I understand the purpose of making web services available to mobile devices. I'm not sure I understand the point of making web pages (designed for 800x600 or greater) available, thought.
The story goes that during construction the site engineer actually had the plans the wrong way round and as a result the building was built back to front. As a result the building tended to sway horribly in winds and the temperature inside was almost impossible to control.
Imagine you are on a 20 person programming team. You spend two years writing an application with lots of low-level code. After release, someone suddenly realizes "Whoops! All the low-level code was written for SPARC instead of X86."
That is basically what you just stated, but in programming terms instead of construction terms.
There are so many inter-dependancies with a large building project that you cannot "accidentally" make major changes; even with building orientation as your site work will have your service entrances at specific places in the foundation.
Now, what can happen is that the construction manager or physical plant can make changes without taking into account design. For example, to use the situation above, the architect might have designed the building to face south, but the CM recommended the building face north because of site issues. The PP or owner might have agreed without consulting the architect or talking to the HVAC sub, thus, the heat loading on the building (manual J calcs) are no where near spec. Even in this case, though, you cannot design a large building with a preferential wind profile, so turning it would not have any effect in that respect. Furthermore, I don't believe such a major decision would be made without consulting all parties.
However, smaller field decisions can be made with disastrous consequences. Google for the Kansas City Hyatt Disaster to see what I mean. Over 100 dead because a seemingly small detail was changed in the field without consulting the architect. In that case, "bridges" were designed to be hung from the ceiling using a bolt system; thus, the weight of all the bridges was supported by the roof and each bridge only needed to support its own weight. At the site, however, it was changed so that each bridge supported the weight of all the bridges below it.
But, I digress.
The most likely scenario is that after the building was built, people noticed issues with sway and temperature control. In order to explain it, the myth of the building being built backwards was born.
As I said, the big commercial suppliers will rip you off on the price of the control system & they'll give you a relatively limited solution compared to something you can do yourself.
In theory, you are paying for system design, not just the hardware. While I am sure there are HVAC contractors that just drop the hardware in and call it a day, you need to find the ones that actually do the required pre-con and post-installation work to balance the system.
You can't just drop in a few dampers and a fancy thermostat to get proper zoning control. There's a big issue with static pressure - if it's not properly addressed, you can easily cut the lifetime of your blower in half.
See that ship over there? They're re-broadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent, not express written consent -- or so the legend goes. </obHomer>
One thing that I thought of, but couldn't really put into words in the few minutes it took to conceive and type that post was that, while X and Y were hard limits on the books, they could modified to the particular situation by the Patent Office during specific claims. Like if there is reason to believe you are trying to submarine, they X for your patent could be retroactively set to X/2 for a specific claim. Or, if there are a company releases a product "on the sly" to try and slide under the radar, X for challenge for that product could be set to a X*3.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect idea, or that it is without issues. But, I've spent a total of 5 minutes thinking about it -- I'm sure people a lot smarter than me with more time could take the general ideas and formulate a better plan.
This almost makes patents like farming. Once you have the monopoly on the idea (the land), you can do nothing and get nothing in return (let the land sit fallow) or you can make use of your idea and make money (grow and harvest crops).
I respect the rights of patent owners, and I'm not sure how you could legally sanction this berhaviour without harming patent holders' legitimate rights, but the practice is just plain sleazy.
If a product that uses your patent without an agreement in place is on the market for X months and you, the patent holder, do not challenge such use, a license is automatically granted for that product.
If you have reason to believe a product is using your patent, you can file a challenge with the patent office stating so. The company offering the product has to respond saying that they are or are not violating your patent. If they say they are not, the previous "X month" window gets extended to the full term of the patent for that product. If they aren't using your patent, this has no effect. If they are using your patent, and tell the patent office they aren't, you now have the full term of the patent to prove them wrong.
You can only exercise this challenge Y times over the life of the patent. Y will not include any challenge that is upheld, either initially or after the fact.
Off-peak meter
on
Smart Power
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Doesn't all this technology re-invent what we already have via the "off-peak meter"?
When our house used electric drying, cooking, and water heating, we had a secondary meter on the outside of the house. This meter powered a separate panel to which the above devices were connected to and was scheduled to be turned off from Noon to 7 PM every day and could be turned off at any other time at the POCO's discretion.
In exchange for this, power from that meter was about 25% the cost of power from our main meter.
Doesn't all this extra technology do the practically the same thing, except a little more granular control, but with the addition of a lot of "complicated" technology (as compared to flipping a switch once a day)?
The number one complaint I hear on why people use Tivo (or ThePirateBay as it seems to be lately) is that advertising sucks -- it is unimportant, too generalized and the same thing over and over.
Let's say you watch 2 hours of TV each night. During that time, you will view at least 32 minutes of ads. Do you honestly think relevance has anything to do with why many people are disgusted with ads?
In theory, personalized ads could fix this. If each ad slot cost more because it was targetted, you could get away with fewer ads. However, do you honestly see the TV execs reducing the number of ads to stay at the same revenue point? No, they will keep the number of ads the same in the hope of earning more. Thus, with "Advertising 2.0", we're in the exact same spot we are now, except our privacy has been sold to whoever wants to pay.
I can't tell you how many times I went to my TiVo to watch the show, only to see the end of a football game.
Count yourself lucky.
I would have been happy to see the end of a football game instead of what Fox had on. At least a football game is entertaining. Usually Tivo would have 15 minutes of commercials intermixed with 15 minutes of the verbal masturbation that they call 'post game'.
Sometimes, they would have 2 minutes of commercials, come back to a placard with the final score, some dojob would announce 'There you have it, the New York Giants over the Philadelphia Eagles, 21 to 17. We'll be right back after this', and then two more minutes of commercials.
Fox can bite my glorious golden ass! (being from Universe 1, of course)
How about "loser pays", but the amount is limited to the amount the loser spent. If you lose, it will cost only as much as you spent. There would have to be some ground rules for things like self-representation and lawyers who work on contingency. There would also have to be an on-going public record of actual costs.
It would sorta act as a resource balance in proceedings. If "big company" is sued by "Joe Schmoe" working with a single lawyer, they have every right to use a team of 30 lawyers, but should only expect to be reimbursed for the first one.
Doug Thompson says he's confirmed it with three different aides.
Homer: Get out, who told you that? Bart: Nelson! Homer: Hmm, that's the kind of dirt that belongs on my web page. Lisa: You can't post that on the internet, you don't even know if it's true! Homer: Nelson has never steered me wrong, honey. Nelson is gold! Bart: You know, it might have been Jimbo.. Homer: Beautiful, we have confirmation.
Isn't the point of capitalism that you're supposed to fix that yourself instead of bribing a politician to do it for you? The software industry already has a lot of special rights that should have been taken away long ago (beginning with that "it's not a sale, it's a license" crap), they don't need more.
Not that I think more laws would actually solve anything, petition the government to add the following to any second-hand sales legislation:
Employees of any company in an industry whose members restrict second-hand sales cannot trade-in or sell possession which were purchased new. This includes: electronics, computers, cars, and houses.
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting
As opposed to Microsoft, who, in their correspondence, makes no mention that going with OpenDocument will cost them big money in lost sales?
I'd much rather a company say "We support X and here is our product that does so" then "You shouldn't go with X for FUD reasons a, b, and c. (And, while we won't tell you this, if you go with X, it will cost us $x million in annual sales)". Give credit to the company with the blatant agenda as opposed to the not-so-well hidden one.
Considering that you walking on to private property they have every right to search your bags should you be on their property.
No, they can "require" that I submit to a search to remain on their property. If I say "no" on my way out, all they can do is tell me to leave, which is exactly what I was trying to do in the first place.
I hate drugs and I think that even the harmless ones end up being a gateway
For some reason, any time someone says something similar to this, I always envision them with a cigarette hanging from their lips and a cup of coffee in their hand.
From what I understand, the most recent revision of the WRT54G (v5) is now based on vxworks. However, you can buy the WRT54GL, which is effectively the WRT54G v4.
- Tony
Re:Houston, we have a busted/confirmed myth
on
Ask The Mythbusters
·
· Score: 1
On a typical two-lane road, you have a corridor around 12-15 feet wide to maneuver in; in the air, your maneuvering room extends several thousand feet over the entire surface of the earth. Do you really think that accidents are going to be a problem?
If trained and certified pilots can get into midair collisions, I think it would be safe to say that most Joe Autodrivers don't really stand a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the purpose of making web services available to mobile devices. I'm not sure I understand the point of making web pages (designed for 800x600 or greater) available, thought.
- Tony
The story goes that during construction the site engineer actually had the plans the wrong way round and as a result the building was built back to front. As a result the building tended to sway horribly in winds and the temperature inside was almost impossible to control.
Imagine you are on a 20 person programming team. You spend two years writing an application with lots of low-level code. After release, someone suddenly realizes "Whoops! All the low-level code was written for SPARC instead of X86."
That is basically what you just stated, but in programming terms instead of construction terms.
There are so many inter-dependancies with a large building project that you cannot "accidentally" make major changes; even with building orientation as your site work will have your service entrances at specific places in the foundation.
Now, what can happen is that the construction manager or physical plant can make changes without taking into account design. For example, to use the situation above, the architect might have designed the building to face south, but the CM recommended the building face north because of site issues. The PP or owner might have agreed without consulting the architect or talking to the HVAC sub, thus, the heat loading on the building (manual J calcs) are no where near spec. Even in this case, though, you cannot design a large building with a preferential wind profile, so turning it would not have any effect in that respect. Furthermore, I don't believe such a major decision would be made without consulting all parties.
However, smaller field decisions can be made with disastrous consequences. Google for the Kansas City Hyatt Disaster to see what I mean. Over 100 dead because a seemingly small detail was changed in the field without consulting the architect. In that case, "bridges" were designed to be hung from the ceiling using a bolt system; thus, the weight of all the bridges was supported by the roof and each bridge only needed to support its own weight. At the site, however, it was changed so that each bridge supported the weight of all the bridges below it.
But, I digress.
The most likely scenario is that after the building was built, people noticed issues with sway and temperature control. In order to explain it, the myth of the building being built backwards was born.
- Tony
As I said, the big commercial suppliers will rip you off on the price of the control system & they'll give you a relatively limited solution compared to something you can do yourself.
In theory, you are paying for system design, not just the hardware. While I am sure there are HVAC contractors that just drop the hardware in and call it a day, you need to find the ones that actually do the required pre-con and post-installation work to balance the system.
You can't just drop in a few dampers and a fancy thermostat to get proper zoning control. There's a big issue with static pressure - if it's not properly addressed, you can easily cut the lifetime of your blower in half.
- Tony
See that ship over there? They're re-broadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent, not express written consent -- or so the legend goes.
</obHomer>
Actually, thanks to the recording industry, yes, you can.
One thing that I thought of, but couldn't really put into words in the few minutes it took to conceive and type that post was that, while X and Y were hard limits on the books, they could modified to the particular situation by the Patent Office during specific claims. Like if there is reason to believe you are trying to submarine, they X for your patent could be retroactively set to X/2 for a specific claim. Or, if there are a company releases a product "on the sly" to try and slide under the radar, X for challenge for that product could be set to a X*3.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect idea, or that it is without issues. But, I've spent a total of 5 minutes thinking about it -- I'm sure people a lot smarter than me with more time could take the general ideas and formulate a better plan.
This almost makes patents like farming. Once you have the monopoly on the idea (the land), you can do nothing and get nothing in return (let the land sit fallow) or you can make use of your idea and make money (grow and harvest crops).
I respect the rights of patent owners, and I'm not sure how you could legally sanction this berhaviour without harming patent holders' legitimate rights, but the practice is just plain sleazy.
If a product that uses your patent without an agreement in place is on the market for X months and you, the patent holder, do not challenge such use, a license is automatically granted for that product.
If you have reason to believe a product is using your patent, you can file a challenge with the patent office stating so. The company offering the product has to respond saying that they are or are not violating your patent. If they say they are not, the previous "X month" window gets extended to the full term of the patent for that product. If they aren't using your patent, this has no effect. If they are using your patent, and tell the patent office they aren't, you now have the full term of the patent to prove them wrong.
You can only exercise this challenge Y times over the life of the patent. Y will not include any challenge that is upheld, either initially or after the fact.
Doesn't all this technology re-invent what we already have via the "off-peak meter"?
When our house used electric drying, cooking, and water heating, we had a secondary meter on the outside of the house. This meter powered a separate panel to which the above devices were connected to and was scheduled to be turned off from Noon to 7 PM every day and could be turned off at any other time at the POCO's discretion.
In exchange for this, power from that meter was about 25% the cost of power from our main meter.
Doesn't all this extra technology do the practically the same thing, except a little more granular control, but with the addition of a lot of "complicated" technology (as compared to flipping a switch once a day)?
- Tony
Just how long will it be before someone 'hacks' a way in to view through it at any time?
With the switch to Intel, I can see why you're a little confused... these will be running Mac OS X, not Windows.
The number one complaint I hear on why people use Tivo (or ThePirateBay as it seems to be lately) is that advertising sucks -- it is unimportant, too generalized and the same thing over and over.
Let's say you watch 2 hours of TV each night. During that time, you will view at least 32 minutes of ads. Do you honestly think relevance has anything to do with why many people are disgusted with ads?
In theory, personalized ads could fix this. If each ad slot cost more because it was targetted, you could get away with fewer ads. However, do you honestly see the TV execs reducing the number of ads to stay at the same revenue point? No, they will keep the number of ads the same in the hope of earning more. Thus, with "Advertising 2.0", we're in the exact same spot we are now, except our privacy has been sold to whoever wants to pay.
- Tony
I can't tell you how many times I went to my TiVo to watch the show, only to see the end of a football game.
Count yourself lucky.
I would have been happy to see the end of a football game instead of what Fox had on. At least a football game is entertaining. Usually Tivo would have 15 minutes of commercials intermixed with 15 minutes of the verbal masturbation that they call 'post game'.
Sometimes, they would have 2 minutes of commercials, come back to a placard with the final score, some dojob would announce 'There you have it, the New York Giants over the Philadelphia Eagles, 21 to 17. We'll be right back after this', and then two more minutes of commercials.
Fox can bite my glorious golden ass! (being from Universe 1, of course)
- Tony
How about "loser pays", but the amount is limited to the amount the loser spent. If you lose, it will cost only as much as you spent. There would have to be some ground rules for things like self-representation and lawyers who work on contingency. There would also have to be an on-going public record of actual costs.
It would sorta act as a resource balance in proceedings. If "big company" is sued by "Joe Schmoe" working with a single lawyer, they have every right to use a team of 30 lawyers, but should only expect to be reimbursed for the first one.
- Tony
Most experts agree the product of the best cryptography will be indistinguishable from random noise
So you are saying it will be written in Perl?
Doug Thompson says he's confirmed it with three different aides.
Homer: Get out, who told you that?
Bart: Nelson!
Homer: Hmm, that's the kind of dirt that belongs on my web page.
Lisa: You can't post that on the internet, you don't even know if it's true!
Homer: Nelson has never steered me wrong, honey. Nelson is gold!
Bart: You know, it might have been Jimbo..
Homer: Beautiful, we have confirmation.
Isn't the point of capitalism that you're supposed to fix that yourself instead of bribing a politician to do it for you? The software industry already has a lot of special rights that should have been taken away long ago (beginning with that "it's not a sale, it's a license" crap), they don't need more.
Not that I think more laws would actually solve anything, petition the government to add the following to any second-hand sales legislation:
Employees of any company in an industry whose members restrict second-hand sales cannot trade-in or sell possession which were purchased new. This includes: electronics, computers, cars, and houses.
What's good for the goose, right?
- Tony
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting
As opposed to Microsoft, who, in their correspondence, makes no mention that going with OpenDocument will cost them big money in lost sales?
I'd much rather a company say "We support X and here is our product that does so" then "You shouldn't go with X for FUD reasons a, b, and c. (And, while we won't tell you this, if you go with X, it will cost us $x million in annual sales)". Give credit to the company with the blatant agenda as opposed to the not-so-well hidden one.
- Tony
Considering that you walking on to private property they have every right to search your bags should you be on their property.
No, they can "require" that I submit to a search to remain on their property. If I say "no" on my way out, all they can do is tell me to leave, which is exactly what I was trying to do in the first place.
I hate drugs and I think that even the harmless ones end up being a gateway
For some reason, any time someone says something similar to this, I always envision them with a cigarette hanging from their lips and a cup of coffee in their hand.
Yes and no.
From what I understand, the most recent revision of the WRT54G (v5) is now based on vxworks. However, you can buy the WRT54GL, which is effectively the WRT54G v4.
- Tony
I think this is what you are looking for.
Don't confuse the Greenhouse Effect (good) with Global Warming (bad).
All I know is that Scooty Puff Junior sucks.
- Tony
I'm sure the executives at HBO are thinking the same thing about people who have the ability to pay for HBO yet won't.
They are probably thinking "Premium cable was a lot easier when all you had to worry about was Captain Midnight."
I loved buying CDs too until my house burned down and I had to buy new ones.
I thought, well, I'll just go back to Best Buy again, show them my receipts, and they'll replace my $1,500.00 worth of CDs I bought from them.
Well, I was wrong, and haven't "bought" a CD since.
Yeah, that sounds just as stupid was what you said.
On a typical two-lane road, you have a corridor around 12-15 feet wide to maneuver in; in the air, your maneuvering room extends several thousand feet over the entire surface of the earth. Do you really think that accidents are going to be a problem?
If trained and certified pilots can get into midair collisions, I think it would be safe to say that most Joe Autodrivers don't really stand a chance.