I've always felt that my soul is firmly attached to my brain, even though the chemistry and makup of my brain largely dictates my actions. (I have autism, so that's a topic I think about more often than most.)
Well, Picard and Troi told the boy that you needed to enter your access code before the computer would enable the panel, and there hadn't been anyone else in the area with the boy. So the panel was probably disabled already.
It would seem to me that the word "printed" is still somewhat dangerous, even if the intent is clear to the average observer.
I'd like to see that clarified. I'm sure a massive letter drive to congressmen would help, but does it help any to send letters to members of relevant government organizations?
Challenging patents needn't involve the courts, if it's done properly. Currently, you're supposed to submit the evidence of prior art, then pay for a reexamination of sorts.
If there was a website dedicated to collecting evidence of prior art and funds for a reexamination request, then the people who are interested in a patent being invalidated could share the cost.
Depending on how you look at it, more "bad" patents could be better for the consumer.
If developers still want to produce a product after one of its underlying technologies has been patented, then they can come up with a different, possibly better, way to produce the same overall functionality of their product.
Unfortunately, it can lock out small developers unless they can get some VC, or maybe a spouse who wins the bread in the meantime. (I suspect that second method would be less stressful.;) )
Yes, I know that a huge number of patents get approved every year, but you have to realize how long it takes a patent to get approved. Even on Slashdot, there are documented incidences of patents that took so long to approve that the technology was widespread before the patent was finally approved. (For example, the technology underlying multisession CDs and the UDF filesystem.)
At least getting patents through the process faster will help reduce the confusion somewhat, and help speed technology along.
Think about it; would UDF and multisession CDs exist the way they do today if the patent had been approved in a timely manner? No. Instead, companies like Roxio would have figured out a different, possibly better, way to accomplish the same goal.
Even spending the money on things like office supplies would help. If they're strapped for cash, there's almost certainly restrictions on consumption of materials. Spending money on "luxuries" would help improve morale.
Definitly. Tariffs not only raise the prices of goods in the country, they also spark malevolence between nations, which can easily lead to more harm to consumers.
No...the show was about an American astronaut that somehow wound up in another civilization that comprised of many different species. The episode I saw had the crew of his ship needing repairs for his ship, and they were negotioating with the planet they were near. Some sort of imperial fleet was after them.
Question 2 was addressed in Heinlein's Time Enough for Love... one of the things he hadn't tried was transfering his mind to the body of a woman. I suspect one of the reasons he chose not to was that there were too many unanswered questions, the same points you bring up.
Definitely religious issues. For instance, does my soul automatically go to the new copy of my body?
Of course, the "new me" will be immediately certain its safe. Everything will seem exactly the same. Except now that I've thought about it. How will I know that I am who I was? How do I know that now?
I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.
Wasn't there a series of episodes in one of the current sci-fi shows about that? A human who was cloned, including memories, and nobody knew who was the original? "Stick a lobster on my head" comes to mind.
That brings up an interesting thought. Perhaps if interfaces were designed to be intelligible on TV, they'd be more usable in reality, too.
Think about it. People watching the show may not know anything about computers, but they still had to understand the occasional piece of information that was important to the plot. (One good example would be when Dr. Crusher was caught in her son's experimental warp bubble. She didn't know where she really was until she saw (and the viewer) saw a picture of the "nature of the universe" and recognized it as something she (and the viewer) saw on one of Wesley's screens in Engineering.
That kind of driving force behind usability would probably be benificial to general use of computers.
Personally, though, I prefer {NeXT|OPEN}Step, GTK, or QT.
Very few of the buttons from LCARS (and whatever the Cardassian system was on DS9...heh. It was funny when they tried to install a new system. Security system went berzerk.) were labeled. At best, they were color-coded.
I assume that Starfleet training included using the interfaces. However, I do wonder about the three-dimensional interface mentioned by Jahdzia in the episode where Sisko's stuck bouncing through time connected to his son, and about the Dominion command interface.
If you think about it, LCARS was horrible, unless your goal was unusability. In one of the TNG episodes, a child thought he caused the destruction of most of his ship by falling on one of the consoles.
I did notice that non-Federation people rarely had any difficulty figuring out the computer systems. Even in Voyager, guests didn't have much of a problem using the systems. (Except for the occasional surprise at a holo-doctor.)
The excuse of saying "we haven't looked at high enough energies" seems to be exactly that - an excuse.
I hate to get involved in a debate which is clearly out of my league, but here I can relate.
You're taking the approach that any anti-science person can make: "Since you haven't found it yet, it doesn't exist. Stop playing with bugs, and come over here to peel potatos."
Not that I'm accusing you of being anti-science. (Far from it! You seem to have ideas worth exploring.)... I'm just pointing out that it's a similar argument.
The water-on-mars argument has been murky for a long time. Different flyby missions have given conflicting data. Even high-intensity rf probing of Mars in the 90s returned controversial data.
There's no way to be sure unless the measurements are taken on-site. (In an interplanetary sense, of course.)
There are situations where patents are appropriate. There are even modern situations that patents were intended for, even though the laws laying the groundwork for patents were laid hundreds of years ago.
Slashdot usually gets up in a fury whenever a patent concept threatens free-as-in-RMS software. And I don't blame them.
Perhaps an antitrust lawsuit by artists that would gaurantee that the artist gets a fixed percentage of the sale price to distributors or (if the RIAA member does direct sales) the consumer would be in order. Then the RIAA, as a group, could run their own P2P service, and cut down their cost to market by distributing the sources of the product.
Or a court directing that the price of an album accurately represented the cost of selling that album.
And/or DRM, with court-ordered restrictions on the limitations it was allowed to impart.
All of these would benefit the artists, the distributors, and the consumers.
But I bet the RIAA would oppose every one of them.
How long until they manage to replace portions of the spine with wire? I'm not talking about splicing into old, damaged nerves. Instead, I'm thinking that muscles could be stimulated simply by placing probes in some portion of the brain. You'd have to learn to use the new circuit, but it still shows promise. I suspect the biggest challange will be providing some sort of sensory feedback so that the concious brain can deal with issues that the subconcious brain would normally deal with. (acid buildup, muscle strain, etc.)
On a side note, it's really fortunate that so much information is passed through the bloodstream. Things like hormones considerably reduce the amount of information that has to be passed through a nerve.
There is an option to optimize for the Transmeta processor line in the kernel configuration. That option is passed along to GCC to make sure the kernel will run as fast as possible. So GCC supports the Transmeta system.
There are also things like LongRun support, etc. that are in the kernel configuration, that don't necessarily involve GCC options.
I bet that even if you had to pay per package (unless it's just a 30-day demo, etc.), an apt-like solution touting proprietary software could be immensly popular in the business world.
It's actually a really old tactic. You tell people you've got a really neat product in the works, so they don't upgrade just yet. They wait for your product with its "latest and greatest" features.
Then you keep slipping the date, and the customer, while mildly irritated, still waits for your product.
Generally, this works well against organizations who know they'll need to upgrade "soon," but it isn't an immediate issue.
Think back to when AMD announced the release date of ClawHammer. People put off upgrading to other products until ClawHammer came out, then they bought it up in all its goodness when it came out.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always felt that my soul is firmly attached to my brain, even though the chemistry and makup of my brain largely dictates my actions. (I have autism, so that's a topic I think about more often than most.)
Well, Picard and Troi told the boy that you needed to enter your access code before the computer would enable the panel, and there hadn't been anyone else in the area with the boy. So the panel was probably disabled already.
It would seem to me that the word "printed" is still somewhat dangerous, even if the intent is clear to the average observer.
I'd like to see that clarified. I'm sure a massive letter drive to congressmen would help, but does it help any to send letters to members of relevant government organizations?
Challenging patents needn't involve the courts, if it's done properly. Currently, you're supposed to submit the evidence of prior art, then pay for a reexamination of sorts.
If there was a website dedicated to collecting evidence of prior art and funds for a reexamination request, then the people who are interested in a patent being invalidated could share the cost.
Depending on how you look at it, more "bad" patents could be better for the consumer.
;) )
If developers still want to produce a product after one of its underlying technologies has been patented, then they can come up with a different, possibly better, way to produce the same overall functionality of their product.
Unfortunately, it can lock out small developers unless they can get some VC, or maybe a spouse who wins the bread in the meantime. (I suspect that second method would be less stressful.
Yes, I know that a huge number of patents get approved every year, but you have to realize how long it takes a patent to get approved. Even on Slashdot, there are documented incidences of patents that took so long to approve that the technology was widespread before the patent was finally approved. (For example, the technology underlying multisession CDs and the UDF filesystem.)
At least getting patents through the process faster will help reduce the confusion somewhat, and help speed technology along.
Think about it; would UDF and multisession CDs exist the way they do today if the patent had been approved in a timely manner? No. Instead, companies like Roxio would have figured out a different, possibly better, way to accomplish the same goal.
Even spending the money on things like office supplies would help. If they're strapped for cash, there's almost certainly restrictions on consumption of materials. Spending money on "luxuries" would help improve morale.
Definitly. Tariffs not only raise the prices of goods in the country, they also spark malevolence between nations, which can easily lead to more harm to consumers.
No...the show was about an American astronaut that somehow wound up in another civilization that comprised of many different species. The episode I saw had the crew of his ship needing repairs for his ship, and they were negotioating with the planet they were near. Some sort of imperial fleet was after them.
Question 2 was addressed in Heinlein's Time Enough for Love ... one of the things he hadn't tried was transfering his mind to the body of a woman. I suspect one of the reasons he chose not to was that there were too many unanswered questions, the same points you bring up.
Picard didn't do Holmes. Data did Holmes.
Picard did Dixon Hill, a much more unsavory character.
You know, perhapse getting all the seasons on DVD wasn't a healthy choice...
Definitely religious issues. For instance, does my soul automatically go to the new copy of my body?
Of course, the "new me" will be immediately certain its safe. Everything will seem exactly the same. Except now that I've thought about it. How will I know that I am who I was? How do I know that now?
I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.
Wasn't there a series of episodes in one of the current sci-fi shows about that? A human who was cloned, including memories, and nobody knew who was the original? "Stick a lobster on my head" comes to mind.
That brings up an interesting thought. Perhaps if interfaces were designed to be intelligible on TV, they'd be more usable in reality, too.
Think about it. People watching the show may not know anything about computers, but they still had to understand the occasional piece of information that was important to the plot. (One good example would be when Dr. Crusher was caught in her son's experimental warp bubble. She didn't know where she really was until she saw (and the viewer) saw a picture of the "nature of the universe" and recognized it as something she (and the viewer) saw on one of Wesley's screens in Engineering.
That kind of driving force behind usability would probably be benificial to general use of computers.
Personally, though, I prefer {NeXT|OPEN}Step, GTK, or QT.
I found it interesting that only Admirals were generally physically unfit. So why the hell aren't I an admiral right NOW?!
Very few of the buttons from LCARS (and whatever the Cardassian system was on DS9...heh. It was funny when they tried to install a new system. Security system went berzerk.) were labeled. At best, they were color-coded.
I assume that Starfleet training included using the interfaces. However, I do wonder about the three-dimensional interface mentioned by Jahdzia in the episode where Sisko's stuck bouncing through time connected to his son, and about the Dominion command interface.
If you think about it, LCARS was horrible, unless your goal was unusability. In one of the TNG episodes, a child thought he caused the destruction of most of his ship by falling on one of the consoles.
I did notice that non-Federation people rarely had any difficulty figuring out the computer systems. Even in Voyager, guests didn't have much of a problem using the systems. (Except for the occasional surprise at a holo-doctor.)
You killed them all. Duh. :)
The original states sent representatives to the convention.
Even after the first draft, some of those states weren't satisfied, and thus came the bill of rights.
It's exactly the same as when an ambassador signs contracts with other nations.
The excuse of saying "we haven't looked at high enough energies" seems to be exactly that - an excuse.
... I'm just pointing out that it's a similar argument.
I hate to get involved in a debate which is clearly out of my league, but here I can relate.
You're taking the approach that any anti-science person can make: "Since you haven't found it yet, it doesn't exist. Stop playing with bugs, and come over here to peel potatos."
Not that I'm accusing you of being anti-science. (Far from it! You seem to have ideas worth exploring.)
The water-on-mars argument has been murky for a long time. Different flyby missions have given conflicting data. Even high-intensity rf probing of Mars in the 90s returned controversial data.
There's no way to be sure unless the measurements are taken on-site. (In an interplanetary sense, of course.)
There are situations where patents are appropriate. There are even modern situations that patents were intended for, even though the laws laying the groundwork for patents were laid hundreds of years ago.
Slashdot usually gets up in a fury whenever a patent concept threatens free-as-in-RMS software. And I don't blame them.
I happen to agree with this comment.
Perhaps an antitrust lawsuit by artists that would gaurantee that the artist gets a fixed percentage of the sale price to distributors or (if the RIAA member does direct sales) the consumer would be in order. Then the RIAA, as a group, could run their own P2P service, and cut down their cost to market by distributing the sources of the product.
Or a court directing that the price of an album accurately represented the cost of selling that album.
And/or DRM, with court-ordered restrictions on the limitations it was allowed to impart.
All of these would benefit the artists, the distributors, and the consumers.
But I bet the RIAA would oppose every one of them.
I see new hope for Christopher Reeves.
How long until they manage to replace portions of the spine with wire? I'm not talking about splicing into old, damaged nerves. Instead, I'm thinking that muscles could be stimulated simply by placing probes in some portion of the brain. You'd have to learn to use the new circuit, but it still shows promise. I suspect the biggest challange will be providing some sort of sensory feedback so that the concious brain can deal with issues that the subconcious brain would normally deal with. (acid buildup, muscle strain, etc.)
On a side note, it's really fortunate that so much information is passed through the bloodstream. Things like hormones considerably reduce the amount of information that has to be passed through a nerve.
There is an option to optimize for the Transmeta processor line in the kernel configuration. That option is passed along to GCC to make sure the kernel will run as fast as possible. So GCC supports the Transmeta system.
There are also things like LongRun support, etc. that are in the kernel configuration, that don't necessarily involve GCC options.
No doubt.
I bet that even if you had to pay per package (unless it's just a 30-day demo, etc.), an apt-like solution touting proprietary software could be immensly popular in the business world.
It's actually a really old tactic. You tell people you've got a really neat product in the works, so they don't upgrade just yet. They wait for your product with its "latest and greatest" features.
Then you keep slipping the date, and the customer, while mildly irritated, still waits for your product.
Generally, this works well against organizations who know they'll need to upgrade "soon," but it isn't an immediate issue.
Think back to when AMD announced the release date of ClawHammer. People put off upgrading to other products until ClawHammer came out, then they bought it up in all its goodness when it came out.