I'm not alright with killing the kid before birth. I'm alright with destroying a ball of tissue (which is not yet a human being) within the first trimester or so. There's a big difference between a fetus at 2 months vs a fetus at 8 or 9 months- one is clearly developed enough to experience pain and suffer, the other is not. When that blob of cells becomes something more is certainly debatable, but I think most scientists would agree that it occurs long after the first trimester, which is when most abortions occur. I don't have the numbers, but I imagine most occur within the first six weeks.
There is no correlation between infant circumcision and reduced risk of diseases. Get that out of your head. People suggesting health benefits are tweaking their science for the purpose of justifying their barbaric behavior, and there have been many studies which demonstrate that with normal hygeine people all over the world live long, healthy, uncircumcized lives. Why don't we let people decide for themselves if they want large portions of the nerves around their penises removed, instead of doing it when they're too young to resist? Why is it that we protest when certain religious groups perform similar acts on girls, but not boys?
However, no laws have been passed specifically detailing the legality...
The government shouldn't (and usually don't) pass laws explicitly detailing the legality of things. It is assumed that whatever the government doesn't explicitly deem illegal is legal. The freedoms the people are granted in the constitution are all outlined by making it illegal for the government to do certain things. Note how each amendment in the Bill of Rights forbids the government from doing something. It doesn't grant us the right to free speech by saying "the people have a right to free speech", they say "Congress shall make no law" abridging it. The lawbooks of a government where nothing was clearly legal unless explicitly stated as such in law would get thick very quickly. I can see it now:
1.00 The government deems the opening of one's eyes to be legal. 1.01 The government hereby deems the reading of these laws by the citizens to be legal. 1.02 The government hereby deems breathing to be legal. 1.03 The goverment hereby deems walking to be legal. ... 97,649,234,234.05 - The government hereby deems reading slashdot.com to be legal. (albeit a waste of time) ...
...or illegality.
The whole point of Roe v. Wade is that our courts explicitly deemed laws detailing the illegality of abortion to be illegal themselves. They did this because the Bill of Rights puts limits on the government which effectively imply a limit when it comes to making laws which intrude on an individual's right to privacy and freedom when it comes to their relationship with their doctor and their own bodies; and thus it may not make laws outlining what procedures they may request their doctor perform on them. Those who are for a government who says a woman can't remove a blastocyst from her uterus might as well be for a goverment which has the power to deem anything related to what you do with your body illegal- having tumors removed? ("clearly God wanted you to die, we shouldn't interfere with the will of God!") getting yourself circumcised? (the atheist state forbids you mutilate your own dick in the name of your god!) (Having your baby circumcized, btw, is another matter. Mutilating someone else's genitals in a barbaric fashion without their choice is wrong, IMHO) getting a tattoo? masturbation? taking viagra? inserting a sex toy? anal sex?
Ingesting whatever one wishes, whether marijuana or heroin, should be legal by this logic, but isn't. Euthanasia should be legal by the same logic, but I'm not sure- does anyone know if we're there yet in the US?
...or does it seem like almost every major national/international market end up in what is essentially a duopoly with a few other minor players? Usually they're red vs blue, too-
Target vs Wal-Mart Home Depot vs Lowe's Coke vs Pepsi Republicans vs Democrats CVS vs Walgreen's Nike vs Reebok Verizon vs Cingular Firestone vs Goodyear Marlboro vs Camel ...
There are a lot more that I can't think of right now. I guess since monopolies often get broken up, things tend to stabilize at duopolies...
Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.
And dolphins also commit gang-rape.
We humans aren't so special after all.
So it's okay for us to do it because monkeys and dolphins do it? Is that where we look for behavioral guidelines? Maybe if we seek to behave like animals.
I realize those requirements exist, but I don't think Apple will have a hard time satisfying those requirements to prove the obviousness of the invention. The motivation was clearly already there- navigating a large number of songs was a problem, and most existing mp3 players had shitty one-line LED displays. Most of them were made by small companies that didn't have the resources to design one with a decent display that would support a more usable interface. Hierarchical menu systems have been around forever, and I think anyone given a device with the controls and display of an iPod or a Nomad would come up with a similar system for navigation. Besides, the Rio Volt I had back in 1998~99 had a hierarchical menu system. It was a CD-based MP3 player, but it is no suprise a similar interface would wind up on a hard drive or memory-based player.
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Anyone with the technical skill required to design an MP3 player is going to be aware of heirarchical menu systems, and would likely choose to use one for the player's navigation. It's totally obvious and therefore this patent should likely be invalidated.
Their site asks for public transportation agencies to contact them in order to participate, but why wait? Most agencies offer their schedules online in some format- if anyone can make a program to parse the various transit systems' websites out there and cull the data, it's Google. Here in Houston, METRO offers a trip planner, but the interface isn't nearly as nice as Google's.
the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.
Who, among designers, engineers, and inventors with the skill to design an MP3 player, wouldn't think of using a heirarchical menu system?
precisely- whether or not Apple had seen Creative's device before designing the iPod, they would have come up with the same navigation system because it's obvious. Patents are not supposed to cover obvious things.
Well, for one thing, his site is weirdal.com, but I found this bit from his Q & A archive interesting:
Jeremy McCarthy of Fairfield, CT asks: Hey Al!!!!! What do u think about Napster? I just want to know if you approve.
I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!
and then this one:
Jens Landmand in Lillebøs: Is your music copyrighted?
Yeah, so just don't try anything funny, okay, Buster?
Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users, but with available GUIs, that's yesterday's news.
indeed, now that Linux has a GUI, all usability issues have been solved!
but not every show is a series where you just HAVE to see every episode. Shows like CSI, Law & Order, ER, etc, are usually self-contained episodes that the viewer can take or leave. I doubt they want commercial-free internet downloads to replace TV, but if it is ever to do so it will have to be at a price that people can afford to casually watch. $2/hr is not an amount most people would idly fritter away like they do with their time when they're watching regular TV.
I don't care about OWNING the show. I just want to be able to watch TV when I feel like it, without commercial interruption, and I'd be happy to pay the equivalent cost to make up for the one less pair of eyeballs they are able to sell to advertisers. The question is whether they're in the business of making content and selling it to customers or attracting viewers and selling their attention to advertisers. It's a new business model for them- what I'm talking about isn't so much television as theatre on a national, time-independent scale.
CableTv sucks there is maybe 12% of all the content that a person watches, the rest is useless to them either because the shows are on when they can not watch them, or the viewership is too small to dedicate airtime.
It's way WAY less than 12%. If you have 100 channels and you watch your TV 24/7 without sleeping, with picture-in-a-picture turned on, you're still only utilizing 2% of the content you're getting (not accounting for reruns, etc). Most people with cable get more than 100 channels, and don't watch TV anywhere near 24/7. I'd wager the average cable TV subscriber views less than.1% of the content that is piped to their home.
These shows are ridiculously overpriced. Do the math- we'll look at the highest-rated show, Desperate Housewives:
Average number of viewers/episode: 17.44mil Number of ads per show: Probably about 10min of National ads (20 30-second spots), 5 of local ads (10 30-second spots) Price per 30-second National spot: $560,000 National ad revenue per show: $11.2m Value/viewer: $.64!
Now, this isn't counting the value of the local ads (which sell in the tens of thousands of $/spot, depending on the market and timeslot), what the show will make in syndication, or DVD sales, but neither is it counting the costs associated with broadcasting television, which are far greater than the cost of hosting a file. I just can't imagine a single show being worth more than a dollar. $2!? I think I'll find [ahem!] other ways to get the shows for a better price point.
I'd gladly pay a quarter for the rights to watch a 30-min show ad-free for 24hrs, encumbered with DRM and everything. If there were a huge database of these shows, I might even go back at a later date and pay to watch them again. A system like that would have to be at LEAST as profitable as broadcast TV, if not moreso...
I seem to remember a German friend of mine telling me that, in Germany, punitive damages are not awarded to the victim but instead go to some sort of general fund. It seems we could use something like that here to help keep the frivolous lawsuits down.
yeah, I tried some of the HP Bluetooth headphones, which are the same as the ones Logitech and others sell. Apparently there's really only one manufacturer making them. Anyway, the sound quality was ok but they were horribly uncomfortable. I have a rather large head and the one-piece non-adjustable headband sucked. The "behind the head" design sucks as well because the way the earpieces connect to the headband is not very accomodating. It was not comfortable to have my ears pinched between two pieces of hard plastic. I guess I'm spoiled by my Sony Fontopia MDR-EX51LP earbuds- super comfortable, great isolation and sound quality.
Someday someone will make some Bluetooth stereo earbuds. Oh how they will rock. Especially if that someone is cool enough to make a bluetooth watch as well. I'd love to be able to read song titles and caller ID info on my wrist and select tracks, adjust volume, etc, by turning the bezel on my watch...
It's not going to be a PVR. Apple has no interest in putting tuner cards in their PC's, particularly when they don't work with the digital cable that probably 90% of their target market uses. In order to actually do that, they would have to put a CableCard slot in the Mac Mini, and then negotiate with that. All of it is way too much trouble and would only succeed in getting them more legal hassles and cannibalizing iTunes video sales.
No, this device will just have TV-out. The idea is that you buy video from the iTunes store and watch it on your TV. Working out deals with the content providers beforehand means you can just sell the video directly to the consumer, commercial-free. It will likely be competing with the Xbox360 and PS3 for this, but Apple has the distinct advantage of being the only company with a serious presence as an online media retailer.
I think that if Apple really wants to get smart they'd make iTunes work with any MP3 player. Maybe that would screw up their DRM, which would screw up their deals with the industry, but if they could do that they would certainly become the de-facto standard for online media. The iPod doesn't need its exclusivity w/iTunes for people to know it's the best portable music/media player out there, but as long as there are non-iPod mp3 players out there and the iTunes store doesn't support them, there is a market for other content providers. Someday, probably with the takeoff of the PS3, Sony will get their store up and running and Apple will have some serious competition. They have the opportunity to nip that in the bud now, but they have yet to do it.
And why have the user transcode the video for their iPod? I would think that Apple would offer both versions for download, or even give you both when you purchase a show.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not alright with killing the kid before birth. I'm alright with destroying a ball of tissue (which is not yet a human being) within the first trimester or so. There's a big difference between a fetus at 2 months vs a fetus at 8 or 9 months- one is clearly developed enough to experience pain and suffer, the other is not. When that blob of cells becomes something more is certainly debatable, but I think most scientists would agree that it occurs long after the first trimester, which is when most abortions occur. I don't have the numbers, but I imagine most occur within the first six weeks.
There is no correlation between infant circumcision and reduced risk of diseases. Get that out of your head. People suggesting health benefits are tweaking their science for the purpose of justifying their barbaric behavior, and there have been many studies which demonstrate that with normal hygeine people all over the world live long, healthy, uncircumcized lives. Why don't we let people decide for themselves if they want large portions of the nerves around their penises removed, instead of doing it when they're too young to resist? Why is it that we protest when certain religious groups perform similar acts on girls, but not boys?
The government shouldn't (and usually don't) pass laws explicitly detailing the legality of things. It is assumed that whatever the government doesn't explicitly deem illegal is legal. The freedoms the people are granted in the constitution are all outlined by making it illegal for the government to do certain things. Note how each amendment in the Bill of Rights forbids the government from doing something. It doesn't grant us the right to free speech by saying "the people have a right to free speech", they say "Congress shall make no law" abridging it. The lawbooks of a government where nothing was clearly legal unless explicitly stated as such in law would get thick very quickly. I can see it now:
The whole point of Roe v. Wade is that our courts explicitly deemed laws detailing the illegality of abortion to be illegal themselves. They did this because the Bill of Rights puts limits on the government which effectively imply a limit when it comes to making laws which intrude on an individual's right to privacy and freedom when it comes to their relationship with their doctor and their own bodies; and thus it may not make laws outlining what procedures they may request their doctor perform on them. Those who are for a government who says a woman can't remove a blastocyst from her uterus might as well be for a goverment which has the power to deem anything related to what you do with your body illegal- having tumors removed? ("clearly God wanted you to die, we shouldn't interfere with the will of God!") getting yourself circumcised? (the atheist state forbids you mutilate your own dick in the name of your god!) (Having your baby circumcized, btw, is another matter. Mutilating someone else's genitals in a barbaric fashion without their choice is wrong, IMHO) getting a tattoo? masturbation? taking viagra? inserting a sex toy? anal sex?
Ingesting whatever one wishes, whether marijuana or heroin, should be legal by this logic, but isn't. Euthanasia should be legal by the same logic, but I'm not sure- does anyone know if we're there yet in the US?
you know, you really should be paying attention to the road, anyway ;)
...or does it seem like almost every major national/international market end up in what is essentially a duopoly with a few other minor players? Usually they're red vs blue, too-
Target vs Wal-Mart
Home Depot vs Lowe's
Coke vs Pepsi
Republicans vs Democrats
CVS vs Walgreen's
Nike vs Reebok
Verizon vs Cingular
Firestone vs Goodyear
Marlboro vs Camel
...
There are a lot more that I can't think of right now. I guess since monopolies often get broken up, things tend to stabilize at duopolies...
I'm a vegan, too. It always irks me when I see the "other animals are doing it, why can't we?" defense.
Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.
And dolphins also commit gang-rape.
We humans aren't so special after all.
So it's okay for us to do it because monkeys and dolphins do it? Is that where we look for behavioral guidelines? Maybe if we seek to behave like animals.
I realize those requirements exist, but I don't think Apple will have a hard time satisfying those requirements to prove the obviousness of the invention. The motivation was clearly already there- navigating a large number of songs was a problem, and most existing mp3 players had shitty one-line LED displays. Most of them were made by small companies that didn't have the resources to design one with a decent display that would support a more usable interface. Hierarchical menu systems have been around forever, and I think anyone given a device with the controls and display of an iPod or a Nomad would come up with a similar system for navigation. Besides, the Rio Volt I had back in 1998~99 had a hierarchical menu system. It was a CD-based MP3 player, but it is no suprise a similar interface would wind up on a hard drive or memory-based player.
Their site asks for public transportation agencies to contact them in order to participate, but why wait? Most agencies offer their schedules online in some format- if anyone can make a program to parse the various transit systems' websites out there and cull the data, it's Google. Here in Houston, METRO offers a trip planner, but the interface isn't nearly as nice as Google's.
precisely- whether or not Apple had seen Creative's device before designing the iPod, they would have come up with the same navigation system because it's obvious. Patents are not supposed to cover obvious things.
It's Lotus Notes! *shudder*
Well, for one thing, his site is weirdal.com, but I found this bit from his Q & A archive interesting:and then this one:
Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users, but with available GUIs, that's yesterday's news.
indeed, now that Linux has a GUI, all usability issues have been solved!
but not every show is a series where you just HAVE to see every episode. Shows like CSI, Law & Order, ER, etc, are usually self-contained episodes that the viewer can take or leave. I doubt they want commercial-free internet downloads to replace TV, but if it is ever to do so it will have to be at a price that people can afford to casually watch. $2/hr is not an amount most people would idly fritter away like they do with their time when they're watching regular TV.
I don't care about OWNING the show. I just want to be able to watch TV when I feel like it, without commercial interruption, and I'd be happy to pay the equivalent cost to make up for the one less pair of eyeballs they are able to sell to advertisers. The question is whether they're in the business of making content and selling it to customers or attracting viewers and selling their attention to advertisers. It's a new business model for them- what I'm talking about isn't so much television as theatre on a national, time-independent scale.
CableTv sucks there is maybe 12% of all the content that a person watches, the rest is useless to them either because the shows are on when they can not watch them, or the viewership is too small to dedicate airtime.
.1% of the content that is piped to their home.
It's way WAY less than 12%. If you have 100 channels and you watch your TV 24/7 without sleeping, with picture-in-a-picture turned on, you're still only utilizing 2% of the content you're getting (not accounting for reruns, etc). Most people with cable get more than 100 channels, and don't watch TV anywhere near 24/7. I'd wager the average cable TV subscriber views less than
what gave it away as a joke, and not just your average clueless noob?
These shows are ridiculously overpriced. Do the math- we'll look at the highest-rated show, Desperate Housewives:
Average number of viewers/episode: 17.44mil
Number of ads per show: Probably about 10min of National ads (20 30-second spots), 5 of local ads (10 30-second spots)
Price per 30-second National spot: $560,000
National ad revenue per show: $11.2m
Value/viewer: $.64!
Now, this isn't counting the value of the local ads (which sell in the tens of thousands of $/spot, depending on the market and timeslot), what the show will make in syndication, or DVD sales, but neither is it counting the costs associated with broadcasting television, which are far greater than the cost of hosting a file. I just can't imagine a single show being worth more than a dollar. $2!? I think I'll find [ahem!] other ways to get the shows for a better price point.
I'd gladly pay a quarter for the rights to watch a 30-min show ad-free for 24hrs, encumbered with DRM and everything. If there were a huge database of these shows, I might even go back at a later date and pay to watch them again. A system like that would have to be at LEAST as profitable as broadcast TV, if not moreso...
i think only those with a severely impaired sense of humor would get that one, given that it wasn't funny
beats giving it to lazy fuckers who just want to sue themselves rich...
I seem to remember a German friend of mine telling me that, in Germany, punitive damages are not awarded to the victim but instead go to some sort of general fund. It seems we could use something like that here to help keep the frivolous lawsuits down.
.dmg is a disk image file for a mac. It's not a windows program.
Joe six loves what Tivo and his sisters do for him
Does Joe Six come from rural West Virginia or Arkansas or something? That's sick...
yeah, I tried some of the HP Bluetooth headphones, which are the same as the ones Logitech and others sell. Apparently there's really only one manufacturer making them. Anyway, the sound quality was ok but they were horribly uncomfortable. I have a rather large head and the one-piece non-adjustable headband sucked. The "behind the head" design sucks as well because the way the earpieces connect to the headband is not very accomodating. It was not comfortable to have my ears pinched between two pieces of hard plastic. I guess I'm spoiled by my Sony Fontopia MDR-EX51LP earbuds- super comfortable, great isolation and sound quality.
Someday someone will make some Bluetooth stereo earbuds. Oh how they will rock. Especially if that someone is cool enough to make a bluetooth watch as well. I'd love to be able to read song titles and caller ID info on my wrist and select tracks, adjust volume, etc, by turning the bezel on my watch...
It's not going to be a PVR. Apple has no interest in putting tuner cards in their PC's, particularly when they don't work with the digital cable that probably 90% of their target market uses. In order to actually do that, they would have to put a CableCard slot in the Mac Mini, and then negotiate with that. All of it is way too much trouble and would only succeed in getting them more legal hassles and cannibalizing iTunes video sales.
No, this device will just have TV-out. The idea is that you buy video from the iTunes store and watch it on your TV. Working out deals with the content providers beforehand means you can just sell the video directly to the consumer, commercial-free. It will likely be competing with the Xbox360 and PS3 for this, but Apple has the distinct advantage of being the only company with a serious presence as an online media retailer.
I think that if Apple really wants to get smart they'd make iTunes work with any MP3 player. Maybe that would screw up their DRM, which would screw up their deals with the industry, but if they could do that they would certainly become the de-facto standard for online media. The iPod doesn't need its exclusivity w/iTunes for people to know it's the best portable music/media player out there, but as long as there are non-iPod mp3 players out there and the iTunes store doesn't support them, there is a market for other content providers. Someday, probably with the takeoff of the PS3, Sony will get their store up and running and Apple will have some serious competition. They have the opportunity to nip that in the bud now, but they have yet to do it.
And why have the user transcode the video for their iPod? I would think that Apple would offer both versions for download, or even give you both when you purchase a show.