I must admit that a 5-watt, 64-bit processor sounds pretty spiffy, but I'd really like to see how it compares to the low-power 32-bit machines that are available now.
But what's wrong with it if it's done in an ethically responsible way?
Make sure it's voluntary, and I have no objection. Once you let a governmental organization have anything to do with it though, it becomes evil and must be stopped at all costs.
The purported motivation of patents is to ensure that inventions are disclosed.
No, that is the purpose of granting patents. Our patent system has been corrupted, which is why I call for reverting to the constitutional patent power.
The purpose of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions in exchange for a temporary monopoly. It's a deal between the inventor and everybody else: tell us how you did it, and we won't compete with you for a set amount of time. The alternative is that the inventor attempts to keep it a secret, and the idea dies with him.
Oh, please. We've heard the conspiracy nuts and snake-oil hucksters for years claiming that the government and the oil companies are suppressing breakthrough energy technologies, and it's complete bullshit.
Firstly, let's remember that so far, cold fusion has been a con. A rip-off. A fraud.
None of the above, actually. It's been a failure to date, but who's been defrauded? Can you show that anyone who funded it was lied to about the difficulty of bringing it to market?
Investments in basic research are a long shot, and long shots can pay off very well if they come through.
Cold fusion isn't ruled out by any known laws of physics, so I'll keep an open mind about it until it's proven one way or another. Pons and Fleischman may not have succeeded, but that's no reason to quit. As long as the people trying to make it work are doing so with their own funds, more power to them. If someone succeeds, then a lot of the scarcity in the world can be solved.
Oh I'm sure this person is a complete asshole based on your story.
As it happens, the way I found out about the incident was I noticed some peculiar things in the guy's code, and I asked my customer about the guy who'd written it.
He'd done bizarre things like declaring an array called "constants", which he initialized with 0 to 255, and everywhere in the code where you might ordinarily have an integer constant, he'd use "constants[whatever]" instead.
When I was working at a brokerage house in NYC, I heard about some guy who had gotten drunk at the office christmas party, punched out a female co-worker, and then blacked out. Remembering nothing of the incident, he showed up for work the following Monday, and discovered that he'd been fired when his keycard wouldn't let him in the front door.
He called security, thinking it was just a bad card, and they came down with a box full of the contents of his desk, and a restraining order that banned him from the premises, and from contacting any of his former colleagues.
Really, it's no skin off your nose if you can't get any useful work done for your last two weeks because of their policies. Enjoy the lightened workload.
Actually, I don't believe that any Apple retail employee even raised his voice at the clown. I've seen a couple of unbelievable flaming assholes trying to pick fights with employees at Apple stores, and even the guy who went as far as poking his finger into the shoulder of the Apple sales guy was only asked to leave the store.
Slashdot Mirror
I must admit that a 5-watt, 64-bit processor sounds pretty spiffy, but I'd really like to see how it compares to the low-power 32-bit machines that are available now.
-jcr
It was Microsoft's finest product, ever. It made it possible to run CP/M on your Apple ][.
Up until the X box, hardware was what they did best.
-jcr
A/W may have gotten a patent on a particular form of pie menu, but Don Hopkins invented it.
-jcr
The obvious answer is that the code isn't good.
Got it, first guess.
-jcr
What would you class as interfering?
Any use of force, including the use of tax money.
-jcr
But what's wrong with it if it's done in an ethically responsible way?
Make sure it's voluntary, and I have no objection. Once you let a governmental organization have anything to do with it though, it becomes evil and must be stopped at all costs.
-jcr
Three trillion in solar technology would go a looong way.
Not if spending it was up to the people who brought us the DMV and Amtrak, it wouldn't.
-jcr
Since when do IQ tests contain questions about the bible, dinosaurs, etc?
They don't. This is a trivia quiz with a smattering of actual problems to solve.
-jcr
The purported motivation of patents is to ensure that inventions are disclosed.
No, that is the purpose of granting patents. Our patent system has been corrupted, which is why I call for reverting to the constitutional patent power.
-jcr
The purpose of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions in exchange for a temporary monopoly. It's a deal between the inventor and everybody else: tell us how you did it, and we won't compete with you for a set amount of time. The alternative is that the inventor attempts to keep it a secret, and the idea dies with him.
-jcr
Seems to me they've been using the red cross for quite a while, too.
-jcr
Governments wont allow that
Oh, please. We've heard the conspiracy nuts and snake-oil hucksters for years claiming that the government and the oil companies are suppressing breakthrough energy technologies, and it's complete bullshit.
-jcr
Firstly, let's remember that so far, cold fusion has been a con. A rip-off. A fraud.
None of the above, actually. It's been a failure to date, but who's been defrauded? Can you show that anyone who funded it was lied to about the difficulty of bringing it to market?
Investments in basic research are a long shot, and long shots can pay off very well if they come through.
-jcr
It seems unlikely to me that the first move an earnest discoverer of a new energy source in Japan would be to call an Italian newspaper
Who says he called them? Maybe the Italian paper scans for stories they find interesting.
-jcr
Cold fusion isn't ruled out by any known laws of physics, so I'll keep an open mind about it until it's proven one way or another. Pons and Fleischman may not have succeeded, but that's no reason to quit. As long as the people trying to make it work are doing so with their own funds, more power to them. If someone succeeds, then a lot of the scarcity in the world can be solved.
-jcr
Oh I'm sure this person is a complete asshole based on your story.
As it happens, the way I found out about the incident was I noticed some peculiar things in the guy's code, and I asked my customer about the guy who'd written it.
He'd done bizarre things like declaring an array called "constants", which he initialized with 0 to 255, and everywhere in the code where you might ordinarily have an integer constant, he'd use "constants[whatever]" instead.
-jcr
How does a company obtain a restraining ordering preventing you from contacting it's employees?
I don't know how it's generally done, but in this case I expect they told a judge about him decking a co-worker.
If he had friends within that company
He didn't.
-jcr
When I was working at a brokerage house in NYC, I heard about some guy who had gotten drunk at the office christmas party, punched out a female co-worker, and then blacked out. Remembering nothing of the incident, he showed up for work the following Monday, and discovered that he'd been fired when his keycard wouldn't let him in the front door.
He called security, thinking it was just a bad card, and they came down with a box full of the contents of his desk, and a restraining order that banned him from the premises, and from contacting any of his former colleagues.
-jcr
Really, it's no skin off your nose if you can't get any useful work done for your last two weeks because of their policies. Enjoy the lightened workload.
-jcr
Steve Jobs is a bit like Stalin or Kim Jong Il
Except for the fact that he has a body count of zero, and people are free to leave.
-jcr
Actually, I don't believe that any Apple retail employee even raised his voice at the clown. I've seen a couple of unbelievable flaming assholes trying to pick fights with employees at Apple stores, and even the guy who went as far as poking his finger into the shoulder of the Apple sales guy was only asked to leave the store.
-jcr
Let's see... US population is about 300 million people now, so 300 million x 1 million is 300 billion. MSFT's offer for Yahoo was $44 billion.
What they could afford is giving everyone $146 to quit using Google, but that would probably run into some regulatory hurdles.
-jcr
Do you think your local video store has a contract with all the movie studios?
Actually, they do. They buy their copies of the movies through a distributor who acts as the studios' agent.
-jcr
Ok, fair enough. There is such a thing as being too harsh on the pig-fuckers.
-jcr
The only way to do that is to make the better search engine.
That is apparently not among their options. Remember who we're talking about here.
-jcr