3-5 books a month for 6-10USD a month for that price, I'd rather join the book club and download real books by snail-mail which I can pass on to my grand-children when I've done with them. This sounds like its about as viable as a 1999 dotcom.
Someone has lost the plot here. Is it them, or is it me?
a) Using a lookup table (to convert betwen long and short)
b) Using a hashing algorithm (to create short from long).
Its pretty obvious that these are entirely novel solutions to a unique problem, and are nothing to do with the use of hashing algorithms (eg during WWII) or lookup tables (eg civilisations prior to the ancient greeks)
The truth is, these absolutely must be novel, because...[need more coffee]
This is more of a problem than you think. The FAT system was a re-implementation of previous technology, and is not patentable. Even M$ have not claimed it is, and the "prior art" objection is a valid one. However, "A means of mapping long filenames to short ones" would appear to normal people to be a trivial application of programming techniques: you put a short file name here, and a long one there, and you use some kind of hashing algorithm - computing 101 stuff! But, by huge volume of precident, in the US, contrary to the wording of the law, you are permitted to patent trivial examples of basic technology. This is a challenge to the whole of the USTPO. If patenting trivia is not permitted, then most patents, and almost every single software patent, will have to be slung out: and bang goes their source of revenue!
Obvously, everyone here thinks that its the job of the USPTO to examine patent applications, and investigate whether they are "novel, feasible, and non-obvious". This ceased to be the case long ago: Their job is to earn money. No one has ever successfully sued them for granting patents on trivia. This has created a loophole where the govt can make money by granting a patent to almost anything submitted, in return for a fee.
Even a case where the USPTO is found liable for gross failure of duty, and fined an amount commensuate with its takings, would not stop this stupidness - just because someone has been able to argue that one instance is trivia does not create a precedent for arguing that something else is trivia. Even if M$ lose this case, it will have no impact whatever on the real problem - that the USPTO exists as a profit centre for the government, and not as a service to the US tax payer.
Actually, the efficiency of large squirrel cage motors > 50HP is generally over 90% - and these are not even permanent magnet motors, but the cheapest, simplest AC motors. (No research available on the efficiency of hamster cage motors:-)
The presence of a banker is sure evidence that this is a scam. Bankers will believe almost anything except the truth.
How do your customers feel about having to deal with someone on the other end of the phone is in an entirely different cultual environment and who cannot relate to the problem?
They are using something like this off the coast of Scotland. It was on the BBC website yesterday.
In a river, the easy way to extract the energy would be to arrange for the wing (I personally call this a "whale tail") to operate a pneumatic ram (like the hydaulic one from a back hoe) and pump into a reservoir cylinder via a non-return valve. Then use an air motor to drive a generator. A simple mechanical arangement forms a flip-flop to toggle the wing angle up and down. (45deg up. When it hits the bottom, it flips to 45deg down, when it hits the top, it flips again). Speed determined by the air pressure and water speed. No need to regulate it. (Make sure you have an adequate safely valve:-)
A fair junk-yard challenge, but if the energy is there, then >10kW is easy engineering, and reliability no problem.
I would expect far greater energy from simpler engienering in an unconfined space. Water wheels require the water to be confined to a narrow channel, which is expensive and a legal nightmare.
To 90% of computer users having "Windows" means having a GUI, like Hoovering means using a vacuum cleaner, and Xeroxing means photocopying. In other words "Windows" is no longer a trade mark, but a generic term.
A quick research project revealed the following facts
Out of 10 teenage boys in central London picked because they happened to be in the room with me:
8 could name P.Diddy's jeweler.
2 knew there was another operating system than Windows. (Slighly more after it was pointed out that some mobile phones had WinCE and regularly crashed, and the others didn't.)
The problem with this approach is how to hide the 5% that goes to the slush fund for things like the Campaign to re-elect the president (CREEP), Iran-contras, the CIA's illegal offshore operations, etc?
Unless you have a good way to hide this, the terrorists have won.
Since credible academic reearch has shown that "the more qualified an Economist, the less likely his predictions are correct", then is pretty obvious that any arbitrarily simplistic AI device will outperform any economist by a large margin.
An x86 desktop CPU is expensive because it includes all sorts of junk, like MMX support and 16-bit mode and legacy instructions and SSE2 and all this other marginalized stuff. And still they're too general purpose. C++ doesn't matter any more. Well, it matters because it's "fast," but not because people really like it. C++ doesn't make you happy the way Haskell or Python or Smalltalk do. Take a minimal instruction set designed to support one of those languages, then implement a simulator for it, then an FPGA, then an ASIC. Keep it simple, keep it fast. You could easily have a 20MHz part pacing high-end desktop processors for most tasks.
Perhaps a bit of history:
In the beginning, all software was written in assembler. Eventually, computers were optimised for executing human readable assembler, eg the DEC10
Then came Fortran - Eventually, computers were optimised for Fortran in hardware: the PDP/11 was specifically optimised to run Fortran!
Then someone (Ok Thomson and Richie) wrote a high level assembler for the PDP/11 - that was how C was concieved.
This was a mega success. Then someone (OK, Intel) produced a poor imitation of the PDP/11 on a chip. The 8086 was basically a PDP/11 clone, even down to the lame memory management. (Others had also produced PDP/11 clones, and hell, DEC produced a PDP/11 on a chip, but decided to over price it).
Then came the high level version of the high level PDP/11 assembler. (C++ is essentially a high level version of C).
Then came the machine-independent version of C++ - Java!
If anyone will pay me to do it, I could do a hardware Java engine on a $20 FPGA, but up till now, noone seems willing to pay.
With a company, I have a phone number, a support contract, and a guarantee that someone will work with me to answer my question. With newsgroups and IRC channels, someone might answer my question but only if I'm willing to wait, surf a lot, or put up with a few hundred "what a st00pid newbie you are" responses that invariably get made.
Yeah right, In over 30 years in the computer industry, the ONLY commercial companies that has ever delivered any support other than putting me on hold, listening to a computer play the paino with one finger, till I find something better to do, are IBM and S3.
When I complained to IBM I had a problem with OS/2 device drivers, the next day I had 3 men in gray suits at my desk, one from IBM Texas, one from IBM UK, and one from IBM Germany, saying "you have a problem? We will get someone to fix it!" - and they did!
OTOH, S3 put me into a conference call with three people on crack who barely spoke English, and did not understand the problem.
By contrast, when I had a problem with kde, it was fixed in days, and I got an e-mail from Mr Kulow asking me to try the new version. When I had a problem with OO Writer, it was fixed properly in a month, when I had a problem with Postgresql it was explained that the manual was out of date, and the person who wrote me would get it fixed. When I had a problem with FreeBSD, etc..
In a Windows environment: OO Writer is WAY better than Word, more useable, more powerful - I can do things that needed Corel Draw or Pagemaker because Word can't do them, and it handles loads of other formats. OO Calc is useable, but not great. OO Presenter is as good as PowerPoint (draw your own conclusion)
As far as compatibility goes... OO is generally better than Word with Word's own files, and it doesn't screw up your tables regularly like Word. Bugs are generally fixed in days, even if not serious, unlike certain other vendors.
In a Unix environment, OO suffers from the usual Unix font limitations, but otherwise its entirely the same as the windows version.
this was not the case in britain, where a new, but incompatible, standard was created, that used bandwidth more effectively, and had better color.
This is not true. Our colour standard is compatible with black and white. However, our original B&W standard was replaced with a new one when we went to UHF from VHF. This is becaue the original standard was even more crap than the US system, and it mmight have been hard to persuade people to move to UHF without the benefit of pictures you could actually see. The move to UHF came in about 1965, while few people bought colour sets before 1975.
We currently have what in computer terms is 800*600 (SVGA) compared to the US 640*480 (VGA). We also encode the colour in a better way, but that ie because we had the advantage of hind-sight, and compatibility with the US did not matter, because in those days, the USA was on another continent. Nowadays, we are in their back yard, so we can all expect to be sold a bunch of shite.
It should be perfectly obvious to everyone that video should be sent as jpeg or something similar, and expanded on-the-fly to whatever your hardware can do. Sending fixed format raster scan images is a totally crap idea, invented by a primative civilisation that did not have the ability to do real-time data compression.
Slashdot Mirror
The corect translation is probably "Duckville"[troll mode off]
Someone has lost the plot here. Is it them, or is it me?
Would you like your tool to be longer and harder ;-}
I would agree, but in my view, at least two of these punishments should apply for each offence.
a) Using a lookup table (to convert betwen long and short)
b) Using a hashing algorithm (to create short from long).
Its pretty obvious that these are entirely novel solutions to a unique problem, and are nothing to do with the use of hashing algorithms (eg during WWII) or lookup tables (eg civilisations prior to the ancient greeks)
The truth is, these absolutely must be novel, because ...[need more coffee]
Obvously, everyone here thinks that its the job of the USPTO to examine patent applications, and investigate whether they are "novel, feasible, and non-obvious". This ceased to be the case long ago: Their job is to earn money. No one has ever successfully sued them for granting patents on trivia. This has created a loophole where the govt can make money by granting a patent to almost anything submitted, in return for a fee.
Even a case where the USPTO is found liable for gross failure of duty, and fined an amount commensuate with its takings, would not stop this stupidness - just because someone has been able to argue that one instance is trivia does not create a precedent for arguing that something else is trivia. Even if M$ lose this case, it will have no impact whatever on the real problem - that the USPTO exists as a profit centre for the government, and not as a service to the US tax payer.
The presence of a banker is sure evidence that this is a scam. Bankers will believe almost anything except the truth.
Us feminists have been calling for that for years!
Even with no black box, the victim would still be dead, and the driver still in jail.
But if you were the victim's relative, you may be interested to know that the driver failed to apply the brake befire killing your loved one.
I can see it now.... "Its not cars that kill people, its CANADIANS" :-)
How do your customers feel about having to deal with someone on the other end of the phone is in an entirely different cultual environment and who cannot relate to the problem?
In a river, the easy way to extract the energy would be to arrange for the wing (I personally call this a "whale tail") to operate a pneumatic ram (like the hydaulic one from a back hoe) and pump into a reservoir cylinder via a non-return valve. Then use an air motor to drive a generator. A simple mechanical arangement forms a flip-flop to toggle the wing angle up and down. (45deg up. When it hits the bottom, it flips to 45deg down, when it hits the top, it flips again). Speed determined by the air pressure and water speed. No need to regulate it. (Make sure you have an adequate safely valve :-)
A fair junk-yard challenge, but if the energy is there, then >10kW is easy engineering, and reliability no problem.
I would expect far greater energy from simpler engienering in an unconfined space. Water wheels require the water to be confined to a narrow channel, which is expensive and a legal nightmare.
To 90% of computer users having "Windows" means having a GUI, like Hoovering means using a vacuum cleaner, and Xeroxing means photocopying. In other words "Windows" is no longer a trade mark, but a generic term.
A quick research project revealed the following facts
Out of 10 teenage boys in central London picked because they happened to be in the room with me:
8 could name P.Diddy's jeweler.
2 knew there was another operating system than Windows. (Slighly more after it was pointed out that some mobile phones had WinCE and regularly crashed, and the others didn't.)
Unless you have a good way to hide this, the terrorists have won.
Since credible academic reearch has shown that "the more qualified an Economist, the less likely his predictions are correct", then is pretty obvious that any arbitrarily simplistic AI device will outperform any economist by a large margin.
Dubya canot tell the difference between "tourist" and "terrorist"!
Its a smart plan: anyone who complains of corruption can be called a terrorist.
Hell, with Billy Boy in charge, even if its broke as hell, it doesn't get fixed. You just get "new improved bugs".
Perhaps a bit of history:
In the beginning, all software was written in assembler. Eventually, computers were optimised for executing human readable assembler, eg the DEC10
Then came Fortran - Eventually, computers were optimised for Fortran in hardware: the PDP/11 was specifically optimised to run Fortran!
Then someone (Ok Thomson and Richie) wrote a high level assembler for the PDP/11 - that was how C was concieved.
This was a mega success. Then someone (OK, Intel) produced a poor imitation of the PDP/11 on a chip. The 8086 was basically a PDP/11 clone, even down to the lame memory management. (Others had also produced PDP/11 clones, and hell, DEC produced a PDP/11 on a chip, but decided to over price it).
Then came the high level version of the high level PDP/11 assembler. (C++ is essentially a high level version of C).
Then came the machine-independent version of C++ - Java!
If anyone will pay me to do it, I could do a hardware Java engine on a $20 FPGA, but up till now, noone seems willing to pay.
According to the TV ads, its in bed with the vaccum cleaner
Yeah right, In over 30 years in the computer industry, the ONLY commercial companies that has ever delivered any support other than putting me on hold, listening to a computer play the paino with one finger, till I find something better to do, are IBM and S3.
When I complained to IBM I had a problem with OS/2 device drivers, the next day I had 3 men in gray suits at my desk, one from IBM Texas, one from IBM UK, and one from IBM Germany, saying "you have a problem? We will get someone to fix it!" - and they did!
OTOH, S3 put me into a conference call with three people on crack who barely spoke English, and did not understand the problem.
By contrast, when I had a problem with kde, it was fixed in days, and I got an e-mail from Mr Kulow asking me to try the new version. When I had a problem with OO Writer, it was fixed properly in a month, when I had a problem with Postgresql it was explained that the manual was out of date, and the person who wrote me would get it fixed. When I had a problem with FreeBSD, etc..
Lack of adverts on prime time tv.
Preferably featuring nuns speaking french... Well it worked for OS/2, didn't it!
No, wait ...
In a Windows environment:
OO Writer is WAY better than Word, more useable, more powerful - I can do things that needed Corel Draw or Pagemaker because Word can't do them, and it handles loads of other formats.
OO Calc is useable, but not great.
OO Presenter is as good as PowerPoint (draw your own conclusion)
As far as compatibility goes ... OO is generally better than Word with Word's own files, and it doesn't screw up your tables regularly like Word.
Bugs are generally fixed in days, even if not serious, unlike certain other vendors.
In a Unix environment, OO suffers from the usual Unix font limitations, but otherwise its entirely the same as the windows version.
Trusted means the system only runs software it trusts , right?
That means my *BSD system won't run any of that there M$ shite then don't it!
How is that evil?
This is not true. Our colour standard is compatible with black and white. However, our original B&W standard was replaced with a new one when we went to UHF from VHF. This is becaue the original standard was even more crap than the US system, and it mmight have been hard to persuade people to move to UHF without the benefit of pictures you could actually see. The move to UHF came in about 1965, while few people bought colour sets before 1975.
We currently have what in computer terms is 800*600 (SVGA) compared to the US 640*480 (VGA). We also encode the colour in a better way, but that ie because we had the advantage of hind-sight, and compatibility with the US did not matter, because in those days, the USA was on another continent. Nowadays, we are in their back yard, so we can all expect to be sold a bunch of shite.
It should be perfectly obvious to everyone that video should be sent as jpeg or something similar, and expanded on-the-fly to whatever your hardware can do. Sending fixed format raster scan images is a totally crap idea, invented by a primative civilisation that did not have the ability to do real-time data compression.
Come to think of it, if the fat lady sings, maybe its all over!