Two, it informs environmental regulations related to the discharge of the chemicals in question. Dioxins are only "unavoidable" today because their release has historically been alarmingly close to unregulated, and they are fairly persistent little critters. If the safe exposure limit is revised downward, acceptable release limits will(again, possibly with substantial lag, nobody wants to make the American Chemistry Council cry) will be revised downward, so that, as the compounds eventually are degraded or encapsulated, exposures will fall.
Exposures will fall in the US... along with a few remains of the manufacturing sector, which will pack up and move to China where they can actually make their stuff.
If every household had four plasma TVs all going at once, you bet your sweet ass it would strain the grid. If electric cars become as ubiquitous as gasoline-powered cars, it WILL strain the grid. Residential power consumption averages about 1KW already. Another 2kW load for several hours is going to make a big difference. (And the US has close to 2 cars per household). Forget about off-peak; the electric cars create their own peak.
The analysis in this report is based on not many people buying electric cars... yeah, while they remain a niche item, there's no problem. But they're also not very interesting as a systemic replacement for petroleum-powered cars if they remain a niche item.
I wish I had mod points, because you're right and it's a fact that has not been sufficiently exploited. Suppose I want to break DRM technique X. At least in theory, all I have to do is arrange for a public domain work to be protected by technique X, without that particular instance of X covering any copyrighted works. Now I can write and publish a tool for breaking technique X, and even demonstrate it on the public domain work, without (theoretically) falling afoul of the DMCA.
I doubt the courts would actually go for this interpretation, but it would be an interesting test case.
Another issue in the Islamic world is the schizoid attitude towards freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is to be demanded wherever Muslims are not free to express their religion. We see this in the reaction towards French bans on headscarves and Swiss bans on minarets. On the other hand, practitioners of non-Islamic religion and culture can have their culture suppressed.
That's not schizoid at all. That's unambiguous opposition to freedom of expression, along with cynical manipulation of those who support it.
It's a bit dickish that the emails were snagged and published, but the emails themselves are not embarassing and there's nothing to be ashamed of in them (that I've seen).
Ah, so you didn't see the parts where they tried to get opposing views excluded from peer reviewed journals, and when that started failing considered boycotting the offending journal? Or you wouldn't find that shameful?
The stories that have been hitting Slashdot about censorship in Pakistan and other Islamic countries gathered quite a few "look at them backwards Muslims", instead of generating empathy about the sad state of these countries.
Empathy? According to prevailing beliefs (held by all but ignorant red-staters), the state of those countries is what the people of those countries want, and for Americans to feel that this is wrong is to be disrespectful of Islamic culture.
The solution is _not_ to go into these countries with military force to "spread freedom", the solution is to stand up against tyranny with words, show them an example of democracy over here and not to co-operate with their regimes to oppress people.
That assumes 1) The people can listen 2) The people will listen 3) The people will believe what we say, despite all the propaganda (much of it coming from the US itself...) painting the US as the root of all evil 4) The people, other than those at the top, matter at all.
I don't have a solution. If there was some sort of home-grown pro-freedom movement, the best the US could do is oppose it. But as far as I can tell (from 10,000+ miles away...) there isn't; the people want their chains. Not surprising; there's a lot of people in the US who want them too.
Or where are the other pieces of prior art that could be combined in an obvious manner to do it?
Touch screens. Existing ebook readers (all of which have instant page flip, and many of which have multi-page gestures). Existing ebook software run on general purpose computers (some of which has simulated page flips). Paper books.
You can't claim something is obvious, after having read it
Ah, so I can only object to patents on obviousness grounds if I don't know what they contain? Well, today's my lucky day, because this is Slashdot where no one reads the articles.
See, the head company makes money, but your contract is with the smaller company that was created. So in this case, you work for Babylon 5 Incorporated. Babylon 5 Inc lost money, tons of it, but they aren't publicly traded or owned. This smaller company is wholly owned by Warner, Fox, etc., who charge the Babylon 5 LLC tons of money for the show. Things like loans, distribution fees, advertising, etc. Warner then gets that money and reports that on their books to their shareholders, which are open, and everything works out quite nicely.
Sounds like another old system -- you were paid for your work, but you had to lease all the tools and your food and housing from the company. Your pay always ended up being a bit lower than those costs, but no matter, the company would keep loaning you the tools and housing... as long as you kept working.
That's the problem with thinking of the issue like a computer programmer.;)
The rules of construction were invented by lawyers and judges.
The courts have consistently held, however, that the 1st amendment does not override the copyright clause.
This is true, but that does not mean that any law or case under the copyright clause is safe from First Amendment analysis. And courts have found that fair use excpetions are required by the First Amendment, although recently the US Supreme Court has been moving to a more "copyright trumps everything" stance.
They were, after all, written and passed by the same people, at essentially the same time, and the bill of rights was essentially considered a codification of rights that already existed.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights were not written by the same people.
Copyright is not a 'law' that congress passed...the specific rules of copyright are passed by them, but 'copyright' already exists as a government function, which means it isn't technically a 'law congress passed'. (Anymore than, for example, confirming judges isn't making a law.)
This is simply nonsense; Title 17 of the US code, concerning copyright, is law.
I wonder if anybody has ever died from being hit on the head with one of these, seems it is likely. Shouldn't there be a way to secure the covers to the ground with a bolt that would at least cause the cover to not fly up but just turn over in case of an explosion?
I think any reasonable bolt would shear off in one of these incidents; it wouldn't hold it down, just make it tumble more. There are devices which allow controlled release of gas under the manhole during an explosion, but I imagine it comes down to cost (which makes certain people froth at the mouth when big evil multinational corporations consider it, but for some reason not when benevolent municipal governments do)
Maybe we shouldn't be striving for equality, but for elevating the lowest? That is, rather than trying to make everyone equal, simply ensure that even those who are at the bottom of the pile have food, water, clothes, shelter, and generally acceptable standard of living;
It doesn't work. Alvin Lee wrote "Tax the rich to feed the poor/until there are rich no more", but that's how it always works out -- you always run out of rich before you run out of poor.
Patents do override free speech, you twit. Patent protection is in the constitution. In fact, patents and copyrights are the only exceptions to free speech actually spelled out in the constitution.
The First Amendment was put in place following the patent clause. Which means, by standard rules of construction, that where a conflict occurs the First Amendment trumps the patent clause, not the other way around. (the same rules insist that if the First Amendment can be read narrowly enough to avoid a conflict, it should be... but that isn't necessarily the case).
However, the courts have consistently held that 'source code that implements a patent is not a patent infringement', as it is akin to a diagram of a patented device.
Sure, the source code itself isn't infringing. But where is that source code? It's in RAM and/or on your disk or flash drive. And there's probably a claim akin to "A storage device containing software to implement the method of claim X". So now your own drive or RAM has become an infringing device.
Yes, exactly. In the same way that a description or schematic of a patented invention does not infringe a patent, simple source code does not infringe a patent. How is this difficult to understand?
This case outlines one of the many major problems with software patents, one being that a split between implementation and description does not exist. The source code -- or even the object code -- to a program implementing a patented method is a description of that method.
It's quite interesting how you can already predict how the world will change in the upcoming 10-20 years. The Chinese have the workforce (and hence more persons with high IQ), they're used to work hard for a living, and realistic economy. They don't let banks cheat and collapse the country like in the US where everyone must get the latest HDTV, big cars and just spend money on non-important items and entertainment.
Preferring the Chinese factory worker lifestyle (work 12-16 hours, return to small dormitory, go back to work, ad infinitum) to an American lifestyle might just be taking the old Protestant work ethic a bit too far.
Wasn't NOx one of the major pollutant problems in the early 1960s?
No, nitrates -- salts containing the NO3- ion -- were. Nitrates are actually a byproduct of this air-cleaning concrete; ideally you'd want only nitrogen and oxygen to result, but it never works out that cleanly.
Well, 30mph is a challenge (do really need that), but if you make a small concession on the speed you can do it easily with a bicycle, this is cheap and even somewhat heallthy.
Here in my part of the US we've got these things called "hills". They ain't big by Colorado standards, but they do make a bicycle commute a bit of a problem. For instance, to get from the nearest train station to my home involves about a 500 foot climb; to get to the station requires a 150 foot climb, max grade about 8%.
False. I can't speak to the whole of the US, but in my state the fuel taxes generate *extra* revenue. The government then uses that excess to help prop-up the Maryland train transit system (which doesn't sell enough tickets to sustain itself). Put another way, in this state, the cars pay for their own unkeep. They pay-in enough gasoline/road tax to keep the highways built PLUS also keeping the rails maintained.
It's that way almost everywhere in the US; Manhattan might be an exception.
Cry me a river. Have you ever thought of going early to the airport? Maybe those people standing around have better time management skills than you, and all you do is let your rage and frustration reach the boiling point like a child that's about to throw a tantrum.
The person who arrives early enough to the airport that they stand around for an hour or more does not have good time management skills at all. They have very poor time management skills as they have wasted great deals of their time. Time management is like engineering. In engineering, you want to build a part strong enough not to fail, plus a safety margin, but not too much better -- or you've probably wasted weight, cost, volume, or some other resource. With time management, you want to get there early enough to make the deadline (by a reasonable margin), but not so much earlier you spend a lot of time standing around.
It has increased a monoculture of trees in the form of stripped native forests that have been replanted with pulpwood trash pines.
Pines? The suburbs aren't just full of pines. Plenty of oak, walnut, and maple, for instance.
DAGS on the American Chestnut tree to see what can happen to a monoculture.
The American Chestnut was (and is) not a monoculture; it is a native plant developmentally stunted by a foreign fungus. Same goes for Dutch Elm disease; it attacks a wide variety of elms.
I've read several studies in Science News that show exposing allergic bodies to the outdoors "trains" the immune system to ignore things like pollen, dust, and so on as simply part of the natural environment.
As a severe hay fever sufferer, I'm not buying it. Sensitization is more likely than desensitization. And I suspect systemic bias against allergy sufferers in this study; people who have an allergic reaction to pollen will typiucally not engage in "forest bathing".
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. Like the child might have sex later in life.
Exposures will fall in the US... along with a few remains of the manufacturing sector, which will pack up and move to China where they can actually make their stuff.
If every household had four plasma TVs all going at once, you bet your sweet ass it would strain the grid. If electric cars become as ubiquitous as gasoline-powered cars, it WILL strain the grid. Residential power consumption averages about 1KW already. Another 2kW load for several hours is going to make a big difference. (And the US has close to 2 cars per household). Forget about off-peak; the electric cars create their own peak.
The analysis in this report is based on not many people buying electric cars... yeah, while they remain a niche item, there's no problem. But they're also not very interesting as a systemic replacement for petroleum-powered cars if they remain a niche item.
It might be good for every school to have one useless teacher, and for each student to have one class with him/her.
But only _one_. I don't really think we're in danger of having schools lacking in useless teachers, alas.
I wish I had mod points, because you're right and it's a fact that has not been sufficiently exploited. Suppose I want to break DRM technique X. At least in theory, all I have to do is arrange for a public domain work to be protected by technique X, without that particular instance of X covering any copyrighted works. Now I can write and publish a tool for breaking technique X, and even demonstrate it on the public domain work, without (theoretically) falling afoul of the DMCA.
I doubt the courts would actually go for this interpretation, but it would be an interesting test case.
That's not schizoid at all. That's unambiguous opposition to freedom of expression, along with cynical manipulation of those who support it.
Ah, so you didn't see the parts where they tried to get opposing views excluded from peer reviewed journals, and when that started failing considered boycotting the offending journal? Or you wouldn't find that shameful?
A "climatologist" is one who buys into AGW.
Empathy? According to prevailing beliefs (held by all but ignorant red-staters), the state of those countries is what the people of those countries want, and for Americans to feel that this is wrong is to be disrespectful of Islamic culture.
That assumes
1) The people can listen
2) The people will listen
3) The people will believe what we say, despite all the propaganda (much of it coming from the US itself...) painting the US as the root of all evil
4) The people, other than those at the top, matter at all.
I don't have a solution. If there was some sort of home-grown pro-freedom movement, the best the US could do is oppose it. But as far as I can tell (from 10,000+ miles away...) there isn't; the people want their chains. Not surprising; there's a lot of people in the US who want them too.
Touch screens. Existing ebook readers (all of which have instant page flip, and many of which have multi-page gestures). Existing ebook software run on general purpose computers (some of which has simulated page flips). Paper books.
Ah, so I can only object to patents on obviousness grounds if I don't know what they contain? Well, today's my lucky day, because this is Slashdot where no one reads the articles.
Sounds like another old system -- you were paid for your work, but you had to lease all the tools and your food and housing from the company. Your pay always ended up being a bit lower than those costs, but no matter, the company would keep loaning you the tools and housing... as long as you kept working.
The rules of construction were invented by lawyers and judges.
This is true, but that does not mean that any law or case under the copyright clause is safe from First Amendment analysis. And courts have found that fair use excpetions are required by the First Amendment, although recently the US Supreme Court has been moving to a more "copyright trumps everything" stance.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights were not written by the same people.
This is simply nonsense; Title 17 of the US code, concerning copyright, is law.
I think any reasonable bolt would shear off in one of these incidents; it wouldn't hold it down, just make it tumble more. There are devices which allow controlled release of gas under the manhole during an explosion, but I imagine it comes down to cost (which makes certain people froth at the mouth when big evil multinational corporations consider it, but for some reason not when benevolent municipal governments do)
It doesn't work. Alvin Lee wrote "Tax the rich to feed the poor/until there are rich no more", but that's how it always works out -- you always run out of rich before you run out of poor.
The First Amendment was put in place following the patent clause. Which means, by standard rules of construction, that where a conflict occurs the First Amendment trumps the patent clause, not the other way around. (the same rules insist that if the First Amendment can be read narrowly enough to avoid a conflict, it should be... but that isn't necessarily the case).
Sure, the source code itself isn't infringing. But where is that source code? It's in RAM and/or on your disk or flash drive. And there's probably a claim akin to "A storage device containing software to implement the method of claim X". So now your own drive or RAM has become an infringing device.
(I only wish I was joking).
This case outlines one of the many major problems with software patents, one being that a split between implementation and description does not exist. The source code -- or even the object code -- to a program implementing a patented method is a description of that method.
BTU per BTU, it's cheaper than firewood.
Preferring the Chinese factory worker lifestyle (work 12-16 hours, return to small dormitory, go back to work, ad infinitum) to an American lifestyle might just be taking the old Protestant work ethic a bit too far.
No, nitrates -- salts containing the NO3- ion -- were. Nitrates are actually a byproduct of this air-cleaning concrete; ideally you'd want only nitrogen and oxygen to result, but it never works out that cleanly.
Here in my part of the US we've got these things called "hills". They ain't big by Colorado standards, but they do make a bicycle commute a bit of a problem. For instance, to get from the nearest train station to my home involves about a 500 foot climb; to get to the station requires a 150 foot climb, max grade about 8%.
It's that way almost everywhere in the US; Manhattan might be an exception.
The person who arrives early enough to the airport that they stand around for an hour or more does not have good time management skills at all. They have very poor time management skills as they have wasted great deals of their time. Time management is like engineering. In engineering, you want to build a part strong enough not to fail, plus a safety margin, but not too much better -- or you've probably wasted weight, cost, volume, or some other resource. With time management, you want to get there early enough to make the deadline (by a reasonable margin), but not so much earlier you spend a lot of time standing around.
Pines? The suburbs aren't just full of pines. Plenty of oak, walnut, and maple, for instance.
The American Chestnut was (and is) not a monoculture; it is a native plant developmentally stunted by a foreign fungus. Same goes for Dutch Elm disease; it attacks a wide variety of elms.
As a severe hay fever sufferer, I'm not buying it. Sensitization is more likely than desensitization. And I suspect systemic bias against allergy sufferers in this study; people who have an allergic reaction to pollen will typiucally not engage in "forest bathing".