This whole Twitter phenomenon seems to reinforce the narcissistic personality common in today's 25 or younger crowd. They think 'Everyone will want to know I watched Top Model tonight, and 90210 and Gossip Girl last night.'
I patent using twitter to obtain viewer information for TV ratings. (Claim 2 is "The system of claim 1 where the viewer demographic is persons 25 or younger")
The filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said that if anyone wanted to criticize his movies, they should do so by making their own movie. It's a good rule.
It's a stupid rule, intended to deflect criticism. If I write some software that's slow, produces wrong results, and crashes all the time, it doesn't take another programmer to criticize it. Nor (obligatory car analogy) does it take a carmaker to criticize a Yugo.
Also there are a lot of thorny ethical issues. For like 25 centuries doctors have been swearing the Hippocratic oath, which explicitly states "do no harm." Doctors can't even prescribe lethal injections when a court orders execution; prisons have to get those drugs 'semi-legally' without going through a real doctor.
Why should a lethal injection be "prescribed"? A lethal injection isn't a medical treatment. It's an execution which happens to use medical apparatus.
So what is it when it's made from artillery shells?
I'll bet there's an army manual somewhere which says so. Probably if the artillery shells are used as artillery shells, they're not considered IEDs, but if they're rigged as a claymore, they are. Sort of like if you somehow hooked a billiard ball to your mouse to make a trackball, you'd have an IPD -- improvised pointing device.
IED = improvised explosive device. As opposed to an explosive device made on a production line somewhere. The military loves acronyms even more than the rest of government, so I doubt there's any Orwellian reason for the name.
The computer and phone industries aren't used to being held to the safety standards of the auto industry. Legally, though, they have the same responsibilities.
I'm pretty sure they don't. Not in the US, and probably not anywhere else. Computers and phones are regulated by the CPSC (and the FCC); cars are regulated by the NHTSA. Totally different set of laws, regulations, and responsibilities.
. ..shouldn't it be designed to detect that situation and shut off, or reduce power consumption (e.g. by slowing down the CPU or going into some sort of 'sleep mode', or implement some other strategy to avoid ever exploding or setting on fire?
Thermal runaway is a chemical reaction inside the battery itself. Once it starts, there's no way to shut it off electronically.
To use your quicksort example, if someone patents the quicksort algorithm it does not prevent you from sorting data generally.
An actual patent on Quicksort would start with a claim covering sorting in general. Then it would move on to a claim which covered all comparison sorts, then all divide and conquer sorts, and only then would it be specific enough to be limited to Quicksort.
That is entirely meaningless. What you need to measure is (1) how much of that innovation would not have happened without patents, and (2) how much other innovation would have happened without patents.
The only reason that the software industry hasn't been brought to a grinding halt by patents is that software is generally opaque; few other than the maker knows the details of how it works (and yes, that applies to open source as well, to a large extent). So even the patent holders have no idea how much infringement is going on. The exceptions are where the patent holders have managed to erect a tollbooth across a standard, as with LZW and a few others; then they know that anyone implementing the standard is infringing their patent, and they can pounce.
Are memory manufacturers following the same practice?
Given the people they market to, and the constraints of the devices themselves, the first manufacturer to sell a memory module as "1.07 GB" is going to be pilloried. I suppose they might switch to "1 GiB" in their spec sheets, if some manufacturer demands it, but most likely nothing will change for memory.
What troubles me is that this sort of cell GPU is not more widely used in everyday applications.
I've looked at it for a few things (encryption, mostly) and there always seem to be a few "gotchas" which end up becoming a bottleneck. It's not clear if this is due to the programming model or the chip, however... access to the accursed carry flag or equivalent keeps coming up, and I know that one is in the programming model.
There's a lot of problems with this idea, despite what the polyannas and anti-skeptics are saying. But glass isn't a frictionless surface; far from it. It's typically smooth, but just because it looks kind of like ice doesn't mean you slide on it like ice.
Woudln't it make much more sense to just coat death valley with solar panels, rather that putting solar panels on the roads where they will be covered up half the time?
Or line Death Valley with aluminum panels and turn it into a enormous solar-thermal system. Any James Bond villains around, we can get them to finance it by claiming it's a death ray.
Solid concrete and asphalt get ripped apart in short order by the combination of weather and heavy vehicle traffic, and they propose to use solar panels to drive on? I'd say it's a bold engineering project, but it's gone beyond "bold", past "insane", past "so crazy it might work", and right into "let's see if we can get dumb ideas paid for if we call 'em green".
They're still required to send the over-the-air channels unencrypted, so this doesn't make ClearQAM useless, it just means some cable users won't get free extended-tier channels.
Making "fuck you" money is EASY to do if you really want to, and having that kind of money lets you opt out of many of the things you're complaining about.
I'm noting a distinct lack of details to this "making 'fuck you' money" idea. I'm guessing there's a ????? somewhere in the business plan, though.
While something may have been "inevitable", someone does get credit for not only thinking to do it, but actually doing it.
I'll give them credit; it's the patent I object to. Being first to do something shouldn't mean you get a 20-year monopoly on doing it. Not every new product is a new invention.
When someone says "when I'm depressed" as if to say sometimes they are and other times they are not, are not "depressed" in the clinical sense. Please google around to learn what depression is.
The answer is... no one knows. The whole "chemical imbalance" theory is without foundation; yes, we know we can twiddle someone's mood by twiddling with their neurotransmitters, but that doesn't mean we're actually getting at the cause of the depression.
However, even if you accept the prevailing theory, unipolar depression most certainly can be episodic; you don't have to be in a depressed state all the time to fit the diagnosis.
Slashdot Mirror
I patent using twitter to obtain viewer information for TV ratings. (Claim 2 is "The system of claim 1 where the viewer demographic is persons 25 or younger")
It's a stupid rule, intended to deflect criticism. If I write some software that's slow, produces wrong results, and crashes all the time, it doesn't take another programmer to criticize it. Nor (obligatory car analogy) does it take a carmaker to criticize a Yugo.
I was. Not having any income the IRS wouldn't find out about from other sources sort of encourages honesty...
Why should a lethal injection be "prescribed"? A lethal injection isn't a medical treatment. It's an execution which happens to use medical apparatus.
That would be an improvement. "Defying Gravity" is just a daytime soap opera with characters who work for NASA.
I'll bet there's an army manual somewhere which says so. Probably if the artillery shells are used as artillery shells, they're not considered IEDs, but if they're rigged as a claymore, they are. Sort of like if you somehow hooked a billiard ball to your mouse to make a trackball, you'd have an IPD -- improvised pointing device.
IED = improvised explosive device. As opposed to an explosive device made on a production line somewhere. The military loves acronyms even more than the rest of government, so I doubt there's any Orwellian reason for the name.
I'm pretty sure they don't. Not in the US, and probably not anywhere else. Computers and phones are regulated by the CPSC (and the FCC); cars are regulated by the NHTSA. Totally different set of laws, regulations, and responsibilities.
Thermal runaway is a chemical reaction inside the battery itself. Once it starts, there's no way to shut it off electronically.
An actual patent on Quicksort would start with a claim covering sorting in general. Then it would move on to a claim which covered all comparison sorts, then all divide and conquer sorts, and only then would it be specific enough to be limited to Quicksort.
The only reason that the software industry hasn't been brought to a grinding halt by patents is that software is generally opaque; few other than the maker knows the details of how it works (and yes, that applies to open source as well, to a large extent). So even the patent holders have no idea how much infringement is going on. The exceptions are where the patent holders have managed to erect a tollbooth across a standard, as with LZW and a few others; then they know that anyone implementing the standard is infringing their patent, and they can pounce.
Given the people they market to, and the constraints of the devices themselves, the first manufacturer to sell a memory module as "1.07 GB" is going to be pilloried. I suppose they might switch to "1 GiB" in their spec sheets, if some manufacturer demands it, but most likely nothing will change for memory.
I've looked at it for a few things (encryption, mostly) and there always seem to be a few "gotchas" which end up becoming a bottleneck. It's not clear if this is due to the programming model or the chip, however... access to the accursed carry flag or equivalent keeps coming up, and I know that one is in the programming model.
There's a lot of problems with this idea, despite what the polyannas and anti-skeptics are saying. But glass isn't a frictionless surface; far from it. It's typically smooth, but just because it looks kind of like ice doesn't mean you slide on it like ice.
Or line Death Valley with aluminum panels and turn it into a enormous solar-thermal system. Any James Bond villains around, we can get them to finance it by claiming it's a death ray.
Irrelevant. This rule applies to cable TV services, not to cable Internet services.
Solid concrete and asphalt get ripped apart in short order by the combination of weather and heavy vehicle traffic, and they propose to use solar panels to drive on? I'd say it's a bold engineering project, but it's gone beyond "bold", past "insane", past "so crazy it might work", and right into "let's see if we can get dumb ideas paid for if we call 'em green".
You'll find similar complaints in _The Iliad_, about how back in Hercules day everything was better.
4 calling birds
3 french hens
2 turtle doves
and a partridge in a pair tree?
They're still required to send the over-the-air channels unencrypted, so this doesn't make ClearQAM useless, it just means some cable users won't get free extended-tier channels.
The P.G. County slogan: Making Montgomery County look better for three generations! (at least)
I'm noting a distinct lack of details to this "making 'fuck you' money" idea. I'm guessing there's a ????? somewhere in the business plan, though.
The decisions are made by a relatively small group of powerful people. The army of "drones" runs things but has little input in how they are run.
I'll give them credit; it's the patent I object to. Being first to do something shouldn't mean you get a 20-year monopoly on doing it. Not every new product is a new invention.
The answer is... no one knows. The whole "chemical imbalance" theory is without foundation; yes, we know we can twiddle someone's mood by twiddling with their neurotransmitters, but that doesn't mean we're actually getting at the cause of the depression.
However, even if you accept the prevailing theory, unipolar depression most certainly can be episodic; you don't have to be in a depressed state all the time to fit the diagnosis.