I remember one story about two employees in a clothes shop who were using putting CCTV cameras in the women's dressing room cubicals supposedly to catch shoplifters, and then selling the video tapes online.
Those who seek power are usually those least suited to wield it.
It has been estimated that an entire lifetime of human experience would take up around 15 petabytes (10^15). Once hard disk reach that kind of level you'll be able to "back yourself up" but I'm getting into the realms of sci-fi now.
On the other hand, a wearable computer that records everything you see and hear, and cross-references that into a database, so that it can whisper in your ear stuff it thinks you should know, could easily exceed 120Tb. The size of the index tables alone could be massive.
Like the man said, it's not the information that is difficult to store but the accessibility of it. To that end the solution would be advance AI algorithms that can process the masses of data available and guess what you want to know.
The M$ license says you cannot release the code under a GPL'd license. Fine, so release it under no license conditions. If you do this then the product is freely available to everyone to use as they please so long as they keep to M$'s original license. OK so you can't guarantee that derivative source code will be available, but many people (especially in the OSS community) may choose to release the source anyway.
This is great. High speed, solid state storage on the cheap.
The real killer app for this technology would be to replace hard disks and give your archived information store the same bandwidth as RAM. In the short term I don't think people will want to merge long term and short term storage because of the addressing issues (except for 64 bit computing) and also because of the major rethink in terms of OS architecture required.
I'm not sure how much confidence I'd have in this stuff to store my critical data. What if a power spike killed a stick of this stuff? I guess a lot of work would have to be done making it robust enought to use in a home enviroment.
But M$ still owns the original patent, re-releasing the code under BSD or GPL or whatever would mean using patented material in an unlicensed manner and so would likely result in a swarm of lawyers breathing down your neck.
Hang on a second, I think the point M$ is trying to make is that violation of these clauses would result in the following situation.
Code for which M$ has a patent claim being protected under the GPL. WTF? That means that code M$ effectivly owns as a licensed use of it's patent, being unavailable for M$ to use outside of a GPL'd implementation.
If I owned a patent and let someone use it and develop it further, and then found I couldn't use something I owned patent rights on (the new work), in whatever way i saw fit, i'd be pretty pissed off too.
As with politicos, if you threaten what they hold dear they'll change their minds.
If any digital device manafactured or sold in the US has to have built in DRM then no other country will buy US made digital equipment. This will cause US workers to loose their jobs, companies to loose money and campaign contributions will fall. There will be increased grey imports circumventing tax, so the treasury will loose out.
Oh yeah, and point out that it'll be a vote looser.
Like the man said, "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow".
Re:a little nonsense, but hey - it's near April Fo
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 1
I think you're getting the story of perceived danger as opposed to real danger. In the vast majority of the UK you are perfectly safe, but the media's sensationalist reporting of that violent crime which does occur, has made people too paranoid to let their kids out on the street and has made the elderly cower in their beds.
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of violent crime occurs in deprived city areas and is associated with drug crime. What increase in ambient violence has occurred is probably as a result of normal people leaving the streets and parks to the dissafected youth making many areas "No Go Areas" simply by the absence of law abiding citizens.
IMHO having a gun to "protect yourself" simply means that anyone who wants to mug you has to carry a gun, and if they really want to do you harm the will have killed you before you even know you're under attack. The only real way to win a gun battle is to have drawn first and have the will to do what the other person won't do.
You may be here because you had a gun, but the those who had a gun and still got killed cannot post here and say "I had a gun and I still got killed". This is hardly a surprise given that they are dead. In scientific terms any anecdotal evidence is tainted by a selection effect.
I don't look at the gun issue through clouded lenses of feelings, fears, and misconceptions. Guns are not evil, bad, etc...but some people, irrationaly, feel that way...and they are often portrayed that way.
If you don't look at the gun issue the a clouded lens of feeleings then why do you carry one? Is it because you feel the need to be protected or is it because it makes you feel powerful, like a big man?
Guns may not be evil but they give evil men the ability to do more harm than they could otherwise do. For this reason alone they should be banned because you cannot know who the next mass murderer of school kids will be.
You're wrong! It wasn't the fact that the idea wasn't patentable that stopped you in your tracks, it was your belief that you couldn't produce something good enough to stand up by itself that stopped you.
Good software, like good books, will sell and make money if marketed in the right way. No-one ever patented the concept of an operating system, but yet there are many different operating systems out there each making money for the developers (or at least those developers who want to make money) and there is competition so that people buy the one that best suits their need.
What I'm trying to say is that software doesn't have to be unique, it just has to be better than the rest, and patents squash this drive to self improvement because it allows the author to rest upon his laurels and rake in the money without improving upon his work. Thus patents blatently harm the public good by preventing better software coming out.
One reason that M$ produces a new OS every year or two, is just so that they stay one step ahead of everyone else. Who truly can say, with their hand upon their hearts that linux would be what it is today if M$ had agressivly improved windows constantly, driving consumer demand for more usable software. Indeed, if someone had patented the CLI, chances are we'd still be using black and green dumb terminals today.
Just as a matter of interest, what software patents does M$ actually own?
Anyway, for the protection of software, copyright is a more than adequate tool, and when used with trademarks it protect the rights of a software developer to earn money from what he produces.
Patent was introduced to encourage innovation, as an exception to the generally held view at the time that an idea became free at the point at which it was spoken. In reality the need for this applies only when the idea itself is the end product of work, whereas in software an idea is simply a means to an end, and a problem solving technique, with the possible exception of specific Algorithms for specific jobs.
I'm not arguing against patents in general, as they can be usefully applied to algorithms to be licensed, but the concept of patent applied to broad ideas and ambiguous implimentations of a technique just seems to be too restrictive.
What would we as software developers do if someone had patented context menus, toolbars, buttons, list boxes, etc. If each demanded a few percent of your sales then what would be left over and who would write software. Not me.
Does this in fact mean that something that appears to be a singularity and have no size in 3 dimensions, actually could have a great deal of size in higher dimensionality space.
If this is the case then the problems associated with singularities could simply vanish.
As I understand it the current best guess at the theory of everything is called M-theory
(http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dim en s.html)
which talks about the universe being a single membrane, of which all matter (and energy and everything else) in the universe is part. This exists in 11 dimensional space.
M-theory is an evolution of string theory
The theory goes that gravity is seepage from another universe a small distance away (like a few mm) in 11 dimensional space.
They believe that in essence gravity is the same strength as the strong nuclear force but what we feel is the translation of that into just 3 dimensions and acting at a short distance. This would then imply that the limit on gravitational forces would be of the same order and would occur when two such universes where very close.
Incidentally M-theory also can explain the big bang as a collision of two membrane universes.
Given that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", any attempt to prove this will fail horribly.
Thus the perpetual feline motion probably exists but the only evidence is, by definition, anecdotal.
A similar test was done by a class of school children a few years ago, where they buttered thousands of slices of toast and dropped them on the floor. Unfortunately they managed to reach the statistical result that toast mostly falls on its UN-buttered side, thus both proving and disproving Sods law at the same time.
The latest theory to come from the boffins is that the entire universe is single membrane (hence M-theory)in a 11-dimensional "multiverse". According to this theory gravity is an effect caused by the proximity of another universe just millimeters away in this multiverse.
Also according to this theory the big bang was caused by a collision between these two universes and there are 10 spatial dimensions and one temporal one.
All good stuff eh, even if it is beyond my tiny little mind.
However the effect described does not constitute a reduction in mass, merely the reduction of the effect of gravity upon mass.
There is also a fourth possibility to add to your list.
4. The device is able to locally reduce the curvature of space-time which Einstein theorised was responsible for the force we call gravity.
Mass is defined as a materials inertia, ie is resistance to motion. Thus a heavy object in a zero g enviroment (such as orbit) is still difficult to get moving.
What would be interesting would be if this effect go break the principle of equivalence which states that it is impossible to tell the difference between gravity and an accelerating frame of reference.
As for applications, if it works; well a great one would be launch vehicles. By externalising the power source for getting something into orbit you greatly reduce the cost. for example, want to get some food up to the ISS? put it on an anti-g pad and literally fire it up there. No need for a rocket or anything much else.
with all these electronic nerves in his wrist permanently connected to a computer, I guess we will be able to say for certain how much of a wan**r, you have to be to do this to yourself.
On a serious note I can see good uses for this technology in terms of gesture control of digital devices. Imagine being able to point at your PC or TV and being able to control it just by waving your hand!
If you owned a company and rolled out one of your own products company wide, and then had to withdraw it because it was useless, wouldn't you kick software guys ass and make him do it right while begging your user base for forgiveness?
OK maybe you wouldn't pick on the poor code monkey but I think I'd fire someone.
If you visit the google page which contains the instructions for filing an infringement notice you'll find the following provision
6. Include the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
However as someone pointed out earlier, this is supposed to be a sacred and ancient text. If this is the case then it can't be copyrighted and the lawyer who filed the complaint is guilty of purjury.
I'm not sure about this. I have an athlon XP 1700+, but if I ask my BIOS (Epox 8KHA+) whether the chip is MP capable or not, it replies "it is" and POST now says Athlon MP 1700+. I have never seen an Athlon MP 1700+ advertised so I must assume that many of the XP chips out there are MP capable, just like many chips can run much faster than the number printed on it says.
Re:Will the SSSCA kill publishers?
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 1
But how can a private firm charge money for a statutory certification? Wouldn't that fall foul of anti-trust laws?
Traditionally the power of publishers was to control the method, and scope of distribution, but with the advent of online content delivery that power fades to nothing.
Say I produced an album and wanted to distribute it and assert my copyright on it, then I would buy a piece of software that can encrypt my work into a legal standard DRM format (the cost of which must be controlled by government) because no propriatry format can be enforced by law because it would illegally favour one producer of DRM software/hardware over another. I publish it over the internet for a modest fee, of which I get too keep all of it (remember no licence fee because it is a legal requirement). Therefore music publishing companies go the way of the dinosaurs.
I know it's not quite the same for film because not everyone can afford 100 million to make an epic, but you could publish whatever you like and get a fair reward if it's any good, without the overhead of duplicating CD's DVD's or video's.
The SSSCA could be the greatest breakthrough in artistic freedom since paper, but only if it results in greater power for the original copyright owner.
Will the SSSCA kill publishers?
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 1
If all distribution of content will be done over the internet in the future will anyone be able to release DRM protected content and be able to demand payment?
If so then couldn't each individual artist release their own music without the need for anyone to print CD's for them. Distribution becomes cheap and easy and the need for publishers disolves.
Perhaps Big Media knows this and is trying to use legislation to make as much money now while it still can. Why should anyone write music so a publisher can take 90% of the profit when you can release it yourself?
Slashdot Mirror
'Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel' (Samuel Johnson)
I agree about CCTV abuse in the UK.
I remember one story about two employees in a clothes shop who were using putting CCTV cameras in the women's dressing room cubicals supposedly to catch shoplifters, and then selling the video tapes online.
Those who seek power are usually those least suited to wield it.
It has been estimated that an entire lifetime of human experience would take up around 15 petabytes (10^15). Once hard disk reach that kind of level you'll be able to "back yourself up" but I'm getting into the realms of sci-fi now.
On the other hand, a wearable computer that records everything you see and hear, and cross-references that into a database, so that it can whisper in your ear stuff it thinks you should know, could easily exceed 120Tb. The size of the index tables alone could be massive.
Like the man said, it's not the information that is difficult to store but the accessibility of it. To that end the solution would be advance AI algorithms that can process the masses of data available and guess what you want to know.
The M$ license says you cannot release the code under a GPL'd license. Fine, so release it under no license conditions. If you do this then the product is freely available to everyone to use as they please so long as they keep to M$'s original license. OK so you can't guarantee that derivative source code will be available, but many people (especially in the OSS community) may choose to release the source anyway.
This is great. High speed, solid state storage on the cheap.
The real killer app for this technology would be to replace hard disks and give your archived information store the same bandwidth as RAM. In the short term I don't think people will want to merge long term and short term storage because of the addressing issues (except for 64 bit computing) and also because of the major rethink in terms of OS architecture required.
I'm not sure how much confidence I'd have in this stuff to store my critical data. What if a power spike killed a stick of this stuff? I guess a lot of work would have to be done making it robust enought to use in a home enviroment.
But M$ still owns the original patent, re-releasing the code under BSD or GPL or whatever would mean using patented material in an unlicensed manner and so would likely result in a swarm of lawyers breathing down your neck.
Hang on a second, I think the point M$ is trying to make is that violation of these clauses would result in the following situation.
Code for which M$ has a patent claim being protected under the GPL. WTF? That means that code M$ effectivly owns as a licensed use of it's patent, being unavailable for M$ to use outside of a GPL'd implementation.
If I owned a patent and let someone use it and develop it further, and then found I couldn't use something I owned patent rights on (the new work), in whatever way i saw fit, i'd be pretty pissed off too.
As with politicos, if you threaten what they hold dear they'll change their minds.
If any digital device manafactured or sold in the US has to have built in DRM then no other country will buy US made digital equipment. This will cause US workers to loose their jobs, companies to loose money and campaign contributions will fall. There will be increased grey imports circumventing tax, so the treasury will loose out.
Oh yeah, and point out that it'll be a vote looser.
Like the man said, "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow".
I think you're getting the story of perceived danger as opposed to real danger. In the vast majority of the UK you are perfectly safe, but the media's sensationalist reporting of that violent crime which does occur, has made people too paranoid to let their kids out on the street and has made the elderly cower in their beds.
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of violent crime occurs in deprived city areas and is associated with drug crime. What increase in ambient violence has occurred is probably as a result of normal people leaving the streets and parks to the dissafected youth making many areas "No Go Areas" simply by the absence of law abiding citizens.
IMHO having a gun to "protect yourself" simply means that anyone who wants to mug you has to carry a gun, and if they really want to do you harm the will have killed you before you even know you're under attack. The only real way to win a gun battle is to have drawn first and have the will to do what the other person won't do.
You may be here because you had a gun, but the those who had a gun and still got killed cannot post here and say "I had a gun and I still got killed". This is hardly a surprise given that they are dead. In scientific terms any anecdotal evidence is tainted by a selection effect.
I don't look at the gun issue through clouded lenses of feelings, fears, and misconceptions. Guns are not evil, bad, etc...but some people, irrationaly, feel that way...and they are often portrayed that way.
If you don't look at the gun issue the a clouded lens of feeleings then why do you carry one? Is it because you feel the need to be protected or is it because it makes you feel powerful, like a big man?
Guns may not be evil but they give evil men the ability to do more harm than they could otherwise do. For this reason alone they should be banned because you cannot know who the next mass murderer of school kids will be.
You're wrong! It wasn't the fact that the idea wasn't patentable that stopped you in your tracks, it was your belief that you couldn't produce something good enough to stand up by itself that stopped you.
Good software, like good books, will sell and make money if marketed in the right way. No-one ever patented the concept of an operating system, but yet there are many different operating systems out there each making money for the developers (or at least those developers who want to make money) and there is competition so that people buy the one that best suits their need.
What I'm trying to say is that software doesn't have to be unique, it just has to be better than the rest, and patents squash this drive to self improvement because it allows the author to rest upon his laurels and rake in the money without improving upon his work. Thus patents blatently harm the public good by preventing better software coming out.
One reason that M$ produces a new OS every year or two, is just so that they stay one step ahead of everyone else. Who truly can say, with their hand upon their hearts that linux would be what it is today if M$ had agressivly improved windows constantly, driving consumer demand for more usable software. Indeed, if someone had patented the CLI, chances are we'd still be using black and green dumb terminals today.
Just as a matter of interest, what software patents does M$ actually own?
Anyway, for the protection of software, copyright is a more than adequate tool, and when used with trademarks it protect the rights of a software developer to earn money from what he produces.
Patent was introduced to encourage innovation, as an exception to the generally held view at the time that an idea became free at the point at which it was spoken. In reality the need for this applies only when the idea itself is the end product of work, whereas in software an idea is simply a means to an end, and a problem solving technique, with the possible exception of specific Algorithms for specific jobs.
I'm not arguing against patents in general, as they can be usefully applied to algorithms to be licensed, but the concept of patent applied to broad ideas and ambiguous implimentations of a technique just seems to be too restrictive.
What would we as software developers do if someone had patented context menus, toolbars, buttons, list boxes, etc. If each demanded a few percent of your sales then what would be left over and who would write software. Not me.
Does this in fact mean that something that appears to be a singularity and have no size in 3 dimensions, actually could have a great deal of size in higher dimensionality space.
If this is the case then the problems associated with singularities could simply vanish.
certainly the theory taks about P-branes, but it is called M-theory for Membrane and not b-theory.
As I understand it the current best guess at the theory of everything is called M-theory
m en s.html)
(http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/di
which talks about the universe being a single membrane, of which all matter (and energy and everything else) in the universe is part. This exists in 11 dimensional space.
M-theory is an evolution of string theory
The theory goes that gravity is seepage from another universe a small distance away (like a few mm) in 11 dimensional space.
They believe that in essence gravity is the same strength as the strong nuclear force but what we feel is the translation of that into just 3 dimensions and acting at a short distance. This would then imply that the limit on gravitational forces would be of the same order and would occur when two such universes where very close.
Incidentally M-theory also can explain the big bang as a collision of two membrane universes.
Given that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", any attempt to prove this will fail horribly.
Thus the perpetual feline motion probably exists but the only evidence is, by definition, anecdotal.
A similar test was done by a class of school children a few years ago, where they buttered thousands of slices of toast and dropped them on the floor. Unfortunately they managed to reach the statistical result that toast mostly falls on its UN-buttered side, thus both proving and disproving Sods law at the same time.
Given that :
a) A cat always lands on its feet
and
b) Toast always lands butter side down (sods law)
what would happen if you tied a piece of buttered toast to a cats back?
The latest theory to come from the boffins is that the entire universe is single membrane (hence M-theory)in a 11-dimensional "multiverse". According to this theory gravity is an effect caused by the proximity of another universe just millimeters away in this multiverse.
Also according to this theory the big bang was caused by a collision between these two universes and there are 10 spatial dimensions and one temporal one.
All good stuff eh, even if it is beyond my tiny little mind.
However the effect described does not constitute a reduction in mass, merely the reduction of the effect of gravity upon mass.
There is also a fourth possibility to add to your list.
4. The device is able to locally reduce the curvature of space-time which Einstein theorised was responsible for the force we call gravity.
Mass is defined as a materials inertia, ie is resistance to motion. Thus a heavy object in a zero g enviroment (such as orbit) is still difficult to get moving.
What would be interesting would be if this effect go break the principle of equivalence which states that it is impossible to tell the difference between gravity and an accelerating frame of reference.
As for applications, if it works; well a great one would be launch vehicles. By externalising the power source for getting something into orbit you greatly reduce the cost. for example, want to get some food up to the ISS? put it on an anti-g pad and literally fire it up there. No need for a rocket or anything much else.
True, but when was the last time you lost your hand down the back of the sofa?
with all these electronic nerves in his wrist permanently connected to a computer, I guess we will be able to say for certain how much of a wan**r, you have to be to do this to yourself.
On a serious note I can see good uses for this technology in terms of gesture control of digital devices. Imagine being able to point at your PC or TV and being able to control it just by waving your hand!
If you owned a company and rolled out one of your own products company wide, and then had to withdraw it because it was useless, wouldn't you kick software guys ass and make him do it right while begging your user base for forgiveness?
OK maybe you wouldn't pick on the poor code monkey but I think I'd fire someone.
If you visit the google page which contains the instructions for filing an infringement notice you'll find the following provision
6. Include the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
However as someone pointed out earlier, this is supposed to be a sacred and ancient text. If this is the case then it can't be copyrighted and the lawyer who filed the complaint is guilty of purjury.
I'm not sure about this. I have an athlon XP 1700+, but if I ask my BIOS (Epox 8KHA+) whether the chip is MP capable or not, it replies "it is" and POST now says Athlon MP 1700+. I have never seen an Athlon MP 1700+ advertised so I must assume that many of the XP chips out there are MP capable, just like many chips can run much faster than the number printed on it says.
But how can a private firm charge money for a statutory certification? Wouldn't that fall foul of anti-trust laws?
Traditionally the power of publishers was to control the method, and scope of distribution, but with the advent of online content delivery that power fades to nothing.
Say I produced an album and wanted to distribute it and assert my copyright on it, then I would buy a piece of software that can encrypt my work into a legal standard DRM format (the cost of which must be controlled by government) because no propriatry format can be enforced by law because it would illegally favour one producer of DRM software/hardware over another. I publish it over the internet for a modest fee, of which I get too keep all of it (remember no licence fee because it is a legal requirement). Therefore music publishing companies go the way of the dinosaurs.
I know it's not quite the same for film because not everyone can afford 100 million to make an epic, but you could publish whatever you like and get a fair reward if it's any good, without the overhead of duplicating CD's DVD's or video's.
The SSSCA could be the greatest breakthrough in artistic freedom since paper, but only if it results in greater power for the original copyright owner.
If all distribution of content will be done over the internet in the future will anyone be able to release DRM protected content and be able to demand payment?
If so then couldn't each individual artist release their own music without the need for anyone to print CD's for them. Distribution becomes cheap and easy and the need for publishers disolves.
Perhaps Big Media knows this and is trying to use legislation to make as much money now while it still can. Why should anyone write music so a publisher can take 90% of the profit when you can release it yourself?