Is it just me, or does the new G5 look like a massive cheese grater from the front?
Unfortunately, it looks like they've abandoned the easy-access pull-down door that let you add ram and add-on cards with ease. Oh well, at least its *supposed* to be quieter...
I thought car-pool lanes were designed to encourage a reduction in pollution. So now if you have enough money, environmental concerns don't apply?
Car-pool lanes are designed to encourage carpooling - which is supposed to reduce the number of cars on the road. If that indirectly (or directly) cuts the amount of pollution, that's great, but speeding traffic is the main goal. Unfortunately, in many areas, the HOV (high-occupancy-vehicle) lanes are rarely used, which leads to many drivers complaining that the state should get rid of the carpool lane, and use it for regular traffic.
What these guys are trying to do is put a price on how much access to the carpool lane for SINGLE occupancy vehicles is worth. Presumably, they'll then use that number to figure out whether or not it's worth it to open up the carpool lane to a select number of drivers, or whether to eliminate the carpool lane altogether. I'd rather they charge some people a premium (who can afford it) for access and thus subsidize the carpool lane for those of us who actually carpool, and maybe even using those funds to build (or zone) new carpool lanes.
I'd rather that then having them eliminate all carpool lanes as a way of opening up another lane.
Because they all use SS# as a primary key in their databases.
Which of course, is a stupid thing to do, since the SS# is NOT GUARANTEED TO BE UNIQUE. In other words, the financial industry would rather pay millions to hire lobbyists and lawyers, than pay the millions to fix lazy programming and procedures, UNLESS threated with dire legal consequences (for example, Y2K liabilities.)
Not to mention they all sell your personal info, trade it amongst themselves, and view any legislation that would crimp that practice as a threat to one of their core businesses. Mind you, this industry really only exists in the US - this country is one of the few places in the world where you can open a bank account and apply for a credit card/loan without ever showing your face in person.
This is the same kind of thinking that lets credit fraud happen - they rather just change your card number and cover the charge (shafting the merchant who got defrauded in the process) than actually tracking down the bastard who stole your card/identity. As far as the banks are concerned, it's a cost of doing business. The banks/credit bureaus are not interested in prosecuting the criminals who steal identities because it doesn't hurt them the slightest bit - they pass all the costs to the merchants. And if you get screwed in the process? Well too bad for you.
Now, why is it that medical data is now better protected than your other personal info? We need a version of HIPPA(sp?) for the financial industry, TODAY.
Anyone else hear "Canopy group" and instantly think about the evil Umbrella Corporation from the Resident Evil games? I mean, jeez, if you're going to run an evil empire, shouldn't you try picking a name that's just a little less conspicuous?
It's a trade off. There's more complexity in the hybrid engine, just as there's more complexity now with fuel-injected computer timed engines over the carburetor-based designs of the past. However, the key advantage of an electric-motor weighted hybrid engine is that gas engine runs at a narrower range of speeds, meaning it can be engineered to deliver peak performance at that set of speeds, rather than trying to maximize power a a variety of speed and torque loads.
Not having to shift from a standing idle at low rpm to a sudden acceleration benefits not only the engine, but the emissions control system, and of course, it works best to cut emissions. Mind you, this is for a electric-motor weighted hybrid - I've seen comments for designs from GM that really are primarily gas engines with electric assist for acceleration. The gas engine still has to shift over a wide range of speeds, but the electric motor (a beefed up 42V alternator) helps to add power. The benefits from a gas-primary are much less than that for an electric-primary, though with a lower level of complexity in integrating the two systems.
On the subject, in the dorms there were always people who would go turn on the shower and then go take a 10 minute crap while the water was running... or leave the sink full blast while brushing their teeth.
Ahhh, you could always tell who the Easterners were. "Defrost the turkey? Yah, just leave it in the sink with the water running..."
Of course, there are still a lot of people out West who still don't get it. Watering lawns with what amounts to drinking water? And they wonder why their water bills are so high...
Ford, like the other vehicle manufacturers, only sells what the people want.
Wrong. Ford, like other vehicle manufacturers, sell what is most profitable. SUVs were comparatively cheap to make, and sold for a nice premium. That they were in vogue only helped to make that market segment the most profitable for them. However, if you ask the average American, buying an unsafe, gas-guzzling automobile is probably not what they want. However, that is what they get when they buy conventional SUVs.
To sell hybrid vehicles to the American public at a competitive price, Ford would have to cut some of that nice profit and make less per vehicle. Ford and its dealerships/repair shops would probably also make less over the life of the vehicle, since a well-designed hybrid with an integrated electric motor (not those gas engines that GM proposed with the oversized 42 volt alternator) will likely have a longer service life - meaning less wear and less maintainence. After all, you are burning less fuel.
Why then did Ford and other automakers suddenly announce fuel-cell cars, and hybrids? Because someone actually started selling hybrids to the American public - cars that weren't styled too strangely or overpriced (due to low production volume.) Can you say fear of the Japanese again? Kudos to Toyota and Honda for actually putting THEIR money where the market is. Boo on Ford for announcing a hybrid Escape well over a year ago, and (evidently) pushing the release date back by another year... AGAIN.
SUVs retail for 20k to 40k. Your typical hybrid retails for around 20k to 40k. A hybrid Ford Escape that gets 40mpg for between 20k and 40k is definitely doable... and there's definitely a market for them. Standardizing hybrid-electric drives would go a long way to lowering the cost per unit. People want these kinds of cars. But they can't buy what isn't on the market, and no American auto maker is willing to upset a good deal and cannabalize their existing sales of pure gas autos. It's much cheaper for them to spend money on PR and lawyers than it is for them to implement a conversion and face competition in a new market
Re:Dear "environmentalist" NIMBYs everywhere,
on
A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
Studies show the obvious: when you build more roads, more people drive. This causes more traffic, not less.
Actually, it's worse than that. Here in SoCal, property close to the places where people want to work is expensive (or it's a slum - not much room inbetween the closer you get to Los Angeles city proper.) Hence, the ever present flight to cheaper residential developments, with the accompanying increase in commute time, and traffic.
Some people just want to widen the freeways, but ignore the fact that reducing commute times will increase the number of people fleeing to far-flug communities (some people brave 40 mile commutes over several hours to get to work...), which increases local property values in that area, which increases the likelyhood of incorporation and rise of city government, local tax base, increased services, which in turn price newcomers out of the area, driving them farther and farther away, and ultimately loading the freeways with worse and worse traffic.
Basically, the problem isn't with the freeways - it's with the pi * r squared increase in new developments compared with the non pi * r squared land available to increase traffic capacity when you have static centers where EVERYONE has to get to. Think of it as having lots of ram, but only one processor. You can keep increasing the bus to the main processor, but you have an upper bound when limited to 2 dimensions (no flying cars yet.) The solution is to cut commute times by distributing job centers amongst residential areas and vice versa (ie, share memory among multiple processors.) This can be accomplished by higher-density development, which cuts commute times, cuts down on traffic, and correspondingly cuts down on pollution and resource usage.
Problem here is that land developers make more money buying cheap land and selling them for a modest profit, than buying expensive land, and trying to make a bigger profit. I still don't know the answer to that one. However, for the record, my commute is 4 miles, on good days I can get to and back from work in 20 minutes. On bad days though... in the middle of traffic... even for just 4 miles I can spend upwards of an hour in traffic - and no widening of freeways will help me since all the traffic is local traffic heading for the damn freeways! Those are the days I break out my bicycle (I usually ride the bus) and just move past all the standstill (single occupant per vehicle) traffic...
It would hurt he group as a whole because those doing more work can not be compensated for it.
Umm... No. Union minimums are just that - minimums. They set the floor at what someone can be paid - not the ceiling. In animation, the union minimum for a lead animator is about $1500 per week. Back in the mid-nineties, hotshots like Glenn Keane were reportedly signed to million-dollar personal contracts. Obviously, they recognized that he had superior talent and name power, and compensated accordingly.
Do your research before joining up with a union - they're not all the same. In particular, look for one that knows technology and has already organized tech workers. If you're not convinced, keep in mind that many unions provide pension coverage and health benefits that are portable (think Actors Guild, and a host of many other entertainment unions).
All it takes is enough people signing union rep cards, and the employer will be forced to negotiate by the Federal Board of Labor Relations. Given this bunch is already ready to walk out, unionization is a realistic alternative. The downside? Well, if you unionize, and are blacklisted as a union agitator, you might have trouble finding work elsewhere in the industry if they aren't unionized... That's why the union rep cards and unionization votes are supposed to be secret.
How about people who buy land they have no intention of building on, hoping to sell it to others while blocking other people from building on this land?
In most places in this country, you're required to pay yearly property tax on real estate holdings. If the property appreciates in value, your taxes go up.
Sure, you can stonewall someone from developing a plot of land by buying it first - but you have to actually BUY it, AND you have to pay the property tax while the land lies fallow. With patents, it's more like taking out 16 year option to buy - you don't need to actually invent anything, just patent something general enought to cover what might be invented, but specific enough to pass the USPTO. Plus, with an option, you don't have to pay property taxes...
Think of it like the domain speculation/squatting game. Those scum squat on domains, hoping to extort money from people who have either lost the domain, or want it. But, there's a cost involved - they have to pay domain renewal fees every year. If nobody plays their game, then they're out all the money that they've put in to holding on to all of those unused domains.
With these "offensive patents", you pay a one-time fee up front to lock up an invention, and then you use that as a weapon to block or extort an invention that will eventually be public domain (ie, your 16 year option on property of the people of the US/world.)
16 years is a long time for a useful invention to stay in someone's closet, as opposed to being produced and marketed to recoup development costs, as the patent process was supposed to encourage. That's whats so disgusting about it.
Commercial Advance was either taken away or broken in early releases of the 4.3 software. My ReplayTV might be a victim of that - I've never been able to get commercial advance to work consistently, so I've always had to resort to using the 30 second skip and instant replay buttons.
Even though it doesn't show visible results to customers (or even management) ongoing rewrites of the existing codebase are the only way to keep on top of changing/added features. You do something one way for one routine - ten mutated versions later (each customized for another purpose) it's time to do a rewrite to consolidate the common portions, and break all the custom stuff off into their own fuctions (or function).
Not as sexy as more bells and whistles, but then again, this is why a lot of the code out there these days is buggy as hell - too much writing, not enough re-writing. And re-writing includes comments. LOTS of comments - at the bare minimum, a function should have at least one sentence describing what it's SUPPOSED to do, so that when it doesn't do that, you have an idea of what should be happening...
There are plenty of games and programs from the early days of personal computing that only exist because someone defeated the copy protection, and cared enough to store and recopy that data. Programs that nobody was able to copy - probably don't exist anymore...
Note, that this isn't a case where the guy is selling intellectual property, or even merchandise thrown away by the manufacturer - he's selling merchandise thrown away by an end retailer.
Thus, this is equivalent to someone driving up to bookstore or Sam Goody's, after they've either gone out of business, or have discarded old stock, and then reselling goods thrown away in the trash, which the end retailer decided was worthless. This is nothing more than selling surplus - no piracy involved here. There isn't even copyright involved, because the merchandise was bought and paid for by the end retailer (in this case, "Jo-Ann" crafts.)
Come on, if the DMCA means you can't resell used/surplus goods, then this is bad news for everybody - especially eBay! Heck, if I pull a computer out of the trash (the person who threw it away already bought and paid for it), now I have to pay for it again?
I'd think it wouldn't be Spielberg who'd make trouble - after all, he got his start as a punk kid making films at a very young age. If anything, he probably be supportive. It's the numerous monied interests who own various bits and pieces of "intellectual property" who would sue the pants off of anyone they thought might "reduce the value of the asset", despite the fact that many fan-derivived works serve to sustain interest in the original property, thus ENHANCING the value of the asset...
eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar (who was a programmer working at General Magic at the time) as an online community (hence, e-Bay, for the Bay area up in San Francisco.) For quite a while, eBay was pretty much a personal website/community bulletin board for him, not a business (in fact, some cool code he hacked together for MagicCap devices lived at the eBay domain for a while - if anyone remembers the e-mail gateway for retrieving web pages.) I think auctions were just a feature of the site that just happened to grow into a big business.
Based on when most of eBay's current corporate officers joined (97-98), it is quite likely that eBay as we currently know it did not exist until probably 1996. Certainly, the Buy-it-now feature that eBay uses, which was ruled as violating at least one of the 3 patents that MercExchange is supposed to own, probably didn't get implemented until at least a year or two after that.
My question is whether these ideas (as detailed in Guaranteed Electronic Markets - 1999) appeared in print prior to the 1995 application date for the patents in question, given the existence of technologies like AOL, AT&T, and BBSes at the time. To be valid, none of the ideas embodied in the patents filed must have been published. I find that hard to believe - that the concept of haggling over a product with the option of a set price, as extended to a network (for example, over the phone network) did not exist in print prior to 1995. As for software agents, that seems like an obvious extension of existing software agent work prior to 1995. I mean, if you look at the patents in question, they cite lots of prior art which makes it clear (at least in my mind) that what they were trying to patent was neither novel nor non-obvious to someone skilled in the field in question.
Seriously, there wasn't any literature - even fiction, that featured the idea of auctions over a networked computer system,with software agents?
Of course, without police, it takes about 20 minutes for the security guards to hook up with the gangs and play both sides of the street.
Ahh, another person who has read Machiavelli, eh? In The Prince, he makes a big stink about how mercenaries rigged the rules of the game so that they ended up with all the gold, and the states of Italy ended up with nothing but grief. Lesson of the day - hire not professional soldiers, for all they care about is staying alive and earning the gold. Instead, hire locals who have a vested interest in NOT letting someone else come in and take over...
Hmmm... Someone ought to come up with an IR gizmo that hooks up to your computer that downloads program guides, then tells your Apex DVR to turn on and record the desired channel at the appropriate time.
It's amazing what people throw away. I regularly pick up perfectly good motherboards and power supplies that people throw away, because they're "outdated". I've also got a box of junk parts that I continually add to as I upgrade my own machines, or cart away salvage. A day or so of elbow grease on a spare weekend, and a couple of boxes of junk turn into a spare workstation (if it's a Pentium 200 or better) or a server (anything less than a Pentium 200.) Of course, the marginal HDs I can't use on a Linux box - I save those for when I get the components for a Windows PC.
My best finds were a totally complete PII 266 workstation with a bad power supply (swapped that out and it booted fine), and a mint-condition vintage Mac Plus (with 1 meg of ram, and original floppy-port hard drive.)
Even stripped machines are useful - you can always reuse the cases to upgrade mini-baby ATs into tower ATs, or further disassemble the case for the LEDs, standoffs, screws, rear plates, motherboard cover plates, etc. Trashed hard drives and non-functional CD-ROMs are a good source for motors, more screws, and raw scrap (I've been meaning to break out a pair of surplus fresnel lenses to use in a solar furnace - melt that metal into slag for other uses.) If you're good with a drill and tap, you can convert bad CD-ROM drives into pretty good 3.5 to 5.25 bay adapters by stripping off everything but the metal base plate and putting holes in the appropriate places.
#1 - When I was talking class action, usually it's been my experience that the lawyers who go looking for plaintiffs, not the other way around. So I wouldn't have to pay a thing - I'd just wait until some enterprising lawyer went after Ralsky and other spam gangs. and just sign up.
#2 - You don't need to hire a lawyer to claim damages under a civil statute. In California, you can file small claims for any amount less than $5000, which entails a minor filing fee ($22).
Obviously a lawyer isn't going to take a time-consuming case unless there's a definite payoff at the end (like taking down Ralsky and all the property he owns, or getting a piece of all that Viagra money.) So big deal - for all the other scum, we'll just use small claims.
What lawyer is going to pursue a case where the fine is $500?
Can you say class-action? Given that a spammer may pump out thousands, if not millions of pieces of spam, I'm sure sure that there are many lawyers who would be willing to settle for a small percentage cut of the gross.
However, lawyers really aren't the audience for this law. Spam bounty hunters and rabid anti-spammers like myself can take the tens of thousands of junk e-mails we've been saving against this day, and use those messages, as well as previous research into spammers, and the experience we've built up, tracking down the bastards, past false fronts, multiple layers of redirection, hijacked mailservers, fraudulent accounts, and nail em good.
And even if you could engage in some sort of class action suit, most of these spammers don't have any assets in the first place
We're already spending the time to nail these punks. Getting judgements that we can then sell to collection agencies only sweetens the feeling of satisfaction. Besides, at the very least we can claim the computer that they used to send the spam 8). Eventually, the bigger spammers (the ones with more to lose) will avoid California, and the spammers already living IN California will be forced to leave, lest they be served with a summons when they get sued.
You're right. Existing laws aren't being enforced. So why complain when we get a law that allows end users, rather than resource-constrained prosecutors, to enforce justice against these scum?
Is there even enough energy coming from the sun and falling on your roof to power your whole house?
Depends on where you live. Some places get lots of sun (ie, Phoenix, AZ), some places not so much (ie, Seattle, WA.) Depending on the size of your roof, and your power consumption, you could power 100% of your needs with a large enough solar array. Actually, a better (and easier) way of doing solar is to mount your panels on the ground - roof mounts are a pain in the ass to access for maintenance. Most important thing when planning a solar array - make sure you don't have ANY shading on your panels. A leaf or a frisbee in the wrong spot can cut your array output by up to 50% - way more than orientation or angle can.
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Is it just me, or does the new G5 look like a massive cheese grater from the front?
Unfortunately, it looks like they've abandoned the easy-access pull-down door that let you add ram and add-on cards with ease. Oh well, at least its *supposed* to be quieter...
I thought car-pool lanes were designed to encourage a reduction in pollution. So now if you have enough money, environmental concerns don't apply?
Car-pool lanes are designed to encourage carpooling - which is supposed to reduce the number of cars on the road. If that indirectly (or directly) cuts the amount of pollution, that's great, but speeding traffic is the main goal. Unfortunately, in many areas, the HOV (high-occupancy-vehicle) lanes are rarely used, which leads to many drivers complaining that the state should get rid of the carpool lane, and use it for regular traffic.
What these guys are trying to do is put a price on how much access to the carpool lane for SINGLE occupancy vehicles is worth. Presumably, they'll then use that number to figure out whether or not it's worth it to open up the carpool lane to a select number of drivers, or whether to eliminate the carpool lane altogether. I'd rather they charge some people a premium (who can afford it) for access and thus subsidize the carpool lane for those of us who actually carpool, and maybe even using those funds to build (or zone) new carpool lanes.
I'd rather that then having them eliminate all carpool lanes as a way of opening up another lane.
Because they all use SS# as a primary key in their databases.
Which of course, is a stupid thing to do, since the SS# is NOT GUARANTEED TO BE UNIQUE. In other words, the financial industry would rather pay millions to hire lobbyists and lawyers, than pay the millions to fix lazy programming and procedures, UNLESS threated with dire legal consequences (for example, Y2K liabilities.)
Not to mention they all sell your personal info, trade it amongst themselves, and view any legislation that would crimp that practice as a threat to one of their core businesses. Mind you, this industry really only exists in the US - this country is one of the few places in the world where you can open a bank account and apply for a credit card/loan without ever showing your face in person.
This is the same kind of thinking that lets credit fraud happen - they rather just change your card number and cover the charge (shafting the merchant who got defrauded in the process) than actually tracking down the bastard who stole your card/identity. As far as the banks are concerned, it's a cost of doing business. The banks/credit bureaus are not interested in prosecuting the criminals who steal identities because it doesn't hurt them the slightest bit - they pass all the costs to the merchants. And if you get screwed in the process? Well too bad for you.
Now, why is it that medical data is now better protected than your other personal info? We need a version of HIPPA(sp?) for the financial industry, TODAY.
Anyone else hear "Canopy group" and instantly think about the evil Umbrella Corporation from the Resident Evil games? I mean, jeez, if you're going to run an evil empire, shouldn't you try picking a name that's just a little less conspicuous?
It's a trade off. There's more complexity in the hybrid engine, just as there's more complexity now with fuel-injected computer timed engines over the carburetor-based designs of the past. However, the key advantage of an electric-motor weighted hybrid engine is that gas engine runs at a narrower range of speeds, meaning it can be engineered to deliver peak performance at that set of speeds, rather than trying to maximize power a a variety of speed and torque loads.
Not having to shift from a standing idle at low rpm to a sudden acceleration benefits not only the engine, but the emissions control system, and of course, it works best to cut emissions. Mind you, this is for a electric-motor weighted hybrid - I've seen comments for designs from GM that really are primarily gas engines with electric assist for acceleration. The gas engine still has to shift over a wide range of speeds, but the electric motor (a beefed up 42V alternator) helps to add power. The benefits from a gas-primary are much less than that for an electric-primary, though with a lower level of complexity in integrating the two systems.
On the subject, in the dorms there were always people who would go turn on the shower and then go take a 10 minute crap while the water was running... or leave the sink full blast while brushing their teeth.
Ahhh, you could always tell who the Easterners were. "Defrost the turkey? Yah, just leave it in the sink with the water running..."
Of course, there are still a lot of people out West who still don't get it. Watering lawns with what amounts to drinking water? And they wonder why their water bills are so high...
Ford, like the other vehicle manufacturers, only sells what the people want.
Wrong. Ford, like other vehicle manufacturers, sell what is most profitable. SUVs were comparatively cheap to make, and sold for a nice premium. That they were in vogue only helped to make that market segment the most profitable for them. However, if you ask the average American, buying an unsafe, gas-guzzling automobile is probably not what they want. However, that is what they get when they buy conventional SUVs.
To sell hybrid vehicles to the American public at a competitive price, Ford would have to cut some of that nice profit and make less per vehicle. Ford and its dealerships/repair shops would probably also make less over the life of the vehicle, since a well-designed hybrid with an integrated electric motor (not those gas engines that GM proposed with the oversized 42 volt alternator) will likely have a longer service life - meaning less wear and less maintainence. After all, you are burning less fuel.
Why then did Ford and other automakers suddenly announce fuel-cell cars, and hybrids? Because someone actually started selling hybrids to the American public - cars that weren't styled too strangely or overpriced (due to low production volume.) Can you say fear of the Japanese again? Kudos to Toyota and Honda for actually putting THEIR money where the market is. Boo on Ford for announcing a hybrid Escape well over a year ago, and (evidently) pushing the release date back by another year... AGAIN.
SUVs retail for 20k to 40k. Your typical hybrid retails for around 20k to 40k. A hybrid Ford Escape that gets 40mpg for between 20k and 40k is definitely doable... and there's definitely a market for them. Standardizing hybrid-electric drives would go a long way to lowering the cost per unit. People want these kinds of cars. But they can't buy what isn't on the market, and no American auto maker is willing to upset a good deal and cannabalize their existing sales of pure gas autos. It's much cheaper for them to spend money on PR and lawyers than it is for them to implement a conversion and face competition in a new market
Studies show the obvious: when you build more roads, more people drive. This causes more traffic, not less.
Actually, it's worse than that. Here in SoCal, property close to the places where people want to work is expensive (or it's a slum - not much room inbetween the closer you get to Los Angeles city proper.) Hence, the ever present flight to cheaper residential developments, with the accompanying increase in commute time, and traffic.
Some people just want to widen the freeways, but ignore the fact that reducing commute times will increase the number of people fleeing to far-flug communities (some people brave 40 mile commutes over several hours to get to work...), which increases local property values in that area, which increases the likelyhood of incorporation and rise of city government, local tax base, increased services, which in turn price newcomers out of the area, driving them farther and farther away, and ultimately loading the freeways with worse and worse traffic.
Basically, the problem isn't with the freeways - it's with the pi * r squared increase in new developments compared with the non pi * r squared land available to increase traffic capacity when you have static centers where EVERYONE has to get to. Think of it as having lots of ram, but only one processor. You can keep increasing the bus to the main processor, but you have an upper bound when limited to 2 dimensions (no flying cars yet.) The solution is to cut commute times by distributing job centers amongst residential areas and vice versa (ie, share memory among multiple processors.) This can be accomplished by higher-density development, which cuts commute times, cuts down on traffic, and correspondingly cuts down on pollution and resource usage.
Problem here is that land developers make more money buying cheap land and selling them for a modest profit, than buying expensive land, and trying to make a bigger profit. I still don't know the answer to that one. However, for the record, my commute is 4 miles, on good days I can get to and back from work in 20 minutes. On bad days though... in the middle of traffic... even for just 4 miles I can spend upwards of an hour in traffic - and no widening of freeways will help me since all the traffic is local traffic heading for the damn freeways! Those are the days I break out my bicycle (I usually ride the bus) and just move past all the standstill (single occupant per vehicle) traffic...
It would hurt he group as a whole because those doing more work can not be compensated for it.
Umm... No. Union minimums are just that - minimums. They set the floor at what someone can be paid - not the ceiling. In animation, the union minimum for a lead animator is about $1500 per week. Back in the mid-nineties, hotshots like Glenn Keane were reportedly signed to million-dollar personal contracts. Obviously, they recognized that he had superior talent and name power, and compensated accordingly.
Do your research before joining up with a union - they're not all the same. In particular, look for one that knows technology and has already organized tech workers. If you're not convinced, keep in mind that many unions provide pension coverage and health benefits that are portable (think Actors Guild, and a host of many other entertainment unions).
All it takes is enough people signing union rep cards, and the employer will be forced to negotiate by the Federal Board of Labor Relations. Given this bunch is already ready to walk out, unionization is a realistic alternative. The downside? Well, if you unionize, and are blacklisted as a union agitator, you might have trouble finding work elsewhere in the industry if they aren't unionized... That's why the union rep cards and unionization votes are supposed to be secret.
How about people who buy land they have no intention of building on, hoping to sell it to others while blocking other people from building on this land?
In most places in this country, you're required to pay yearly property tax on real estate holdings. If the property appreciates in value, your taxes go up.
Sure, you can stonewall someone from developing a plot of land by buying it first - but you have to actually BUY it, AND you have to pay the property tax while the land lies fallow. With patents, it's more like taking out 16 year option to buy - you don't need to actually invent anything, just patent something general enought to cover what might be invented, but specific enough to pass the USPTO. Plus, with an option, you don't have to pay property taxes...
Think of it like the domain speculation/squatting game. Those scum squat on domains, hoping to extort money from people who have either lost the domain, or want it. But, there's a cost involved - they have to pay domain renewal fees every year. If nobody plays their game, then they're out all the money that they've put in to holding on to all of those unused domains.
With these "offensive patents", you pay a one-time fee up front to lock up an invention, and then you use that as a weapon to block or extort an invention that will eventually be public domain (ie, your 16 year option on property of the people of the US/world.)
16 years is a long time for a useful invention to stay in someone's closet, as opposed to being produced and marketed to recoup development costs, as the patent process was supposed to encourage. That's whats so disgusting about it.
Commercial Advance was either taken away or broken in early releases of the 4.3 software. My ReplayTV might be a victim of that - I've never been able to get commercial advance to work consistently, so I've always had to resort to using the 30 second skip and instant replay buttons.
I wonder if he would have been so set against giving the national library a copy if he could have claimed it against his income for tax purposes...
Even though it doesn't show visible results to customers (or even management) ongoing rewrites of the existing codebase are the only way to keep on top of changing/added features. You do something one way for one routine - ten mutated versions later (each customized for another purpose) it's time to do a rewrite to consolidate the common portions, and break all the custom stuff off into their own fuctions (or function).
Not as sexy as more bells and whistles, but then again, this is why a lot of the code out there these days is buggy as hell - too much writing, not enough re-writing. And re-writing includes comments. LOTS of comments - at the bare minimum, a function should have at least one sentence describing what it's SUPPOSED to do, so that when it doesn't do that, you have an idea of what should be happening...
There are plenty of games and programs from the early days of personal computing that only exist because someone defeated the copy protection, and cared enough to store and recopy that data. Programs that nobody was able to copy - probably don't exist anymore...
And that was just over the span of only 20 years?
Note, that this isn't a case where the guy is selling intellectual property, or even merchandise thrown away by the manufacturer - he's selling merchandise thrown away by an end retailer.
Thus, this is equivalent to someone driving up to bookstore or Sam Goody's, after they've either gone out of business, or have discarded old stock, and then reselling goods thrown away in the trash, which the end retailer decided was worthless. This is nothing more than selling surplus - no piracy involved here. There isn't even copyright involved, because the merchandise was bought and paid for by the end retailer (in this case, "Jo-Ann" crafts.)
Come on, if the DMCA means you can't resell used/surplus goods, then this is bad news for everybody - especially eBay! Heck, if I pull a computer out of the trash (the person who threw it away already bought and paid for it), now I have to pay for it again?
I'd think it wouldn't be Spielberg who'd make trouble - after all, he got his start as a punk kid making films at a very young age. If anything, he probably be supportive. It's the numerous monied interests who own various bits and pieces of "intellectual property" who would sue the pants off of anyone they thought might "reduce the value of the asset", despite the fact that many fan-derivived works serve to sustain interest in the original property, thus ENHANCING the value of the asset...
eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar (who was a programmer working at General Magic at the time) as an online community (hence, e-Bay, for the Bay area up in San Francisco.) For quite a while, eBay was pretty much a personal website/community bulletin board for him, not a business (in fact, some cool code he hacked together for MagicCap devices lived at the eBay domain for a while - if anyone remembers the e-mail gateway for retrieving web pages.) I think auctions were just a feature of the site that just happened to grow into a big business.
Based on when most of eBay's current corporate officers joined (97-98), it is quite likely that eBay as we currently know it did not exist until probably 1996. Certainly, the Buy-it-now feature that eBay uses, which was ruled as violating at least one of the 3 patents that MercExchange is supposed to own, probably didn't get implemented until at least a year or two after that.
My question is whether these ideas (as detailed in Guaranteed Electronic Markets - 1999) appeared in print prior to the 1995 application date for the patents in question, given the existence of technologies like AOL, AT&T, and BBSes at the time. To be valid, none of the ideas embodied in the patents filed must have been published. I find that hard to believe - that the concept of haggling over a product with the option of a set price, as extended to a network (for example, over the phone network) did not exist in print prior to 1995. As for software agents, that seems like an obvious extension of existing software agent work prior to 1995. I mean, if you look at the patents in question, they cite lots of prior art which makes it clear (at least in my mind) that what they were trying to patent was neither novel nor non-obvious to someone skilled in the field in question.
Seriously, there wasn't any literature - even fiction, that featured the idea of auctions over a networked computer system,with software agents?
Of course, without police, it takes about 20 minutes for the security guards to hook up with the gangs and play both sides of the street.
Ahh, another person who has read Machiavelli, eh? In The Prince, he makes a big stink about how mercenaries rigged the rules of the game so that they ended up with all the gold, and the states of Italy ended up with nothing but grief. Lesson of the day - hire not professional soldiers, for all they care about is staying alive and earning the gold. Instead, hire locals who have a vested interest in NOT letting someone else come in and take over...
Hmmm... Someone ought to come up with an IR gizmo that hooks up to your computer that downloads program guides, then tells your Apex DVR to turn on and record the desired channel at the appropriate time.
Try a different broker. I just shorted 100 shares on E*Trade just 5 minutes ago (1:40pm EDT). Order went through without a hitch at $8.30 per share.
Shorted 100 shares here 10:45 pdt, 8.30 per share.
It's amazing what people throw away. I regularly pick up perfectly good motherboards and power supplies that people throw away, because they're "outdated". I've also got a box of junk parts that I continually add to as I upgrade my own machines, or cart away salvage. A day or so of elbow grease on a spare weekend, and a couple of boxes of junk turn into a spare workstation (if it's a Pentium 200 or better) or a server (anything less than a Pentium 200.) Of course, the marginal HDs I can't use on a Linux box - I save those for when I get the components for a Windows PC.
My best finds were a totally complete PII 266 workstation with a bad power supply (swapped that out and it booted fine), and a mint-condition vintage Mac Plus (with 1 meg of ram, and original floppy-port hard drive.)
Even stripped machines are useful - you can always reuse the cases to upgrade mini-baby ATs into tower ATs, or further disassemble the case for the LEDs, standoffs, screws, rear plates, motherboard cover plates, etc. Trashed hard drives and non-functional CD-ROMs are a good source for motors, more screws, and raw scrap (I've been meaning to break out a pair of surplus fresnel lenses to use in a solar furnace - melt that metal into slag for other uses.) If you're good with a drill and tap, you can convert bad CD-ROM drives into pretty good 3.5 to 5.25 bay adapters by stripping off everything but the metal base plate and putting holes in the appropriate places.
#1 - When I was talking class action, usually it's been my experience that the lawyers who go looking for plaintiffs, not the other way around. So I wouldn't have to pay a thing - I'd just wait until some enterprising lawyer went after Ralsky and other spam gangs. and just sign up.
#2 - You don't need to hire a lawyer to claim damages under a civil statute. In California, you can file small claims for any amount less than $5000, which entails a minor filing fee ($22).
Obviously a lawyer isn't going to take a time-consuming case unless there's a definite payoff at the end (like taking down Ralsky and all the property he owns, or getting a piece of all that Viagra money.) So big deal - for all the other scum, we'll just use small claims.
What lawyer is going to pursue a case where the fine is $500?
Can you say class-action? Given that a spammer may pump out thousands, if not millions of pieces of spam, I'm sure sure that there are many lawyers who would be willing to settle for a small percentage cut of the gross.
However, lawyers really aren't the audience for this law. Spam bounty hunters and rabid anti-spammers like myself can take the tens of thousands of junk e-mails we've been saving against this day, and use those messages, as well as previous research into spammers, and the experience we've built up, tracking down the bastards, past false fronts, multiple layers of redirection, hijacked mailservers, fraudulent accounts, and nail em good.
And even if you could engage in some sort of class action suit, most of these spammers don't have any assets in the first place
We're already spending the time to nail these punks. Getting judgements that we can then sell to collection agencies only sweetens the feeling of satisfaction. Besides, at the very least we can claim the computer that they used to send the spam 8). Eventually, the bigger spammers (the ones with more to lose) will avoid California, and the spammers already living IN California will be forced to leave, lest they be served with a summons when they get sued.
You're right. Existing laws aren't being enforced. So why complain when we get a law that allows end users, rather than resource-constrained prosecutors, to enforce justice against these scum?
Is there even enough energy coming from the sun and falling on your roof to power your whole house?
Depends on where you live. Some places get lots of sun (ie, Phoenix, AZ), some places not so much (ie, Seattle, WA.) Depending on the size of your roof, and your power consumption, you could power 100% of your needs with a large enough solar array. Actually, a better (and easier) way of doing solar is to mount your panels on the ground - roof mounts are a pain in the ass to access for maintenance. Most important thing when planning a solar array - make sure you don't have ANY shading on your panels. A leaf or a frisbee in the wrong spot can cut your array output by up to 50% - way more than orientation or angle can.