The main thrust of my argument was moral rights - you should make a decision based upon the entire work, and either view it as it was meant to be seen, or respect the director's vision and not see it at all (if that's the director's wish.)
The secondary argument (censorship), was the idea that a third party could control what you can see or hear. Perhaps I should have modified the argument to encompass spam - I don't think anyone would contest the suitability of stopping spam mail (at least I wouldn't.) But would people stand for their mail to be subtly modified, even if they were notified of it? Also, the people maintaining block lists are not the same ones that are profiting the blocking of spam mail. The censorship argument is really an extension of the moral rights argument.
Personally, I have serious issues about taking this kind of activity to court, but after Clean-Flicks, in anticipation of being sued by the directors, sued first to declare their activity explicity legal, the DGA didn't have any choice but to go ahead and sue to protect artists' rights.
I think what it will boil down to is that clean-flicks will have to stop pre-cleaning films directly, since they are serving in a distributory capacity (in my opinion.) Instructions on how to do it yourself, closing your eyes, having a friend take care of it, that's fine by me - but editing someone else's work for profit? Not cool. I certainly would not allow my films to be edited, not without my involvement, or at least my consent.
You, the end user, can do whatever you want with the media. You can burn it, cut it up, remaster it, mix it, splice it, or throw it away. The instant you redistribute or start to share the results of your modifications, is where the creator becomes concerned - because it is then no longer their work, although it may be represented or assumed by the viewing public as such.
The instant where you redistribute for profit is where you cross the line - and that's what I assume the DGA is finding legal grounds to sue on.
BTW, I do believe that control over distribution is covered under the rights granted by the legislature.
Clean-Flicks' main legal problem is that "co-ownership" deal (where they say that the end-user and CF are the joint owners) is a shaky defense. If end users bought a copy of an "Austin Powers" videotape, delivered it to CF to sanitize, and then watched it, I don't think there would be an issue. However, they're offering edited films for rent, and are essentially acting as a distributor of altered content.
The real problem with this lawsuit is over gizmos allowing the user to implement blocking, as you come dangerously close to censoring just pure information (they sell a kind of "safe movie" software that tells your DVD player to censor your DVD at appropriate places.) However, I'm sure that the DGA is going to argue that because it's a monthly paid service - that there is technically no difference between the user having a set-top gizmo controlled by CF and getting an edited cable broadcast from CF. If you're going to piss on the DGA over something, piss on them over this.
$14.95 for a second line? Where is that possible? I'm in California, and the mandatory state charge (interstate non-primary access) for having a second line is $7 in addition to the $10.00 I pay GTE for a metered line, and with the state, federal, and local taxes, my phone bill for my second line comes to about $20 a month. I used to pay another $7 on top of that before I figured out that I didn't need flat-rate access for a fax machine (duh!)
For pretty much everyone (at least in California), broadband makes sense (if it's less than $50) if they're running a dedicated phone line for dialup right now.
Oh, and to those of you with little kids to whom you want to show "Saving Private Ryan" - do the smart thing and JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY'RE OLDER.
After all, it isn't like there's a shortage of G-rated fare you can show them. I'm sure the director would thank you also, for respecting his/her work, and allowing your kids the full experience of seeing the films as you probably saw them. Those of you adults who would rather edit all the gore out for yourselves, please read my previous post.
The slashdot blurb is misleading - the DGA represents the directors, not the corporations - hence the crap about robbing consumers of their rights by pushing DRM is complete hogwash. What we have here is a bunch of people who want to watch the latest movies, but who are unwilling to watch the whole thing (due to hang-ups about sex, violence, etc.) They want to live nice "clean" lives, and don't want to see the movie as the director intended.
Lacking the know-how to do it themselves, they happily employ the services of this company, which has made big inroads among certain communities, and is making this business of chopping films for consumption very profitable. It's getting to the point where the movies the directors make are not getting to the end audience they way they intended.
Traditionally, the way the directors handled these cases was pretty much - tough, that's my film, if you don't like some of the material, you're welcome not to watch. It was up to the individual. Here, you have what arguably is a distributor (the "co-ownership" agreement aside, which I would argue is purely a legal device), dictating what the audience sees.
"So what?", you say? "The audience wants them to edit the films for them!" Well, there are several different takes on this issue, so let me re-frame the situation. People want web-filters to block "unsuitable" sites as well. Does that mean we should support web-blocking, since the blocking only happens by request of the end-user? Perhaps.
What about a bookstore with "sanitized" versions of popular works? Would you support that, even though it violates the writer's moral rights (after all, you have changed their work WITHOUT their permission.) Some of you would probably find that distasteful, or even disingenuous.
Personally, I find the practice disturbing. It's bad enough people choose to ignore history and reality, without enabling a practice that effectively filters out ideas and images, on popular media. What's next? Editing out minority populations (language and violent situations are already a casualty on movies and cartoons screened on network and even cable TV), replacing dialogue, or even characters?
Yes, much of this already happens with the blessing of the media companies (partially because they want to cater to this restrictive audience.) The directors gripe and grumble, but in the end, they can try and deliver DVDs and Videos that capture the vision of what they wanted to deliver. This service takes that control away, and puts it in the hands of a third party censor, who then effectively controls the vision of what is seen by this particular population.
In the end though, I guess what really bothers me is the attitude that these people have. It's the kind of attitude, I want to consume all I want, but I don't want to deal with the consequences of my consumption. Or, to rephrase it for these folks, they hate Hollywood and everything that it stands for, but they want to be entertained anyways. Arguably a good business opportunity, but not one that I would personally support.:P
Just a clarification - only citizens (male citizens) are required to register with selective service (the draft.) No citizenship, no requirement to serve, not in the armed forces, not on a jury, nothin'. Of course, you still have to pay taxes.
all of which currently dump the power generated as heat (they use magnetic resistance, in the form of a generator hooked up to big banks of resistors, with a little power bled off to run the computer), you can save quite a bit in air-conditioning costs
I don't think it works that way. Just as much, in fact, slightly more heat would still be produced. I mean, it seems the second law of thermodynamics would imply that.
I think you misunderstood me. Exercise bikes currently take all the work you put into them and converts it to heat. What I proposed, is you could avoid the heat production by channelling the power generated by the generators already hooked up to me bikes to the electrical grid, instead of to the resistors on the bike that are currently bleeding the generated power as heat.
Nothing here violates the 2nd law - air conditioning costs would go down because you would no longer have to cool down all these machines, as that power is off doing work elsewhere, rather than in the actual gym. Yes, you'd still generate heat during the generation process, as it's not 100% efficient, but you wouldn't be converting 100% of it into heat, immediately in the gym, as it currently works.
The onboard bike computer doesn't get 200 watts, because most of that generated power is bled off as heat, through the resistor banks, which provides the resistance to the pedals.
A single bike isn't worth it. However, for a gym owner with dozens of bikes, all of which currently dump the power generated as heat (they use magnetic resistance, in the form of a generator hooked up to big banks of resistors, with a little power bled off to run the computer), you can save quite a bit in air-conditioning costs, while paying for lighting to boot.
Besides,.01 pays for 200 watts of electricity (at least it does in Los Angeles), more than enough to power your computer and monitor. Might as well use that pedaling to crunch RC5 keys before converting it to heat...
Super8 with the film cartridges would be easier to handle. Problem is, I don't know of any film format that will allow you to film for a full half-hour without having to reload. And what about syncing audio?
Essentially the message of the article is this: you can't ignore the business side of things unless you want to end up penniless and eternally controlled by the suits.
Can't you augment them with a secondary battery pack? One that can be charged using publicly available chargers?
Personally, I'm still kind of bummed to find that the RAV4 EV costs well in excess of $40k - even with the $13k in rebates and tax credits, that's still over twice what the gas model costs, without hybrid fuel capability.
No, not a gas generator. Those things have horrible efficiency, and no emissions controls whatsoever. What about a fuel cell though? Install one in the trunk, duct the air intake from under the chassis, duct the steam output to a "tailpipe", and leave that sucker on all the time to trickle-charge the batteries, in conjunction with an external charger. Make sure to get rid of the inverter, so you can bypass all that charging inefficiency to feed DC directly to the battery pack. Of course, this increases the high cost of your electric by another 10K or so...
Sigh. Maybe sticking a patch of solar cells on your roof would work better.
If people are actually willing to buy electric cars for more than it costs to manufacture them, why aren't foreign competitors to GM selling them in the US?
Probably because the buying (not leasing) market is too small to justify a full-time production line. Currently, your only way to buy is to shell out about 30-60k for a conversion done on a low-end floater (a floater is a conventional car, minus the gas engine.)
I don't think that anyone is mass-producing any electrics, since that brief period when the GM EV-1s, Honda EV+s, and Electric Ford Rangers were around. All of these cars were leased, and as far as I know, all three programs were discontinued by their respective manufacturers. Prior to discontinuation, I know that both the EV-1s and the Rangers were due for battery upgrades - the EV-1s to NiCads, and the Ranger to improved LeadAcids (or NiCads?)
I think you'd have an easier time resurrecting Enron than making GM follow any publicly rational policy concerning the EV-1s. The EV-1s were showpieces - designed to get California off their back while their lobbyists and lawyers worked to defeat zero-emissions legislation. Now that California has backed off, the EV-1s have outlived their usefulness, and can now be replaced by clearly inferior electric golf-carts (helping to reaffirm the image of electric cars as underpowered and fit only for old people and the golf course.)
There isn't any public outrage, because there was never any public awareness of the EV-1s. A concerted effort NOT to advertise on GM's part saw to that. And, after the news stations swallowed the line about the EV-1s not selling well (well DUH, they were only leased - they were NEVER sold), the EV-1 literally dropped off the face of the earth. To be honest, I was surprised that there were still any around - I would have thought that GM would have junked them as soon as they repossessed them from all of the previous EV-1 leasees.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to raise awareness about what GM has done. But actually influence their policy? Not unless you own 50% +1 shares of GM stock...
Generally, the batteries used in electric vehicles are absorbant-mat type valve-regulated sealed batteries. This means you can shoot holes in the batteries and very little, if any electrolyte will spill out. Think of them as bigger, more advanced gel-cell lead acid batteries.
Also, given the fact that your vehicle will probably be heavier (since you're carrying the lead acid batteries, and the steel to support them) the other vehicle (unless it's a huge-ass truck) will probably come out of the accident in much worse shape than you will.
I haven't a clue as to what they put into the EV-1, but I doubt that it would fare worse than a Toyota Corolla in an accident.
As far as GM crushing their EV-1s to permanently get them out of consumer reach, well, they're assholes who have already written off the money they spent building what amounts to a working fleet of prototypes, so from their point of view, "disposing" of the asset makes sense, tax-wise, since they feel that they're no longer going to be in the electric-car business (despite the fact that fuel-cell cars ARE electric cars!!!)
The biggest joke is on states who built electric car charging stations with proprietary Magnacharger paddles to support EV-1s. With the EV-1s off the road, there really isn't any use for those charging stations anymore - I haven't heard of any hobbyists using the very expensive magnacharger system as part of their EV conversions, so there you go, more taxpayer money wasted on the behalf of these corporate bozos.
You know, if you distanced yourself from the marketing crowd (turn away from the dark side...) you'd probably find that the incidents of HTML mail and Microsoft Word attachments would decrease. I find that the use of HTML is usually linked to the newbieness or cluelessness of users, marketingdroid MBA's usually falling into the clueless category. On the other hand, poking into your clueless colleagues.DOC attachments with a text editor can sometimes yield interesting tidbits about where a document has been...
"Everybody on the internet today can now handle images."
Um... No. A good idea, but one that relies on faulty thinking - the same kind of thinking that assumes that everyone will have flash installed, javascript enabled, and is running Internet Explorer on a Windows PC.
As much as I'd like to enhance SMTP to deny spammers, I can do without this "solution".
Depends on the antenna design. You may get unwanted stray lobes of radiation if they've installed it improperly though. I'd rather put my faith in the inverse-square law.
" Starting to allow legislation about what can or can't be passed over the net sure sounds like the DMCA to me. So how can you be for one and against the other? "
The government is supposed to represent the people's interests. Fighting spam is in the people's interest. Enforcing the DCMA is only in the corporations' interests. Thus, we can be against goverment backing of the DCMA, and for government backing of anti-spam legislation.
Ahh, but what exactly IS spam? Is it a mass mailing? Is it unauthorized use of server resources (spam and run)? Or is it UCE?
There are legit uses for mass mailings (ie, mailing lists.) Spam and run only works with the clueless who persist in running unsecured mail relays. And UCE is a subjective measure (no matter how good your adaptive filters are), and to restrict the ability to mail based on content is a dangerous step.
The most dangerous spammers today are not the whack-a-mole spammers that keep changing dialups, who relay-rape and advertise sites in Russia and China (whose admins could care less.) The most dangerous spammers are the big commercial outfits who sideline as legit operations, and who carry advertising from the likes of Amazon and AOL and run their own ISP feeds. These guys are hard to kill because they're semi-legit (ie, they tend to carry "legitimate" traffic), even though they're clearly spammers of the worst stripe.
The only way to deal with these guys is to blackhole whole IP blocks. For the whack-a-molers, you blackhole open-relays and known dialups. For everything else, use adaptive filters on the receiving end. If you're a server admin, restrict sending to known clients only, from a restricted list of IPs. I don't think there are a lot of mods you can make to SMTP that haven't been made already to fight spam - maybe standardizing the tarpitting of dictionary attacks (where the spammer tries to ferret out working e-mails by attempting bogus mailing connection attempts.) The tools are there. The key is to make sure everyone uses them.
L33T speak has always been the province of "wanna-bes" trying to look cool. Nobody who wants to be understood will use it. The lazy contractions "r for are, u for you", have always existed, and will continue to be used for written notes, as well as online.
The fact of the matter is that computers are being used by a greater segment of the population than before, and as a result, online speech is now mirroring the illiteracy present in the general population. That this has become a trend, or even a convention, due to the advantages of typing less, should not be surprising to programmers using commands like "rm -Rf, or ls -lh", especially when learned early on, and especially when proper writing isn't taught.
Poor writing is not endemic to younger students, as I've seen professionals and graduate students lapse into "lazy speak" when using e-mail, with missing punctuation, an absence of capital letters, and a desperate need to run a spellcheck.
Here's a thought though - could it be that lazy-speak is a direct consequence of people not knowing how to touch-type? It's a lot easier to write correctly, when you can type fast enough to proof and revise as you converse.
Publish your material. Publish it as widely as possible. If the morons who patent your implementation/idea don't do a lit search, and then get their patent invalidated, then that's their own damn problem.
And what is this supposed to prove? That you sent an envelope to yourself, and had it postmarked? Please...
I can see it now - you walk into court and throw a sealed envelope on to the Judge's bench. "Your honor, this is PROOF that I invented the X-widget on this date." All the opposing attorney has to do is bring up chain of custody. The money you'd spend proving that the envelope was indeed sent on that date, and had not been tampered with, would have easily paid for a notary to make a copy of your orignal notes way back when, and sign and date them.
There are reasons why they teach you to keep lab notebooks, and reasons why you should keep others appraised about what you've been doing and when. And there are reasons why you should go consult a qualified IP attorney, rather than soliciting layman opinions on a forum like Slashdot!!! And NO, I'm not a lawyer, so the above should NOT be considered legal advice.
Slashdot Mirror
The main thrust of my argument was moral rights - you should make a decision based upon the entire work, and either view it as it was meant to be seen, or respect the director's vision and not see it at all (if that's the director's wish.)
The secondary argument (censorship), was the idea that a third party could control what you can see or hear. Perhaps I should have modified the argument to encompass spam - I don't think anyone would contest the suitability of stopping spam mail (at least I wouldn't.) But would people stand for their mail to be subtly modified, even if they were notified of it? Also, the people maintaining block lists are not the same ones that are profiting the blocking of spam mail. The censorship argument is really an extension of the moral rights argument.
Personally, I have serious issues about taking this kind of activity to court, but after Clean-Flicks, in anticipation of being sued by the directors, sued first to declare their activity explicity legal, the DGA didn't have any choice but to go ahead and sue to protect artists' rights.
I think what it will boil down to is that clean-flicks will have to stop pre-cleaning films directly, since they are serving in a distributory capacity (in my opinion.) Instructions on how to do it yourself, closing your eyes, having a friend take care of it, that's fine by me - but editing someone else's work for profit? Not cool. I certainly would not allow my films to be edited, not without my involvement, or at least my consent.
You, the end user, can do whatever you want with the media. You can burn it, cut it up, remaster it, mix it, splice it, or throw it away. The instant you redistribute or start to share the results of your modifications, is where the creator becomes concerned - because it is then no longer their work, although it may be represented or assumed by the viewing public as such.
The instant where you redistribute for profit is where you cross the line - and that's what I assume the DGA is finding legal grounds to sue on.
BTW, I do believe that control over distribution is covered under the rights granted by the legislature.
Clean-Flicks' main legal problem is that "co-ownership" deal (where they say that the end-user and CF are the joint owners) is a shaky defense. If end users bought a copy of an "Austin Powers" videotape, delivered it to CF to sanitize, and then watched it, I don't think there would be an issue. However, they're offering edited films for rent, and are essentially acting as a distributor of altered content.
The real problem with this lawsuit is over gizmos allowing the user to implement blocking, as you come dangerously close to censoring just pure information (they sell a kind of "safe movie" software that tells your DVD player to censor your DVD at appropriate places.) However, I'm sure that the DGA is going to argue that because it's a monthly paid service - that there is technically no difference between the user having a set-top gizmo controlled by CF and getting an edited cable broadcast from CF. If you're going to piss on the DGA over something, piss on them over this.
$14.95 for a second line? Where is that possible? I'm in California, and the mandatory state charge (interstate non-primary access) for having a second line is $7 in addition to the $10.00 I pay GTE for a metered line, and with the state, federal, and local taxes, my phone bill for my second line comes to about $20 a month. I used to pay another $7 on top of that before I figured out that I didn't need flat-rate access for a fax machine (duh!)
For pretty much everyone (at least in California), broadband makes sense (if it's less than $50) if they're running a dedicated phone line for dialup right now.
Whoah. Thanks for the info. Glad to know that I'm now too old for selective service :)
I think I'm still young enough to volunteer though, I hope.
Oh, and to those of you with little kids to whom you want to show "Saving Private Ryan" - do the smart thing and JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY'RE OLDER.
After all, it isn't like there's a shortage of G-rated fare you can show them. I'm sure the director would thank you also, for respecting his/her work, and allowing your kids the full experience of seeing the films as you probably saw them. Those of you adults who would rather edit all the gore out for yourselves, please read my previous post.
The slashdot blurb is misleading - the DGA represents the directors, not the corporations - hence the crap about robbing consumers of their rights by pushing DRM is complete hogwash. What we have here is a bunch of people who want to watch the latest movies, but who are unwilling to watch the whole thing (due to hang-ups about sex, violence, etc.) They want to live nice "clean" lives, and don't want to see the movie as the director intended.
:P
Lacking the know-how to do it themselves, they happily employ the services of this company, which has made big inroads among certain communities, and is making this business of chopping films for consumption very profitable. It's getting to the point where the movies the directors make are not getting to the end audience they way they intended.
Traditionally, the way the directors handled these cases was pretty much - tough, that's my film, if you don't like some of the material, you're welcome not to watch. It was up to the individual. Here, you have what arguably is a distributor (the "co-ownership" agreement aside, which I would argue is purely a legal device), dictating what the audience sees.
"So what?", you say? "The audience wants them to edit the films for them!" Well, there are several different takes on this issue, so let me re-frame the situation. People want web-filters to block "unsuitable" sites as well. Does that mean we should support web-blocking, since the blocking only happens by request of the end-user? Perhaps.
What about a bookstore with "sanitized" versions of popular works? Would you support that, even though it violates the writer's moral rights (after all, you have changed their work WITHOUT their permission.) Some of you would probably find that distasteful, or even disingenuous.
Personally, I find the practice disturbing. It's bad enough people choose to ignore history and reality, without enabling a practice that effectively filters out ideas and images, on popular media. What's next? Editing out minority populations (language and violent situations are already a casualty on movies and cartoons screened on network and even cable TV), replacing dialogue, or even characters?
Yes, much of this already happens with the blessing of the media companies (partially because they want to cater to this restrictive audience.) The directors gripe and grumble, but in the end, they can try and deliver DVDs and Videos that capture the vision of what they wanted to deliver. This service takes that control away, and puts it in the hands of a third party censor, who then effectively controls the vision of what is seen by this particular population.
In the end though, I guess what really bothers me is the attitude that these people have. It's the kind of attitude, I want to consume all I want, but I don't want to deal with the consequences of my consumption. Or, to rephrase it for these folks, they hate Hollywood and everything that it stands for, but they want to be entertained anyways. Arguably a good business opportunity, but not one that I would personally support.
Just a clarification - only citizens (male citizens) are required to register with selective service (the draft.) No citizenship, no requirement to serve, not in the armed forces, not on a jury, nothin'. Of course, you still have to pay taxes.
I don't think it works that way. Just as much, in fact, slightly more heat would still be produced. I mean, it seems the second law of thermodynamics would imply that.
I think you misunderstood me. Exercise bikes currently take all the work you put into them and converts it to heat. What I proposed, is you could avoid the heat production by channelling the power generated by the generators already hooked up to me bikes to the electrical grid, instead of to the resistors on the bike that are currently bleeding the generated power as heat.
Nothing here violates the 2nd law - air conditioning costs would go down because you would no longer have to cool down all these machines, as that power is off doing work elsewhere, rather than in the actual gym. Yes, you'd still generate heat during the generation process, as it's not 100% efficient, but you wouldn't be converting 100% of it into heat, immediately in the gym, as it currently works.
The onboard bike computer doesn't get 200 watts, because most of that generated power is bled off as heat, through the resistor banks, which provides the resistance to the pedals.
A single bike isn't worth it. However, for a gym owner with dozens of bikes, all of which currently dump the power generated as heat (they use magnetic resistance, in the form of a generator hooked up to big banks of resistors, with a little power bled off to run the computer), you can save quite a bit in air-conditioning costs, while paying for lighting to boot.
.01 pays for 200 watts of electricity (at least it does in Los Angeles), more than enough to power your computer and monitor. Might as well use that pedaling to crunch RC5 keys before converting it to heat...
Besides,
Super8 with the film cartridges would be easier to handle. Problem is, I don't know of any film format that will allow you to film for a full half-hour without having to reload. And what about syncing audio?
Essentially the message of the article is this: you can't ignore the business side of things unless you want to end up penniless and eternally controlled by the suits.
Well, they are using SACD, does that count toward classifying them as evil?
Can't you augment them with a secondary battery pack? One that can be charged using publicly available chargers?
Personally, I'm still kind of bummed to find that the RAV4 EV costs well in excess of $40k - even with the $13k in rebates and tax credits, that's still over twice what the gas model costs, without hybrid fuel capability.
No, not a gas generator. Those things have horrible efficiency, and no emissions controls whatsoever. What about a fuel cell though? Install one in the trunk, duct the air intake from under the chassis, duct the steam output to a "tailpipe", and leave that sucker on all the time to trickle-charge the batteries, in conjunction with an external charger. Make sure to get rid of the inverter, so you can bypass all that charging inefficiency to feed DC directly to the battery pack. Of course, this increases the high cost of your electric by another 10K or so...
Sigh. Maybe sticking a patch of solar cells on your roof would work better.
See this page to reserve one. You gotta be in California to qualify :(
If people are actually willing to buy electric cars for more than it costs to manufacture them, why aren't foreign competitors to GM selling them in the US?
Probably because the buying (not leasing) market is too small to justify a full-time production line. Currently, your only way to buy is to shell out about 30-60k for a conversion done on a low-end floater (a floater is a conventional car, minus the gas engine.)
I don't think that anyone is mass-producing any electrics, since that brief period when the GM EV-1s, Honda EV+s, and Electric Ford Rangers were around. All of these cars were leased, and as far as I know, all three programs were discontinued by their respective manufacturers. Prior to discontinuation, I know that both the EV-1s and the Rangers were due for battery upgrades - the EV-1s to NiCads, and the Ranger to improved LeadAcids (or NiCads?)
I think you'd have an easier time resurrecting Enron than making GM follow any publicly rational policy concerning the EV-1s. The EV-1s were showpieces - designed to get California off their back while their lobbyists and lawyers worked to defeat zero-emissions legislation. Now that California has backed off, the EV-1s have outlived their usefulness, and can now be replaced by clearly inferior electric golf-carts (helping to reaffirm the image of electric cars as underpowered and fit only for old people and the golf course.)
There isn't any public outrage, because there was never any public awareness of the EV-1s. A concerted effort NOT to advertise on GM's part saw to that. And, after the news stations swallowed the line about the EV-1s not selling well (well DUH, they were only leased - they were NEVER sold), the EV-1 literally dropped off the face of the earth. To be honest, I was surprised that there were still any around - I would have thought that GM would have junked them as soon as they repossessed them from all of the previous EV-1 leasees.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to raise awareness about what GM has done. But actually influence their policy? Not unless you own 50% +1 shares of GM stock...
Generally, the batteries used in electric vehicles are absorbant-mat type valve-regulated sealed batteries. This means you can shoot holes in the batteries and very little, if any electrolyte will spill out. Think of them as bigger, more advanced gel-cell lead acid batteries.
Also, given the fact that your vehicle will probably be heavier (since you're carrying the lead acid batteries, and the steel to support them) the other vehicle (unless it's a huge-ass truck) will probably come out of the accident in much worse shape than you will.
I haven't a clue as to what they put into the EV-1, but I doubt that it would fare worse than a Toyota Corolla in an accident.
As far as GM crushing their EV-1s to permanently get them out of consumer reach, well, they're assholes who have already written off the money they spent building what amounts to a working fleet of prototypes, so from their point of view, "disposing" of the asset makes sense, tax-wise, since they feel that they're no longer going to be in the electric-car business (despite the fact that fuel-cell cars ARE electric cars!!!)
The biggest joke is on states who built electric car charging stations with proprietary Magnacharger paddles to support EV-1s. With the EV-1s off the road, there really isn't any use for those charging stations anymore - I haven't heard of any hobbyists using the very expensive magnacharger system as part of their EV conversions, so there you go, more taxpayer money wasted on the behalf of these corporate bozos.
You know, if you distanced yourself from the marketing crowd (turn away from the dark side...) you'd probably find that the incidents of HTML mail and Microsoft Word attachments would decrease. I find that the use of HTML is usually linked to the newbieness or cluelessness of users, marketingdroid MBA's usually falling into the clueless category. On the other hand, poking into your clueless colleagues .DOC attachments with a text editor can sometimes yield interesting tidbits about where a document has been...
"Everybody on the internet today can now handle images."
Um... No. A good idea, but one that relies on faulty thinking - the same kind of thinking that assumes that everyone will have flash installed, javascript enabled, and is running Internet Explorer on a Windows PC.
As much as I'd like to enhance SMTP to deny spammers, I can do without this "solution".
Depends on the antenna design. You may get unwanted stray lobes of radiation if they've installed it improperly though. I'd rather put my faith in the inverse-square law.
" Starting to allow legislation about what can or can't be passed over the net sure sounds like the DMCA to me. So how can you be for one and against the other? "
The government is supposed to represent the people's interests. Fighting spam is in the people's interest. Enforcing the DCMA is only in the corporations' interests. Thus, we can be against goverment backing of the DCMA, and for government backing of anti-spam legislation.
Ahh, but what exactly IS spam? Is it a mass mailing? Is it unauthorized use of server resources (spam and run)? Or is it UCE?
There are legit uses for mass mailings (ie, mailing lists.) Spam and run only works with the clueless who persist in running unsecured mail relays. And UCE is a subjective measure (no matter how good your adaptive filters are), and to restrict the ability to mail based on content is a dangerous step.
The most dangerous spammers today are not the whack-a-mole spammers that keep changing dialups, who relay-rape and advertise sites in Russia and China (whose admins could care less.) The most dangerous spammers are the big commercial outfits who sideline as legit operations, and who carry advertising from the likes of Amazon and AOL and run their own ISP feeds. These guys are hard to kill because they're semi-legit (ie, they tend to carry "legitimate" traffic), even though they're clearly spammers of the worst stripe.
The only way to deal with these guys is to blackhole whole IP blocks. For the whack-a-molers, you blackhole open-relays and known dialups. For everything else, use adaptive filters on the receiving end. If you're a server admin, restrict sending to known clients only, from a restricted list of IPs. I don't think there are a lot of mods you can make to SMTP that haven't been made already to fight spam - maybe standardizing the tarpitting of dictionary attacks (where the spammer tries to ferret out working e-mails by attempting bogus mailing connection attempts.) The tools are there. The key is to make sure everyone uses them.
L33T speak has always been the province of "wanna-bes" trying to look cool. Nobody who wants to be understood will use it. The lazy contractions "r for are, u for you", have always existed, and will continue to be used for written notes, as well as online.
The fact of the matter is that computers are being used by a greater segment of the population than before, and as a result, online speech is now mirroring the illiteracy present in the general population. That this has become a trend, or even a convention, due to the advantages of typing less, should not be surprising to programmers using commands like "rm -Rf, or ls -lh", especially when learned early on, and especially when proper writing isn't taught.
Poor writing is not endemic to younger students, as I've seen professionals and graduate students lapse into "lazy speak" when using e-mail, with missing punctuation, an absence of capital letters, and a desperate need to run a spellcheck.
Here's a thought though - could it be that lazy-speak is a direct consequence of people not knowing how to touch-type? It's a lot easier to write correctly, when you can type fast enough to proof and revise as you converse.
Publish your material. Publish it as widely as possible. If the morons who patent your implementation/idea don't do a lit search, and then get their patent invalidated, then that's their own damn problem.
And what is this supposed to prove? That you sent an envelope to yourself, and had it postmarked? Please...
I can see it now - you walk into court and throw a sealed envelope on to the Judge's bench. "Your honor, this is PROOF that I invented the X-widget on this date." All the opposing attorney has to do is bring up chain of custody. The money you'd spend proving that the envelope was indeed sent on that date, and had not been tampered with, would have easily paid for a notary to make a copy of your orignal notes way back when, and sign and date them.
There are reasons why they teach you to keep lab notebooks, and reasons why you should keep others appraised about what you've been doing and when. And there are reasons why you should go consult a qualified IP attorney, rather than soliciting layman opinions on a forum like Slashdot!!! And NO, I'm not a lawyer, so the above should NOT be considered legal advice.