There, there. I agree that intellectual property ha been completely subverted. I agree that software patents should be outlawed, that the copyrightableness of code should be carefully examined, and the copyrightableness of binaries also. However, there are indeed domains where a period of exclusive commercial exploitation makes sense. Drug research, movie production.
I like the position of the pirate party : copyrights should be a lot shorter (~10 years) and non-commercial sharing should be allowed. It is, however, productive to propose a period of commercial exclusivity.
Not because he was gay, but because he was in a depression caused by the drugs he was forced to take against his gayness (a then criminal offense in UK). He was forces to take hormones to modify his sexual behavior. He was having several medical problems (including growing boobs IIRC) and was forbidden to meet the man he loved.
And yes, as you point out, he was a polymath and a genius, someone who probably felt he was trapped in a retarded world and who could envision the future.
So, in a moment of depression, disguising a suicide as a fantasy brought by the bleeding technical edge of the moment (color theaters) seems a credible scenario for him, yes.
The widely acknowledge factoid is more than suicide. The claims are he poisoned himself with an apple injected with cyanide, after becoming obsessed with Disney's Snow-White movie. Where does this folklore come from ?
He synthesized cyanide himself, so of course his apartment smelled of it. The idea that a gay man with drug-induced depression could wish to eat the enchanted apple to sleep a hundred years before a prince wakes him up in a more tolerant world seems pretty credible to me.
Exactly : biomedical patents work more or less how they are supposed to work : a process is disclosed, a reasonable (but arguably a bit too long) exclusivity time is given to the filler. I wouldn't be against some enforced maximum margin on life-saving drugs, but well, I'm a heathen commie...
What is funny is that biomed patent works well because most drugs are NOT inventions through ingeniousness : they are usually the result of thousands (millions ?) of test-and-fail procedures. A huge quantity of molecules are tried at random and often when it is effective its mechanisms are not even understood. Copying a molecule, on the other hand, is usually easier. It makes sense to protect this discovery.
For software patents, however, the situation is more ridiculous because usually, obvious solutions are patented : give any two competent software developer the same requirement, and they will come up with similar solutions.
There should be ways to detect the wirings and whether there is a mux and where, but the documentation is not available to the developers (maybe you can help us figure out how to do this, have any ideas? You can also 'petition' nvidia for releasing these specs: nvidia customer help ? )
I think that my next one will have Intel graphics. They are not the top boys in terms of raw power, but their drivers are open source, and their linux support apparently complete. That makes them probably decent competitors to NVidia/ATI
The fact is, the algorithm that is Google Search has things that passes as opinions despite not being programmed by Google programmers. When auto-suggest say "Scientology is... a sect" or "Obama is... a muslim.", this is not a statement done by anyone at Google. These speeches can be recognized as offensive, defamatory or damaging. Yet, these are clearly statements of opinion without authors.
Therefore it can be argued that, despite not sentient per se, Google's algorithm create the basis of what can be considered an opinion, and even a political one. So, if this speech can be attacked for being defamatory, why couldn't it be protected for being political/religious ?
This doesn't give computers a right, it just clarifies the legal notion of "protected speech". "Free speech" is not a property attached to a person but to an action. Saying that computers can do this action doesn't seem so far fetched to me.
It is interesting also, because an alternate opinion could be to say that this speech, being automatically generated by an algorithm, is not an opinion but a matter of fact. But to prove such a thing, it would take Google to release their algorithm, which I think is not their desired outcome but may be the reason why they are looking for a decision in another direction.
Still... Impeding-doom asteroids routinely pass between the Earth and the Moon and are detected after the fact.
I say we should forget about the Moon or about Mars. It is time that Earth sets up a good detection system (maybe an orbital array of Hubble-like telescopes ?) and begins thinking about mitigation plans for the case where a dangerous asteroid is located.
Mod this guy up to heaven. He knows the technical details.
I'll steal this post to ask from a knowledgeable person : As someone who has been bitten by the optimus thing, who has now a poor ATI driver, are intel graphics any good ? I heard they really pimped up their acceleration abilities these years. Are the open source drivers really good under linux ?
No support of Optimus means that on laptops, nvidia cards are either unsupported or power hungry. NVidia made a statement saying they will never support such a feature in their linux drivers. Nouveau has repeatedly asked for the specification information of this. Note that this information is not critical at all from a strategical point of view. No answer. NVidia's message is clearly "linux users are second zone citizens and we will not help them the slightest".
Even when not thinking that everything linux should be open source, NVidia does not provide a working linux driver for its optimus cards (that is, 90% of cards sold in laptops today). With no open source solution and no closed source solution, we can simply stare as a fact that their support simply sucks.
Some people do that, and even manage to get pictures of their scammers by asking for a proof that they do exist by making a picture of them with a sign spelling the name of the sender (And sometimes senders are called Iam A. Dick) http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame.htm
Nevertheless, I don't see why he's avoiding extradition to Sweden, it's certainly not the worst country in the world.
Because Sweden has already extraded terrorists suspects to U.S without due process. I doubt they would do the same in Assange's case, but I can't blame the guy to not wanting to bet his ass on this. And a plane accident happens so quickly...
I know that Americans hate this kind of thing, but why not have an order of IT, like there is for doctors or lawyers ? Face it : no technological tool will make it even difficult for a sysadmin to have a copy of confidential corporate data. You have to rely on morality and goodwill, which is hard to enforce technologically.
Have an order whose member accept to follow a strict code ("Delete copies that you own, signal any accessible sensitive data, do not talk to anyone about the content you saw..." ) that would make them suitable to work as trustworthy sysadmins without risks, just like you know you can trust a doctor to not tell everyone you have AIDS if he sees that when you donated blood.
You have spent 10 years working at Nokia researcher, a world-leader on phone and smart-phones ? You won't stay unemployed long. I am left-leaning (from France, so you might as well call me a communist) but come on, in this industry, competition is fierce. No one with such an experience will stay unemployed long. There are small companies that have a hard time finding good profiles. See this as Nokia sending spores full of its DNA across the whole European innovation ecosystem.
Slashdot Mirror
There, there. I agree that intellectual property ha been completely subverted. I agree that software patents should be outlawed, that the copyrightableness of code should be carefully examined, and the copyrightableness of binaries also. However, there are indeed domains where a period of exclusive commercial exploitation makes sense. Drug research, movie production.
I like the position of the pirate party : copyrights should be a lot shorter (~10 years) and non-commercial sharing should be allowed. It is, however, productive to propose a period of commercial exclusivity.
You know that "open" does not just mean "there is a CLI available", right ?
Not because he was gay, but because he was in a depression caused by the drugs he was forced to take against his gayness (a then criminal offense in UK). He was forces to take hormones to modify his sexual behavior. He was having several medical problems (including growing boobs IIRC) and was forbidden to meet the man he loved.
And yes, as you point out, he was a polymath and a genius, someone who probably felt he was trapped in a retarded world and who could envision the future.
So, in a moment of depression, disguising a suicide as a fantasy brought by the bleeding technical edge of the moment (color theaters) seems a credible scenario for him, yes.
When you are killing people, that's a weak argument. When you are selling damn iPads and are subjected to a convoluted export law, that's fair.
The widely acknowledge factoid is more than suicide. The claims are he poisoned himself with an apple injected with cyanide, after becoming obsessed with Disney's Snow-White movie. Where does this folklore come from ?
He synthesized cyanide himself, so of course his apartment smelled of it. The idea that a gay man with drug-induced depression could wish to eat the enchanted apple to sleep a hundred years before a prince wakes him up in a more tolerant world seems pretty credible to me.
Exactly : biomedical patents work more or less how they are supposed to work : a process is disclosed, a reasonable (but arguably a bit too long) exclusivity time is given to the filler. I wouldn't be against some enforced maximum margin on life-saving drugs, but well, I'm a heathen commie...
What is funny is that biomed patent works well because most drugs are NOT inventions through ingeniousness : they are usually the result of thousands (millions ?) of test-and-fail procedures. A huge quantity of molecules are tried at random and often when it is effective its mechanisms are not even understood. Copying a molecule, on the other hand, is usually easier. It makes sense to protect this discovery.
For software patents, however, the situation is more ridiculous because usually, obvious solutions are patented : give any two competent software developer the same requirement, and they will come up with similar solutions.
There should be ways to detect the wirings and whether there is a mux and where, but the documentation is not available to the developers (maybe you can help us figure out how to do this, have any ideas? You can also 'petition' nvidia for releasing these specs: nvidia customer help ? )
I think that my next one will have Intel graphics. They are not the top boys in terms of raw power, but their drivers are open source, and their linux support apparently complete. That makes them probably decent competitors to NVidia/ATI
The fact is, the algorithm that is Google Search has things that passes as opinions despite not being programmed by Google programmers. When auto-suggest say "Scientology is... a sect" or "Obama is... a muslim.", this is not a statement done by anyone at Google. These speeches can be recognized as offensive, defamatory or damaging. Yet, these are clearly statements of opinion without authors.
Therefore it can be argued that, despite not sentient per se, Google's algorithm create the basis of what can be considered an opinion, and even a political one. So, if this speech can be attacked for being defamatory, why couldn't it be protected for being political/religious ?
This doesn't give computers a right, it just clarifies the legal notion of "protected speech". "Free speech" is not a property attached to a person but to an action. Saying that computers can do this action doesn't seem so far fetched to me.
It is interesting also, because an alternate opinion could be to say that this speech, being automatically generated by an algorithm, is not an opinion but a matter of fact. But to prove such a thing, it would take Google to release their algorithm, which I think is not their desired outcome but may be the reason why they are looking for a decision in another direction.
Any object with a MOID lower than 0.0026 AU is : http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/sormano/sael.html#SAEL
That is, several a year, and depending on the size, several a month.
You say it like copyright was supposed to expire one day...
Still... Impeding-doom asteroids routinely pass between the Earth and the Moon and are detected after the fact.
I say we should forget about the Moon or about Mars. It is time that Earth sets up a good detection system (maybe an orbital array of Hubble-like telescopes ?) and begins thinking about mitigation plans for the case where a dangerous asteroid is located.
Mod this guy up to heaven. He knows the technical details.
I'll steal this post to ask from a knowledgeable person : As someone who has been bitten by the optimus thing, who has now a poor ATI driver, are intel graphics any good ? I heard they really pimped up their acceleration abilities these years. Are the open source drivers really good under linux ?
Arduino Grande
Enormous components
No support of Optimus means that on laptops, nvidia cards are either unsupported or power hungry. NVidia made a statement saying they will never support such a feature in their linux drivers. Nouveau has repeatedly asked for the specification information of this. Note that this information is not critical at all from a strategical point of view. No answer. NVidia's message is clearly "linux users are second zone citizens and we will not help them the slightest".
Even when not thinking that everything linux should be open source, NVidia does not provide a working linux driver for its optimus cards (that is, 90% of cards sold in laptops today). With no open source solution and no closed source solution, we can simply stare as a fact that their support simply sucks.
My prediction : Google will be mining asteroids before China sends a human on the moon.
Some people do that, and even manage to get pictures of their scammers by asking for a proof that they do exist by making a picture of them with a sign spelling the name of the sender (And sometimes senders are called Iam A. Dick) http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame.htm
Nevertheless, I don't see why he's avoiding extradition to Sweden, it's certainly not the worst country in the world.
Because Sweden has already extraded terrorists suspects to U.S without due process. I doubt they would do the same in Assange's case, but I can't blame the guy to not wanting to bet his ass on this. And a plane accident happens so quickly...
I concur. It took me a while to understand that "biostatistics" is simply statistics with no specific mathematical tool...
How about a POST request that contains an encrypted file ? Do you prevent that ?
I first saw the story there : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4120837
Man, we are talking about England here...
They might prohibit certain services altogether to prevent spread of lewdness, but they won't spy on you.
That, they can outsource to one of the thousand heathen American or European companies that will be happy to do it for them.
I know that Americans hate this kind of thing, but why not have an order of IT, like there is for doctors or lawyers ? Face it : no technological tool will make it even difficult for a sysadmin to have a copy of confidential corporate data. You have to rely on morality and goodwill, which is hard to enforce technologically.
Have an order whose member accept to follow a strict code ("Delete copies that you own, signal any accessible sensitive data, do not talk to anyone about the content you saw..." ) that would make them suitable to work as trustworthy sysadmins without risks, just like you know you can trust a doctor to not tell everyone you have AIDS if he sees that when you donated blood.
You have spent 10 years working at Nokia researcher, a world-leader on phone and smart-phones ? You won't stay unemployed long. I am left-leaning (from France, so you might as well call me a communist) but come on, in this industry, competition is fierce. No one with such an experience will stay unemployed long. There are small companies that have a hard time finding good profiles. See this as Nokia sending spores full of its DNA across the whole European innovation ecosystem.