No, strictly speaking, it's not patent abuse. Rather, it's the USPTO granting patents for things that fail the obviousness test. My evidence that it fails the obviousness test is that I thought of this myself a long time ago, and I am not in the business of building fancy lighting, or even building electronics. I didn't think at the time that it was patent-worthy, but rather that it was the right way to make the light do what I would want it to do. (I was thinking of a specific use, different from the high-end pretty light market that Color Kinetics pursues.)
Upon thinking of it, my reaction was not to rush to the patent office, but to think to myself "Huh, that would be a nice way to get an all-colored light. But blue LEDs are expensive, and high-powered LEDs are expensive, and I don't feel like building that from scratch myself, as I don't build electronics for a living. I wonder when I'll be able to by one like that cheaply."
Because of the patent, even when LEDs are cheap, a light like this probably won't be. Thanks loads, USPTO.
I suppose we could be mad at Color Kinetics for bothering to apply for this patent. But, given that USPTO is handing out licenses for "the sky is blue", _somebody_ will be asking for a patent on that. I prefer to be annoyed at USPTO.
"Light Bulb Replacements"..."LoveOO writes Boston.com has a story about three companies which are trying to replace the Light bulb."
I found the title and the first sentence more than a little misleading. I expected to read about three different ways of producing light. Something like new LEDs, that strange way that involves molten sulfer and microwaves, and...? Instead, the three ways are LEDs, LEDs, and LEDs. Couldn't they have even told us more about three subtly different technologies for producing efficient/cheap LEDs?
It's still considered a drug, its prohibition "worked" and didn't cause a massive revolt like
alcohol's did, and it's not terribly important
You need to get a lot less ignorant about marijuana issues.
The current illegality of marijuana is a HUGE problem.
Our prisons and legal system are choked with marijuana convictions and trials.
All the policing, trials, and prisons are hugely expensive.
Abuses by police are happening all the time.
Foreign governments are being stiff-armed into "helping" us, to the peril of their stability and sovereignty, and the well-being of their citizens.
Our constitutional rights have been eroded in the name of tilting at this windmill!
The "drug war" will never be "won". We should stop letting politicians pretend that it ever could be, if only we would be a little harsher, a little more rapacious, a little more vicious, a little more heartless, a little more wasteful with our tax revenue.
This war against drugs has been proceeding very much indeed like prohibition, in terms of the effects on society, the effects on the drug supply, etc. You should read some history.
WAKE UP! PAY ATTENTION!
Well, that's tragic and all, I guess. But, our government should track his every move, purchase, romance, etc.? How does that help him? How does that help us? How does that help the government?
Does the raw image format of this camera let you get at the color data from all four kinds of pixels? That could be very interesting...
at least two shelves missing from the iDesk
on
iWorkstations?
·
· Score: 1
Obviously, the pictures of the iDesk show what is merely an "artist's concept". It shows a round shelf to hold mouse. The production model would at the very least include two more shelves like that: one big shelf to hold the pizza, and one small shelf to hold the caffiene.
Um, if SCO's lawyers do ever argue this in front of a judge, does this sort of stupidity count as one of the things for which a judge can declare the lawyer in contempt? Something along the lines of "Mr. SCO Lawyer, in recognition of your extreme ignorance of copyright law and for wasting our time, I'm fining you $500."
I agree. What's worse, they are mixing "doesn't suck" with "has whizzy features". They award a total of 5 points for the "whizzy features", and I'd swear I see the scores for the providers grouped into two bunches, separated by... a 5 point gap. So if the survey really had been about "who doesn't suck?", it would be even more of a dogpile, all landing in a 7 point patch!
Worse, half of "doesn't suck" is apparently "do they happen to have towers where I am and where I go?" That seems to me like an all-or-nothing condition, not some shading between 100 points of goodness and 107.
First, the grandparent post was obviously humor, and good humor at that. Parent poster needs to acquire a sense of humor.
Second, when you said "feasible", you meant "profitable". Certainly such a power plant is feasible; it has already been done!
Third, regarding the profitability, just how many of these solar tower power plants do you think we could be building with the $5,000,000,000 per month that the USA is spending to be in Iraq? Not to mention the $100,000,000,000 that we already spent getting there and being there so far?
If we as taxpayers agree that we should squander such a huge pile of money, we should ask if instead of spending it on Iraq, it would be better to spend on a project that would in one fell swoop 1) create lots of construction jobs in the USA 2) reduce our alleged need to obtain fossil fuels from wildlife preserves in Alaska and elsewhere 3) increase our electrical supply 4) reduce our dependence on foreign oil and probably improve our trade imbalance at the same time 5) weaken oil cartels 6) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases 7) reduce emissions that cause acid rain 8) improve the stability of our electrical grid by adding energy storage capacity 9) satisfy our putative duty under the Kyoto Treaty, to the amazement and gratitude of the rest of the world? The economic analysis of whether or not we should build such plants might need to be more profound than simply "how many $/kilowatthour will it cost"?
While the video of Ghyslain's antics generated some derisive Internet comments, others felt bad
and started raising money for him. One group collected more than $3,000 (U.S.), which they used
to buy him an Apple iPod portable music player.
$3000? That would be for the special edition iPod, the one with the terabyte disk and platinum housing?
(When, oh when, will people start reading the article?)
As others have observed, Microsoft is not the big winner here, although it is a winner. It gets to consolidate and aggregate its existing business, and sure it's probably squeezing Apple, IBM, etc some more here and there with this contract. And sure, it has locked down this portion of market share for FIVE MORE YEARS, which is bad. But...
The big winner is Dell. It's administering all this software business. It skims whatever it can before passing the lion's share on to Microsoft. It acquires a huge list of potential "customers" and tries to sell them Dell hardware. And it squeezes out a bunch of small fry who were ensconced in cozy government contracts. Excerpted from Government Computer News: http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22743-1. html:
The department reached the agreement earlier this month, after inviting nine bidders, including GTSI Corp. of Chantilly, Va., and MarkSoft Management Resources Inc. of Canterbury, N.H., to present proposals.
Seriously, who are those two companies that got mentioned? Either wannabees, or hasbeens. Dell ate their lunch, and Dell has some other merchandise it would enjoy selling to the 280,000 eyeballs it just acquired for the next five years.
When you call the president a facist, you've pretty much trashed not just the country, not just its leaders, but everything the country is about.
I think your argument here is pretty much bullshit. I think my president is a bully and a thug. But on the other hand, I think the Constitution is wonderful. See how that works? The president of the USA is not the same thing as the USA, etc.
The defining characteristic of this country is the orderly transfer of power.
That was really the wrongest argument you could have chosen to defend the current president, who only came to power when the U.S. Supreme Court intruded in highly unusual fashion, and along party lines, to decide the election. If there was ever a president of the USA that came to power in a disorderly way, George W. Bush might be it.
When someone starts calling people "fascists" - intimating that they are dictators -- they are trashing the fundamental principle of this country.
No, they are trashing that person. Also, I think you might have a little confusion about what "fascist" means.
Regardless of how you dislike the embattled outcome of the last election it was *orderely*. There was no military coup, there was no mass unrest.
The lack of rioting and other violence is a testament to the excessive patience and virtue of the American citizens. It is perhaps also evidence of the trust and honor we place in decisions of the US Supreme Court, albeit now diminished by their interference in a decision of law of the State of Florida. Or it might mean that most citizens are mindless sheep who didn't even bother to show up for the vote. It in no way is a compliment to the current president, nor his administration.
The main point here is that criticism going on mostly these days is not in good faith. It is made in bad faith to score political or other points. And that does reflect badly on the opposition. It shows that you are not a patriot, but an opportunist.
My complaining shows that I am angry. I'm not interested in scoring points, I'm interested in change. The fact that I am willing to stand up and complain is what makes me a patriot. Your willingness to paint me and others as opportunists shows that you are interested in ad hominem attacks.
Anyone with concerns should come forward with them. Whats happening now though is artifical concern. We have people using their dissent as a mask.
I assure that my concern, and that of many millions of American patriots, is not artificial in any way, and it is offensive for you to paint us as having some sort of secret agenda. We very plainly dislike being lied to, having the Bill of Rights trashed, attacking countries that pose no threat to us, giving tax breaks to sweethearts and fat cats, scape-goating various minorities, etc. These concerns of ours are not artificial.
Dissent yes, but lets not kid ourselves. 99% of the dissent we see is not principled, but rather, based on politics.
What exactly are you saying here? 99% of dissenters are whiney Democrat losers? Not true, but even if it were, you're implying that dissenters' ideals are not "principles", but "politics"? And that the ideals of the current administration are somehow on the other hand not "politics", but "principles"? And why would that be so?
It is becoming increasingly clear that the USA attached Iraq because it wanted to "redraw the map" in the Middle East, not because it actually feared any "weapons of mass destruction" from that country. This all reeks of Wolfowitz's wet dream from a decade ago coming true.
At the rate we're going, we might not even need to name the next aircraft carrier after George Bush, because we won't need any more aircraft carriers. We'll have airbases sprinkled conveniently around the globe, in Afganistan, Iraq, Liberia, North Korea, Columbia,...
T. gondii does affect humans. It causes the disease toxoplasmosis. It is bad for AIDS patients and fetuses. It causes brain damage. That is why pregnant women are supposed to avoid contact with cat feces.
Re:Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?
on
New Deep Ocean Creatures
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And I'm afraid that being pulled to the surface is a one-way trip.
The previous poster is hinting at why they kept all three specimens. Let me make it more plain. By the time the fish were found in the net, they were as good as dead, if not dead already.
When fish with swim bladders are brought up from depth (90m is deep enough), this gas-filled bladder expands grossly, giving the fish fatal internal injuries. For example, the bladders of these fish from 90m would swell to about 9 times the volume that they were at depth.
Fish brought up from great depths, even if they lack swim bladders, can die from what is essentially The Bends, i.e. dissolved gas within their tissues fizzing out of solution.
(They can die from other things as well.)
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely incinerate the automobiles of people who illegally exceed the speed limit.
The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
during a hearing on transportation laws represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against highway scofflaws.
During a discussion on methods to frustrate car owners who illegally exceed the speed limit, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to ignite cars involved in such speeding.
Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal arson laws.
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's car,"
replied Randy Saaf of MphDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt automotive traffic. One technique involves deliberately driving very slowly so other users can't go faster.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said incinerating someone's car "may be the only way you can teach somebody about speed limits."
The senator, a driver who logged 18,000 miles last year, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for speed limit enforcers from
liability for damaging cars. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a
computer user about illegal behavior, "then incinerate their car."
"If we can find some way to do this without incinerating their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for incinerating their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating speed limits," Hatch said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee's senior Democrat, later said the problem is serious but called Hatch's idea too drastic a remedy to be considered. "Traffic laws need to be followed, but some Draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve," Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. "We need to work together to find the right answers, and this is not one of them."
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in transportation debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation,
Jonathan Lamy, said Hatch was "apparently making a metaphorical point that if transportation departments don't take reasonable steps to prevent massive speeding on the roads they build, Congress may be forced to consider stronger measures." The Department of Transportation funds major highway projects.
Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and highway executives to work faster toward ways to enforce traffic laws than to signal forthcoming legislation.
"It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce," said Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department (news - web sites) moving violations prosecutor and associate professor at George Washington University law school.
The transportation industry has gradually escalated its fight against speeders, targeting the most egregious scofflaws with civil lawsuits. The Department of Transportation recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track drivers - even those hiding behind aliases - using popular sportscars.
Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve an arson exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent passengers might be wrongly targeted. "It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."
There has been much made of the 15" powerbook, which is still Titanium, not Aluminum. Speculation has been that it will be updated dramatically, including outrageous predictions of the new 15" Aluminum powerbook getting a 970 processor. I guess people think it was held back from update so that it could get the 970 when it is finally updated.
People, pay attention. The 15" powerbook was held back because Jobs promised to support MacOS 9 until... this summer. With that constraint off, it can get the new technologies that are not supported in MacOS 9 (bluetooth, airport extreme). That doesn't mean it's getting the 970.
Considering a lot of GPS receivers have an error of + or - 10 feet or so, I wonder if they are using very precise equipment
You are thinking of the consumer-grade GPS receivers, which can be had for $100 and fit in your hand. The next step up in the marketplace, for surveyors, gives ~1cm accuracy after a half hour of measurement. These cost $5000-$10000, yet are portable, but maybe are a backpack rather than handheld. The receivers and methods used in the article are obviously even better and more expensive, amay be completely non-portable, and likely require sophisticated post-processing of their raw measurements.
Adelman photographed Streisand's sea-side Malibu mansion using a 6 megapixel Nikon digital camera from a helicopter flying over the Pacific Ocean. The photograph, along with over 12,000 other photographs, is part of an aerial photographic survey of the California coastline.
I looked at the thumbnails, and at the large version of that photo, and what it revealed to me was not anything spectacular about Streisand's house, but rather that I REALLY want a "6 megapixel Nikon digital camera". The enlargement is gorgeous.
Slashdot Mirror
Upon thinking of it, my reaction was not to rush to the patent office, but to think to myself "Huh, that would be a nice way to get an all-colored light. But blue LEDs are expensive, and high-powered LEDs are expensive, and I don't feel like building that from scratch myself, as I don't build electronics for a living. I wonder when I'll be able to by one like that cheaply."
Because of the patent, even when LEDs are cheap, a light like this probably won't be. Thanks loads, USPTO.
I suppose we could be mad at Color Kinetics for bothering to apply for this patent. But, given that USPTO is handing out licenses for "the sky is blue", _somebody_ will be asking for a patent on that. I prefer to be annoyed at USPTO.
I found the title and the first sentence more than a little misleading. I expected to read about three different ways of producing light. Something like new LEDs, that strange way that involves molten sulfer and microwaves, and ...? Instead, the three ways are LEDs, LEDs, and LEDs. Couldn't they have even told us more about three subtly different technologies for producing efficient/cheap LEDs?
I had the same reaction: "Hey, that sure looks like a knock-off of the TiVo logo!"
It can't be an accident.
You need to get a lot less ignorant about marijuana issues. The current illegality of marijuana is a HUGE problem. Our prisons and legal system are choked with marijuana convictions and trials. All the policing, trials, and prisons are hugely expensive. Abuses by police are happening all the time. Foreign governments are being stiff-armed into "helping" us, to the peril of their stability and sovereignty, and the well-being of their citizens. Our constitutional rights have been eroded in the name of tilting at this windmill! The "drug war" will never be "won". We should stop letting politicians pretend that it ever could be, if only we would be a little harsher, a little more rapacious, a little more vicious, a little more heartless, a little more wasteful with our tax revenue.
This war against drugs has been proceeding very much indeed like prohibition, in terms of the effects on society, the effects on the drug supply, etc. You should read some history. WAKE UP! PAY ATTENTION!
Well, that's tragic and all, I guess.
But, our government should track his every move, purchase, romance, etc.?
How does that help him?
How does that help us?
How does that help the government?
Ditto.
It should be +5 insightful.
Does the raw image format of this camera let you get at the color data from all four kinds of pixels? That could be very interesting...
Obviously, the pictures of the iDesk show what is merely an "artist's concept". It shows a round shelf to hold mouse. The production model would at the very least include two more shelves like that: one big shelf to hold the pizza, and one small shelf to hold the caffiene.
"Blame Canada! ..."
Um, if SCO's lawyers do ever argue this in front of a judge, does this sort of stupidity count as one of the things for which a judge can declare the lawyer in contempt? Something along the lines of "Mr. SCO Lawyer, in recognition of your extreme ignorance of copyright law and for wasting our time, I'm fining you $500."
Worse, half of "doesn't suck" is apparently "do they happen to have towers where I am and where I go?" That seems to me like an all-or-nothing condition, not some shading between 100 points of goodness and 107.
Second, when you said "feasible", you meant "profitable". Certainly such a power plant is feasible; it has already been done!
Third, regarding the profitability, just how many of these solar tower power plants do you think we could be building with the $5,000,000,000 per month that the USA is spending to be in Iraq? Not to mention the $100,000,000,000 that we already spent getting there and being there so far?
If we as taxpayers agree that we should squander such a huge pile of money, we should ask if instead of spending it on Iraq, it would be better to spend on a project that would in one fell swoop 1) create lots of construction jobs in the USA 2) reduce our alleged need to obtain fossil fuels from wildlife preserves in Alaska and elsewhere 3) increase our electrical supply 4) reduce our dependence on foreign oil and probably improve our trade imbalance at the same time 5) weaken oil cartels 6) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases 7) reduce emissions that cause acid rain 8) improve the stability of our electrical grid by adding energy storage capacity 9) satisfy our putative duty under the Kyoto Treaty, to the amazement and gratitude of the rest of the world? The economic analysis of whether or not we should build such plants might need to be more profound than simply "how many $/kilowatthour will it cost"?
$3000? That would be for the special edition iPod, the one with the terabyte disk and platinum housing?
As others have observed, Microsoft is not the big winner here, although it is a winner. It gets to consolidate and aggregate its existing business, and sure it's probably squeezing Apple, IBM, etc some more here and there with this contract. And sure, it has locked down this portion of market share for FIVE MORE YEARS, which is bad. But...
The big winner is Dell. It's administering all this software business. It skims whatever it can before passing the lion's share on to Microsoft. It acquires a huge list of potential "customers" and tries to sell them Dell hardware. And it squeezes out a bunch of small fry who were ensconced in cozy government contracts. Excerpted from Government Computer News:. html:
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22743-1
The department reached the agreement earlier this month, after inviting nine bidders, including GTSI Corp. of Chantilly, Va., and MarkSoft Management Resources Inc. of Canterbury, N.H., to present proposals.
Seriously, who are those two companies that got mentioned? Either wannabees, or hasbeens. Dell ate their lunch, and Dell has some other merchandise it would enjoy selling to the 280,000 eyeballs it just acquired for the next five years.
I think your argument here is pretty much bullshit. I think my president is a bully and a thug. But on the other hand, I think the Constitution is wonderful. See how that works? The president of the USA is not the same thing as the USA, etc.
The defining characteristic of this country is the orderly transfer of power.
That was really the wrongest argument you could have chosen to defend the current president, who only came to power when the U.S. Supreme Court intruded in highly unusual fashion, and along party lines, to decide the election. If there was ever a president of the USA that came to power in a disorderly way, George W. Bush might be it.
When someone starts calling people "fascists" - intimating that they are dictators -- they are trashing the fundamental principle of this country.
No, they are trashing that person. Also, I think you might have a little confusion about what "fascist" means.
Regardless of how you dislike the embattled outcome of the last election it was *orderely*. There was no military coup, there was no mass unrest.
The lack of rioting and other violence is a testament to the excessive patience and virtue of the American citizens. It is perhaps also evidence of the trust and honor we place in decisions of the US Supreme Court, albeit now diminished by their interference in a decision of law of the State of Florida. Or it might mean that most citizens are mindless sheep who didn't even bother to show up for the vote. It in no way is a compliment to the current president, nor his administration.
The main point here is that criticism going on mostly these days is not in good faith. It is made in bad faith to score political or other points. And that does reflect badly on the opposition. It shows that you are not a patriot, but an opportunist.
My complaining shows that I am angry. I'm not interested in scoring points, I'm interested in change. The fact that I am willing to stand up and complain is what makes me a patriot. Your willingness to paint me and others as opportunists shows that you are interested in ad hominem attacks.
Anyone with concerns should come forward with them. Whats happening now though is artifical concern. We have people using their dissent as a mask.
I assure that my concern, and that of many millions of American patriots, is not artificial in any way, and it is offensive for you to paint us as having some sort of secret agenda. We very plainly dislike being lied to, having the Bill of Rights trashed, attacking countries that pose no threat to us, giving tax breaks to sweethearts and fat cats, scape-goating various minorities, etc. These concerns of ours are not artificial.
Dissent yes, but lets not kid ourselves. 99% of the dissent we see is not principled, but rather, based on politics.
What exactly are you saying here? 99% of dissenters are whiney Democrat losers? Not true, but even if it were, you're implying that dissenters' ideals are not "principles", but "politics"? And that the ideals of the current administration are somehow on the other hand not "politics", but "principles"? And why would that be so?
It is becoming increasingly clear that the USA attached Iraq because it wanted to "redraw the map" in the Middle East, not because it actually feared any "weapons of mass destruction" from that country. This all reeks of Wolfowitz's wet dream from a decade ago coming true.
At the rate we're going, we might not even need to name the next aircraft carrier after George Bush, because we won't need any more aircraft carriers. We'll have airbases sprinkled conveniently around the globe, in Afganistan, Iraq, Liberia, North Korea, Columbia, ...
Close, very close. Directed energy weapons means of course sharks with friggin' lasers.
T. gondii does affect humans.
It causes the disease toxoplasmosis.
It is bad for AIDS patients and fetuses.
It causes brain damage.
That is why pregnant women are supposed to avoid
contact with cat feces.
The previous poster is hinting at why they kept all three specimens. Let me make it more plain. By the time the fish were found in the net, they were as good as dead, if not dead already.
When fish with swim bladders are brought up from depth (90m is deep enough), this gas-filled bladder expands grossly, giving the fish fatal internal injuries. For example, the bladders of these fish from 90m would swell to about 9 times the volume that they were at depth.
Fish brought up from great depths, even if they lack swim bladders, can die from what is essentially The Bends, i.e. dissolved gas within their tissues fizzing out of solution. (They can die from other things as well.)
Who will be the first to spoof the radar, so that the Honda next to you will kindly slow down and let you cut? :-)
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely incinerate the automobiles of people who illegally exceed the speed limit.
The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on transportation laws represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against highway scofflaws.
During a discussion on methods to frustrate car owners who illegally exceed the speed limit, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to ignite cars involved in such speeding.
Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal arson laws.
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's car," replied Randy Saaf of MphDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt automotive traffic. One technique involves deliberately driving very slowly so other users can't go faster.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said incinerating someone's car "may be the only way you can teach somebody about speed limits."
The senator, a driver who logged 18,000 miles last year, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for speed limit enforcers from liability for damaging cars. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal behavior, "then incinerate their car."
"If we can find some way to do this without incinerating their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for incinerating their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said. "There's no excuse for anyone violating speed limits," Hatch said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee's senior Democrat, later said the problem is serious but called Hatch's idea too drastic a remedy to be considered. "Traffic laws need to be followed, but some Draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve," Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. "We need to work together to find the right answers, and this is not one of them."
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in transportation debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation, Jonathan Lamy, said Hatch was "apparently making a metaphorical point that if transportation departments don't take reasonable steps to prevent massive speeding on the roads they build, Congress may be forced to consider stronger measures." The Department of Transportation funds major highway projects.
Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and highway executives to work faster toward ways to enforce traffic laws than to signal forthcoming legislation.
"It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce," said Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department (news - web sites) moving violations prosecutor and associate professor at George Washington University law school. The transportation industry has gradually escalated its fight against speeders, targeting the most egregious scofflaws with civil lawsuits. The Department of Transportation recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track drivers - even those hiding behind aliases - using popular sportscars.
Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve an arson exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent passengers might be wrongly targeted. "It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."
People, pay attention. The 15" powerbook was held back because Jobs promised to support MacOS 9 until ... this summer. With that constraint off, it can get the new technologies that are not supported in MacOS 9 (bluetooth, airport extreme). That doesn't mean it's getting the 970.
Considering a lot of GPS receivers have an error of + or - 10 feet or so, I wonder if they are using very precise equipment
You are thinking of the consumer-grade GPS receivers, which can be had for $100 and fit in your hand. The next step up in the marketplace, for surveyors, gives ~1cm accuracy after a half hour of measurement. These cost $5000-$10000, yet are portable, but maybe are a backpack rather than handheld. The receivers and methods used in the article are obviously even better and more expensive, amay be completely non-portable, and likely require sophisticated post-processing of their raw measurements.
I looked at the thumbnails, and at the large version of that photo, and what it revealed to me was not anything spectacular about Streisand's house, but rather that I REALLY want a "6 megapixel Nikon digital camera". The enlargement is gorgeous.
Death of the Internet predicted, photos at 11!
Yawn.
"By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy."