Shee, if you're going to make arcologies, you should put rectenna canopies over them and the areas between, and collect the energy where it is needed while shielding the habitats.
Back when microprocessors were invented, well, about the 8080's time, someone was trying to get anyone who used IC memory chips of any type to pay royalties based on the theory that this infringed on their patent for an obscure mechanical crossbar switch.
As far as I could understand the language of the demand, it was based mainly on the fact that the device and the memory chips both were electrical things sort of organized in a rectangular grid.
My 1977(8?) KIM-1 portable player compressed the musical notes considerably. The codes, from 1 to 255, indicated the frequency, duration, and lookup table. This was decoded into up to thousands of approximated waveforms from the lookup table. Output was a parallel port, through TTL drivers, resistors wired into a D/A, and a little speaker, in case anyone is tempted to patent these concepts.:-)
Nah. I think they're living in a dream world; no business that would be worth their soliciting is going to pay. Not enough to pay for the patent and the bogus royalty solicitations.
On the other hand, it is possible to make money off such a patent just by fooling a single credulous investor into buying part of the thing...
Okay... I was playing a tinny version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" off my carryable Kim-1 single-board computer - ordinary lantern batteries as power-supply, downloaded from my Digital Group box(Z80, massive 24K of RAM). In 1977, or perhaps it was 1978. Until the school found out that was where the buzzy patriotic tune emitted from every radio and intercom speaker in the school was coming from.
That should take care of "prior art" for both portable players of downloaded music and portable transmitters of same.
I think I cribbed all the circuitry from articles in the first year or so of Byte Magazine, except for the power supply. Lantern batteries wired to monolithic voltage regulators duh.
IMHO the patent doesn't look worth a pitcher of warm spit (that's the bowdlerized version).
The problem of the totally impotent force opposing the ultimately vulnerable object. Why have so few philosophers considered this crucial question? -- "Your lack of grovelling disturbs me."
True. But capitalism thrives best in limited democracies, and democracies that do not allow sufficient capitalism tend to do poorly. Or not exist.
It irritates voters forbidden to enrich themselves. Pure democracies let a bare majority impose and are unviable, and elected officials must respect opinions of significant minorities.
They get voted out when minorities use decisions as litmus tests that change votes, and less affected majorities don't.
As a Sysadmin I would have no trouble with this. Of course, you would have to accept a CYA memo from myself, recommending the rebuild, noting the possible damage and liability, and releving me from any responsibility for your decision to do otherwise.
Of course old people die. Age is an incurable condition, so far. Duh! I would not argue that if, fully informed of what treatment is or is not effective for a possibly fatal condition, and offered it they should not have the option to choose death instead.
Perhaps from an evolutionary perspective, "You get born, you breed, you die" is all that is important. But this logic indicates persons who are sterile, women who have reached menopause, and so on should be excluded from public health programs. Morally, I reject this eugenics approach.
In human society a person's contributions can extend for their entire lives. They do not become of less worth to society as they age, and limiting the choices available for them is as objectionable as any genocide based on discrimination by sex, race, et cetra. But excluding them from treatment is no better than murder being excused by other conditions they may have.
"Selfishness"? Give me a break. Goodness, the money saved by excluding the sick elderly from treatment using your excuses, and the inheritances transferred more quickly to their heirs, just seem terribly convenient, don't they? What an amazingly convenient, cost-saving coincidence. Not.
You know, it would be rather nice if the SETI project would now distribute a utility to check if people are running the SETI client or a hacked copy of what they thought was the SETI client.
It stimulates the development and the initial use and survival of the newest technologies, supporting them financially until they become cheap enough, or, umm, penetrate the market enough to take off into general use. And then pretend that it never happened.
Examples? VCRs, Video cameras, streaming video...
Some complain of the bandwidth used, as if the internet connection purchased with their dollars should take precedence, but these are the same people who will be later using and enjoying the technologies for less erotic uses.
IIRC, the Casmir Effect - two conducting plates placed near each other, which excludes from a vaccum between the plates virtual particles with wavelengths longer than the plate separation - is one way to raise the speed of light in the affected region.
If there are any phenomena that leave traces in the radio signals earth receives from space (sort of what radio telescopes are for), analyzing those signals and checking out the prospects winnowed from the data is likely to reveal those phenomena.
So, attacking the SETI problem, which (obviously) interests people enough to participate in the analysis, will IMO much more likely result in announcements of natural galactic-scale masers (or something sounding like that), than the discovery of ET. Which will greatly interest, at least, the astronomers and astronomy mavens.
Let me get this straight: Intel makes much more profit on their chips than AMD does, so Intel is at a disadvantage.:-)
This is interesting logic. By extension, any company which is highly profitable should fail as a result of their success.
Sorry, you are imagining things. AMD is crippled by their small market share which must support their whole R&D and facilities cost. Intel maximizes their profits by minimizing expenses as well as charging what the market will bear for their processors, and produces them for much less cost per processor as a result.
"Intel start to treat it's friend badly"? I have no idea what you mean by this. Companies deal with each other in the real world for their own benefit, not to help "friends". Are you imagining that it is ethical, desirable, or even legal for public companies to cut other companies out of their market share? Maybe this works in some third-world countries where corruption is rampant, but not in the market Intel works in.
Slashdot Mirror
An IP for every traffic light.
An IP for every streetlight, fire hydrant, mailbox, and manhole cover.
An IP for every commode.
An IP for every URL, of course.
A whole IP network for every elementary particle in the universe, with plenty of room for subnetting in case of decay.
An IP to be included free with every condom purchased, and the other way around.
An IP to be born every minute.
Shee, if you're going to make arcologies, you should put rectenna canopies over them and the areas between, and collect the energy where it is needed while shielding the habitats.
Back when microprocessors were invented, well, about the 8080's time, someone was trying to get anyone who used IC memory chips of any type to pay royalties based on the theory that this infringed on their patent for an obscure mechanical crossbar switch.
As far as I could understand the language of the demand, it was based mainly on the fact that the device and the memory chips both were electrical things sort of organized in a rectangular grid.
My 1977(8?) KIM-1 portable player compressed the musical notes considerably. The codes, from 1 to 255, indicated the frequency, duration, and lookup table. This was decoded into up to thousands of approximated waveforms from the lookup table. Output was a parallel port, through TTL drivers, resistors wired into a D/A, and a little speaker, in case anyone is tempted to patent these concepts. :-)
Nah. I think they're living in a dream world; no business that would be worth their soliciting is going to pay. Not enough to pay for the patent and the bogus royalty solicitations.
On the other hand, it is possible to make money off such a patent just by fooling a single credulous investor into buying part of the thing...
Okay... I was playing a tinny version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" off my carryable Kim-1 single-board computer - ordinary lantern batteries as power-supply, downloaded from
my Digital Group box(Z80, massive 24K of RAM).
In 1977, or perhaps it was 1978. Until the
school found out that was where the buzzy patriotic tune emitted from every radio and intercom speaker in the school was coming from.
That should take care of "prior art" for both portable players of downloaded music and portable transmitters of same.
I think I cribbed all the circuitry from articles in the first year or so of Byte Magazine, except for the power supply. Lantern batteries wired to monolithic voltage regulators duh.
IMHO the patent doesn't look worth a pitcher of warm spit (that's the bowdlerized version).
Once upon a time I had no feet... :-)
Shit-fire, yes, speaking should be fun! :-)
Did you ever try to something like "the data're in" rather than "the data's in"? Forget it!
[to tune of "With a Backpack On My Back"]
I love to sit and stuff my apps
with great huge chunks of code
and that is why performance is
beginning to implode.
[refrain]
Feature-eee, feature-iii,
feature-eee, feature-i-i-i-i-i-i,
feature-eee, feature-iii,
my programs are obese.
[idea stolen largely from a song sung by Garrison Keillor]
Liability, yes. Umm... are there any IRC channels which might be appropriate for these anonymous-denounciation meetings? ;-)
The problem of the totally impotent force opposing the ultimately vulnerable object. Why have so few philosophers considered this crucial question?
--
"Your lack of grovelling disturbs me."
True. But capitalism thrives best in limited democracies, and democracies that do not allow sufficient capitalism tend to do poorly. Or not exist.
It irritates voters forbidden to enrich themselves. Pure democracies let a bare majority impose and are unviable, and elected officials must respect opinions of significant minorities.
They get voted out when minorities use decisions as litmus tests that change votes, and less affected majorities don't.
Hey, if they make us prosperous, humans will follow them anywhere.
And bite them, of course, as Mark Twain observed.
If they left the car where it was, but changed the presets on the radio to Country & Western stations - now that would be malicious.
As a Sysadmin I would have no trouble with this. Of course, you would have to accept a CYA memo from myself, recommending the rebuild, noting the possible damage and liability, and releving me from any responsibility for your decision to do otherwise.
How exactly are the myriad users of the Windows versions going to do this thing?
Of course old people die. Age is an incurable condition, so far. Duh! I would not argue that if, fully informed of what treatment is or is not effective for a possibly fatal condition, and offered it they should not have the option to choose death instead.
Perhaps from an evolutionary perspective, "You get born, you breed, you die" is all that is important. But this logic indicates persons who are sterile, women who have reached menopause, and so on should be excluded from public health programs. Morally, I reject this eugenics approach.
In human society a person's contributions can extend for their entire lives. They do not become of less worth to society as they age, and limiting the choices available for them is as objectionable as any genocide based on discrimination by sex, race, et cetra. But excluding them from treatment is no better than murder being excused by other conditions they may have.
"Selfishness"? Give me a break. Goodness, the money saved by excluding the sick elderly from treatment using your excuses, and the inheritances transferred more quickly to their heirs, just seem terribly convenient, don't they? What an amazingly convenient, cost-saving coincidence. Not.
You know, it would be rather nice if the SETI project would now distribute a utility to check if people are running the SETI client or a hacked copy of what they thought was the SETI client.
Perhaps he meant things like the remarkable lack of medical treatment for the elderly some countries, for example kidney dialysis?
Of course porn benefits mankind.
It stimulates the development and the initial use and survival of the newest technologies, supporting them financially until they become cheap enough, or, umm, penetrate the market enough to take off into general use. And then pretend that it never happened.
Examples? VCRs, Video cameras, streaming video...
Some complain of the bandwidth used, as if the internet connection purchased with their dollars should take precedence, but these are the same people who will be later using and enjoying the technologies for less erotic uses.
Evolution in action?
Destroy humans to protect sheep?
Now thatwould be ignoring symbiosis!
IIRC, the Casmir Effect - two conducting plates placed near each other, which excludes from a vaccum between the plates virtual particles with wavelengths longer than the plate separation - is one way to raise the speed of light in the affected region.
If there are any phenomena that leave traces in the radio signals earth receives from space (sort of what radio telescopes are for), analyzing those signals and checking out the prospects winnowed from the data is likely to reveal those phenomena.
:-)
So, attacking the SETI problem, which (obviously) interests people enough to participate in the analysis, will IMO much more likely result in announcements of natural galactic-scale masers (or something sounding like that), than the discovery of ET. Which will greatly interest, at least, the astronomers and astronomy mavens.
I think the term for this is marketing
Let me get this straight: Intel makes much more profit on their chips than AMD does, so Intel is at a disadvantage. :-)
This is interesting logic. By extension, any company which is highly profitable should fail as a result of their success.
Sorry, you are imagining things. AMD is crippled by their small market share which must support their whole R&D and facilities cost. Intel maximizes their profits by minimizing expenses as well as charging what the market will bear for their processors, and produces them for much less cost per processor as a result.
"Intel start to treat it's friend badly"? I have no idea what you mean by this. Companies deal with each other in the real world for their own benefit, not to help "friends". Are you imagining that it is ethical, desirable, or even legal for public companies to cut other companies out of their market share? Maybe this works in some third-world countries where corruption is rampant, but not in the market Intel works in.