Sorry, there was a URL error in posting the " better explanation " , the second link. It didn't post, for some reason.
Here it is, again, above, and below (in text), in case it still doesn't work.
http://www.math.jmu.edu/~jim/full.ps
The better explanation is actually intuitive, such that a normal person with a normal education in Differential Calculus would understand it. Shoot, even a person with just algebra could understand it if they understood *what* differential equations were.
I have the best computer animation program out there, XYZ-Anime, and it is the most anoying thing when I want to type a report, and it gets up and goes out for coffee.
Unrealistically, what I'd really like to see would be a programming model that could take a general model, and then at will recalculate the general model based upon specifics. Of course, I too have some physics and math, and I'm not to sure one could really do this.
But if I were going to do it, I would probably use Taylor function matrices everywhere, and use the Parker-Sochacki Picard iteration (better explanation here) to do the specific calculations as needed. My data would then be stored first in a lookup table, as spotty as it could be, and secondarily as a Taylor function, and on third order the Taylor function would be recalculated whenever there was time.
There. I spelled it out. Now, quit trying to play two games at once, and realize, you live in a single reality. Quit lying to yourself, therefore, and either (1) play by the American Government's rules, or (2) get out. Me, I actually picked both.
Nonetheless, no matter what you pick, I expect that the same thing that takes down most criminals is the fact that they don't think their method (that is, crime) through to its logical conculsion (usually prison, death, or broken relationships). It's a distinct sign of a lack of intelligence.
Even where it results in the criminal ruling the world (Napoleon, Hitler), the net result is (a) butt of jokes about megalomaniac little snits with various tics (b) see previous paragraph: prison, death, broken relationships.
... and replace with alternative P2P HDD that does not offer copyrighted materials. Preferably of you pounding out various tunes on your son's xylophone, while singing through a kazoo.
Just be sure and bury it in the middle of a state park, or before too long some bank robber is going to be taken down with your HDD as his weapon of choice...
... could you improve edge effects by going from a square matrix, to a hexagonal matrix?
A lot of the edge effects, as I understand, came from the RGBG matrix.
Or, alternatively, going from RGBG in the square matrix, to a ton more KRKK KBKK KGKK, instead, and getting major definition on the edges, but lower definition on the color?
Even better might be KKKK KKKK KKKK RGBI KKKK KKKK etc., in a hexagonal pattern, with I being infrared.
As I remember, the color (rods?) receptors in the eye are not nearly as high definition as the brightness sensors. So I would think you could do the same on the CCD, and get a ton better edge definition without loss.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about the art of photography.
So could you explain to us what dynamic range really is? Is it perhaps the range of dark, to bright, which can be shown by the medium?
As far as I remember, printers cannot produce as bright or as dim colors as photos; computer monitors are in between.
However, I do also remember that there are photographic output devices available -- essentially an image source that points at a camera. Since you can vary the length of time that a pixel shows up, I would think that you should be able to get any dynamic range that photography is capable of (if I'm understanding the term correctly).
That being the case, I wonder why it wouldn't be better to shoot digital, then output to your photographic output device, under ideal conditions?
I like to see quality responses like this: it told me more about the actual process that goes on there, and it actually does make a little bit of sense. I can see from this that you really do believe in your work, and probably belong where you are.
BTW... Most of the stuff you do is pretty amazing; but at least as of 5-6 years ago, your planetary position predictions were lousy. I'm hoping you guys have, since then, upgraded your method with the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration.
Actually, no -- government held patents and copyrights are not public domain.
As much as any real property, they are subject to the Condemnation/Privatization cycle of transferring property from poor people/businesses to wealthy people and businesses.
As I remember, ("Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynmann) during the Manhatten Project, they asked for and claimed the patent ideas of the scientists working on the projects. So Feynmann, in exchange for a tiny party, provided them with the patents for such things as nuclear powered ships, nuclear subs, nuclear airplanes, and such. Those aren't public domain; and the beneficiary of these patents is the US Government.
Or think back to your own town: remember all those properties that the town council condemned? Remember all those lucrative contracts that went out to companies owned by members of the town council? And the $3000 dead-town-district lots that suddenly got sold as $120k "Parking"? Or the university that traded its valuable property between the university town and the nearest commercial center (on the main road), in an acre-for-acre swap for flood-plane land with its Athletic Director? Or the mayor who got free land from the city for "improving downtown", a free building from the feds for "a medical complex", put his own "doctor's office" on the top floor, and rented the rest to the US Park Service, moving them out of the US Post Office across the street?
Ummm... maybe your town wasn't quite like my town. Quite like it -- these were stories from Harrisonburg, VA, and VA Tech. But I'm willing to bet that it's not too different from ours. I've seen this kind of thing in too many places.
Anything the government owns is NOT public domain. It is very specifically private domain, and headed into the hands of someone more powerful than you.
... So let's just say that the German Army sends up this satellite, and it handles the communications securely, and they are absolutely sure that nobody has intercepted the signal, so it bounces from their spy's little notebook+dish, up to the bird, and down, ever so securely to the server (on M$ Windoze, on a system in their capital), through the decryption server, and from there it goes across the street, through a ring network, over to the next city, up to another satellite dish, up to another satellite, down to Denver, back over to New York by Sprint cable, through a subocean cable, into France, into Berlin, and into the office of their spymaster.
Or something.
So it's good to know that our communications will be secure.
Ummm.... does anybody remember that RFP by the German Army for a non-M$ operating system?
First, let me say that I don't pirate. I don't even copy cassette music tapes, except as the usable backup (I archive the original -- they break too easily).
That said, I:
(1) really do not believe that IP laws follow natural law, and do not believe that IP law is good for a country in any way, shape, or form, any more than slavery is good for a country. Let me be more explicit: I consider IP law to be a form of legalized theft, using the government to do the exact opposite of the government's job (read "The Law").
(2) Am extremely concerned about mandated hardware restrictions.
The reason for my interesting position is that I do not believe in civil disobedience -- I rather believe in following the highest law possible, and trying to change the bad ones, or leaving the unfree country (as I have done). I think that if more people followed my path, there would be a ton more incentive to do away with IP laws entirely. They don't, and there isn't, and whole countries are going down a really bad road as a result.
But I tend to view a lot of the claims by slashdotters as valid on their own, but only invalidated by their piracy insofar as they pirate.
What I'd do, if I really wanted to get into the recycling business, is as follows:
(1) I wouldn't recycle just one: I'd set up to grab and recycle as many as possible. From there, I'd go into computer part recycling.
(2) I'd take the thing apart into its components. Anytime you can rebuild a CD-R out of its working components, that's the best you can do. Keep the good ones, bad parts go towards trash (but not there yet)
(3) Bad parts: Sometimes, as you identify a whole bunch of bad boards (for example, they each blew a cap), you may be able to grab the boards and rebuild them. At that point, you have a good "refurbishing" business.
(4) Trashed parts: don't forget to grab the gold. Also, if the laser is good, the motor is good -- those parts you can collect and sell at Nuts and Volts, or set up your own "parts junkyard". Anyone who wants a cheap laser? $5 a pop, much better than $30 new for the conceptual prototyping. (several stages: conceptual prototype is first, followed by a production prototype, followed by a production model and first sales, followed by an actual working model...;->).
Seriously, if you're really into recycling computer parts, I would strongly consider going to a junkyard, and finding out what software they use, and doing the same thing. They have to break cars down, and then deal with essentially parts of all the different models, list which parts are interchangeable (e.g. toyota and VW rabbit turn signal lightbulbs).
I'd ESPECIALLY like to see this done with monitors. Usually, the monitor blows a cap, but you don't know which one. So you throw the whole thing. How wasteful! On the other hand, if you could measure the capacitive properties of a good board, and your bad board, and use it to predict which cap blew (huge database I know, but if you have a real junkyard, I expect you'll build such a database relatively rapidly) then you can make about $25 profit per shot. Buy the dead monitors at $5 each, and sell them at $50 each.
It occurs to me that it might work to set up a combination "better business bureau" and "SSL" certification on the web.
Keep everything automated -- however, you get a score for unanswered complaints, answered complaints that are not accepted by the complainent, and such. Score drops too low, you lose your cert.
By doing that, you would actually provide the service of an alternative means of security.
Re:A wonderful solution, then: previous art!
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Since the definition is now set at 4 notes, and there is a ton of out-of-copyright material from the 1700's and before, you break everything from Metallica's latest hit into 4 note groups, show that it is all previously published, and then start burning and selling CDs.
Naturally, you do it *without* the singing, which is a private matter -- but karaoke DJs will love it.
They sue, you haul out your list. Countersue to have the copyright revoked, based upon the 4-note definition.
Also, don't forget the relative scales. Just switching up an octave doesn't make a thing new, unless you're singing "Way Down Low" in the upper scales or something.
You are making the same lame point that constitutionalists and libertarians make.
Actually, scratch that "lame" bit. It's a good point, but it has nothing to do with reality.
Reality: Power derives from a willingness to use force and destroy. Reality: Rights exist only insofar as people require them, either through voting with their feet, or through their own exercise of power. Reality: Wars exist when group A comes in contact with group B, or group A comes in contact with another group A, or even when group B comes in contact with another group B. Reality: Smart people vote with their feet while they can.
Our government hasn't paid attention to its Constitution since the civil war. Sometimes, it happens to approximately follow the Constitution, but only incidentally, and not because it is its "contract of governance". When its actions follow the Constitution, it is because the Constitution does give a pretty good path to follow, so as not to degenerate into constant fighting.
That said, there are always groups that want to seize more power, and sometimes they are in the government. When they try to seize to much power, they abandon their responsibilities, and chaos follows.
Let's just say that the Constitution was a statement of good faith by the men who purposed to rule the new nation of the USA. They did a pretty good job, and a lot of men tried to keep faith with that statement. Today, a few of them still do; many really don't care.
Just thought I'd drop this line, because most people *don't* know how to put out an engine fire.
That includes firemen.
I sold my car a while back, and then about a year later, heard that it had burned. The new owner had taken a church group to a ski resort, and then noticed the engine was burning. He put water on it, and it didn't help. So he called the fire department. They used up all their portable fire extinguishers... no good. It just kept relighting, because the engine was so hot. Eventually the car burned to a crisp.
My *brother*, on the other hand, did successfully put out an engine fire once. It was a car pulled over at the side of the road, and he packed mud on the engine. The mud smothered the flames, and kept the oxygen away until the engine had cooled.
Anyhow, chipping or due to an oil leak (the most common cause *I* know of), there is a way to put those things out.
That's the diff between liberal , libertarian
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With the current group in charge, you can bet that every ammendment in the Bill of Rights, save for the 2nd, is in danger.
Might I remind people that such things as the "know your customer" program at banks [and I am certain it is in force now, an unusual deposit takes over 2.5 weeks to go through] was introduced under CLINTON? My uncle, a Naderite, and I, a libertarian, agree on one thing: Gore, Clinton, and Dubiya are carbon copies of each other.
Anyhow, the difference between an American liberal and a libertarian is that for an American liberal, it does make a difference who is in control of the abusive government.
And before people go off on "yez right-wingers", I will point out that this is also the definition of the difference between a conservative and a libertarian.
Quite simply, I don't walk out of the movie feeling clean if it's got lots of naked women dancing. It's worse for bedroom scenes.
My wife walks out feeling dirty if it's got tons of gratuitous violence.
I ***REALLY*** don't like the stuff. I would go for "edited" versions every time, if I had the choice. I never have, so I simply haven't seen a whole bunch of movies that might have been good.
Maybe it's better that way. But society is more messed up when you *can't* have censorship.
I, for one, want it. Please censor my movie. Really.
FWIW, we do prepublishing, and we're trying to make the jump from Word to Quark.
Word is so badly programmed that it has cost us tons of money due to document corruption. When this problem came out in '98/99, there was officially support with our purchased product. However Word support went to the extent of saying "what you are seeing on the screen is not what is happening, Word functions properly, and no don't send us the files for autopsy."
Quark at least is stable, as of Ver. 4.05 (which we use). When there *is* document corruption, you can either (a) select all, copy, open a clean document, paste, save as (b) delete all pages. Ask the program to regenerate pages. That's it. Corruption is not permanent there.
We do this on Mac, but Word has similar problems on the PC, and according to reports I read later versions than ours also have those problems. So we're jumping ship.
What with no support, a real cost 10x that of professional programs, and all, I would not be sorry to see Mac lose Office support. Very quickly, our authors would also make the jump, and there would be no question as to whether it was a better choice.
You know, the middle man is so expensive, and I figured, why did they really want to pay me $15 million just for a basic bank transfer service.
So I figured they might as well just go to the horse's mouth.
So in any case, I asked them to send me a registered mail to confirm that they were serious,
at my business address (Fur Trading Corp., Washington DC) in care of my secretary "Uce Depney".
UCE Dep.
FTC
CRC-240
Washington, DC 20580
I especially asked them to include a copy of the email that they sent with my reply, and to remind me that they were the original writers of the email. Soooo... if they do happen to be in America, we can see something to go on. If not, our friends over at the Unsolicited Commercial Email program of the FTC will have a good laugh.
If I remember correctly, there was recently (1999) allocated a whole bunch of bandwidth for low-power FM stations, specifically to be awarded to nonprofit organizations. So... it would seem that the thing to do would be to get ahold of a non-profit organization, such as Kuro5hin, to sponsor you. Then they request the bandwidth, local to your university. You get something like 3 miles of broadcast; your are limited to something like 100-1000 W.
You then cover the Kuro5hin news, but also play all kinds of free rock-n-roll (that is, donated by the musicians) in the background. Or do it for slashdot, if slashdot is a NPO (I don't know if it is or not). Or do it for any of a number of other organizations.
You will still need a good $2000-$10000 initial investment for the radio equipment, unless you want to try to build your own and get it to pass FCC regulations (not impossible, I guess). But $2k is small compared to the cost of getting bandwidth.
I guess most of you aren't remembering those Lucent closed-architecture WinModems, that -- just like upcoming M$ plans, shipped the jobs off to the CPU. Even under windows, it couldn't hold a link, and they went bad quickly (expected lifetime 2 yrs).
Sure, the WinMouse is no problem, and I'm willing to bet that the WinKeyboard may have worked as a regular keyboard, and done allright.
But you've gotta compare apples to apples, not marbles. For that, you've gotta remember the WinModem.
I, for one, was impressed enough to remember "never touch Lucent". And when the VP of Sales at Lucent became the President of HP [and incidently the old guard fled for their lives] I immediately said "caution buying HP products.]
I, for one, will stay away from CPU eating brain-dead closed-source patentfee architecture. It just isn't smart. Come to think of it, going with M$ isn't smart. Their cut-rate word processor cost us over $7000 ($30k if you count lost contracts) because they can't -- or refuse to -- fix the document corruption problems that Word generates for 30-page, 800k documents.
You're absolutely right that it would not stand up in court.
Nonetheless, the courts are wrong. When people try to seize power that is not theirs -- that the cannot inherently countrol (imagine Jabba the Hut suing for ownership of Luke Skywalker's "force" abilities, or a klutz suing to be named a blackbelt in judo), they self destruct.
So a basic definition of ownership SHOULD be whether ownership is possible.
In the case of satellite signals, it isn't possible, and attempts to control it actually tear down the society that allows such attempts, by either increasing disrespect for the law, or making the government go to draconian effort and expense to enforce its more foolish laws.
I think I do understand where they are coming from: their primary customers are the cellular phone folks, and it makes sense for them to brand the airwaves as property.
It's much the same as Bill Gates calling software copiers "thieves", back in the days when software copying was standard.
Nonetheless, I disagree on one level, and one level only.
I tend to think that not everything can be or should be "property". Specifically, if something is inherently ownable -- that is, defendable -- then it can be property, and will probably best be managed as someone's property. However, such things as ideas, once they are released to the public, are not really defendable. Software is the same. To brand such things as property, then, is to either increase disrespect for the law, or to hurt those who do respect the law and benefit those who don't respect the law. Either way, a society slowly self-destructs under such a situation.
So I can't support just claiming that bandwidth use is theft. Why, just yesterday I was at school and used the internet to look at a site that was personally of interest to me (SLASHDOT, for crying out loud). And I don't at all feel guilty.
So I tend to think that it would be trespassing (not theft) to hack a system -- but if the company leaves the system open, then it is not trespassing. That is, if a company is attempting to secure their system, then they are showing that they are defending their bandwidth as property. But if they leave their bandwidth open, then that becomes instead a public accessway, much like McDonalds' bathrooms.
Word of warning, though: abuse it, and you'll lose it.
A business owner I know said that quote I have in my subject line: a patent is like a gun that costs $10k to buy, $100k to shoot. I doubt he made it up, he was more into quoting other people.
I think your best advice might come from Don Lancaster, author of "the TTL Cookbook", "The CMOS Cookbook", a regular column in Nuts and Volts Magazine, and "The Incredible Secret Money Machine ]["... which is where I got this bit of advice.
He pointed out that the best way to protect your invention is to invent it, publish it, and immediately start selling it, and thus prevent others from patenting your idea.
This has several advantages: (1) Big companies hate things that are public domain. This keeps them out. (2) Big companies love to break patents, or failing that, simply to break the patent holders. (3) If your idea is successful, you should be able to sell the article you publish, and make an immediate (small) profit: $100-$500. (4) The article will also serve as advertising: you'll become known as the most knowledgeable person to come to in that area. Thus, you'll get sales. (5) The money you didn't spend on lawyers and the patent process can be invested in production.
Essentially, patents are not for little people. They are there to allow big companies to steal more effectively, that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, there was a URL error in posting the " better explanation " , the second link. It didn't post, for some reason. Here it is, again, above, and below (in text), in case it still doesn't work. http://www.math.jmu.edu/~jim/full.ps The better explanation is actually intuitive, such that a normal person with a normal education in Differential Calculus would understand it. Shoot, even a person with just algebra could understand it if they understood *what* differential equations were.
Unrealistically, what I'd really like to see would be a programming model that could take a general model, and then at will recalculate the general model based upon specifics. Of course, I too have some physics and math, and I'm not to sure one could really do this.
But if I were going to do it, I would probably use Taylor function matrices everywhere, and use the Parker-Sochacki Picard iteration (better explanation here) to do the specific calculations as needed. My data would then be stored first in a lookup table, as spotty as it could be, and secondarily as a Taylor function, and on third order the Taylor function would be recalculated whenever there was time.
The End of American Civilization has begun.
There. I spelled it out. Now, quit trying to play two games at once, and realize, you live in a single reality. Quit lying to yourself, therefore, and either (1) play by the American Government's rules, or (2) get out. Me, I actually picked both.
Nonetheless, no matter what you pick, I expect that the same thing that takes down most criminals is the fact that they don't think their method (that is, crime) through to its logical conculsion (usually prison, death, or broken relationships). It's a distinct sign of a lack of intelligence.
Even where it results in the criminal ruling the world (Napoleon, Hitler), the net result is (a) butt of jokes about megalomaniac little snits with various tics (b) see previous paragraph: prison, death, broken relationships.
... and replace with alternative P2P HDD that does not offer copyrighted materials. Preferably of you pounding out various tunes on your son's xylophone, while singing through a kazoo.
Just be sure and bury it in the middle of a state park, or before too long some bank robber is going to be taken down with your HDD as his weapon of choice...
... could you improve edge effects by going from a square matrix, to a hexagonal matrix?
A lot of the edge effects, as I understand, came from the RGBG matrix.
Or, alternatively, going from RGBG in the square matrix, to a ton more
KRKK KBKK KGKK, instead, and getting major definition on the edges, but lower definition on the color?
Even better might be KKKK KKKK KKKK RGBI KKKK KKKK etc., in a hexagonal pattern, with I being infrared.
As I remember, the color (rods?) receptors in the eye are not nearly as high definition as the brightness sensors. So I would think you could do the same on the CCD, and get a ton better edge definition without loss.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about the art of photography.
So could you explain to us what dynamic range really is? Is it perhaps the range of dark, to bright, which can be shown by the medium?
As far as I remember, printers cannot produce as bright or as dim colors as photos; computer monitors are in between.
However, I do also remember that there are photographic output devices available -- essentially an image source that points at a camera. Since you can vary the length of time that a pixel shows up, I would think that you should be able to get any dynamic range that photography is capable of (if I'm understanding the term correctly).
That being the case, I wonder why it wouldn't be better to shoot digital, then output to your photographic output device, under ideal conditions?
BTW... Most of the stuff you do is pretty amazing; but at least as of 5-6 years ago, your planetary position predictions were lousy. I'm hoping you guys have, since then, upgraded your method with the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration.
Quick Explanation of the method here.
Actually, no -- government held patents and copyrights are not public domain.
... maybe your town wasn't quite like my town. Quite like it -- these were stories from Harrisonburg, VA, and VA Tech. But I'm willing to bet that it's not too different from ours. I've seen this kind of thing in too many places.
As much as any real property, they are subject to the Condemnation/Privatization cycle of transferring property from poor people/businesses to wealthy people and businesses.
As I remember, ("Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynmann) during the Manhatten Project, they asked for and claimed the patent ideas of the scientists working on the projects. So Feynmann, in exchange for a tiny party, provided them with the patents for such things as nuclear powered ships, nuclear subs, nuclear airplanes, and such. Those aren't public domain; and the beneficiary of these patents is the US Government.
Or think back to your own town: remember all those properties that the town council condemned? Remember all those lucrative contracts that went out to companies owned by members of the town council? And the $3000 dead-town-district lots that suddenly got sold as $120k "Parking"? Or the university that traded its valuable property between the university town and the nearest commercial center (on the main road), in an acre-for-acre swap for flood-plane land with its Athletic Director? Or the mayor who got free land from the city for "improving downtown", a free building from the feds for "a medical complex", put his own "doctor's office" on the top floor, and rented the rest to the US Park Service, moving them out of the US Post Office across the street?
Ummm
Anything the government owns is NOT public domain. It is very specifically private domain, and headed into the hands of someone more powerful than you.
Excellent idea: computer keyboard trackpad *with* microphone ... (lessee, see, touch, taste, smell... ) spittoon and gas collector.
{ poster emits loud fart; computer shuts down }
But now the gestures start to have meaning to your coworkers, too.
Or something.
So it's good to know that our communications will be secure.
Ummm.... does anybody remember that RFP by the German Army for a non-M$ operating system?
First, let me say that I don't pirate. I don't even copy cassette music tapes, except as the usable backup (I archive the original -- they break too easily).
:
That said, I
(1) really do not believe that IP laws follow natural law, and do not believe that IP law is good for a country in any way, shape, or form, any more than slavery is good for a country.
Let me be more explicit: I consider IP law to be a form of legalized theft, using the government to do the exact opposite of the government's job (read "The Law").
(2) Am extremely concerned about mandated hardware restrictions.
The reason for my interesting position is that I do not believe in civil disobedience -- I rather believe in following the highest law possible, and trying to change the bad ones, or leaving the unfree country (as I have done). I think that if more people followed my path, there would be a ton more incentive to do away with IP laws entirely. They don't, and there isn't, and whole countries are going down a really bad road as a result.
But I tend to view a lot of the claims by slashdotters as valid on their own, but only invalidated by their piracy insofar as they pirate.
What I'd do, if I really wanted to get into the recycling business, is as follows:
;->).
.
(1) I wouldn't recycle just one: I'd set up to grab and recycle as many as possible. From there, I'd go into computer part recycling.
(2) I'd take the thing apart into its components. Anytime you can rebuild a CD-R out of its working components, that's the best you can do. Keep the good ones, bad parts go towards trash (but not there yet)
(3) Bad parts: Sometimes, as you identify a whole bunch of bad boards (for example, they each blew a cap), you may be able to grab the boards and rebuild them. At that point, you have a good "refurbishing" business.
(4) Trashed parts: don't forget to grab the gold. Also, if the laser is good, the motor is good -- those parts you can collect and sell at Nuts and Volts, or set up your own "parts junkyard". Anyone who wants a cheap laser? $5 a pop, much better than $30 new for the conceptual prototyping. (several stages: conceptual prototype is first, followed by a production prototype, followed by a production model and first sales, followed by an actual working model...
Seriously, if you're really into recycling computer parts, I would strongly consider going to a junkyard, and finding out what software they use, and doing the same thing. They have to break cars down, and then deal with essentially parts of all the different models, list which parts are interchangeable (e.g. toyota and VW rabbit turn signal lightbulbs)
I'd ESPECIALLY like to see this done with monitors. Usually, the monitor blows a cap, but you don't know which one. So you throw the whole thing. How wasteful! On the other hand, if you could measure the capacitive properties of a good board, and your bad board, and use it to predict which cap blew (huge database I know, but if you have a real junkyard, I expect you'll build such a database relatively rapidly) then you can make about $25 profit per shot. Buy the dead monitors at $5 each, and sell them at $50 each.
It occurs to me that it might work to set up a combination "better business bureau" and "SSL" certification on the web.
Keep everything automated -- however, you get a score for unanswered complaints, answered complaints that are not accepted by the complainent, and such. Score drops too low, you lose your cert.
By doing that, you would actually provide the service of an alternative means of security.
Since the definition is now set at 4 notes, and there is a ton of out-of-copyright material from the 1700's and before, you break everything from Metallica's latest hit into 4 note groups, show that it is all previously published, and then start burning and selling CDs.
Naturally, you do it *without* the singing, which is a private matter -- but karaoke DJs will love it.
They sue, you haul out your list. Countersue to have the copyright revoked, based upon the 4-note definition.
Also, don't forget the relative scales. Just switching up an octave doesn't make a thing new, unless you're singing "Way Down Low" in the upper scales or something.
You are making the same lame point that constitutionalists and libertarians make.
Actually, scratch that "lame" bit. It's a good point, but it has nothing to do with reality.
Reality: Power derives from a willingness to use force and destroy.
Reality: Rights exist only insofar as people require them, either through voting with their feet, or through their own exercise of power.
Reality: Wars exist when group A comes in contact with group B, or group A comes in contact with another group A, or even when group B comes in contact with another group B.
Reality: Smart people vote with their feet while they can.
Our government hasn't paid attention to its Constitution since the civil war. Sometimes, it happens to approximately follow the Constitution, but only incidentally, and not because it is its "contract of governance". When its actions follow the Constitution, it is because the Constitution does give a pretty good path to follow, so as not to degenerate into constant fighting.
That said, there are always groups that want to seize more power, and sometimes they are in the government. When they try to seize to much power, they abandon their responsibilities, and chaos follows.
Let's just say that the Constitution was a statement of good faith by the men who purposed to rule the new nation of the USA. They did a pretty good job, and a lot of men tried to keep faith with that statement. Today, a few of them still do; many really don't care.
Just thought I'd drop this line, because most people *don't* know how to put out an engine fire.
That includes firemen.
I sold my car a while back, and then about a year later, heard that it had burned. The new owner had taken a church group to a ski resort, and then noticed the engine was burning. He put water on it, and it didn't help. So he called the fire department. They used up all their portable fire extinguishers... no good. It just kept relighting, because the engine was so hot. Eventually the car burned to a crisp.
My *brother*, on the other hand, did successfully put out an engine fire once. It was a car pulled over at the side of the road, and he packed mud on the engine. The mud smothered the flames, and kept the oxygen away until the engine had cooled.
Anyhow, chipping or due to an oil leak (the most common cause *I* know of), there is a way to put those things out.
With the current group in charge, you can bet that every ammendment in the Bill of Rights, save for the 2nd, is in danger. Might I remind people that such things as the "know your customer" program at banks [and I am certain it is in force now, an unusual deposit takes over 2.5 weeks to go through] was introduced under CLINTON? My uncle, a Naderite, and I, a libertarian, agree on one thing: Gore, Clinton, and Dubiya are carbon copies of each other. Anyhow, the difference between an American liberal and a libertarian is that for an American liberal, it does make a difference who is in control of the abusive government. And before people go off on "yez right-wingers", I will point out that this is also the definition of the difference between a conservative and a libertarian.
Quite simply, I don't walk out of the movie feeling clean if it's got lots of naked women dancing .
It's worse for bedroom scenes.
My wife walks out feeling dirty if it's got tons of gratuitous violence.
I ***REALLY*** don't like the stuff. I would go for "edited" versions every time, if I had the choice. I never have, so I simply haven't seen a whole bunch of movies that might have been good.
Maybe it's better that way. But society is more messed up when you *can't* have censorship.
I, for one, want it. Please censor my movie. Really.
FWIW, we do prepublishing, and we're trying to make the jump from Word to Quark.
Word is so badly programmed that it has cost us tons of money due to document corruption. When this problem came out in '98/99, there was officially support with our purchased product. However Word support went to the extent of saying "what you are seeing on the screen is not what is happening, Word functions properly, and no don't send us the files for autopsy."
Quark at least is stable, as of Ver. 4.05 (which we use). When there *is* document corruption, you can either (a) select all, copy, open a clean document, paste, save as (b) delete all pages. Ask the program to regenerate pages. That's it. Corruption is not permanent there.
We do this on Mac, but Word has similar problems on the PC, and according to reports I read later versions than ours also have those problems. So we're jumping ship.
What with no support, a real cost 10x that of professional programs, and all, I would not be sorry to see Mac lose Office support. Very quickly, our authors would also make the jump, and there would be no question as to whether it was a better choice.
You know, the middle man is so expensive, and I figured, why did they really want to pay me $15 million just for a basic bank transfer service. So I figured they might as well just go to the horse's mouth. So in any case, I asked them to send me a registered mail to confirm that they were serious, at my business address (Fur Trading Corp., Washington DC) in care of my secretary "Uce Depney". UCE Dep. FTC CRC-240 Washington, DC 20580 I especially asked them to include a copy of the email that they sent with my reply, and to remind me that they were the original writers of the email. Soooo... if they do happen to be in America, we can see something to go on. If not, our friends over at the Unsolicited Commercial Email program of the FTC will have a good laugh.
If I remember correctly, there was recently (1999) allocated a whole bunch of bandwidth for low-power FM stations, specifically to be awarded to nonprofit organizations. So... it would seem that the thing to do would be to get ahold of a non-profit organization, such as Kuro5hin, to sponsor you. Then they request the bandwidth, local to your university. You get something like 3 miles of broadcast; your are limited to something like 100-1000 W.
You then cover the Kuro5hin news, but also play all kinds of free rock-n-roll (that is, donated by the musicians) in the background. Or do it for slashdot, if slashdot is a NPO (I don't know if it is or not). Or do it for any of a number of other organizations.
You will still need a good $2000-$10000 initial investment for the radio equipment, unless you want to try to build your own and get it to pass FCC regulations (not impossible, I guess). But $2k is small compared to the cost of getting bandwidth.
I guess most of you aren't remembering those Lucent closed-architecture WinModems, that -- just like upcoming M$ plans, shipped the jobs off to the CPU. Even under windows, it couldn't hold a link, and they went bad quickly (expected lifetime 2 yrs). Sure, the WinMouse is no problem, and I'm willing to bet that the WinKeyboard may have worked as a regular keyboard, and done allright. But you've gotta compare apples to apples, not marbles. For that, you've gotta remember the WinModem. I, for one, was impressed enough to remember "never touch Lucent". And when the VP of Sales at Lucent became the President of HP [and incidently the old guard fled for their lives] I immediately said "caution buying HP products.] I, for one, will stay away from CPU eating brain-dead closed-source patentfee architecture. It just isn't smart. Come to think of it, going with M$ isn't smart. Their cut-rate word processor cost us over $7000 ($30k if you count lost contracts) because they can't -- or refuse to -- fix the document corruption problems that Word generates for 30-page, 800k documents.
You're absolutely right that it would not stand up in court. Nonetheless, the courts are wrong. When people try to seize power that is not theirs -- that the cannot inherently countrol (imagine Jabba the Hut suing for ownership of Luke Skywalker's "force" abilities, or a klutz suing to be named a blackbelt in judo), they self destruct. So a basic definition of ownership SHOULD be whether ownership is possible. In the case of satellite signals, it isn't possible, and attempts to control it actually tear down the society that allows such attempts, by either increasing disrespect for the law, or making the government go to draconian effort and expense to enforce its more foolish laws.
I think I do understand where they are coming from: their primary customers are the cellular phone folks, and it makes sense for them to brand the airwaves as property.
It's much the same as Bill Gates calling software copiers "thieves", back in the days when software copying was standard.
Nonetheless, I disagree on one level, and one level only.
I tend to think that not everything can be or should be "property". Specifically, if something is inherently ownable -- that is, defendable -- then it can be property, and will probably best be managed as someone's property. However, such things as ideas, once they are released to the public, are not really defendable. Software is the same. To brand such things as property, then, is to either increase disrespect for the law, or to hurt those who do respect the law and benefit those who don't respect the law. Either way, a society slowly self-destructs under such a situation.
So I can't support just claiming that bandwidth use is theft. Why, just yesterday I was at school and used the internet to look at a site that was personally of interest to me (SLASHDOT, for crying out loud). And I don't at all feel guilty.
So I tend to think that it would be trespassing (not theft) to hack a system -- but if the company leaves the system open, then it is not trespassing. That is, if a company is attempting to secure their system, then they are showing that they are defending their bandwidth as property. But if they leave their bandwidth open, then that becomes instead a public accessway, much like McDonalds' bathrooms.
Word of warning, though: abuse it, and you'll lose it.
A business owner I know said that quote I have in my subject line: a patent is like a gun that costs $10k to buy, $100k to shoot. I doubt he made it up, he was more into quoting other people.
... which is where I got this bit of advice.
I think your best advice might come from Don Lancaster, author of "the TTL Cookbook", "The CMOS Cookbook", a regular column in Nuts and Volts Magazine, and "The Incredible Secret Money Machine ]["
He pointed out that the best way to protect your invention is to invent it, publish it, and immediately start selling it, and thus prevent others from patenting your idea.
This has several advantages: (1) Big companies hate things that are public domain. This keeps them out. (2) Big companies love to break patents, or failing that, simply to break the patent holders. (3) If your idea is successful, you should be able to sell the article you publish, and make an immediate (small) profit: $100-$500. (4) The article will also serve as advertising: you'll become known as the most knowledgeable person to come to in that area. Thus, you'll get sales. (5) The money you didn't spend on lawyers and the patent process can be invested in production.
Essentially, patents are not for little people. They are there to allow big companies to steal more effectively, that's all.