You did, but I see that I phrased it poorly. What I was trying to say was antimatter iron for example can annihilate with aluminum, or water, or air, or any stable form of matter...because the positrons around the anti-iron will interact with the electrons around matter atoms. The article itself is talking about storing positrons...I would bet because they are the "easiest" to make (here I admit I'm not a particle physist, but I think the lightest anti-particles are the easiest to create in an accelerator, so postitrons are more prevalent than anti-protons and anti-neutrons.)
The next responder made an interesting point about the electrostatic repulsion between an antiproton and an electron preventing contact between the antiproton and the protons of the nuclei. I suspect antiprotons are still extremely short-lived exposed in the universe, but now I'm a little out of my league as to precisely how and how fast they find their way close enough to a proton to annihilate.
You don't need a matched piece of matter to detonate antimatter. Wherever that antimatter goes it will find matter with which to detonate unless you take immense precautions to keep it isolated (which is what much of the article is about). Especially with positrons: What you percieve as mechanical resistance...two solid objects that push against each other rather than just mixing like a gas...is electron-electron repulsion between the atoms on the outsides of those objects. Electrons orbiting an iron atom are just as likely to annihilate with positrons orbiting an anti-iron nucleus, an anti-proton nucleus, or nothing at all.
Wow..that sooper sekrit plan to...let me see if I can follow this...get their supporters to vote on election day?!?!?! What will those wacky Republicans think of next?
"It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small."
And what if the positions are reversed? What if a small company wants to spank a large company? If you want to drag MS into this, they rip off everyone. Try to take them to court, and now they get a free defense? WTF? Bill Gates thanks you.
I didn't say defenses should be free for all patent infringement cases, unless as the original poster suggested, we want to take a "whatever let the courts sort it out" attitude towards granting BS patents. I think the AC is underestimating the cost of defending yourself against any bogus lawsuit that probably should be thrown out in the first place. And before this devolves into an issue of whether the courts are inherently fair or not, I'm perfectly happy to concede that it may be impossible to come up with a legal system that prevents bogus lawsuits from ever being more than a nuicance while giving all legitimate complaints their fair hearing. But that doesn't mean we should make it worse by adding ammo for bogus lawsuits.
No one can predict how a company/inventor may enforce their patent(s)...
How or whether they plan to enforce it is irrelevant as to whether they deserve the patent. If the patent is obviously unenforceable than it obviousely shouldn't have been granted in the first place. The mere threat that they might try to enforce it is bad enough enough, even if you THINK you know you can beat it in court. And the whole "Sun's not evil. We just need this patent to defend ourselves from Microsoft's bogus patents" defense doesn't hold water for me. If that's really the situation then it means the system is badly broken.
...nor can the USPTO track down every single piece of prior art out there. Their job is simply to do the best they can, given the circumstances (sleeping, eating, having a life). And, like the law of averages (where 50% of all people have below average intelligence), so too will the patent office always come under fire, no matter how tight their standards are.
Well okay the picture is not as black and white as either the AC or I made it out to be. The AC's main point was "why worry, let the courts settle it." I say screw that, let the patent office do its job. If they mess up once in a while fine..the courts are the back-up system. And I'm sure what we're seeing here on/. are the worst examples out of thousands of patents granted. But I don't hear politicians talking about this. I don't read about this in mainstream media. If this is a problem that only tech sites are talking about then it's a good thing they seem to be beating the subject into the ground.
Bummer...then you're just going to have to figure out a way to rank them and deal with the fact that a simple ordered list doesn't adequately describe the complex psychology that disproves the "transitive law of better candidacy". Anyone faced with such a quandary should find it equally difficult to pick their single vote in the current system (your example gives me no indication whether you would vote for A, B or C in the current system), because it also fails to allow for complex comparisons. However if you really only have one favorite candidate, and are happy with the current system, that preference can still be expressed with a ranked list.
It's funny you asked this, as I was just thinking that other realistic voting methods besides plurality would discourage attack ads. From a game theory stand-point think of it this way:
With plurality all effects are either "good" or "bad" for a particular side. Anything bad for my opponent is good for me to an equal extent. In fact things that are bad for me but worse for my opponent are actually good for me overall (like attack ads...they might make me look mean-spirited, but if it makes my opponent look like a terrorist-loving commie pinko godless child molestor, they benefit my campain.). This only works because there are only two candidates. Throw 20 candidates in the mix, and an attack ad hurts the target the worst and hurts attacker somewhat, benefitting the most the other 18 uninvolved candidates.
Heck even without the "negative ramifications" (let's say for example that McCain-Feingold is repealed and I'm allowed to put out a vicious attack ad without having to take credit for it) attack ads would be less effective with more candidates. The attacker still has to foot the bill for an ad whose benefit is effectively spread equally among all the non-attacked candidates. If I can earn 5 votes per dollar spent with a self-promoting ad or cost someone 10 votes per dollar spent with an attack ad, an attack ad is more cost effective than a self-promoting ad with one opponent, an equal effective with two opponents, and less effective with any more than two.
This all of course assumes there are a multitude of valid candidates. If we passed one of these alternate voting schemes that makes third parties more realistic and found that 95% of Americans still voted for the top two parties, attack ads would be just as effective as ever, as the top two could safely ignore the fringe parties and hammer each other. And conversely everything I said would be equally valid with our current system if he had more than two parties with a realistic chance of winning, but it's pretty well accepted that our current voting system will always favor a trend towards two parties.
No, I don't think you really preemted the obvious replies. In short:
If stupid patents can just be thrown out the instant someone challenges them, why is it the fights we hear about always seem to drag on. I agree it should be reasonably cheap for another big company to fight such a ridiculous patent, but that's not enough. It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small.
If trivially stupid patents don't matter, why are the big guys in such an arms race to collect them? From the article:
"I think that IBM in particular, and Microsoft increasingly, have incredible patent arsenals. Sun needs some protections, too," Governor said.
This sure doesn't sound like Sun isn't worried about M$'s patent on double-click...it'll get tossed as soon as M$ tries to enforce it. This sounds like Sun is trying to say...okay M$ if you try to charge us for double-clicking, you don't get to sell per-employee site licenses anymore.
And finally...sure the patent office is allowed a few mistakes. But your attitude seems to be don't worry if the patent office is too liberal, that's what the courts are for. No the courts are not there to do the patent office's job for it, and it's fairly clear that a judge's time is more valuable than a patent clerk's.
"I have a file, with the exact bibliography printed on the folder, for every article I've read or written."
I tried to keep a system like that going for a while. It's one thing to be good about saying "Wow, that was a good article, I should fill out the bibliography right now in case I should like to cite it someday." It doesn't take much discipline since it happens roughly once a year. It takes a whole other level of discipline I just don't have to keep filling in those entries for articles I get bored with halfway through, stacks of articles my boss dumps on my desk, articles I read and decide are completely irrelevant to anything I'll ever be interested in, etc.
Nowadays I just use SciFinder or one of the other databases which can export in citation manager friendly format instead of typing in by hand. I'm not sure I see how P2P would make my life any easier. However these are all (SciFinder, SciSearch, ISI to be sure, not so sure about others) for fee databases that require my University to pay a subscription. I'm all for the free exchange of information, especially in the scientific community, so if this facititates it, I'm on board.
Re:Boy -- talk about your pointless questions...
on
Can GNU Ever Be Unix?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Is there are particular reason that FSF/GNU would object to certification? I haven't read the 55 pages of requirements, but I didn't get the impression that either "closed source", "not free to modify" or anything else incompatible with the GPL are part of the requirements. If you take a certified version and modify it, you undoubtedly can't call it certified anymore, but you're still free to redistribute your modified, "no-longer certified as Unix" version.
But I think the more significant point is that it's not FSF/GNU who would have the most incentive to get a distro certified as Unix. As the article pointed out, it's probably the hardware companies like IBM and Sun who would find it worthwhile.
But you should kind of expect it with TV. TV shows are scheduled (generally) on the hour or half hour so that regular viewers can keep watching. After that the ad placement follows a pretty logical formula: ads between shows, so there're always ads on the hour / half hour. Ads after the first five minute teaser. Ads at the halfway break, etc.
I suppose radio shows would follow a similar logic: If a popular radio personality has a two hour show, there are probably a few (or 20) optimal times to place ad breaks. But I don't really listen to talk radio that much, I just want to hear music. The difference there is that songs are 3-5 minutes long and I don't know what's coming, so if an ad comes on, I've got no reason not to look for another station...except for the aforementioned fact that I never seem to have any luck finding music on the other stations.
I doubt it. For one thing, the music industry already
fixes the prices on online music stores. For another the demand for single downloads online will reflect the advertising and payola efforts of the big labels every bit as much as the "quality" of the songs. "Competition" between brick and mortar record stores hasn't kept prices reflecting the true value of the music, and the combination of quick impulse buying and the ability to buy just the hit song will only favor formulaic hit machines.
Well if my experience whenever I forget to bring a CD in the car is any indicator, the flaw in your idea is that all the stations with good music have ads at the same time.
Call the above comment half joking, half tinfoil hat musings. I used to chock it up to bad luck, but I've wondered if there isn't any truth to it: it would be in the radio stations' interests to get together and agree to overlap ad time to minimize channel surfing, wouldn't it?
Yeah, I couldn't believe that when I read it, but of course a better comparison would be number of branches and tellers per U.S. resident between now and 20 years ago, since the total population has undoubtedly grown as well. And for the number of tellers, I'd be curious how many more tellers are part-time employees these days than full time...as so many businesses especially in the service industry have discovered, part time employees are cheaper because they don't have to offer benefits.
I remember about 10 years ago a bank in Chicago created a huge stink because they wanted to start charging a fee for every teller transaction that could have been accomplished at an ATM. There's no doubt that bank was pretty sure it would save money if people would use ATMs more. Of course at the time I couldn't help but think why would anyone want to wait for a teller if they didn't have to. You'd think the wait time would be more than enough deterant.
Yeah, I don't know if I'm blurring the line between sci-fi and reality, but aren't there already working biometrics systems that could serve as a unique identifier without requiring implantation? Retinal scanners, fingerprint scanners, etc?
I suspect part of the answer is the tracking capability..the article didn't mention it, but Mexico is suffering a crime wave of kidnappings for ransoms. Perhaps his job makes him a particularly vulnerable/valuable target. I imagine he and his family are at least upper middle class if not downright rich, but that doesn't really explain why this is a requirement of his job and not just a suggested preventative measure for all wealthy residents of Mexico.
I've logged into the NYtimes, LAtimes and the Washington post using site-specific spamgourmet addresses for each, since about 4 months ago. Haven't gotten a single email to any of them beyond the initial "Welcome and thank you for registering." I was pleasantly surprised at the evidence of their scrupulousness because I expected the worst going in (which is why I used site-specific disposeable address in the first place).
As for the issue of collecting personal info. I think it's fairly reasonable for them to attempt to characterize both the size and demographic of their readership in order to sell ad space. I don't think every little annoyance is justified in light of the "it makes money therefore it is GOOD" attitude some coorporate stooges have (pop-ups come to mind), but yeah, they're supplying a service, and if that's what they have to do to stay afloat. If it bothers you that much, fake your info.
Whoops...well sorry about my comment in the other post about nobody balking about paying to publish. I guess I am being somewhat US-centric about this. But none-the-less, if your lab is budget limited, how can you afford to read journals now? Does the govt. fund your libraries? I mean I don't want to sound like an arrogant American cold-hearted capitalist "we paid for it it's ours": I feel pretty strongly about money NOT being a limiting barrier to people being involved in science, I just don't see how reader pays works any better. I figured writer-pays at least puts more of the burden on the big name hotshots who have huge labs and churn out papers like a vending machine. My wife works at a school that can't afford online subscriptions anymore...not the end of the world for her I suppose, since they still have the dead tree versions although I personally don't think I could bear it if I had to give up that convenience. However I'm sure there are also print journals her library just can't afford because there's not enough interest to justify the cost. The professors there don't tend to have to publish as much because it's a primarily undergraduate school, focussed more on teaching than on publishing. But their library still has to pay for journals.
Anyways, whoever you are doing research for will foot the bill to get it published for the prestige of getting their guys name published. It's not like jo-bob amateur chemist is publishing scientific papers in his spare time after he gets home from the office.
Agreed. And even if jo-bob amateur chemist wanted to do research in his spare time, he can't afford to read the articles under the current system. At least if he does end up having to fork over $1500 (not sure where I just saw that number...it may not be realistic) to get published, he won't have to do it until he has a result. And even more to the point, any system like this would involve the ability to apply for a fee waiver. Scientific conferences already do this for the most part to help out the struggling scientist on a small budget.
The biggest part of publishing is doing research worthy of being published. If you got something that can make it into a major journal you'll get the money from somewhere.
Scientists don't live off royalties of papers they publish. They aren't novelists. They are researchers. Someone pays for their research and pays for their publishing.
Agreed again. Scientists who publish in major journals have grant money to do so, and will pay for the publication. Publishing is how scientists get more grant money, and $1500 is chump change compared to the average cost of doing the research necessary to get a paper out. Nobody is going to think twice about whether the fee is actually worth it. And again, I think a reasonable system will have some wiggle room in it so someone who has really exhausted their grant won't have to dip into personal funds or sit on their results until another grant comes through.
And oh ya, all the scientist I know are very well paid, even the bums that haven't published squat in ages.
Ouch...no don't agree on this one. Industrial scientists get paid pretty well, but this is really an issue much more for academics than for industry. Industrial scientists get funded based on how well their research turns a profit, and they frequently can't publish because of the need to maintain trade secrets. I definitely think the vast majority of academic scientists are not paid well..but I don't know, I might be biased or something:-).
Your solution requires RFID readers in all existing vending machines. That's a lot of replacing to do, while this might not help as much, it's also a lot less costly.
Vending machines already need costly upgrades everytime the govt. decides the old bills have too many counterfeits. I lived in the S.F. bay area until two years ago...about a couple of years after the "new" US bills started appearing. As of the time I left, the BART stations there still couldn't take the new bills. And for crying out loud, how many times have you been unable to use a bill in a vending machine because it was too wrinkled? And I'm no engineer, but I'll bet dollars to donuts an RFID reader is easier, less costly technology to install in a vending machine than something based on scanning technology. Whether the RFID chips have actually advanced to the point that yet that they're useful in paper bills yet...this may be an idea that's still a few years off before it's feasible.
Actually come to think of it, the real problem as I see it is how hard is it to forge RFID chips? Everyone keeps talking about them like they're the be all end all to security issues. But if they really become so commonplace, there's going to have to be a lot of people actually making them, and thus a lot of people who actually know how to make them. So what if the mints put unique serial numbers on each bill? If I'm forging the bills, how hard will it be to forge a bunch of sequential RFID numbers? I mean theives have already "cracked" garage door openers, and while that's not necessarily advertised as a really secure system, it also only gets the thief one step closer to access to the house. The actual robbery still has to be done by hand. Being able to forge RFID codes on other people's stuff could be a much more lucrative venture
July 2002 is the filing date. To be a little more fair, there was something in the patent about it being a continuation of an abandonded patent, filed back in '99, but who knows...govt. agency... peak of the dotcom boom, 15 years after the first Mac, what 20 years after the first GUI?.. was still too early for them to adopt these neat inventions called "Com-puuu-tors?!?"
The USPTO has been accused of being lazy and ignorant for their inability/unwillingness to find prior art in the past, but this one takes the cake. The stupid moron who approved this probably double clicked something to do it! Where they using stone and chisel there before July 2002?!?!?
Video Poker...really? I think you (or whereever you heard that) may be overestimating the effects of strategy in video poker. Sure you can hurt your odds by hitting random buttons like a monkey, but my purely empirical experience is that the vast majority of hands have an obvious best choice that requires little to no concept of statistics to decide.
It's an interesting point, though. I used to assume "economic evolution" or whatever would always require any casino game to preserve the house's edge no matter how smart the player is. But I suppose in games with a complicated enough strategy, the best decision for the casino would actually be to allow the absolute best players to make a little money in order to keep the game close enough for the "average" player that they don't get discouraged. That's why casino games have such a small house edge in the first place...a finely honed balance between maximizing casino profit per game played and maximizing total number of games played. But video poker?!?!...I can't see that having odds much better than slots even for optimal play.
That said I'm not volunteering to sign up for a live test of this thing with a real bear. Bears are pretty smart and persistant when it comes to getting into food containers. Little black bears that live in Yosemite break into cars all the time...the mere fact that it is constructed from metal is not enough by itself when it comes to a big species like a grizzly or a polar bear. One might be quite literally bent-out-of-shape before it gives up on dinner even if it never digs a claw or fang into flesh. This quote from the ebay listing is not a selling point to me: "The suits are unique because they were built totally out of Hurtubise's mind, with no blueprints, drawings or schematics."
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I expect to see this in the Annals of Improbable Research. Maybe they're bucking for an Ignobel Prize.
You did, but I see that I phrased it poorly. What I was trying to say was antimatter iron for example can annihilate with aluminum, or water, or air, or any stable form of matter...because the positrons around the anti-iron will interact with the electrons around matter atoms. The article itself is talking about storing positrons...I would bet because they are the "easiest" to make (here I admit I'm not a particle physist, but I think the lightest anti-particles are the easiest to create in an accelerator, so postitrons are more prevalent than anti-protons and anti-neutrons.)
The next responder made an interesting point about the electrostatic repulsion between an antiproton and an electron preventing contact between the antiproton and the protons of the nuclei. I suspect antiprotons are still extremely short-lived exposed in the universe, but now I'm a little out of my league as to precisely how and how fast they find their way close enough to a proton to annihilate.
You don't need a matched piece of matter to detonate antimatter. Wherever that antimatter goes it will find matter with which to detonate unless you take immense precautions to keep it isolated (which is what much of the article is about). Especially with positrons: What you percieve as mechanical resistance...two solid objects that push against each other rather than just mixing like a gas...is electron-electron repulsion between the atoms on the outsides of those objects. Electrons orbiting an iron atom are just as likely to annihilate with positrons orbiting an anti-iron nucleus, an anti-proton nucleus, or nothing at all.
Wow..that sooper sekrit plan to...let me see if I can follow this...get their supporters to vote on election day?!?!?! What will those wacky Republicans think of next?
"It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small."
And what if the positions are reversed? What if a small company wants to spank a large company? If you want to drag MS into this, they rip off everyone. Try to take them to court, and now they get a free defense? WTF? Bill Gates thanks you.
I didn't say defenses should be free for all patent infringement cases, unless as the original poster suggested, we want to take a "whatever let the courts sort it out" attitude towards granting BS patents. I think the AC is underestimating the cost of defending yourself against any bogus lawsuit that probably should be thrown out in the first place. And before this devolves into an issue of whether the courts are inherently fair or not, I'm perfectly happy to concede that it may be impossible to come up with a legal system that prevents bogus lawsuits from ever being more than a nuicance while giving all legitimate complaints their fair hearing. But that doesn't mean we should make it worse by adding ammo for bogus lawsuits.
No one can predict how a company/inventor may enforce their patent(s)...
How or whether they plan to enforce it is irrelevant as to whether they deserve the patent. If the patent is obviously unenforceable than it obviousely shouldn't have been granted in the first place. The mere threat that they might try to enforce it is bad enough enough, even if you THINK you know you can beat it in court. And the whole "Sun's not evil. We just need this patent to defend ourselves from Microsoft's bogus patents" defense doesn't hold water for me. If that's really the situation then it means the system is badly broken.
Well okay the picture is not as black and white as either the AC or I made it out to be. The AC's main point was "why worry, let the courts settle it." I say screw that, let the patent office do its job. If they mess up once in a while fine..the courts are the back-up system. And I'm sure what we're seeing here on /. are the worst examples out of thousands of patents granted. But I don't hear politicians talking about this. I don't read about this in mainstream media. If this is a problem that only tech sites are talking about then it's a good thing they seem to be beating the subject into the ground.
Bummer...then you're just going to have to figure out a way to rank them and deal with the fact that a simple ordered list doesn't adequately describe the complex psychology that disproves the "transitive law of better candidacy". Anyone faced with such a quandary should find it equally difficult to pick their single vote in the current system (your example gives me no indication whether you would vote for A, B or C in the current system), because it also fails to allow for complex comparisons. However if you really only have one favorite candidate, and are happy with the current system, that preference can still be expressed with a ranked list.
With plurality all effects are either "good" or "bad" for a particular side. Anything bad for my opponent is good for me to an equal extent. In fact things that are bad for me but worse for my opponent are actually good for me overall (like attack ads...they might make me look mean-spirited, but if it makes my opponent look like a terrorist-loving commie pinko godless child molestor, they benefit my campain.). This only works because there are only two candidates. Throw 20 candidates in the mix, and an attack ad hurts the target the worst and hurts attacker somewhat, benefitting the most the other 18 uninvolved candidates.
Heck even without the "negative ramifications" (let's say for example that McCain-Feingold is repealed and I'm allowed to put out a vicious attack ad without having to take credit for it) attack ads would be less effective with more candidates. The attacker still has to foot the bill for an ad whose benefit is effectively spread equally among all the non-attacked candidates. If I can earn 5 votes per dollar spent with a self-promoting ad or cost someone 10 votes per dollar spent with an attack ad, an attack ad is more cost effective than a self-promoting ad with one opponent, an equal effective with two opponents, and less effective with any more than two.
This all of course assumes there are a multitude of valid candidates. If we passed one of these alternate voting schemes that makes third parties more realistic and found that 95% of Americans still voted for the top two parties, attack ads would be just as effective as ever, as the top two could safely ignore the fringe parties and hammer each other. And conversely everything I said would be equally valid with our current system if he had more than two parties with a realistic chance of winning, but it's pretty well accepted that our current voting system will always favor a trend towards two parties.
If stupid patents can just be thrown out the instant someone challenges them, why is it the fights we hear about always seem to drag on. I agree it should be reasonably cheap for another big company to fight such a ridiculous patent, but that's not enough. It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small.
If trivially stupid patents don't matter, why are the big guys in such an arms race to collect them? From the article:
This sure doesn't sound like Sun isn't worried about M$'s patent on double-click...it'll get tossed as soon as M$ tries to enforce it. This sounds like Sun is trying to say...okay M$ if you try to charge us for double-clicking, you don't get to sell per-employee site licenses anymore.And finally...sure the patent office is allowed a few mistakes. But your attitude seems to be don't worry if the patent office is too liberal, that's what the courts are for. No the courts are not there to do the patent office's job for it, and it's fairly clear that a judge's time is more valuable than a patent clerk's.
I tried to keep a system like that going for a while. It's one thing to be good about saying "Wow, that was a good article, I should fill out the bibliography right now in case I should like to cite it someday." It doesn't take much discipline since it happens roughly once a year. It takes a whole other level of discipline I just don't have to keep filling in those entries for articles I get bored with halfway through, stacks of articles my boss dumps on my desk, articles I read and decide are completely irrelevant to anything I'll ever be interested in, etc.
Nowadays I just use SciFinder or one of the other databases which can export in citation manager friendly format instead of typing in by hand. I'm not sure I see how P2P would make my life any easier. However these are all (SciFinder, SciSearch, ISI to be sure, not so sure about others) for fee databases that require my University to pay a subscription. I'm all for the free exchange of information, especially in the scientific community, so if this facititates it, I'm on board.
But I think the more significant point is that it's not FSF/GNU who would have the most incentive to get a distro certified as Unix. As the article pointed out, it's probably the hardware companies like IBM and Sun who would find it worthwhile.
Somebody mod that "too informative"
I suppose radio shows would follow a similar logic: If a popular radio personality has a two hour show, there are probably a few (or 20) optimal times to place ad breaks. But I don't really listen to talk radio that much, I just want to hear music. The difference there is that songs are 3-5 minutes long and I don't know what's coming, so if an ad comes on, I've got no reason not to look for another station...except for the aforementioned fact that I never seem to have any luck finding music on the other stations.
I doubt it. For one thing, the music industry already fixes the prices on online music stores. For another the demand for single downloads online will reflect the advertising and payola efforts of the big labels every bit as much as the "quality" of the songs. "Competition" between brick and mortar record stores hasn't kept prices reflecting the true value of the music, and the combination of quick impulse buying and the ability to buy just the hit song will only favor formulaic hit machines.
Call the above comment half joking, half tinfoil hat musings. I used to chock it up to bad luck, but I've wondered if there isn't any truth to it: it would be in the radio stations' interests to get together and agree to overlap ad time to minimize channel surfing, wouldn't it?
I remember about 10 years ago a bank in Chicago created a huge stink because they wanted to start charging a fee for every teller transaction that could have been accomplished at an ATM. There's no doubt that bank was pretty sure it would save money if people would use ATMs more. Of course at the time I couldn't help but think why would anyone want to wait for a teller if they didn't have to. You'd think the wait time would be more than enough deterant.
Yeah, I don't know if I'm blurring the line between sci-fi and reality, but aren't there already working biometrics systems that could serve as a unique identifier without requiring implantation? Retinal scanners, fingerprint scanners, etc?
I suspect part of the answer is the tracking capability..the article didn't mention it, but Mexico is suffering a crime wave of kidnappings for ransoms. Perhaps his job makes him a particularly vulnerable/valuable target. I imagine he and his family are at least upper middle class if not downright rich, but that doesn't really explain why this is a requirement of his job and not just a suggested preventative measure for all wealthy residents of Mexico.
As for the issue of collecting personal info. I think it's fairly reasonable for them to attempt to characterize both the size and demographic of their readership in order to sell ad space. I don't think every little annoyance is justified in light of the "it makes money therefore it is GOOD" attitude some coorporate stooges have (pop-ups come to mind), but yeah, they're supplying a service, and if that's what they have to do to stay afloat. If it bothers you that much, fake your info.
Agreed. And even if jo-bob amateur chemist wanted to do research in his spare time, he can't afford to read the articles under the current system. At least if he does end up having to fork over $1500 (not sure where I just saw that number...it may not be realistic) to get published, he won't have to do it until he has a result. And even more to the point, any system like this would involve the ability to apply for a fee waiver. Scientific conferences already do this for the most part to help out the struggling scientist on a small budget.
The biggest part of publishing is doing research worthy of being published. If you got something that can make it into a major journal you'll get the money from somewhere. Scientists don't live off royalties of papers they publish. They aren't novelists. They are researchers. Someone pays for their research and pays for their publishing.
Agreed again. Scientists who publish in major journals have grant money to do so, and will pay for the publication. Publishing is how scientists get more grant money, and $1500 is chump change compared to the average cost of doing the research necessary to get a paper out. Nobody is going to think twice about whether the fee is actually worth it. And again, I think a reasonable system will have some wiggle room in it so someone who has really exhausted their grant won't have to dip into personal funds or sit on their results until another grant comes through.
And oh ya, all the scientist I know are very well paid, even the bums that haven't published squat in ages.
Ouch...no don't agree on this one. Industrial scientists get paid pretty well, but this is really an issue much more for academics than for industry. Industrial scientists get funded based on how well their research turns a profit, and they frequently can't publish because of the need to maintain trade secrets. I definitely think the vast majority of academic scientists are not paid well..but I don't know, I might be biased or something :-).
And yet somehow you and the parent post seem to have missed the sarcasm contained therein.
Vending machines already need costly upgrades everytime the govt. decides the old bills have too many counterfeits. I lived in the S.F. bay area until two years ago...about a couple of years after the "new" US bills started appearing. As of the time I left, the BART stations there still couldn't take the new bills. And for crying out loud, how many times have you been unable to use a bill in a vending machine because it was too wrinkled? And I'm no engineer, but I'll bet dollars to donuts an RFID reader is easier, less costly technology to install in a vending machine than something based on scanning technology. Whether the RFID chips have actually advanced to the point that yet that they're useful in paper bills yet...this may be an idea that's still a few years off before it's feasible.
Actually come to think of it, the real problem as I see it is how hard is it to forge RFID chips? Everyone keeps talking about them like they're the be all end all to security issues. But if they really become so commonplace, there's going to have to be a lot of people actually making them, and thus a lot of people who actually know how to make them. So what if the mints put unique serial numbers on each bill? If I'm forging the bills, how hard will it be to forge a bunch of sequential RFID numbers? I mean theives have already "cracked" garage door openers, and while that's not necessarily advertised as a really secure system, it also only gets the thief one step closer to access to the house. The actual robbery still has to be done by hand. Being able to forge RFID codes on other people's stuff could be a much more lucrative venture
Well I mod me -1 for digressing I guess...
July 2002 is the filing date. To be a little more fair, there was something in the patent about it being a continuation of an abandonded patent, filed back in '99, but who knows...govt. agency... peak of the dotcom boom, 15 years after the first Mac, what 20 years after the first GUI?.. was still too early for them to adopt these neat inventions called "Com-puuu-tors?!?"
The USPTO has been accused of being lazy and ignorant for their inability/unwillingness to find prior art in the past, but this one takes the cake. The stupid moron who approved this probably double clicked something to do it! Where they using stone and chisel there before July 2002?!?!?
It's an interesting point, though. I used to assume "economic evolution" or whatever would always require any casino game to preserve the house's edge no matter how smart the player is. But I suppose in games with a complicated enough strategy, the best decision for the casino would actually be to allow the absolute best players to make a little money in order to keep the game close enough for the "average" player that they don't get discouraged. That's why casino games have such a small house edge in the first place...a finely honed balance between maximizing casino profit per game played and maximizing total number of games played. But video poker?!?!...I can't see that having odds much better than slots even for optimal play.
That said I'm not volunteering to sign up for a live test of this thing with a real bear. Bears are pretty smart and persistant when it comes to getting into food containers. Little black bears that live in Yosemite break into cars all the time...the mere fact that it is constructed from metal is not enough by itself when it comes to a big species like a grizzly or a polar bear. One might be quite literally bent-out-of-shape before it gives up on dinner even if it never digs a claw or fang into flesh. This quote from the ebay listing is not a selling point to me: "The suits are unique because they were built totally out of Hurtubise's mind, with no blueprints, drawings or schematics."