If you're using emotions in lieu of facts to justify a factual claim, then it's not "truth" at all - or at least, the emotions that you are using do not make it truth. If you're making an emotional claim, then facts were never an issue anyway.
The thing is, that with the sort of stuff Yahoo! is engaged in, there's no real reason for people to stick with the second best. In general, the offerigs are free, so people don't feel compelled to stay to get their money's worth. To get to a competitor is just as hard as typing in a different URL. The one exception is email, as people don't like having to get their friends to use a new email address. But if Yahoo! drops to second-best in search, everyone's just going to use the best search engine. If it drops to second-best in email, new people aren't going to sign up with them. This is in contrast to stuff like consoles, where exclusive, non-compatible games produce lock-in. In a marketplace where there is no lock-in, no difference in price, and equal accessibility of all offerings, only the best product is going to win.
I really can't see what Yahoo! is offering these days. The days of static portals are done, other search engines beat its socks off, and its webmail competitors are generally further along too. I just find no compelling reason to visit their site.
I wasn't saying the Matrix was a great movie (although I think the first one was), I was just refuting the grand-parent when he implied that you couldn't do a realistic hack on a movie for fear of getting busted by the government.
If I remember correctly, the second Matrix movie shows a legitimate hack when Trinity cracked a computer. I believe it was a bind exploit? It was obsolete at the time, but still a legit hack, and there are probably old unpatched systems somewhere that are still vulnerable to it.
I suppose that's because Australia has a semi-decent public health system as well. You can get most critical treatments through the public health system, just there's no guarantees about how long you'll be waiting, or how many people you'll be crammed in with when you're recovering. Private health insurance here just ensures that you don't have to wait as long, can get a more comfortable/private bed to recover in, and covers a lot of elective procedures. A lot of Australias don't pay health insurance, and then bitch when something comes up and they've got to wait to get in to the hospitals. The public health system was supposed to be the last resort, and people treat it like the first line of defence.
I have no insurance. No employer wants to pay me it and why should they? With only a highschool diploma they can and I have to work without it until I get a degree.
What type of insurance? Personal health insurance? What does your employer have to do with that? Why don't you take it out yourself? That's what I do - my health insurance is something like $400AUD a quarter, which is pretty affordable. Up until I left University, I was covered by my parents health policy.
I've got to say, reading this has given me another reason to be thankful I don't live in America. Credit checks and psychological screening for basic employment? I've never heard of such things here, unless they were directly related to the area the applicant was to be employed in.
It shows character and if you have bad credit studies will show you are more likely to steal or be less responsibile with the companies money over those who have a better rating. How can you manage our money if you can not even manage your own?
I can sort of see that perspective, but surely that would only apply to bean-counters, or managers who have the power to allocate funds, not lowly techs. It also seems a long bow to draw - like not employing me because I don't keep my house tidy, so how could I be expected to write tidy code?
That said, I'm not entirely sympathetic towards people with bad credit. A lot of it is to do with not using your money responsibly (and not having health insurance is fairly irresponsible, if you don't have other plan to fall back on). But really, all it should be used for is determining whether or not you have a history of failing to repay your debts in a timely fashion. A background check is really just a matter of searching the public record (as all convictions are on the public record), whereas a credit check is querying your private dealings with other private entities. I would have thought there were data retention laws about credit companies giving away those details - or do employers force you to sign consent forms for credit checks before they employ you?
I'm from Australia, and our companies hiring policies are seemingly much less draconian. I can definately see where a background check is a necessity, but can someone tell me a good reason why an employee's credit rating is his employer's business? Unless he's trying to hit up his boss for a loan, why does his credit rating matter?
uTorrent allows you to set an upper limit for download/upload data rates. I set mine to 5k/sec (I'm on slow Aussie DSL) so I can still do online stuff while it's chugging along. You could probably set that limit very low to avoid uploading. However, part of the premise of BitTorrent was that it was supposed to handle that sort of abuse at the protocol level; if you never upload, then you're the lowest priority when it comes to downloading. You shouldn't have to block people (especially not a whole client) to prevent leeching; the protocol should do it for you.
Most people that use uTorrent, use it based on the predicate that it allows for more privacy
I've never heard of anyone using it for that reason. Personally, I use it primarily for it's feature-set and small footprint, and its on that basis that I recommend it to others.
Actually, the US is pretty much the only country with any Christian Fundamentalism. It's an entirely US-based movement. Foreigners might consider themselves Christians who believe in the fundamental tenets of the Bible, and mistakenly identify themselves with US Christian Fundamentalism, but if they read the list of "Fundamentals" the US-based group subscribes to, they probably wouldn't.
The reason people have qualms about it, is that once it is established as acceptable, you'll have people start creating embryoes solely for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. For example, an IVF doctor needs to make twenty embryoes in order to have a good chance of producing a viable offspring for his clients. Instead he makes two hundred, and sells (or even gives) the excess to a stem cell research lab. Then you're not dealing with embryoes that would have been destroyed anyway, you're basically conducting "therepeutic" cloning.
Wow, you managed to ignore the text of the article and invoke the ire of slashdot's logic-nazis by mis-using "beg the question" all in one post. I know who the first recipient of the replicated braincells should be.
You're probably thinking about the laws regarding the Sabbath, which (IIRC) forbade journaying on the Sabbath, or setting out late at night on the night before the Sabbath, so you were stuck in the middle of nowhere the next day.
The point of most advertising isn't to make you buy a product, but to get the name of that product stuck in your head. It's not so that you'll go out and buy a Toyota, it's so that when you start thinking about buying a car, the first name that jumps into your head is "Toyota". For lower-level advertising, it's just so that you'll actually recognise the name. It's odd, but a company that's been advertised is often seen as being legit - maybe just because it has enough money to actually purchase advertising. If you're a small company, and someone hears an ad for you on the radio, it's like some sort of validation.
You keep saying that, and I keep telling you that that is demonstrably not true. The historical precedent I cite (Wright Bros. and Glenn Curtiss) is the specific example about which I know the most, but other examples from recent history are even more obvious (see RIM vs. NTP, RIM vs. Palm, Amazon's one-click, etc.)
None of those other examples demonstrate your point at all. Look at the one-click patent here. It consists of a series of steps that must be followed in order for this patent to apply. The client provides the server with personal information. The server provides the client with a unique identifier. The system associates the identifier with the information the client provides. When the client places an order, it also transmits the identifier, and an order is made using stored client details.
If any of those steps doesn't match, the patent doesn't apply. For instance, if instead of the system generating a unique ID, I had a system that used a username picked by the client to implement a one-click purchase, the patent wouldn't apply. The concept of a "one-click purchase" wasn't patented, a particular way of doing it was. You can still make a one-click system, as long as you do it differently. (This patent is still stupid, because it's an obvious method, but that's neither here nor there).
The same is true of the RIM/NTP patent case - their patent wasn't for "wireless email" it was for a method of providing wireless email. Email to wireless devices was around long before either patent - it was the method of pushing email to a mobile device (rather than periodic polling) that was patented.
In my limited understanding of the Wright/Curtiss case, this is also true - the patent covered a means of implementing roll control, not the concept of roll control. It may have been that their method is the only known way to implement roll control (I don't know), and it may have been that their claim (changing the shape of the wing) was too broad and should have been narrowed (to indicate changing shape of the wing by wing-warping, rather than a blanket-covering of all methods of changing the shape of the wing). It may be a stupid patent in light of its application to aerodynamics, but it still only covered an implementation and not a concept, even if that implementation is the only known way to implement that concept.
Assuming your sig is true, you probably do know more about aerodynamics than me. I've been getting my information from Wikipedia, which states:
"The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that wing-warping need not be the only method that could be employed to vary the angle presented to the air by the outer portions of a machine's wings. The concept of varying the angle near the wingtips, by whatever means, is central to the patent. The broad protection intended by this language was important in the patent infringement lawsuits the Wrights brought and won against Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators who adopted ailerons while the Wrights continued to use wing-warping."
I don't think the "angle the wing presents to the air" (I got the phraseology straight from Wikipedia) is talking about the angle of attack; I think it's talking about the angle of any part of the wing which interacts with the air - which would pretty much cover any change in the shape of the wing. Granted, that claim is fairly general, and maybe the patent office was wrong to approve a patent with such general claims. Maybe they should have restricted it to wing-warping only. But the claim is still for a method (controlling an aircraft by changing the shape of a wing), not a concept (controlling an aircraft). You can't patent an idea ("hey, let's make a flying machine", or "hey, let's compress audio data") and prevent anyone else from doing the same. You have to patent a method of implementing your idea, and only that method, not the idea is patented.
Except they weren't patenting roll control, they were patenting a method for creating a flying machine. One of their claims in that patent was a method of controlling the plane by adjusting angle of the wing. General concept: roll control. Method: adjusting the angle of the wing. They patented a method. It might have been too general, but it was still a method, not a concept. If Curtiss had found a way to implement roll control that didn't involve changing the angle of the wing, it wouldn't have been an issue.
What about it? Their patent described a method for constructing a flying machine. They didn't patent the concept of flying machines, they patented a specific method of creating a flying machine. Part of the patent office's job is to ensure that the claims of a patent are sufficiently narrow. You can argue as to whether or not the patent office is doing its job properly, but it reamins that, conceptually, patents are for specific methods and not general concepts.
You're wrong. Have a look at any patent, and after the abstract that gets everyone up in arms, there's a specific list of claims that actually specify what is being patented. And those claims always specify a method - even stupid ones like the "swinging sideways on a swing" patent. If you do the same thing, but don't do just one of the steps mentioned in the patent, you're not infringing.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're using emotions in lieu of facts to justify a factual claim, then it's not "truth" at all - or at least, the emotions that you are using do not make it truth. If you're making an emotional claim, then facts were never an issue anyway.
The thing is, that with the sort of stuff Yahoo! is engaged in, there's no real reason for people to stick with the second best. In general, the offerigs are free, so people don't feel compelled to stay to get their money's worth. To get to a competitor is just as hard as typing in a different URL. The one exception is email, as people don't like having to get their friends to use a new email address. But if Yahoo! drops to second-best in search, everyone's just going to use the best search engine. If it drops to second-best in email, new people aren't going to sign up with them. This is in contrast to stuff like consoles, where exclusive, non-compatible games produce lock-in. In a marketplace where there is no lock-in, no difference in price, and equal accessibility of all offerings, only the best product is going to win.
I really can't see what Yahoo! is offering these days. The days of static portals are done, other search engines beat its socks off, and its webmail competitors are generally further along too. I just find no compelling reason to visit their site.
I wasn't saying the Matrix was a great movie (although I think the first one was), I was just refuting the grand-parent when he implied that you couldn't do a realistic hack on a movie for fear of getting busted by the government.
If I remember correctly, the second Matrix movie shows a legitimate hack when Trinity cracked a computer. I believe it was a bind exploit? It was obsolete at the time, but still a legit hack, and there are probably old unpatched systems somewhere that are still vulnerable to it.
I suppose that's because Australia has a semi-decent public health system as well. You can get most critical treatments through the public health system, just there's no guarantees about how long you'll be waiting, or how many people you'll be crammed in with when you're recovering. Private health insurance here just ensures that you don't have to wait as long, can get a more comfortable/private bed to recover in, and covers a lot of elective procedures. A lot of Australias don't pay health insurance, and then bitch when something comes up and they've got to wait to get in to the hospitals. The public health system was supposed to be the last resort, and people treat it like the first line of defence.
I have no insurance. No employer wants to pay me it and why should they? With only a highschool diploma they can and I have to work without it until I get a degree.
What type of insurance? Personal health insurance? What does your employer have to do with that? Why don't you take it out yourself? That's what I do - my health insurance is something like $400AUD a quarter, which is pretty affordable. Up until I left University, I was covered by my parents health policy.
I've got to say, reading this has given me another reason to be thankful I don't live in America. Credit checks and psychological screening for basic employment? I've never heard of such things here, unless they were directly related to the area the applicant was to be employed in.
It shows character and if you have bad credit studies will show you are more likely to steal or be less responsibile with the companies money over those who have a better rating. How can you manage our money if you can not even manage your own?
I can sort of see that perspective, but surely that would only apply to bean-counters, or managers who have the power to allocate funds, not lowly techs. It also seems a long bow to draw - like not employing me because I don't keep my house tidy, so how could I be expected to write tidy code?
That said, I'm not entirely sympathetic towards people with bad credit. A lot of it is to do with not using your money responsibly (and not having health insurance is fairly irresponsible, if you don't have other plan to fall back on). But really, all it should be used for is determining whether or not you have a history of failing to repay your debts in a timely fashion. A background check is really just a matter of searching the public record (as all convictions are on the public record), whereas a credit check is querying your private dealings with other private entities. I would have thought there were data retention laws about credit companies giving away those details - or do employers force you to sign consent forms for credit checks before they employ you?
I'm from Australia, and our companies hiring policies are seemingly much less draconian. I can definately see where a background check is a necessity, but can someone tell me a good reason why an employee's credit rating is his employer's business? Unless he's trying to hit up his boss for a loan, why does his credit rating matter?
uTorrent allows you to set an upper limit for download/upload data rates. I set mine to 5k/sec (I'm on slow Aussie DSL) so I can still do online stuff while it's chugging along. You could probably set that limit very low to avoid uploading. However, part of the premise of BitTorrent was that it was supposed to handle that sort of abuse at the protocol level; if you never upload, then you're the lowest priority when it comes to downloading. You shouldn't have to block people (especially not a whole client) to prevent leeching; the protocol should do it for you.
Most people that use uTorrent, use it based on the predicate that it allows for more privacy
I've never heard of anyone using it for that reason. Personally, I use it primarily for it's feature-set and small footprint, and its on that basis that I recommend it to others.
I always thought Heinelin was an arrogant twat. I hadn't read that particular passage, but it seems to exemplify my position.
Actually, the US is pretty much the only country with any Christian Fundamentalism. It's an entirely US-based movement. Foreigners might consider themselves Christians who believe in the fundamental tenets of the Bible, and mistakenly identify themselves with US Christian Fundamentalism, but if they read the list of "Fundamentals" the US-based group subscribes to, they probably wouldn't.
The reason people have qualms about it, is that once it is established as acceptable, you'll have people start creating embryoes solely for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. For example, an IVF doctor needs to make twenty embryoes in order to have a good chance of producing a viable offspring for his clients. Instead he makes two hundred, and sells (or even gives) the excess to a stem cell research lab. Then you're not dealing with embryoes that would have been destroyed anyway, you're basically conducting "therepeutic" cloning.
Therefore, the foundation of this is human cloning on a fairly reliable scale.
No. You can use adult stem cells to apply the treatment that you discovered using experiments with embryonic stem cells.
Wow, you managed to ignore the text of the article and invoke the ire of slashdot's logic-nazis by mis-using "beg the question" all in one post. I know who the first recipient of the replicated braincells should be.
Scripture's out but Star Trek is in? Hail the bastion of rationality.
You're probably thinking about the laws regarding the Sabbath, which (IIRC) forbade journaying on the Sabbath, or setting out late at night on the night before the Sabbath, so you were stuck in the middle of nowhere the next day.
The point of most advertising isn't to make you buy a product, but to get the name of that product stuck in your head. It's not so that you'll go out and buy a Toyota, it's so that when you start thinking about buying a car, the first name that jumps into your head is "Toyota". For lower-level advertising, it's just so that you'll actually recognise the name. It's odd, but a company that's been advertised is often seen as being legit - maybe just because it has enough money to actually purchase advertising. If you're a small company, and someone hears an ad for you on the radio, it's like some sort of validation.
What would happen if you turned the device upside down and mounted to to the bottom of a platform or a car? Would it take too much energy?
Unless you had a very small car, absolutely nothing. It's got nothing to do with the amount of energy used, but the wavelength of the soundwaves used.
You keep saying that, and I keep telling you that that is demonstrably not true. The historical precedent I cite (Wright Bros. and Glenn Curtiss) is the specific example about which I know the most, but other examples from recent history are even more obvious (see RIM vs. NTP, RIM vs. Palm, Amazon's one-click, etc.)
None of those other examples demonstrate your point at all. Look at the one-click patent here. It consists of a series of steps that must be followed in order for this patent to apply. The client provides the server with personal information. The server provides the client with a unique identifier. The system associates the identifier with the information the client provides. When the client places an order, it also transmits the identifier, and an order is made using stored client details.
If any of those steps doesn't match, the patent doesn't apply. For instance, if instead of the system generating a unique ID, I had a system that used a username picked by the client to implement a one-click purchase, the patent wouldn't apply. The concept of a "one-click purchase" wasn't patented, a particular way of doing it was. You can still make a one-click system, as long as you do it differently. (This patent is still stupid, because it's an obvious method, but that's neither here nor there).
The same is true of the RIM/NTP patent case - their patent wasn't for "wireless email" it was for a method of providing wireless email. Email to wireless devices was around long before either patent - it was the method of pushing email to a mobile device (rather than periodic polling) that was patented.
In my limited understanding of the Wright/Curtiss case, this is also true - the patent covered a means of implementing roll control, not the concept of roll control. It may have been that their method is the only known way to implement roll control (I don't know), and it may have been that their claim (changing the shape of the wing) was too broad and should have been narrowed (to indicate changing shape of the wing by wing-warping, rather than a blanket-covering of all methods of changing the shape of the wing). It may be a stupid patent in light of its application to aerodynamics, but it still only covered an implementation and not a concept, even if that implementation is the only known way to implement that concept.
Assuming your sig is true, you probably do know more about aerodynamics than me. I've been getting my information from Wikipedia, which states:
"The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that wing-warping need not be the only method that could be employed to vary the angle presented to the air by the outer portions of a machine's wings. The concept of varying the angle near the wingtips, by whatever means, is central to the patent. The broad protection intended by this language was important in the patent infringement lawsuits the Wrights brought and won against Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators who adopted ailerons while the Wrights continued to use wing-warping."
I don't think the "angle the wing presents to the air" (I got the phraseology straight from Wikipedia) is talking about the angle of attack; I think it's talking about the angle of any part of the wing which interacts with the air - which would pretty much cover any change in the shape of the wing. Granted, that claim is fairly general, and maybe the patent office was wrong to approve a patent with such general claims. Maybe they should have restricted it to wing-warping only. But the claim is still for a method (controlling an aircraft by changing the shape of a wing), not a concept (controlling an aircraft). You can't patent an idea ("hey, let's make a flying machine", or "hey, let's compress audio data") and prevent anyone else from doing the same. You have to patent a method of implementing your idea, and only that method, not the idea is patented.
Ailerons still involve changing the angle the wing presents to the air. It wasn't.
Except they weren't patenting roll control, they were patenting a method for creating a flying machine. One of their claims in that patent was a method of controlling the plane by adjusting angle of the wing. General concept: roll control. Method: adjusting the angle of the wing. They patented a method. It might have been too general, but it was still a method, not a concept. If Curtiss had found a way to implement roll control that didn't involve changing the angle of the wing, it wouldn't have been an issue.
What about it? Their patent described a method for constructing a flying machine. They didn't patent the concept of flying machines, they patented a specific method of creating a flying machine. Part of the patent office's job is to ensure that the claims of a patent are sufficiently narrow. You can argue as to whether or not the patent office is doing its job properly, but it reamins that, conceptually, patents are for specific methods and not general concepts.
You're wrong. Have a look at any patent, and after the abstract that gets everyone up in arms, there's a specific list of claims that actually specify what is being patented. And those claims always specify a method - even stupid ones like the "swinging sideways on a swing" patent. If you do the same thing, but don't do just one of the steps mentioned in the patent, you're not infringing.