While it sounds like a great way to save the NHS money by getting people to become healthier problems will arise in practice.
Anybody who smokes and doesn't want to quit can simply resume smoking after the test... Just like how drug addicts who are forced into detox usually return to using after they are released.
With obese patients the idea is even worse because if they simply diet to lose the weight they will end up losing a combination of fat and muscle, which lowers their metabolism. After surgery if they then return to the bad habits that made them obese in the first place they will gain all the weight back and probably some additional... Your just perpetuating a cycle of yo-yo dieting.
Dealing with addiction and obesity is not easy... To be effective the person has to want to change, forcing them simply won't have the long term effects you want.
There is! The car you are looking for is called a Used Car and as an added bonus it is significantly cheaper than any new car on the market! Even better is with the money you save you can not only purchase a full set of tools to maintain and repair the car, so you won't need to take it to an overpriced mechanic!
Well as a photographer shooting weddings I generally carry 8 SD cards on me at any given time. When I load them into my SD case I put them all label up to signify that they are empty and ready to go. As I go through cars during the course of a day I put my spent cards back into the case label down to signify that they are no longer empty and need to be downloaded to the computer.
Most of my colleagues use the same method with their SD or compact flash cards.
I just came back from Egypt with slightly under 40 gigs of commercial photographs and had to pass through Seattle on my way home to Canada. Got asked two whole questions... where was I coming from and where was I going. Now I am your stereotypical white guy, the middle eastern looking people on the flight where without exception getting the third degree (and they where all holding American or Canadian passports).
Companies need to start looking at WHY their employee's want to connect personal devices to coporate systems. If its just so that they can import calenders, contact lists, etc into their PDA or calender at home then set up systems to allow it. If its to take confidential materials out of the office to work on at home (since how many people actually work a 40 hour week anymore), then set up proper encryption protocals to allow this but at the same time minimize the risks associated with data being lost.
Remember the best way to get somebody to do something is to tell them they are not allowed to.
This is just typical cell phone usage rates in Canada.
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit (but just a little bit) but if I could get US cell phone rates here in Canada I would be doing back flips down the street. The cell phone companies here in Canada are masters at gouging customers with some of the highest rates in the world (plus they add mandatory monthly connection fees, 911 fees, etc, etc, etc on top).
Actually they are still exposed to the lawsuit if somebody else uploads my images, but could in theory go after the uploader.
It's the same as if you gave me an MP3 and told me to use it publicly. If you don't own the copyright I am still subject to lawsuit by the copyright holder, although I could turn around and go after you.
I am a professional photographer, and I do have clients who have posted pictures that I hold the copyright on to facebook.
I have serious doubts as to facebook ever actually using posted pictures commercially, much less moving to sell them. The reasons are 1)there is no way for facebook or any purchaser to confirm that the uploader actually owned the copyright (thus exposing them to the statutory $150,000 penalty on images with a registered copyright... in this case thank you US congress!) and 2)even if the copyright holder uploaded the images any sort of commercial usage requires a model and/or property release if any identifiable persons or property are in the image, which facebook will not have thus exposing them to lawsuits from those depicted in the images.
What kind of true geek walks anywhere? You think we get these perfectly round bodies by doing anything even remotely close to exercise? YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
I'm not sure the rules in a solar race allow for wind sails, but even if they did the weight penalty of carry the sail all the way from Texas combined with the fact that the prevailing winds across the Canadian praries from Winnipeg to Calary are westerly, and the the cars are going the wrong way.
Everybody see's it as an iPhone clone because it has a touch screen, accelerometers, etc.
The reality is this phone is aimed at a completely different market than the iPhone. This phone is aimed at those who value open source software / hardware, whereas the iPhone is aimed at the 'Cool' sector.
I am going to be getting one later in the year when my current 3-year contract runs out. I am tired of locked phones with disabled features for the benefit of the phone company. To me the ability to control my own phone is more important than having a few extra bells and whistles like the iphone.
The whole problem with requiring an annual fee to maintain your copyright is that the little guy would get screwed. Many artists spend their whole life creating and virtually starving to death (because sales require promotion and promotion costs money), only to become successful at the end and their early work thereby becomes profitable. They could not afford to maintain their copyrights if fees where involved and then Mickey and friends could step in a utilize their work for nothing.
A better solution would be to only charge a copyright fee on copyrights held by corporations (i.e. created under a work for hire license or purchased from the artist). When the artist who created the work still holds the copyright (and has no contractual obligations to a company on the use of that work) the current system works fairly decently. Since a company's main priority is its bottom line, unprofitable works would be released into the public domain sooner, but the little guy would still be able to benefit from his / her individual work.
I am both a geek AND a semi-pro photographer (meaning I also have a day job to ensure that my mortgage gets paid every month). As soon as I read this I saw immediate problems, namely the biometric data needs to be either stored as metadata (which means it can be stripped out without damaging the photo) or it needs to be integrated into the image data itself (which means it will effectively reduce the quality of the picture), thereby rendering this feature useless to anybody who needs to put bread on the table.
The current problem with protecting the copyright on photographs is not in proving ownership of the copyright (that's why most pro's and semi-pros register entire DVD's at a time with the copyright office) but in 1) identifying when an image is stolen (if I don't personally see any of my images used without permission then there is nobody else who will identify them for me) and 2) actually enforcing your copyright (I'm not the RIAA with an army of lawyers at my disposal). Things get more complicated by the fact that many photographers (myself included) don't really care if somebody steals an image to use as their computers desktop, since they probably wouldn't have bought it anyways so its not really a lost sale, but when this occurs the image can later get posted online with all copyright notices removed (and every single method of identifying a photograph as copyrighted). This means that even if you are able to identify a large corporation stealing you image, they can always claim that the theft was unintentional and hence any settlment will probably not cover the legal bills. A few of my full-time pro friends have actually found pictures they hold the copyright on (and where watermarked prior to being posted online) on flickr with the watermarks removed and under a creative commons license (without their permission).
Call me old fashioned but I still like to believe that the majority of Police do have an interest in protecting the public, the members who are only interested in the power trip are a minority (although the do exist).
As a personal example, a couple of years ago I had a bike stolen from my garage. It was probably only worthy $200-$300 and I figured the chances of the police finding it where non-existant so I didn't bother to even file a police report. About 2 weeks later I was driving on the other side of town (well city of 650,000) and guess what I saw in the trunk in front of me... my bike. I tried to follow the car but lost it in one of the worst areas of the city, but I did get the licence plate. I then went straight to the police station and filed a report, unfortunatly the licence plate was stolen. The next morning the police came out to my house and took a formal report. 2 hours later, they called me back and had found my bike 2 blocks from where I lost the car. The cops had actually driven down every street and alley in the area looking for it.
To make a long story short, the police do care about finding stolen property but they need an idea where to look for it. They don't have the ability to look in every pawn shop in an average city, every day. Software can help, assuming the theif simply stole the laptop to get a quick couple of bucks.
My initial reaction to this was along the lines of it being just another possible plan by microsoft to gouge the consumer. However what if this is actually technology to fight piracy but minimize the effect on legitimate customers.
Microsofts current anit-piracy activites (i.e. the Vista Black screen of death) can cause a legitimate customers computer to become virutally in-operable when the malfunction. Imagine the following scenario however.
You can download and install Windows without any sort of licence key for free, but you will need to live with the pop-up ads which effectivly pay for the operating system. You would still have the option of purchasing a licence and thereby getting rid of the ads.
Would this be a legitimate (i.e. not evil) use of this patent?
As a former mathematics teacher in Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba if it matters) I can say that there is a worse scenario, it is not uncommon for school principals to put pressure on math teachers to give all students good grades. The logic being that since math courses are mandatory for graduation, failing a student will socially stigmatize them.
As a specific example, I personally had 3 students who did not attempt a single assignment and all of them had attendance rates below 50%. I was told by the principle that if I wanted to be hired on next year I would need to give these students an extra assignment for 'Bonus' marks so that they would pass. I refused and hence am a former math teacher.
While successful lawsuits of this type could result in patent reform, since having a weak patent (with clear prior art) could end up costing company's money instead of being used as corporate weapons, an instantanious problem arises.
You need to be able to prove that the company ignored prior art and if a case comes down to two people saying different things the courts will generally find in favor of the defendant.
I can see it now:
Lawyer 1: "You knew about the prior art before you filed for the patent because your secretary told me so!"
Defendant: "No I didn't!"
Judge: "Case dismissed"
In order for this cases to be sucessful, hard evidence needs to found (i.e. an e-mail saying "Lets ignore the prior art"). Otherwise the only ones who will win are the lawyers (as always).
The ideas of the US Constitution (not just the 4th amendment) where based upon the philosophical ideals of Europe at the time. These ideas have largely been accepted by the WESTERN world as the ideal standard of living (with some notable exceptions such as the right to bear arms).
It is important to note that the social norms of many cultures are not compatible with western ideals. This causes conflict when the west tries to use its power (economic and military) to force its ideals on the rest of the world. The irony is that one of the most powerful ideas expressed by the US constitution that has been adopted by the western world is the concept of freedom of choice (association, religion, expression are all choices we make). By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.
The more we post articles about how Microsoft is claiming patent violations, the better it is for Microsoft. This is simply a case of the more your story is in the news, the better the results for you. MS will NEVER sue anybody using Linux because the consequences of MS losing that case would be disastrous. Instead they will simply try and make managers (who in most organizations outside the tech sphere are technologically illiterate) make the following connection:
Linux = Patent Violation = Unreliable
Instead the Linux community should turn the tables on Microsoft and find a patent that MS has broken and feed the media the story that Windows users are going to get sued, hence making getting sued for using any OS a null point.
140 lbs might not be a whole lot, but in order to win the competition you need to be able to move 150 kilograms (333 lbs). The best entry was only able to move 43% of that.
Steve Jobs may be many things, but an idiot is not one of them. He realizes that there is no way studios will simply abandon DRM, they have spent way too much money and dedicated too much PR on it (by selling it as an anti-piracy measure). However, if the price of a song is raised 30% the studios will be able to justify removing DRM because (from the studios PR point of view) the extra money they will receive from the sale will offset piracy of the song.
Of course the reality is that Steve Jobs and the studios will simply get richer by getting more money for each song, and piracy rates will stay virtually untouched.
The purpose of this lawsuit may not be to actually recieve damages, it is probably simply to try and shut-up the source of the negative publicity.
You do not need to win a court case for it to be advantage to you. If your goal is to stop a source of negative publicity, a lawsuit may casue the other party to simply shut-up instead of incurring large legal bills on a matter of principal. Of course, if the other party calls you on it and is willing to fight in court you end up getting MORE negative publicity.
Slashdot Mirror
While it sounds like a great way to save the NHS money by getting people to become healthier problems will arise in practice.
Anybody who smokes and doesn't want to quit can simply resume smoking after the test... Just like how drug addicts who are forced into detox usually return to using after they are released.
With obese patients the idea is even worse because if they simply diet to lose the weight they will end up losing a combination of fat and muscle, which lowers their metabolism. After surgery if they then return to the bad habits that made them obese in the first place they will gain all the weight back and probably some additional... Your just perpetuating a cycle of yo-yo dieting.
Dealing with addiction and obesity is not easy... To be effective the person has to want to change, forcing them simply won't have the long term effects you want.
There is! The car you are looking for is called a Used Car and as an added bonus it is significantly cheaper than any new car on the market! Even better is with the money you save you can not only purchase a full set of tools to maintain and repair the car, so you won't need to take it to an overpriced mechanic!
Well... as somebody who is both a) not an american and b) a former employee of my countries government... the answer is YES
Well as a photographer shooting weddings I generally carry 8 SD cards on me at any given time. When I load them into my SD case I put them all label up to signify that they are empty and ready to go. As I go through cars during the course of a day I put my spent cards back into the case label down to signify that they are no longer empty and need to be downloaded to the computer.
Most of my colleagues use the same method with their SD or compact flash cards.
I just came back from Egypt with slightly under 40 gigs of commercial photographs and had to pass through Seattle on my way home to Canada. Got asked two whole questions... where was I coming from and where was I going. Now I am your stereotypical white guy, the middle eastern looking people on the flight where without exception getting the third degree (and they where all holding American or Canadian passports).
Companies need to start looking at WHY their employee's want to connect personal devices to coporate systems. If its just so that they can import calenders, contact lists, etc into their PDA or calender at home then set up systems to allow it. If its to take confidential materials out of the office to work on at home (since how many people actually work a 40 hour week anymore), then set up proper encryption protocals to allow this but at the same time minimize the risks associated with data being lost.
Remember the best way to get somebody to do something is to tell them they are not allowed to.
This is just typical cell phone usage rates in Canada.
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit (but just a little bit) but if I could get US cell phone rates here in Canada I would be doing back flips down the street. The cell phone companies here in Canada are masters at gouging customers with some of the highest rates in the world (plus they add mandatory monthly connection fees, 911 fees, etc, etc, etc on top).
Actually they are still exposed to the lawsuit if somebody else uploads my images, but could in theory go after the uploader.
It's the same as if you gave me an MP3 and told me to use it publicly. If you don't own the copyright I am still subject to lawsuit by the copyright holder, although I could turn around and go after you.
I am a professional photographer, and I do have clients who have posted pictures that I hold the copyright on to facebook.
I have serious doubts as to facebook ever actually using posted pictures commercially, much less moving to sell them. The reasons are 1)there is no way for facebook or any purchaser to confirm that the uploader actually owned the copyright (thus exposing them to the statutory $150,000 penalty on images with a registered copyright... in this case thank you US congress!) and 2)even if the copyright holder uploaded the images any sort of commercial usage requires a model and/or property release if any identifiable persons or property are in the image, which facebook will not have thus exposing them to lawsuits from those depicted in the images.
or about half a mile if he feels like walking
What kind of true geek walks anywhere? You think we get these perfectly round bodies by doing anything even remotely close to exercise? YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
I'm not sure the rules in a solar race allow for wind sails, but even if they did the weight penalty of carry the sail all the way from Texas combined with the fact that the prevailing winds across the Canadian praries from Winnipeg to Calary are westerly, and the the cars are going the wrong way.
Everybody see's it as an iPhone clone because it has a touch screen, accelerometers, etc.
The reality is this phone is aimed at a completely different market than the iPhone. This phone is aimed at those who value open source software / hardware, whereas the iPhone is aimed at the 'Cool' sector.
I am going to be getting one later in the year when my current 3-year contract runs out. I am tired of locked phones with disabled features for the benefit of the phone company. To me the ability to control my own phone is more important than having a few extra bells and whistles like the iphone.
Admit we where wrong? This is Slashdot, where baseless inflammatory accusations are NEVER wrong!!!!
The whole problem with requiring an annual fee to maintain your copyright is that the little guy would get screwed. Many artists spend their whole life creating and virtually starving to death (because sales require promotion and promotion costs money), only to become successful at the end and their early work thereby becomes profitable. They could not afford to maintain their copyrights if fees where involved and then Mickey and friends could step in a utilize their work for nothing.
A better solution would be to only charge a copyright fee on copyrights held by corporations (i.e. created under a work for hire license or purchased from the artist). When the artist who created the work still holds the copyright (and has no contractual obligations to a company on the use of that work) the current system works fairly decently. Since a company's main priority is its bottom line, unprofitable works would be released into the public domain sooner, but the little guy would still be able to benefit from his / her individual work.
I am both a geek AND a semi-pro photographer (meaning I also have a day job to ensure that my mortgage gets paid every month). As soon as I read this I saw immediate problems, namely the biometric data needs to be either stored as metadata (which means it can be stripped out without damaging the photo) or it needs to be integrated into the image data itself (which means it will effectively reduce the quality of the picture), thereby rendering this feature useless to anybody who needs to put bread on the table.
The current problem with protecting the copyright on photographs is not in proving ownership of the copyright (that's why most pro's and semi-pros register entire DVD's at a time with the copyright office) but in 1) identifying when an image is stolen (if I don't personally see any of my images used without permission then there is nobody else who will identify them for me) and 2) actually enforcing your copyright (I'm not the RIAA with an army of lawyers at my disposal). Things get more complicated by the fact that many photographers (myself included) don't really care if somebody steals an image to use as their computers desktop, since they probably wouldn't have bought it anyways so its not really a lost sale, but when this occurs the image can later get posted online with all copyright notices removed (and every single method of identifying a photograph as copyrighted). This means that even if you are able to identify a large corporation stealing you image, they can always claim that the theft was unintentional and hence any settlment will probably not cover the legal bills. A few of my full-time pro friends have actually found pictures they hold the copyright on (and where watermarked prior to being posted online) on flickr with the watermarks removed and under a creative commons license (without their permission).
Call me old fashioned but I still like to believe that the majority of Police do have an interest in protecting the public, the members who are only interested in the power trip are a minority (although the do exist).
As a personal example, a couple of years ago I had a bike stolen from my garage. It was probably only worthy $200-$300 and I figured the chances of the police finding it where non-existant so I didn't bother to even file a police report. About 2 weeks later I was driving on the other side of town (well city of 650,000) and guess what I saw in the trunk in front of me... my bike. I tried to follow the car but lost it in one of the worst areas of the city, but I did get the licence plate. I then went straight to the police station and filed a report, unfortunatly the licence plate was stolen. The next morning the police came out to my house and took a formal report. 2 hours later, they called me back and had found my bike 2 blocks from where I lost the car. The cops had actually driven down every street and alley in the area looking for it.
To make a long story short, the police do care about finding stolen property but they need an idea where to look for it. They don't have the ability to look in every pawn shop in an average city, every day. Software can help, assuming the theif simply stole the laptop to get a quick couple of bucks.
My initial reaction to this was along the lines of it being just another possible plan by microsoft to gouge the consumer. However what if this is actually technology to fight piracy but minimize the effect on legitimate customers.
Microsofts current anit-piracy activites (i.e. the Vista Black screen of death) can cause a legitimate customers computer to become virutally in-operable when the malfunction. Imagine the following scenario however.
You can download and install Windows without any sort of licence key for free, but you will need to live with the pop-up ads which effectivly pay for the operating system. You would still have the option of purchasing a licence and thereby getting rid of the ads.
Would this be a legitimate (i.e. not evil) use of this patent?
As a former mathematics teacher in Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba if it matters) I can say that there is a worse scenario, it is not uncommon for school principals to put pressure on math teachers to give all students good grades. The logic being that since math courses are mandatory for graduation, failing a student will socially stigmatize them.
As a specific example, I personally had 3 students who did not attempt a single assignment and all of them had attendance rates below 50%. I was told by the principle that if I wanted to be hired on next year I would need to give these students an extra assignment for 'Bonus' marks so that they would pass. I refused and hence am a former math teacher.
Well I know for fact that Dell's with Linux are NOT available in Canada.
While successful lawsuits of this type could result in patent reform, since having a weak patent (with clear prior art) could end up costing company's money instead of being used as corporate weapons, an instantanious problem arises.
You need to be able to prove that the company ignored prior art and if a case comes down to two people saying different things the courts will generally find in favor of the defendant.
I can see it now:
Lawyer 1: "You knew about the prior art before you filed for the patent because your secretary told me so!"
Defendant: "No I didn't!"
Judge: "Case dismissed"
In order for this cases to be sucessful, hard evidence needs to found (i.e. an e-mail saying "Lets ignore the prior art"). Otherwise the only ones who will win are the lawyers (as always).
The ideas of the US Constitution (not just the 4th amendment) where based upon the philosophical ideals of Europe at the time. These ideas have largely been accepted by the WESTERN world as the ideal standard of living (with some notable exceptions such as the right to bear arms).
It is important to note that the social norms of many cultures are not compatible with western ideals. This causes conflict when the west tries to use its power (economic and military) to force its ideals on the rest of the world. The irony is that one of the most powerful ideas expressed by the US constitution that has been adopted by the western world is the concept of freedom of choice (association, religion, expression are all choices we make). By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.
The more we post articles about how Microsoft is claiming patent violations, the better it is for Microsoft. This is simply a case of the more your story is in the news, the better the results for you. MS will NEVER sue anybody using Linux because the consequences of MS losing that case would be disastrous. Instead they will simply try and make managers (who in most organizations outside the tech sphere are technologically illiterate) make the following connection:
Linux = Patent Violation = Unreliable
Instead the Linux community should turn the tables on Microsoft and find a patent that MS has broken and feed the media the story that Windows users are going to get sued, hence making getting sued for using any OS a null point.
140 lbs might not be a whole lot, but in order to win the competition you need to be able to move 150 kilograms (333 lbs). The best entry was only able to move 43% of that.
Steve Jobs may be many things, but an idiot is not one of them. He realizes that there is no way studios will simply abandon DRM, they have spent way too much money and dedicated too much PR on it (by selling it as an anti-piracy measure). However, if the price of a song is raised 30% the studios will be able to justify removing DRM because (from the studios PR point of view) the extra money they will receive from the sale will offset piracy of the song.
Of course the reality is that Steve Jobs and the studios will simply get richer by getting more money for each song, and piracy rates will stay virtually untouched.
The purpose of this lawsuit may not be to actually recieve damages, it is probably simply to try and shut-up the source of the negative publicity.
You do not need to win a court case for it to be advantage to you. If your goal is to stop a source of negative publicity, a lawsuit may casue the other party to simply shut-up instead of incurring large legal bills on a matter of principal. Of course, if the other party calls you on it and is willing to fight in court you end up getting MORE negative publicity.