Perhaps they should come up with a way to lay the booster down on its side, once it's successfully landed on the drone ship?
Doesn't work. The rockets are not designed to handle heavy horizontal stress. They can handle pretty extreme vertical stress but to make them survive being on their sides that reliably would require a lot more reinforcements which means the rockets would have a lot more mass.
They could pressurize the interior after landing with something inert, such as nitrogen gas, which could give it enough structural strength to tip on its side.
It's been a built-in feature in OS X for at least over a decade, I think you could even do it over FireWire back before gig E was standard.
Can confirm. You boot the old machine in target disk mode by holding down T, plug it into the new machine via Firewire, and it mounts as if it was a drive. The Migration Assistant application can transfer all your data and settings from that machine.
Has always been for free for Macs, too. There's an application called Migration Assistant that is included in every install and can transfer data from a prior machine. It's even fired up during the first run of a new OS install, asking if you want to transfer your data from another machine or drive. It properly installs everything, including preferences, settings, etc.
I've got a couple different auto-blockers installed, including Hiya and AT&T's blocker. They still seem to let two-three calls through per day. But the worst part is that, even with the calls they block, the robocallers will still leave voicemails (sometimes launching into their spiel, but other times, around three seconds of silence), so even though I don't get the annoying rings, I still get the annoying alerts. I understand that the former may be tough to block, since they seem like legitimate voicemail, but there really should be something to automatically delete the latter. There should be no reason ever to deliver a silent couple-second voicemail.
My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers.
Good news: newer computers are more energy efficient.
As for your service size, you need to know your square footage as well as: a/c?(minimum amperage), air handler + heat strips?(min amps), electric water heater?, electric range/oven/cooktop?, electric dryer?, any other fixed appliances?
With gas heat, dryer, range, and water heater, 100 amps might be overkill, yet be the smallest service allowed to be installed.
3500 sq ft., with central air, electric range, dual electric convection ovens, electric dryer. Only non-electric is the oil furnace, so I was really concerned that we'd be pushing it. But I've got a whole-house meter installed, and I've never seen it above 7kW (~about 63A).
House was built in 1959, so 100A would have seemed like plenty back then.
My whole house has been LED for years. I've had zero issues and only had to replace 1 bulb.
My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers (way more than the previous owner had) that I'd be running into that limit. But the first thing I did was rip out all of his old fluorescent fixtures and swapped out a bunch of halogens for LEDs, and I've never even come close.
That blows. I have 3 credit cards, all of which have interest rates of 8% or lower. When did high teens to low 20s for interest rates become average?
I remember back in the '90s getting my first "student" credit card with a 19.99% APR or so, something unreasonably high that was justified by the banks as "we're giving you credit and you have no credit history." That's now the new normal, though.
The novelty is in the stringing. Every new invention is at least partly going to build on existing ideas. Patents can be awarded on processes, not necessarily an "invention."
Yes, usually, but not in this particular case... Here's claim 1:
1. A method for processing a plurality of undeliverable mail items comprising the steps of:
encoding data including intended recipient identification information on each of a plurality of mail items prior to mailing;
receiving those items of the plurality of mail items that are returned as being undeliverable;
scanning and decoding the encoded data on the items of undeliverable mail to identify intended recipients having incorrect addresses; and
electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipients for the sender to update the sender's mailing address files.
1. Al, Charlie's assistant, writes Bob's destination address on outside of envelope. That's "encoding data including intended recipient identification information."
2. Get mail returned ("receiving those items that are returned as undeliverable").
3. Read address ("scanning and decoding data").
4. Al sends email to Charlie asking for Bob's correct address ("electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipients for the sender to update the sender's mailing address files").
Not just the kind of dark and stormy night that you read about in books, but the sort of messy, murky night that ends with a body count on the 405.
I was on my fifth dark and stormy, in fact, and though I was enjoying the ginger taste, I had to stop. After all, it was nearly time for my commute, coincidentally on the 405.
You'd have to do this through legislation, since the telcos are never going to cannibalize that sweet, sweet robocall revenue stream, but if you implemented a small fee from the caller to the recipient - say, a nickel - this problem would dry up. Friends and families that call each other would essentially keep trading that nickel back and forth, so there'd be little to no real net cost. Same for legitimate businesses that both receive and make calls. It only becomes costly when you start calling millions of people, and a few dollars back on your phone bill each month would at least make you feel a bit better.
Why hasn't phone company greed solved the problem by now? This seems like the perfect opportunity for the cell phone network to switch to caller pays, and bill for every single call attempt, even if it doesn't connect.
This is proof positive that phone companies aren't motivated solely by greed—they're also actively working to piss off as many people as possible.
They are billing the callers. If Robocallers stopped paying the telcos, then the problem would disappear instantly. But the telcos make a ton of money off those calls, and have a negative incentive to stop anything.
It is, and it would break every VOIP system out there which can set its own Caller ID.
Double edge swords cut both ways.
Not if they implemented a reply-to address, like SMTP. That would let you have both useful spoofing for company PBXs and the like, while still having an identification of the originating number.
Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not?
Because the hardware implementations are invariably more than just software in a crunchy shell. That said it's a reasonable question. My take on it is that the hardware could be patented if it involves sufficiently novel physics but the code should be adequately covered by copyright. Words on a page versus words on a monitor are still words. The exact medium the come on is (or should be) irrelevant for copyright purposes.
But the hardware implementations aren't running code - the code is instructions to a general purpose processor to configure it in the same manner as those hardware implementations, and the hardware wouldn't have "words on a monitor". So, no, an ASIC chip may do exactly the same thing as your software does, but wouldn't infringe your copyright.
Software is not an abstract idea nor has that ever been the argument.
Furthermore, these are not "proposed new rules" but new guidance and they are already "in effect" as noted later in the last paragraph. This new guidance is a good thing as it helps promote consistency and ends the craziness that erupted with the Alice decision. It is also entirely consistent with recent court rulings, the problem was that patent examiners are typically not lawyers and are not easily persuaded by legal arguments. By incorporating recent decisions in updated guidance, more consistency in granted patents can be achieved and less effort and money is wasted. This is all a good thing, it does not, in any way, make "software patents" easier to obtain.
In short, everything about this is wrong and the author is ignorant.
All of that. Additionally, this doesn't mean that software patent trolls have been given a free pass - the USPTO simultaneously released new guidance on 35 USC 112, which covers the requirements of definiteness and disclosure, instructing Examiners to apply a very strict filter to software claims, limiting them to the specific algorithms disclosed in the application. If a patent troll tries to go too broad and claim that their patent applies to any way of achieving some effect, they're not only going to be wrong, they're probably going to find their patent is suddenly invalid.
Copyrights and patents do not overlap and serve different purposes.
The very fact that software can be both copyrighted and patented shows your argument to be incorrect as a practical matter.
[snip]
Obviously but one can make a very reasonable argument that because software is copyrighted, patents should not and need not apply to software.
While they do overlap, GP is right that they serve different purposes. Copyright provides strong protection against copying that specific work - e.g. piracy. It provides little to no protection against competitors who recreate the work on their own, which is where patents come in. This is particularly important in software, as it's rare that competitors want the specific work rather than just anything providing the functionality.
For example, copyright is great for movies or music, because people want to see Aquaman or buy Taylor Swift's new album, rather than seeing the cheap knockoff movie "Waterking" or buying my new album. But people don't typically care if they're playing Nimblebit's Tiny Tower, as opposed to Zynga's Dream Heights, or Pajitnov's Tetris as opposed to some cheap knockoff, or using GIMP or LibreOffice as opposed to Photoshop or MS Office. Knockoff versions are cheap to make, particularly after you've already done all the design work and testing and they're just reverse engineering and developing new graphic assets, and copyright doesn't help at all.
There are two ways for software developers to get around this fungibility issue - one is to create proprietary formats or servers and lock customers in, but that's bad for consumers. The other way is patent protection. And given that it has a much shorter time frame than copyright, that's also a good thing for consumers.
Furthermore the core purpose of both is to address the free rider problem. Copyright deals with it for documented creative works and patents are supposed to deal with it for tangible practical inventions but they are solving the same problem in two different domains with different practical requirements.
[snip]
Software at its core is nothing more than a fancy math formula. It's instructions to a machine. I have yet to see any credible argument detailing how society benefits if we should allow patents on mathematical formulas or any other intangible idea like a business process.
Yes, except for the limitation "tangible". The patent act applies to new and useful machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter, which are all tangible... as well as processes, which are not.
And if machines are patentable, why shouldn't a process using those machines be patentable? Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not? Merely because one uses hardware? What's the justification for that - it costs money to reproduce those chips, while duplicating software is negligible? And if that's the justification, wouldn't that help serve to just make patents the domain of the wealthy, if only "expensive" things are patentable?
Both the summary and the article imply this has something to do with smart fabric. However, you're right--follow the links all the way to the patent and this is nothing more than a particular configuration of fabric, with no mention of anything smart whatsoever. That's not a design patent, it's a fabric pattern patent. Why is the U.S.P.T.O. even patenting something that silly. That's a copyright concern, at most.
Because if you remake the fabric on your own, you wouldn't infringe the copyright.
Design patents are more like trade dress (minus the requirement of distinctiveness and adding requirements of novelty and nonobviousness and a time-limited term), which is why it's natural for the USPTrademarkO to cover them.
>Though "professional engineer" and 'registered professional engineer" are still regulated
Screw that. My job grade is "Principle Engineer", commonly called PE. Engineering is certainly my profession. I'm a professional engineer.
If the state wants to make it illegal to claim a state certification that you don't actually have, then do that. So limit it to "Oregon state registered engineer". Anything more general is legit.
I have a Juris Doctorate and occasionally work on medical devices. Therefore, can I call myself a medical doctor? I think not - the terms used together have a specific meaning that is greater than the individual words. Similarly, professional engineer means something specific beyond "I'm an engineer, and I'm a professional".
There should be a distinction between "Engineer" and "Licensed Professional Engineer (in Oregon)." Just like someone licensed to practice medicine in New York can claim to be a physician, but can't practice legally in Oregon.
That's effectively what the ruling did:
Therefore, there is an easy fix to this First Amendment problem: strike the
word “engineer” from Or. Rev. Stat. 672.002(2) and Or. Rev. Stat. 672.007(1)(b). Plaintiff
invites this remedy by focusing his challenge on the Title laws’ use of the word “engineer.” (Pl.’s
Mot. Summ. J. at 27.) Accordingly, the term “engineer” should be stricken from these
subsections, leaving the remainder of the Act intact: Or. Rev. Stat. 672.002(2) (“**Engineer**,
‘professional engineer’ or ‘registered professional engineer’ means an individual who is
registered in this state and holds a valid certificate to practice engineering in this state as
provided under ORS 672.002 to 672.325.”); Or. Rev. Stat. 672.007(1)(b) (“A person is
practicing or offering to practice engineering if the person . . . [t]hrough the use of some other
title implies that the person is **an engineer or** a registered professional engineer[.]).
(asterisks used in place of strikethrough, since Slashdot doesn't allow that).
Anyone can freely call themselves an engineer in Oregon. They just can't call themselves a PE unless licensed.
Second, search results can change by location, such as the inclusion of local news articles. We controlled for this factor by checking all links by hand for this possibility, comparing them to the city and state of the volunteer. We saw very few local links for gun control (1 organic link, 1 news infobox link) and immigration (0), though more for vaccinations (15 organic links, 4 news infobox links).
To control for these local links, we replaced all of them with the same placeholder — localdomain.com for organic links and "Local Source" for infoboxes — in all of our analysis. This adjustment means two users whose results only differed by a different local domain in the same slot would not count as different. Interestingly, this adjustment didn't affect overall variation significantly.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really control for location, because the targeting doesn't work the way they think it does. Google doesn't just include local news stories, but, even for (especially for?) logged out users, they apply targeting based on what your local demographics are like and the search history results of your neighbors. Live in a big city? Even if you're logged out, you'll get a different set of results than if you live in a small rural town. This is true even with a completely wiped history or brand new computer. The justification is that you probably have many similarities with people around you... if they're all searching for snow blowers because there's a storm coming, you probably are interested in one too. It's not even close to 100% accurate, but it's not inaccurate either - it's the same basis used for decades for selecting markets for television commercials, too: using a small group of consumers for whom they have highly accurate information, they extrapolate out to the larger market.
Does this mean you're not really logged out, and Google is secretly tracking you? No, no more than you're being tracked when some broadcaster decides to show certain commercials during a sitcom as opposed to others. They're just making an educated case, and while the result looks the same - pseudo-personalized content - the process is different.
Using personal email for work and vice-versa is something everybody does, even though it's often against some policy.
Is that really true, though, given web email and the capability of having multiple email apps on your phone? I have a personal email that I access at work, but I don't send work emails through it, just like I don't send personal emails through my work address. Maybe for old people or luddites who only have their work email, but I'd think anyone posting on Slashdot has at least two or three email addresses they use regularly.
When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society.
Significantly longer than that. Patents have existed for almost 600 years, and trademarks date back to ancient Rome.
But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).
Insists that science says there are two genders. Immediately notes that science identifies more than two genders.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they should come up with a way to lay the booster down on its side, once it's successfully landed on the drone ship?
Doesn't work. The rockets are not designed to handle heavy horizontal stress. They can handle pretty extreme vertical stress but to make them survive being on their sides that reliably would require a lot more reinforcements which means the rockets would have a lot more mass.
They could pressurize the interior after landing with something inert, such as nitrogen gas, which could give it enough structural strength to tip on its side.
Hopefully that doesn't work any more, otherwise it would be a massive security hole. Fortunately Firewire is long dead.
If someone has physical access to your machine, and you don't have full disk encryption, then you already have a massive security hole.
But in the meantime, the Swedish case has ended.
Technically, only the assault charge, which he successfully evaded until the statute of limitations expired. The rape charge is still pending.
It's been a built-in feature in OS X for at least over a decade, I think you could even do it over FireWire back before gig E was standard.
Can confirm. You boot the old machine in target disk mode by holding down T, plug it into the new machine via Firewire, and it mounts as if it was a drive. The Migration Assistant application can transfer all your data and settings from that machine.
My only question is how it's ever worth $99.
I've got a couple different auto-blockers installed, including Hiya and AT&T's blocker. They still seem to let two-three calls through per day. But the worst part is that, even with the calls they block, the robocallers will still leave voicemails (sometimes launching into their spiel, but other times, around three seconds of silence), so even though I don't get the annoying rings, I still get the annoying alerts. I understand that the former may be tough to block, since they seem like legitimate voicemail, but there really should be something to automatically delete the latter. There should be no reason ever to deliver a silent couple-second voicemail.
My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers.
Good news: newer computers are more energy efficient.
As for your service size, you need to know your square footage as well as: a/c?(minimum amperage), air handler + heat strips?(min amps), electric water heater?, electric range/oven/cooktop?, electric dryer?, any other fixed appliances?
With gas heat, dryer, range, and water heater, 100 amps might be overkill, yet be the smallest service allowed to be installed.
3500 sq ft., with central air, electric range, dual electric convection ovens, electric dryer. Only non-electric is the oil furnace, so I was really concerned that we'd be pushing it. But I've got a whole-house meter installed, and I've never seen it above 7kW (~about 63A).
House was built in 1959, so 100A would have seemed like plenty back then.
My whole house has been LED for years. I've had zero issues and only had to replace 1 bulb.
My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers (way more than the previous owner had) that I'd be running into that limit. But the first thing I did was rip out all of his old fluorescent fixtures and swapped out a bunch of halogens for LEDs, and I've never even come close.
That blows. I have 3 credit cards, all of which have interest rates of 8% or lower. When did high teens to low 20s for interest rates become average?
I remember back in the '90s getting my first "student" credit card with a 19.99% APR or so, something unreasonably high that was justified by the banks as "we're giving you credit and you have no credit history." That's now the new normal, though.
The novelty is in the stringing. Every new invention is at least partly going to build on existing ideas. Patents can be awarded on processes, not necessarily an "invention."
Yes, usually, but not in this particular case... Here's claim 1:
1. A method for processing a plurality of undeliverable mail items comprising the steps of:
encoding data including intended recipient identification information on each of a plurality of mail items prior to mailing;
receiving those items of the plurality of mail items that are returned as being undeliverable;
scanning and decoding the encoded data on the items of undeliverable mail to identify intended recipients having incorrect addresses; and
electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipients for the sender to update the sender's mailing address files.
1. Al, Charlie's assistant, writes Bob's destination address on outside of envelope. That's "encoding data including intended recipient identification information."
2. Get mail returned ("receiving those items that are returned as undeliverable").
3. Read address ("scanning and decoding data").
4. Al sends email to Charlie asking for Bob's correct address ("electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipients for the sender to update the sender's mailing address files").
Boom, invalid.
"It was a dark and stormy night."
Not just the kind of dark and stormy night that you read about in books, but the sort of messy, murky night that ends with a body count on the 405.
I was on my fifth dark and stormy, in fact, and though I was enjoying the ginger taste, I had to stop. After all, it was nearly time for my commute, coincidentally on the 405.
You'd have to do this through legislation, since the telcos are never going to cannibalize that sweet, sweet robocall revenue stream, but if you implemented a small fee from the caller to the recipient - say, a nickel - this problem would dry up. Friends and families that call each other would essentially keep trading that nickel back and forth, so there'd be little to no real net cost. Same for legitimate businesses that both receive and make calls. It only becomes costly when you start calling millions of people, and a few dollars back on your phone bill each month would at least make you feel a bit better.
Why hasn't phone company greed solved the problem by now? This seems like the perfect opportunity for the cell phone network to switch to caller pays, and bill for every single call attempt, even if it doesn't connect.
This is proof positive that phone companies aren't motivated solely by greed—they're also actively working to piss off as many people as possible.
They are billing the callers. If Robocallers stopped paying the telcos, then the problem would disappear instantly. But the telcos make a ton of money off those calls, and have a negative incentive to stop anything.
It is, and it would break every VOIP system out there which can set its own Caller ID.
Double edge swords cut both ways.
Not if they implemented a reply-to address, like SMTP. That would let you have both useful spoofing for company PBXs and the like, while still having an identification of the originating number.
Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not?
Because the hardware implementations are invariably more than just software in a crunchy shell. That said it's a reasonable question. My take on it is that the hardware could be patented if it involves sufficiently novel physics but the code should be adequately covered by copyright. Words on a page versus words on a monitor are still words. The exact medium the come on is (or should be) irrelevant for copyright purposes.
But the hardware implementations aren't running code - the code is instructions to a general purpose processor to configure it in the same manner as those hardware implementations, and the hardware wouldn't have "words on a monitor". So, no, an ASIC chip may do exactly the same thing as your software does, but wouldn't infringe your copyright.
Software is not an abstract idea nor has that ever been the argument.
Furthermore, these are not "proposed new rules" but new guidance and they are already "in effect" as noted later in the last paragraph. This new guidance is a good thing as it helps promote consistency and ends the craziness that erupted with the Alice decision. It is also entirely consistent with recent court rulings, the problem was that patent examiners are typically not lawyers and are not easily persuaded by legal arguments. By incorporating recent decisions in updated guidance, more consistency in granted patents can be achieved and less effort and money is wasted. This is all a good thing, it does not, in any way, make "software patents" easier to obtain.
In short, everything about this is wrong and the author is ignorant.
All of that. Additionally, this doesn't mean that software patent trolls have been given a free pass - the USPTO simultaneously released new guidance on 35 USC 112, which covers the requirements of definiteness and disclosure, instructing Examiners to apply a very strict filter to software claims, limiting them to the specific algorithms disclosed in the application. If a patent troll tries to go too broad and claim that their patent applies to any way of achieving some effect, they're not only going to be wrong, they're probably going to find their patent is suddenly invalid.
Copyrights and patents do not overlap and serve different purposes.
The very fact that software can be both copyrighted and patented shows your argument to be incorrect as a practical matter.
[snip]
Obviously but one can make a very reasonable argument that because software is copyrighted, patents should not and need not apply to software.
While they do overlap, GP is right that they serve different purposes. Copyright provides strong protection against copying that specific work - e.g. piracy. It provides little to no protection against competitors who recreate the work on their own, which is where patents come in. This is particularly important in software, as it's rare that competitors want the specific work rather than just anything providing the functionality.
For example, copyright is great for movies or music, because people want to see Aquaman or buy Taylor Swift's new album, rather than seeing the cheap knockoff movie "Waterking" or buying my new album. But people don't typically care if they're playing Nimblebit's Tiny Tower, as opposed to Zynga's Dream Heights, or Pajitnov's Tetris as opposed to some cheap knockoff, or using GIMP or LibreOffice as opposed to Photoshop or MS Office. Knockoff versions are cheap to make, particularly after you've already done all the design work and testing and they're just reverse engineering and developing new graphic assets, and copyright doesn't help at all.
There are two ways for software developers to get around this fungibility issue - one is to create proprietary formats or servers and lock customers in, but that's bad for consumers. The other way is patent protection. And given that it has a much shorter time frame than copyright, that's also a good thing for consumers.
Furthermore the core purpose of both is to address the free rider problem. Copyright deals with it for documented creative works and patents are supposed to deal with it for tangible practical inventions but they are solving the same problem in two different domains with different practical requirements.
[snip] Software at its core is nothing more than a fancy math formula. It's instructions to a machine. I have yet to see any credible argument detailing how society benefits if we should allow patents on mathematical formulas or any other intangible idea like a business process.
Yes, except for the limitation "tangible". The patent act applies to new and useful machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter, which are all tangible... as well as processes, which are not.
And if machines are patentable, why shouldn't a process using those machines be patentable? Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not? Merely because one uses hardware? What's the justification for that - it costs money to reproduce those chips, while duplicating software is negligible? And if that's the justification, wouldn't that help serve to just make patents the domain of the wealthy, if only "expensive" things are patentable?
Both the summary and the article imply this has something to do with smart fabric. However, you're right--follow the links all the way to the patent and this is nothing more than a particular configuration of fabric, with no mention of anything smart whatsoever. That's not a design patent, it's a fabric pattern patent. Why is the U.S.P.T.O. even patenting something that silly. That's a copyright concern, at most.
Because if you remake the fabric on your own, you wouldn't infringe the copyright.
Design patents are more like trade dress (minus the requirement of distinctiveness and adding requirements of novelty and nonobviousness and a time-limited term), which is why it's natural for the USPTrademarkO to cover them.
>Though "professional engineer" and 'registered professional engineer" are still regulated
Screw that. My job grade is "Principle Engineer", commonly called PE. Engineering is certainly my profession. I'm a professional engineer. If the state wants to make it illegal to claim a state certification that you don't actually have, then do that. So limit it to "Oregon state registered engineer". Anything more general is legit.
I have a Juris Doctorate and occasionally work on medical devices. Therefore, can I call myself a medical doctor? I think not - the terms used together have a specific meaning that is greater than the individual words. Similarly, professional engineer means something specific beyond "I'm an engineer, and I'm a professional".
There should be a distinction between "Engineer" and "Licensed Professional Engineer (in Oregon)." Just like someone licensed to practice medicine in New York can claim to be a physician, but can't practice legally in Oregon.
That's effectively what the ruling did:
Therefore, there is an easy fix to this First Amendment problem: strike the word “engineer” from Or. Rev. Stat. 672.002(2) and Or. Rev. Stat. 672.007(1)(b). Plaintiff invites this remedy by focusing his challenge on the Title laws’ use of the word “engineer.” (Pl.’s Mot. Summ. J. at 27.) Accordingly, the term “engineer” should be stricken from these subsections, leaving the remainder of the Act intact: Or. Rev. Stat. 672.002(2) (“**Engineer**, ‘professional engineer’ or ‘registered professional engineer’ means an individual who is registered in this state and holds a valid certificate to practice engineering in this state as provided under ORS 672.002 to 672.325.”); Or. Rev. Stat. 672.007(1)(b) (“A person is practicing or offering to practice engineering if the person . . . [t]hrough the use of some other title implies that the person is **an engineer or** a registered professional engineer[.]).
(asterisks used in place of strikethrough, since Slashdot doesn't allow that).
Anyone can freely call themselves an engineer in Oregon. They just can't call themselves a PE unless licensed.
Second, search results can change by location, such as the inclusion of local news articles. We controlled for this factor by checking all links by hand for this possibility, comparing them to the city and state of the volunteer. We saw very few local links for gun control (1 organic link, 1 news infobox link) and immigration (0), though more for vaccinations (15 organic links, 4 news infobox links).
To control for these local links, we replaced all of them with the same placeholder — localdomain.com for organic links and "Local Source" for infoboxes — in all of our analysis. This adjustment means two users whose results only differed by a different local domain in the same slot would not count as different. Interestingly, this adjustment didn't affect overall variation significantly.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really control for location, because the targeting doesn't work the way they think it does. Google doesn't just include local news stories, but, even for (especially for?) logged out users, they apply targeting based on what your local demographics are like and the search history results of your neighbors. Live in a big city? Even if you're logged out, you'll get a different set of results than if you live in a small rural town. This is true even with a completely wiped history or brand new computer. The justification is that you probably have many similarities with people around you... if they're all searching for snow blowers because there's a storm coming, you probably are interested in one too. It's not even close to 100% accurate, but it's not inaccurate either - it's the same basis used for decades for selecting markets for television commercials, too: using a small group of consumers for whom they have highly accurate information, they extrapolate out to the larger market.
Does this mean you're not really logged out, and Google is secretly tracking you? No, no more than you're being tracked when some broadcaster decides to show certain commercials during a sitcom as opposed to others. They're just making an educated case, and while the result looks the same - pseudo-personalized content - the process is different.
thousands of kids born with encephalitis in the southern US
Given typical election results, who would notice?
Using personal email for work and vice-versa is something everybody does, even though it's often against some policy.
Is that really true, though, given web email and the capability of having multiple email apps on your phone? I have a personal email that I access at work, but I don't send work emails through it, just like I don't send personal emails through my work address. Maybe for old people or luddites who only have their work email, but I'd think anyone posting on Slashdot has at least two or three email addresses they use regularly.
When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society.
Significantly longer than that. Patents have existed for almost 600 years, and trademarks date back to ancient Rome.
But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).
Insists that science says there are two genders. Immediately notes that science identifies more than two genders.