Yeah, I only can afford ONE TiVo and I had to choose between the PlayStation and the X-Box. I mean, I'm scraping at the bone here!
And gas prices are making my monster SUV cost me $30 whole dollars per week to gas up! And I've got this cough because Republicans ruin the environment and won't give me free medical care just because I spent my health insurance money on my champion Abyssinian, Ruffles.
And why should I have to pay extra for HBO 27? Gimme, gimme, gimmme!
You just plug anything into your wires/pipes, and it gets full access to the resource.
Your analogy falls down, because your house has only one access point to each utility, unless you are Tank Girl, stealing from Water and Power.
So yes, insofar as you have electrical devices or water-using applicances that don't overload your line/pipe, you are fine, but your house has only one.
OK, this would have been a cool idea 4 years ago when the iMac came out, as many at the time suggested. Get a Beetle, get a matching iMac. But now the new Beetle is passe. Shouldn't these things be in that annoyingly trendy pseudo-Mini BMW keeps hawking?
They're supposed to be matching the hipness of the style, not the 3-years-ago-this-was-cool of the current crop of G4 processors.
Didja really think they were listening before? It's not like money started talking 4 years ago. It's been that way as long as I've been aware, and from what I can tell, our research has shown that one person cannot make a difference... and the horse you rode in on.
Really, do you think everything was read under Bush I or Clinton? The cost would be staggering, and now they're basically being honest. Sure it's depressing, but if you didn't know that was the case before now, you're just being naiive at best.
That's why the advice of political activisim is: write an ORIGINAL letter on PAPER, sign it in ink, and MAIL it to your local representative. It will get put in the "fer or agin" pile, and not read beyond that, and you'll get a bedbug letter back, but at least you'll be counted.
As someone else said, if you really need to have a conversation, lots and lots of money is the only way to achieve it. Or sleep with them. That'll work too.
Actually most of the 'stans were conquered, occupied, and made states by the Russians prior to the Soviet Union. They were essentially vassal states, and incorporating them into the Soviet Union just openly acknowledged what had been true previously.
Google for Britain, Russia, and "The Great Game" in the 19th century. Very interesting stuff.
Re:Go for it anyway...
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Netflix came up with a genuinely new business model, for which they should be rewarded
For which they are rewarded when someone joins and pays them money.
What secrets are they keeping that the public will benefit from the exposure of on their patent application?
None. It's bleeding obvious, and the first time you hear of it, it's obvious how to implement it, even by lemonade stand-level businesspeople.
If you're an American, read your Constitution--the justification is written into it. If you're not, well, quick start a Netflix-style business before the EU patent is granted.
We have a share called "Corp_Functions". That's one letter too long for the browser. All the Windows boxes can see it and mount it properly. I, on the other hand, have to mount it by URL.
It's also been very inconsistent about what it will let me see, a la the problems of the XP/2K boxes you mention. It did improve vastly with 10.2.
And of course there's the issue with not being able to automount Samba shares, but that's not a browsing issue.
While I'm open to improvements in the OS, especially in the interface consistency and configuration tools area, the biggest thing I'm looking for is essentially a host of bugfixes in OS X's networking.
The Samba support is buggy -- it can't browse as well as a Windows box, and when talking to a Unix box it doesn't understand the concept of group priviliges most of the time, requiring you to re-save documents 5 to 10 times before it will decide you have write permissions.
Networking in general has big issues--PPCP VPN support improved with 10.2 but if you have a mounted drive over Samba over a VPN and the connection drops--you're pretty much in a race to see if you can shell into your machine to issue `reboot` before some runaway process hogs the entire machine and takes down every other service. I've heard from others that this is also true of regular (non-VPN) NFS mounts as well.
So truly robust networking support for those of us in mixed environments would make my life So Much Easier You Wouldn't Believe It.
Re:Go for it anyway...
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Good points, but there are those of us who worry about wind power's effects on bird populations. They disproportionately kill endangered large species, such as Golden Eagles and other raptors. They are situated in areas where these endangered birds tend to soar and hunt...open areas with good wind.
Even though they may not be as large a contributor to total bird loss (not just raptors) as automobiles, power lines, and lighted transmission towers, the number is impressive given how few wind power installations exist in the US. They truly are avian cuisinarts.
Supposedly new designs with lower turbine speeds have reduced avian fatalities (though this was introduced for noise reduction, not avian concerns). Ironically the same people who demand the "Precautionary Principle" be applied to everything have not demanded that new designs be put through rigorous testing of this known problem before deployment.
In order to get a patent, you must provide enough technical information that anyone skilled in the trade could read your patent and duplicate the device.
IANAPL.
However, I do know from having read some computer and business method patents that you can gloss over lots and lots and lots of details. Sample code isn't even necessary.
So you could patent "A method, using a network of pipes, to combine a flavor described as 'Chocolaty' and a flavor described as 'Bacony'. The flavors would enter the system and be mixed by appropriate methods (see Patents gibberish, gibberish, and gibberish) and come out as ChocoBacon. A conceptual diagram is enclosed."
Now, yes, someone skilled in the art could read that and go "oh, yeah, combine chocolate and bacon flavors--duh," but it's so broad that any technical hurdles in the way could be said to be covered by the patent, and any specific methods would be violations of that patent.
So in effect, by being overly broad, you can patent an idea.
If you don't believe me, try coming up with five or six different methods of one-click shopping that don't infringe on Amazon's patent. You can't.
Here're the weasel words: "Although the present invention has been described in terms of various embodiments, it is not intended that the invention be limited to these embodiments."
So even if he describes a method that would be brutally expensive, harmful, or maybe even wouldn't work (lots of those get through the patent office every day) in the vaguest of terms, any method that implemented them, even if they significantly improved upon them, would infringe. Thus they can do it without having to figure out how it's really done.
Pretend that while playing in my kitchen, I invent a new soda flavor.
Allright. I'm pretending you're playing around and have invented the long-sought-after-LemonCherry flavor (substitute Choco-Bacon flavor if you believe that two great tastes will always taste great together).
OK, now pretend I'm the Scumbag Lawyer (but I repeat myself) 5 blocks over in the really nice part of town with a kitchen you'll never afford. I look around at the soda market and realize that nobody's patented the idea of LemonCherry (or ChocoBacon) flavor.
Being a jackass with lots of money and, thanks to my triple-billing practices, lots of spare time, I invest a measly $15,000 to get it through the patent process quickly. Remember, I haven't actually figured out HOW TO DO IT, just THE IDEA OF IT. So I'll probably do it more quickly than you can.
Now, you come along and apply for a patent to your LemonCherry (or ChocoBacon) flavor. You find out--oops, you can't because the idea of it is patented by Scumbag Lawyer (but I repeat myself). You try to get a narrower patent on your particular method of producing it and peddle it to Pepsi and Coke.
They, having lots of Scumbag Lawyers (but I repeat myself), will do a defensive patent search and find Scumbag Lawyer's patent. They license it from him (they'll have to anyway) and alter your method just enough to get around your patent. They let you know 3 weeks later that they don't want to do anything with you, and introduce ChocoBacon (or LemonCherry) PepsiCoke.
You: screwed.
PepsiCoke: Doing pretty well, makin' soda.
ScumBagLawyer (but I repeat myself): Makin' out like a bandit, doin' even less work, having a kitchen bigger than your house.
Oh, good. If there's one thing I think that would make me feel safer and more at peace, it's two nuclear-armed superpowers competing in everyting across the globe.
That worked SO friggin' well the last time, and I felt SO damn secure. As did Europe.
That's what I get for waiting. And thanks for the explanation of the sudden skip back to Season 1 ep 1--and also confirming that I didn't just forget to watch one of the season 4 eps--that caused some confusion for me (I only saw about half of season 4 last time around).
Now, if only Lackluster would rent the stupid DVDs...
I thought the same exact thing, but a few months back finally started watching a few re-runs...and now I'm hooked. I've seen almost all the series, thanks to the two-a-day showings on FX (which just restarted for some reason, so try to catch it). This is the best TV writing since B5. It has the same humor as the movie, but a little bit more darkness and teen angst. However the writing more than makes up for it.
The Cordelia and Anya characters really make it.
One question I've always had that was not answered tonight (no spoilers): in the very first ep Xander surprises Buffy by saying he knows she thinks she's the slayer--and then starts to say how he knows but she cuts him off. So how the hell did he know? I thought it might be a cool bookend, but alas that wasn't answered. Anyone who can clue me in wins Karma the next time I have points.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahem.
Would they use the SuSEplex move on SCO?
Does this mean Darl McBride's going to wake up with a penguin head in his bed???
Nah, why kill your own? Better use Clippy.
If anything, it will probably get the Vietnam vets and slave traders to spin in their graves at 45rpm...
Warning to HermanAB:
If you attempt to defeat the copy protection built into these 45rpm cylinders, we will add your name to our list of subpoenas.
-Mitch Bainwol
the middle class are now the working poor
Yeah, I only can afford ONE TiVo and I had to choose between the PlayStation and the X-Box. I mean, I'm scraping at the bone here!
And gas prices are making my monster SUV cost me $30 whole dollars per week to gas up! And I've got this cough because Republicans ruin the environment and won't give me free medical care just because I spent my health insurance money on my champion Abyssinian, Ruffles.
And why should I have to pay extra for HBO 27? Gimme, gimme, gimmme!
Steven Johnson also doesn't know the difference between "synonym" (different words with same meaning) and "homonym" (same word, different meaning).
Apple, the computer company is a homonym of apple, the fruit.
You just plug anything into your wires/pipes, and it gets full access to the resource.
Your analogy falls down, because your house has only one access point to each utility, unless you are Tank Girl, stealing from Water and Power.
So yes, insofar as you have electrical devices or water-using applicances that don't overload your line/pipe, you are fine, but your house has only one.
Exactly like NAT.
Informative? WTF? I think (hope) the author meant to be "funny".
Did any of you say to yourself "That's funny, Google isn't normally that brain-dead and ignores the content of code" and maybe try it out?
Go ahead, try "Arial" as a search term in Google.
Jerome F Cross, think a little.
Why a beetle at all?
OK, this would have been a cool idea 4 years ago when the iMac came out, as many at the time suggested. Get a Beetle, get a matching iMac. But now the new Beetle is passe. Shouldn't these things be in that annoyingly trendy pseudo-Mini BMW keeps hawking?
They're supposed to be matching the hipness of the style, not the 3-years-ago-this-was-cool of the current crop of G4 processors.
Didja really think they were listening before? It's not like money started talking 4 years ago. It's been that way as long as I've been aware, and from what I can tell, our research has shown that one person cannot make a difference ... and the horse you rode in on.
Really, do you think everything was read under Bush I or Clinton? The cost would be staggering, and now they're basically being honest. Sure it's depressing, but if you didn't know that was the case before now, you're just being naiive at best.
That's why the advice of political activisim is: write an ORIGINAL letter on PAPER, sign it in ink, and MAIL it to your local representative. It will get put in the "fer or agin" pile, and not read beyond that, and you'll get a bedbug letter back, but at least you'll be counted.
As someone else said, if you really need to have a conversation, lots and lots of money is the only way to achieve it. Or sleep with them. That'll work too.
Highly skilled folks in the rest of the world have been dealing with this for years -- they all learned English to compete. Now it's our turn.
You mean, we have to learn English?
But...but...that means spell-checking our posts...and using punctuation correctly...and, my God, grammar?!?
The horror, the horror.
The solution becomes simple: tax evil.
For very brown skin color values of "evil."
Actually most of the 'stans were conquered, occupied, and made states by the Russians prior to the Soviet Union. They were essentially vassal states, and incorporating them into the Soviet Union just openly acknowledged what had been true previously.
Google for Britain, Russia, and "The Great Game" in the 19th century. Very interesting stuff.
Yep, and it's even worse for humans.
Fortunately, fission has none of these problems.
Netflix came up with a genuinely new business model, for which they should be rewarded
For which they are rewarded when someone joins and pays them money.
What secrets are they keeping that the public will benefit from the exposure of on their patent application?
None. It's bleeding obvious, and the first time you hear of it, it's obvious how to implement it, even by lemonade stand-level businesspeople.
If you're an American, read your Constitution--the justification is written into it. If you're not, well, quick start a Netflix-style business before the EU patent is granted.
what problems have you had browsing SMB shares?
We have a share called "Corp_Functions". That's one letter too long for the browser. All the Windows boxes can see it and mount it properly. I, on the other hand, have to mount it by URL.
It's also been very inconsistent about what it will let me see, a la the problems of the XP/2K boxes you mention. It did improve vastly with 10.2.
And of course there's the issue with not being able to automount Samba shares, but that's not a browsing issue.
Damn, never have mod points when you need them.
While I'm open to improvements in the OS, especially in the interface consistency and configuration tools area, the biggest thing I'm looking for is essentially a host of bugfixes in OS X's networking.
The Samba support is buggy -- it can't browse as well as a Windows box, and when talking to a Unix box it doesn't understand the concept of group priviliges most of the time, requiring you to re-save documents 5 to 10 times before it will decide you have write permissions.
Networking in general has big issues--PPCP VPN support improved with 10.2 but if you have a mounted drive over Samba over a VPN and the connection drops--you're pretty much in a race to see if you can shell into your machine to issue `reboot` before some runaway process hogs the entire machine and takes down every other service. I've heard from others that this is also true of regular (non-VPN) NFS mounts as well.
So truly robust networking support for those of us in mixed environments would make my life So Much Easier You Wouldn't Believe It.
Good points, but there are those of us who worry about wind power's effects on bird populations. They disproportionately kill endangered large species, such as Golden Eagles and other raptors. They are situated in areas where these endangered birds tend to soar and hunt...open areas with good wind.
Even though they may not be as large a contributor to total bird loss (not just raptors) as automobiles, power lines, and lighted transmission towers, the number is impressive given how few wind power installations exist in the US. They truly are avian cuisinarts.
Supposedly new designs with lower turbine speeds have reduced avian fatalities (though this was introduced for noise reduction, not avian concerns). Ironically the same people who demand the "Precautionary Principle" be applied to everything have not demanded that new designs be put through rigorous testing of this known problem before deployment.
In order to get a patent, you must provide enough technical information that anyone skilled in the trade could read your patent and duplicate the device.
IANAPL.
However, I do know from having read some computer and business method patents that you can gloss over lots and lots and lots of details. Sample code isn't even necessary.
So you could patent "A method, using a network of pipes, to combine a flavor described as 'Chocolaty' and a flavor described as 'Bacony'. The flavors would enter the system and be mixed by appropriate methods (see Patents gibberish, gibberish, and gibberish) and come out as ChocoBacon. A conceptual diagram is enclosed."
Now, yes, someone skilled in the art could read that and go "oh, yeah, combine chocolate and bacon flavors--duh," but it's so broad that any technical hurdles in the way could be said to be covered by the patent, and any specific methods would be violations of that patent.
So in effect, by being overly broad, you can patent an idea.
If you don't believe me, try coming up with five or six different methods of one-click shopping that don't infringe on Amazon's patent. You can't.
Here're the weasel words: "Although the present invention has been described in terms of various embodiments, it is not intended that the invention be limited to these embodiments."
So even if he describes a method that would be brutally expensive, harmful, or maybe even wouldn't work (lots of those get through the patent office every day) in the vaguest of terms, any method that implemented them, even if they significantly improved upon them, would infringe. Thus they can do it without having to figure out how it's really done.
Pretend that while playing in my kitchen, I invent a new soda flavor.
Allright. I'm pretending you're playing around and have invented the long-sought-after-LemonCherry flavor (substitute Choco-Bacon flavor if you believe that two great tastes will always taste great together).
OK, now pretend I'm the Scumbag Lawyer (but I repeat myself) 5 blocks over in the really nice part of town with a kitchen you'll never afford. I look around at the soda market and realize that nobody's patented the idea of LemonCherry (or ChocoBacon) flavor.
Being a jackass with lots of money and, thanks to my triple-billing practices, lots of spare time, I invest a measly $15,000 to get it through the patent process quickly. Remember, I haven't actually figured out HOW TO DO IT, just THE IDEA OF IT. So I'll probably do it more quickly than you can.
Now, you come along and apply for a patent to your LemonCherry (or ChocoBacon) flavor. You find out--oops, you can't because the idea of it is patented by Scumbag Lawyer (but I repeat myself). You try to get a narrower patent on your particular method of producing it and peddle it to Pepsi and Coke.
They, having lots of Scumbag Lawyers (but I repeat myself), will do a defensive patent search and find Scumbag Lawyer's patent. They license it from him (they'll have to anyway) and alter your method just enough to get around your patent. They let you know 3 weeks later that they don't want to do anything with you, and introduce ChocoBacon (or LemonCherry) PepsiCoke.
You: screwed.
PepsiCoke: Doing pretty well, makin' soda.
ScumBagLawyer (but I repeat myself): Makin' out like a bandit, doin' even less work, having a kitchen bigger than your house.
Now see the problem?
Oh, good. If there's one thing I think that would make me feel safer and more at peace, it's two nuclear-armed superpowers competing in everyting across the globe.
That worked SO friggin' well the last time, and I felt SO damn secure. As did Europe.
Remember?
Nah, didn't think so.
That's what I get for waiting. And thanks for the explanation of the sudden skip back to Season 1 ep 1--and also confirming that I didn't just forget to watch one of the season 4 eps--that caused some confusion for me (I only saw about half of season 4 last time around).
Now, if only Lackluster would rent the stupid DVDs...
I also quite like the line:
"Oh, I don't like that. Kill him a LOT."
I thought the same exact thing, but a few months back finally started watching a few re-runs...and now I'm hooked. I've seen almost all the series, thanks to the two-a-day showings on FX (which just restarted for some reason, so try to catch it). This is the best TV writing since B5. It has the same humor as the movie, but a little bit more darkness and teen angst. However the writing more than makes up for it.
The Cordelia and Anya characters really make it.
One question I've always had that was not answered tonight (no spoilers): in the very first ep Xander surprises Buffy by saying he knows she thinks she's the slayer--and then starts to say how he knows but she cuts him off. So how the hell did he know? I thought it might be a cool bookend, but alas that wasn't answered. Anyone who can clue me in wins Karma the next time I have points.
Just like congress too.. always resting on their laurals.
No, you misspelled it. It's "Laurels," as a surprising number of interns are known by that name.
i wonder how much that cost balmer. ...not nearly as much as making him act out the naughty dance scene from "True Lies".
Dance, puppets, dance!