> The value of a novel idea is in the idea itself. Whether this is something that can be built into > a physical object or can only be programmed into electronic memory gates, the idea is what is important.
Well, what if the idea were, instead, worked into a painting? Or a song? That would be the realm of copyright, not patent. The point being, that an idea does not get protection simply because it's novel, instead protection is granted if it fits the criteria set forth by a law. Sometimes that means patents, sometimes copyright, and sometimes nothing at all (e.g. food ideas). This case is not about the value of novel ideas in software, but whether software fits the definition of a patentable idea under the law.
Further, I should point out that patents were never really about the the idea itself, but rather the implementation of it. They exist to protect a company's investment in R&D and, perhaps even more importantly, the means of production. Does software need this, is the real question, and if not, it can simply remain protected by copyright.
> Yes, I still write with a fountain-pen (and sometimes even a quill) on paper in addition to using a keyboard.
I just want to throw this out there: Left handed people cannot easily use these implements, nor the common (i.e. right handed) stoke patterns and techniques.
Fountain pens generally only function on 'pull' strokes; when pushing, the nib neds to catch on the paper, and there is minimal ink flow. This isn't a major issue when writing right-handed because the text flows to the right, just making the average stroke a 'pull'. Left handed writers, naturally, are 'pushing' most of the time. There are other problems as well, such as smearing the fresh ink, etc.
Of course, with the proper training (e.g. rotating the paper at an odd angle) and tools (e.g. nibs cut at opposite angles), these can be overcome. However, it is still significantly more difficult for a left hander to learn, and at only 10% of the population, there's not enough incentive to teach them in a mixed environment (e.g. school).
Point being, you can count the better part of all left handers saying "doesn't matter to me" simply because they are ill-equipped, not because they are "philistines".
> Why do people keep thinking anecdotal evidence has any particular value at all?
Because most people don't have the time/money/resources to scientifically verify everything.
> Science long ago abandoned the idea that reliable and useful data could be gained by "After I did X, Y happened".
Really? Because, last I checked, that's called an "experiment". You may have heard of them, they are the basis of the scientific method, and thus, science.
Science is based on observation. The only difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence is that anecdotal evidence is not as rigorously controlled and analyzed. In particular, not all of the variables involved in the occurrence of event Y are accounted for, so X does not necessarily effect Y. However, a sufficiently diverse collection of anecdotal evidence can be quite reliable. The more cases there are, the fewer other statistically meaningful (non-X) causes of Y. It doesn't replace a proper scientific study, but shouldn't be completely ignored either.
If you look at the original poster's comment is the context of the rest of his post, it becomes rather clear (at least to me) that he was referring to the _emotional_ aspect of the sound. In other words, would the awesome sound quality of these violins elicit the same emotional response if one heard it everyday in the background of crap album filler songs? That, I think, is a very legitimate question that's got absolutely nothing to do with elitism or even quality (as we are talking about the emotions, not the sound itself).
The Federal Gasoline tax does not "mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices". This tax proposal is little more than a way of netting some GPS companies gigabucks and getting GPS driving logs of every driver. Why else would they not JUST USE THE F**KING ODOMETER.
P.S. If you think that law enforcement isn't salivating of the idea that the could subpoena a driver's entire history you are beyond naive.
So, for the sake of argument, lets say she tazered our "PCP-stoked guy twice her size" and now he's on the ground a 5 feet or so away from her. She's now going to just walk up to him, cuff him, and toss him into the police car just like that? Even if she could cuff him, which would be something of a feat in its own right, he would still present a significant threat. So yes, actually, I _would_ support use of a firearm. Or, better yet, partnering her with someone that would be able to better match the dude in the first place, making this example moot (99% of the time).
Actually, it's essentially pain. True, it's not exactly same, but neither are burns and cuts. The muscular interference effect is largely unimportant as it tends to be both short lived (i.e. duration of shock) and fairly localized. If someone is high PCP and charging you, zapping them on the arm isn't really going to do much better than a billy club. Unless, of course, you keep the current on until they're dead, but that kinda misses the point, doesn't it?
If the money spent on tazers and tazer training (and defending tazer death suits) was instead spent on billy clubs and (here's the important part:) close combat classes, officers would generally be better off.
> The odd thing about complaining about this is, what are they comparing > to? A hypothetical perfect online database that doesn't exist anyways?
That's exactly why this article is little more than some long winded trolling. So the metadata is wrong... As long as the books themselves are perfectly fine (which they seem to be), you can always check the metadata your self. I must think that as far as Google is concerned (and 99+% of its users) the metadata isn't nearly as important as the data itself. Once the data is collected you can always fix the rest.
Expect a new "tagging game" in the next year or two to manually correct these error.
You obviously have little to no understanding as to how an electron microscope works. The electron beam can scan at a very high speed, and generates a large raster image in under 1/10 sec. The number of points it can scan is more on the order of 10M/s, than 10/s. Further, it's not like it's that hard to put a platter spinner in you $500k scope and just scan a slow line (thus, a spiral on the platter) and read the whole disk at once. It'd probably take less than a day to read out a whole disk.
Disclaimer: I don't work in a computer forensics department, but I do own an electron microscope.
That's actually incorrect. While the Prius is parallel, the design of the transmission is such that the engine can be made to run at a specific speed regardless (mostly) of the speed the wheels are turning. A Prius can go about 60 MPH with the engine running at 1000 RPM (its minimum), and can go about 15-80 with it held at 2000 RPM (probably in the ball park of its most efficient).
There's an article here, complete with flash app showing how it works. It's rather ingenious.
Traditionally, it was very much the case that the spec preceded hardware support. OpenGL was around for years before it was ever (basically) fully implemented on consumer hardware. There are still some corner cases where some cards will have to fall back to partial software support, and some cards (like my cheap laptop chip) are specifically designed to run some things in software (my chip lacks vertex shaders).
More recently, it's become a bit more complicated, because the spec designers and the hardware designers get together and decide what would be reasonable for the next gen spec. Even still, the bulk of the new stuff is only in development, not actually released by the time the spec is.
While it is true that the ARM will not run programs compiled for the x86, that isn't a huge deal because such a smart book would only _ever_ run linux. How many binary only apps are even available, let alone important, on linux? (BTW, something like 90+% of applications shouldn't need any source level modification to run on an ARM arch.)
> With this ARM "smartbook", I'll still have to lug around a big laptop to be able to run those programs that the smartbook doesn't.
As a matter of curiosity, what would these programs be? Windows apps under Wine?
"borked" != "wrong". The borked (usually meaning 'broken', BTW) is in reference to the fact that many of the drivers included were some degree of screwed up, thus leaving the computer basically crippled. Also, while some people don't seem to care for the included distros, they still generally applaud the linux laptops and really only mention the distro in passing (at least, that's all I've seen).
Well, the obvious solution is to put a "What country do you live in?" dropdown on the front page. Thus you no longer have to worry about IP addresses and all that. Sure the users may lie, but that's their problem...
My guess would be that the recipe is based on Aluminum Hydroxide. It melts at the fairly modest temperature of 300C and can be dissolved in acidic or strongly basic solutions. Because it is basically hydrated alumina (it's sometimes called that) it's not too hard to believe that with the right additives you could have the alumina 'condense' on to a seed crystal. For color, you'll probably also want to add chromium hydroxide.
If you're looking to experiment, ceramic stores (i.e. pottery craft supply stores) will carry the aluminum hydroxide. They only carry chromium oxide, but that dissolves in acid to from essentially the same products as the hydroxide. Keep the acid as week as possible (just enough to dissolve the products, I think; you don't want it to fume). Good luck.
Well, a rough check shows that each base pair (and backbone) weighs about 614amu, which gives a weight of 10^-21 grams for 2 bits. So, pure DNA weighs about a 4ug per petabyte, supposing my calculations are correct.
However, that's hardly fair. The density of bits is _far_ from the density of the actual storage. After all, a hard disk uses only extremely small regions (probably only a few million amu) on the surface of a disk. However, the motors, the case, and even the disk (substrate) itself are orders of magnitude heavier than the bits themselves. I'd be rather surprised if the actual storage was much more than a couple grams.
The point is, of course, that there are all kinds of ways to store data, but when it comes down to weight, the control mechanisms are what matters. For this reason it's extremely unlikely that DNA will _ever_ be used as storage, except if we start making bio-computers.
Also, for what it's worth, the human genome only stores about 770MB, only a bit more than a CD.
Not true in the slightest (well, maybe the slightest). It is neigh guaranteed that some time in the lifetime of whoever is appointed the Supreme Court will hear a case regarding the excessiveness of damages in a (personal) infringement suit. Their ruling would basically decide if the present statue (regarding damages) is constitutional.
So true, they will not be deciding how much money _you_ have pay. However, they will be deciding something much more important: the minimum and maximum that _anyone_ should have to pay.
The entire point of the RIAA cases* is to increase the risk of file sharing so that it becomes less common. If they only sued for a couple hundred bucks, then no one would care. These cases are all about punitive action and would be worthless without it. If Sotomayor supports punitive infringement suits, she will almost certainly support the RIAA's.
* Certainly part of the RIAA's plan is to also leverage the life-crushing nature of their lawsuits to extort money out of others, but that doesn't change the deterrent 'ideal' of their suits.
You don't seem to appreciate just how short a femtosecond is. As it is only 1e-15sec (1 millionth of a nanosecond), that means a pulse of 1e15W (1 million terawatts) would use only about 1 joule of energy.
So let's say for the sake of argument that the power and pulse length are both an order of magnitude larger. Then say it's only 10% efficient, so that the process actually takes 1kJ. This energy corresponds to all of 25 seconds at 40W. In other words, the break even lifetime is under one minute.
If it was designed from the start to be cross-platform compatible (e.g. using OpenGL rather than DirectX), then yes, one programmer is more than enough. All the logic, scripting, and models will carry over no matter what, which really leaves debugging whatever minor environmental and graphical inconsistencies that arise.
From the definition of steal, courtesy of dictionary.com: 2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance
Def #2 makes illegitimate copying theft pretty much by definition, but even if you want to interpret that as only "ideas" and not "intellectual property", then #3 will cover it with its fairly broad "to... get... insidiously".
So yes, copying is, in fact, theft. Maybe not in the same way as stealing a car is theft, but I don't see him saying it is.
From the OP: "the kind of cute that says they think I have a different presence than I actually want to portray"
The concern seems to be less for his masculinity, and more for his appearance. One can be entirely unconcerned with what other people think about them, but still care about how others _react_ to them. In other words, you may not care if someone doesn't think you're masculine, but care very much if they think you're too 'cute' and therefore decide not to buy what you're selling.
You jest (or at least the mods think so), but actually, you're not so far off the mark. As Windows does not come bundled with support for any file system that isn't patented by Microsoft, lording those patents over people is quite anticompetitive. Or, at the very least, more-so than the whole IE thing which started all this monopoly stuff to begin with.
Then again, the entire point of software patents is to make monopolies, so perhaps this is just what's supposed to be happening.
It's a fun idea, but practically speaking, this is just far too powerful. A handful of supernovae worth of energy could fairly easily destroy an entire solar system, so a weapon yielding OVER 9000!!! (sorry) would be severe overkill. And not the fun sort of 'why not' overkill, but the inter-solar equivalent of nuking it from orbit: for when you have to be sure nothing within several hundred light-years survives (and another few thousand ltyr are devastated).
So maybe it'd be more accurate to think of these as a civilization's last ditch effort to take out a horrible nemesis, rather than a simple weapon.
> This implies that they are blocking all outbound port 25 requests.
It doesn't imply that at all. Now they do that in the future, but there's absolutely no logical reason to do so now. After all, they'll have enough complaints on their hands with just this transition, let alone blocking all other (possibly unauthenticated) outgoing mail too.
No, port 587 is simply where authenticated SMTP usually goes, and so that's the port they're using. It also helps that most mail clients automagicly link 587 and authentication, so the changes are easier for the end user.
Finally, I would point out, there's not a whole lot of difference between blacklisting port 25 and blacklisting port 25 on non-Verision servers. So if they were going to block it, they could've done it even before now.
Slashdot Mirror
> The value of a novel idea is in the idea itself. Whether this is something that can be built into
> a physical object or can only be programmed into electronic memory gates, the idea is what is important.
Well, what if the idea were, instead, worked into a painting? Or a song? That would be the realm of copyright, not patent. The point being, that an idea does not get protection simply because it's novel, instead protection is granted if it fits the criteria set forth by a law. Sometimes that means patents, sometimes copyright, and sometimes nothing at all (e.g. food ideas). This case is not about the value of novel ideas in software, but whether software fits the definition of a patentable idea under the law.
Further, I should point out that patents were never really about the the idea itself, but rather the implementation of it. They exist to protect a company's investment in R&D and, perhaps even more importantly, the means of production. Does software need this, is the real question, and if not, it can simply remain protected by copyright.
> Yes, I still write with a fountain-pen (and sometimes even a quill) on paper in addition to using a keyboard.
I just want to throw this out there: Left handed people cannot easily use these implements, nor the common (i.e. right handed) stoke patterns and techniques.
Fountain pens generally only function on 'pull' strokes; when pushing, the nib neds to catch on the paper, and there is minimal ink flow. This isn't a major issue when writing right-handed because the text flows to the right, just making the average stroke a 'pull'. Left handed writers, naturally, are 'pushing' most of the time. There are other problems as well, such as smearing the fresh ink, etc.
Of course, with the proper training (e.g. rotating the paper at an odd angle) and tools (e.g. nibs cut at opposite angles), these can be overcome. However, it is still significantly more difficult for a left hander to learn, and at only 10% of the population, there's not enough incentive to teach them in a mixed environment (e.g. school).
Point being, you can count the better part of all left handers saying "doesn't matter to me" simply because they are ill-equipped, not because they are "philistines".
> Why do people keep thinking anecdotal evidence has any particular value at all?
Because most people don't have the time/money/resources to scientifically verify everything.
> Science long ago abandoned the idea that reliable and useful data could be gained by "After I did X, Y happened".
Really? Because, last I checked, that's called an "experiment". You may have heard of them, they are the basis of the scientific method, and thus, science.
Science is based on observation. The only difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence is that anecdotal evidence is not as rigorously controlled and analyzed. In particular, not all of the variables involved in the occurrence of event Y are accounted for, so X does not necessarily effect Y. However, a sufficiently diverse collection of anecdotal evidence can be quite reliable. The more cases there are, the fewer other statistically meaningful (non-X) causes of Y. It doesn't replace a proper scientific study, but shouldn't be completely ignored either.
If you look at the original poster's comment is the context of the rest of his post, it becomes rather clear (at least to me) that he was referring to the _emotional_ aspect of the sound. In other words, would the awesome sound quality of these violins elicit the same emotional response if one heard it everyday in the background of crap album filler songs? That, I think, is a very legitimate question that's got absolutely nothing to do with elitism or even quality (as we are talking about the emotions, not the sound itself).
No.
The Federal Gasoline tax does not "mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices". This tax proposal is little more than a way of netting some GPS companies gigabucks and getting GPS driving logs of every driver. Why else would they not JUST USE THE F**KING ODOMETER.
P.S. If you think that law enforcement isn't salivating of the idea that the could subpoena a driver's entire history you are beyond naive.
So, for the sake of argument, lets say she tazered our "PCP-stoked guy twice her size" and now he's on the ground a 5 feet or so away from her. She's now going to just walk up to him, cuff him, and toss him into the police car just like that? Even if she could cuff him, which would be something of a feat in its own right, he would still present a significant threat. So yes, actually, I _would_ support use of a firearm. Or, better yet, partnering her with someone that would be able to better match the dude in the first place, making this example moot (99% of the time).
Actually, it's essentially pain. True, it's not exactly same, but neither are burns and cuts. The muscular interference effect is largely unimportant as it tends to be both short lived (i.e. duration of shock) and fairly localized. If someone is high PCP and charging you, zapping them on the arm isn't really going to do much better than a billy club. Unless, of course, you keep the current on until they're dead, but that kinda misses the point, doesn't it?
If the money spent on tazers and tazer training (and defending tazer death suits) was instead spent on billy clubs and (here's the important part:) close combat classes, officers would generally be better off.
> The odd thing about complaining about this is, what are they comparing
> to? A hypothetical perfect online database that doesn't exist anyways?
That's exactly why this article is little more than some long winded trolling. So the metadata is wrong... As long as the books themselves are perfectly fine (which they seem to be), you can always check the metadata your self. I must think that as far as Google is concerned (and 99+% of its users) the metadata isn't nearly as important as the data itself. Once the data is collected you can always fix the rest.
Expect a new "tagging game" in the next year or two to manually correct these error.
You obviously have little to no understanding as to how an electron microscope works. The electron beam can scan at a very high speed, and generates a large raster image in under 1/10 sec. The number of points it can scan is more on the order of 10M/s, than 10/s. Further, it's not like it's that hard to put a platter spinner in you $500k scope and just scan a slow line (thus, a spiral on the platter) and read the whole disk at once. It'd probably take less than a day to read out a whole disk.
Disclaimer: I don't work in a computer forensics department, but I do own an electron microscope.
That's actually incorrect. While the Prius is parallel, the design of the transmission is such that the engine can be made to run at a specific speed regardless (mostly) of the speed the wheels are turning. A Prius can go about 60 MPH with the engine running at 1000 RPM (its minimum), and can go about 15-80 with it held at 2000 RPM (probably in the ball park of its most efficient).
There's an article here, complete with flash app showing how it works. It's rather ingenious.
Traditionally, it was very much the case that the spec preceded hardware support. OpenGL was around for years before it was ever (basically) fully implemented on consumer hardware. There are still some corner cases where some cards will have to fall back to partial software support, and some cards (like my cheap laptop chip) are specifically designed to run some things in software (my chip lacks vertex shaders).
More recently, it's become a bit more complicated, because the spec designers and the hardware designers get together and decide what would be reasonable for the next gen spec. Even still, the bulk of the new stuff is only in development, not actually released by the time the spec is.
While it is true that the ARM will not run programs compiled for the x86, that isn't a huge deal because such a smart book would only _ever_ run linux. How many binary only apps are even available, let alone important, on linux? (BTW, something like 90+% of applications shouldn't need any source level modification to run on an ARM arch.)
> With this ARM "smartbook", I'll still have to lug around a big laptop to be able to run those programs that the smartbook doesn't.
As a matter of curiosity, what would these programs be? Windows apps under Wine?
"borked" != "wrong". The borked (usually meaning 'broken', BTW) is in reference to the fact that many of the drivers included were some degree of screwed up, thus leaving the computer basically crippled. Also, while some people don't seem to care for the included distros, they still generally applaud the linux laptops and really only mention the distro in passing (at least, that's all I've seen).
Well, the obvious solution is to put a "What country do you live in?" dropdown on the front page. Thus you no longer have to worry about IP addresses and all that. Sure the users may lie, but that's their problem...
My guess would be that the recipe is based on Aluminum Hydroxide. It melts at the fairly modest temperature of 300C and can be dissolved in acidic or strongly basic solutions. Because it is basically hydrated alumina (it's sometimes called that) it's not too hard to believe that with the right additives you could have the alumina 'condense' on to a seed crystal. For color, you'll probably also want to add chromium hydroxide.
If you're looking to experiment, ceramic stores (i.e. pottery craft supply stores) will carry the aluminum hydroxide. They only carry chromium oxide, but that dissolves in acid to from essentially the same products as the hydroxide. Keep the acid as week as possible (just enough to dissolve the products, I think; you don't want it to fume). Good luck.
Well, a rough check shows that each base pair (and backbone) weighs about 614amu, which gives a weight of 10^-21 grams for 2 bits. So, pure DNA weighs about a 4ug per petabyte, supposing my calculations are correct.
However, that's hardly fair. The density of bits is _far_ from the density of the actual storage. After all, a hard disk uses only extremely small regions (probably only a few million amu) on the surface of a disk. However, the motors, the case, and even the disk (substrate) itself are orders of magnitude heavier than the bits themselves. I'd be rather surprised if the actual storage was much more than a couple grams.
The point is, of course, that there are all kinds of ways to store data, but when it comes down to weight, the control mechanisms are what matters. For this reason it's extremely unlikely that DNA will _ever_ be used as storage, except if we start making bio-computers.
Also, for what it's worth, the human genome only stores about 770MB, only a bit more than a CD.
Not true in the slightest (well, maybe the slightest). It is neigh guaranteed that some time in the lifetime of whoever is appointed the Supreme Court will hear a case regarding the excessiveness of damages in a (personal) infringement suit. Their ruling would basically decide if the present statue (regarding damages) is constitutional.
So true, they will not be deciding how much money _you_ have pay. However, they will be deciding something much more important: the minimum and maximum that _anyone_ should have to pay.
Umm... Wut?
The entire point of the RIAA cases* is to increase the risk of file sharing so that it becomes less common. If they only sued for a couple hundred bucks, then no one would care. These cases are all about punitive action and would be worthless without it. If Sotomayor supports punitive infringement suits, she will almost certainly support the RIAA's.
* Certainly part of the RIAA's plan is to also leverage the life-crushing nature of their lawsuits to extort money out of others, but that doesn't change the deterrent 'ideal' of their suits.
You don't seem to appreciate just how short a femtosecond is. As it is only 1e-15sec (1 millionth of a nanosecond), that means a pulse of 1e15W (1 million terawatts) would use only about 1 joule of energy.
So let's say for the sake of argument that the power and pulse length are both an order of magnitude larger. Then say it's only 10% efficient, so that the process actually takes 1kJ. This energy corresponds to all of 25 seconds at 40W. In other words, the break even lifetime is under one minute.
If it was designed from the start to be cross-platform compatible (e.g. using OpenGL rather than DirectX), then yes, one programmer is more than enough. All the logic, scripting, and models will carry over no matter what, which really leaves debugging whatever minor environmental and graphical inconsistencies that arise.
> the "copying = theft" mistake
From the definition of steal, courtesy of dictionary.com:
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance
Def #2 makes illegitimate copying theft pretty much by definition, but even if you want to interpret that as only "ideas" and not "intellectual property", then #3 will cover it with its fairly broad "to ... get ... insidiously".
So yes, copying is, in fact, theft. Maybe not in the same way as stealing a car is theft, but I don't see him saying it is.
From the OP: "the kind of cute that says they think I have a different presence than I actually want to portray"
The concern seems to be less for his masculinity, and more for his appearance. One can be entirely unconcerned with what other people think about them, but still care about how others _react_ to them. In other words, you may not care if someone doesn't think you're masculine, but care very much if they think you're too 'cute' and therefore decide not to buy what you're selling.
You jest (or at least the mods think so), but actually, you're not so far off the mark. As Windows does not come bundled with support for any file system that isn't patented by Microsoft, lording those patents over people is quite anticompetitive. Or, at the very least, more-so than the whole IE thing which started all this monopoly stuff to begin with.
Then again, the entire point of software patents is to make monopolies, so perhaps this is just what's supposed to be happening.
It's a fun idea, but practically speaking, this is just far too powerful. A handful of supernovae worth of energy could fairly easily destroy an entire solar system, so a weapon yielding OVER 9000!!! (sorry) would be severe overkill. And not the fun sort of 'why not' overkill, but the inter-solar equivalent of nuking it from orbit: for when you have to be sure nothing within several hundred light-years survives (and another few thousand ltyr are devastated).
So maybe it'd be more accurate to think of these as a civilization's last ditch effort to take out a horrible nemesis, rather than a simple weapon.
> This implies that they are blocking all outbound port 25 requests.
It doesn't imply that at all. Now they do that in the future, but there's absolutely no logical reason to do so now. After all, they'll have enough complaints on their hands with just this transition, let alone blocking all other (possibly unauthenticated) outgoing mail too.
No, port 587 is simply where authenticated SMTP usually goes, and so that's the port they're using. It also helps that most mail clients automagicly link 587 and authentication, so the changes are easier for the end user.
Finally, I would point out, there's not a whole lot of difference between blacklisting port 25 and blacklisting port 25 on non-Verision servers. So if they were going to block it, they could've done it even before now.