are there any other compounds, perhaps naturally-occurring compounds that exhibit similar behavior? If so, that might go aways towards explaining how the first primordial single-celled organisms came about.
The human ear can, but a computer can't yet. voice recognition is nearly useless until it can.
Voice recognition is incredibly useful in the right context. A friend of mine is an attorney who happens to be disabled. He makes great use of voice recognition on his computer, does most of his legal work with it. Is it "conversational"? No, but it serves his purposes perfectly.
So you're right, speech recognition systems aren't as generally versatile or accurate as the human brain, but they're getting better all the time. Give it ten years or so, with improved algorithms and a sixteen core processor to handle them I think we'll be interacting with computers on a much different level. Of course, by then you'll have to know Spanish or Mandarin to use one of them.
Why not just put it on a rotating pedestal in a helium-filled, climate-controlled transparent case in the center of your living room, so that all and sundry can kneel to it in prayer forever.
The term is "perceived value" and drives a lot of unnecessary expenditures on the part of a whole lot of people, because to them there's a one-to-one correspondence between cost and value. Like you say, there's usually a correlation but it's not absolute. This is also a reason that some people refuse to even consider something like Linux or another "free" operating system. If it's free, then it can't be worth anything.
y which I mean, IBM doesn't want a single vendor (Microsoft sort of taught IBM a lesson there),
Of course, IBM itself has taught that same lesson to a lot of other companies over the past few decades. It's the great appeal of open source operating systems and applications in general. No one entity can jack you around too much.
Please name one substantive change to patent law passed by Congress and signed into law by the President since 1982.
Okay. You asked for it, you got it Toyota.
I should note, though, that the USPTO generates a great deal of its own revenue in the form of fees related to the filing and prosecution of patents.
Precisely. And that's wrong.
It is an advantage to large rightsholders who can afford to pay periodic maintenance fees. However, it's a drawback to the small inventor who might have managed to patent his invention, but can find it falling into the public domain well before the expiration date because he couldn't afford to pay the fee. That's one example of how Congress skewed the patent system to serve corporate America at the expense of the independent inventor. Please don't tell me that it doesn't matter because the only significant innovation comes out of corporate labs. That's just not true. I have a few patents myself, and at the time I was just an independent developer contracting for a big company. I pushed the envelope enough, improved their product enough, that the new design was patentable. As it happens, I share those rights with a large corporation whose law firm picks up the tab for the maintenance fees.
This article describes much of what I'm talking about here and puts it better than I could. Here's a relevant passage:
Then, in 1991, under pressure to reign in massive budget deficits, lawmakers passed (and President George H.W. Bush signed) a law that revolutionized the way the patent office does business. Borrowing ideas then in vogue among private sector consultants and CEOs to "reengineer" organizations to make them more "customer-driven," Congress instructed the patent office, which had always been funded from government revenues, to now pay its own way through fees charged to applicants, and to make the process of winning a patent easier on them.
Here's another tidbit:
Additionally, patent-holders pay annual maintenance fees for the first 12 years of a patent's life, meaning that each approved patent brings in a total of over $3,000 to the office.
Consequently, due to Congress' fiddling (I would call it "malfeasance in office") the USPTO is now highly motivated to just issue the damn patent and let the courts sort it out later, because it is in the patent office's best interests to do so. It is not, however, in the best interests of the United States and its citizens for them to operate that way.
I suggest you read the rest of the article, it's very informative. So yeah, Congress did this, and they're the only ones that can fix it.
No, it's also been corporate. The changes to patent law, and USPTO funding, were made by Congress, not by the courts. Don't try to let those pricks get off scott-free in this matter, because they're guilty up to their eyeballs.
I don't think "backwards" is sufficiently descriptive... I'd say "corrupt" more closely resembles the situation with regards to Imaginary Property. These laws didn't just happen... in the U.S., Congress couldn't have cared less about patent and trademark law until they were paid by the private sector to revise it. We the People got sold out, and I'm sorry to say it's happening in the U.K. as well. That's too bad, because this is the very stuff that ends civilizations.
these guys do know what they're doing so far as security is concerned, that's true. The problem here, though, is less one of technical expertise as it is enforcement of standards and security best practices. The NSA would be the one of the best groups, I'd say, to lay out those standards in the first place... whether they're a wise choice to enforce them is another question entirely. I don't have an answer to that.
However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads
Good. Advertising revenue is not something that anyone is entitled to receive. Show me a site with useful content supported with unobtrusive advertising and maybe you'll get my eyeballs for a while. What we don't need are more linkfarms.
To turn research into a product, you need a lot of hype.
Technically, you need a lot of money to turn research into product, however, hype is a required intermediate process which extracts necessary funds from unwary investors.
Nah... all they'll do is make such ventures too risky, nobody will undertake them, and that will be that. The consumer is who will get fucked over (again.)
Then, following a pre-agreed signal, they all simultaneously open their trench coats and show everybody a confusing web GUI full of rounded corners and running on top of a proprietary plug-in.
Slashdot Mirror
are there any other compounds, perhaps naturally-occurring compounds that exhibit similar behavior? If so, that might go aways towards explaining how the first primordial single-celled organisms came about.
The human ear can, but a computer can't yet. voice recognition is nearly useless until it can.
Voice recognition is incredibly useful in the right context. A friend of mine is an attorney who happens to be disabled. He makes great use of voice recognition on his computer, does most of his legal work with it. Is it "conversational"? No, but it serves his purposes perfectly.
So you're right, speech recognition systems aren't as generally versatile or accurate as the human brain, but they're getting better all the time. Give it ten years or so, with improved algorithms and a sixteen core processor to handle them I think we'll be interacting with computers on a much different level. Of course, by then you'll have to know Spanish or Mandarin to use one of them.
Why not just put it on a rotating pedestal in a helium-filled, climate-controlled transparent case in the center of your living room, so that all and sundry can kneel to it in prayer forever.
The term is "perceived value" and drives a lot of unnecessary expenditures on the part of a whole lot of people, because to them there's a one-to-one correspondence between cost and value. Like you say, there's usually a correlation but it's not absolute. This is also a reason that some people refuse to even consider something like Linux or another "free" operating system. If it's free, then it can't be worth anything.
y which I mean, IBM doesn't want a single vendor (Microsoft sort of taught IBM a lesson there),
Of course, IBM itself has taught that same lesson to a lot of other companies over the past few decades. It's the great appeal of open source operating systems and applications in general. No one entity can jack you around too much.
Please name one substantive change to patent law passed by Congress and signed into law by the President since 1982.
Okay. You asked for it, you got it Toyota.
I should note, though, that the USPTO generates a great deal of its own revenue in the form of fees related to the filing and prosecution of patents.
Precisely. And that's wrong.
It is an advantage to large rightsholders who can afford to pay periodic maintenance fees. However, it's a drawback to the small inventor who might have managed to patent his invention, but can find it falling into the public domain well before the expiration date because he couldn't afford to pay the fee. That's one example of how Congress skewed the patent system to serve corporate America at the expense of the independent inventor. Please don't tell me that it doesn't matter because the only significant innovation comes out of corporate labs. That's just not true. I have a few patents myself, and at the time I was just an independent developer contracting for a big company. I pushed the envelope enough, improved their product enough, that the new design was patentable. As it happens, I share those rights with a large corporation whose law firm picks up the tab for the maintenance fees.
This article describes much of what I'm talking about here and puts it better than I could. Here's a relevant passage:
Then, in 1991, under pressure to reign in massive budget deficits, lawmakers passed (and President George H.W. Bush signed) a law that revolutionized the way the patent office does business. Borrowing ideas then in vogue among private sector consultants and CEOs to "reengineer" organizations to make them more "customer-driven," Congress instructed the patent office, which had always been funded from government revenues, to now pay its own way through fees charged to applicants, and to make the process of winning a patent easier on them.
Here's another tidbit:
Additionally, patent-holders pay annual maintenance fees for the first 12 years of a patent's life, meaning that each approved patent brings in a total of over $3,000 to the office.
Consequently, due to Congress' fiddling (I would call it "malfeasance in office") the USPTO is now highly motivated to just issue the damn patent and let the courts sort it out later, because it is in the patent office's best interests to do so. It is not, however, in the best interests of the United States and its citizens for them to operate that way.
I suggest you read the rest of the article, it's very informative. So yeah, Congress did this, and they're the only ones that can fix it.
Why? That would only serve to make Slashdot more informative but less entertaining.
No, it's also been corporate. The changes to patent law, and USPTO funding, were made by Congress, not by the courts. Don't try to let those pricks get off scott-free in this matter, because they're guilty up to their eyeballs.
Or Power Over UrethraNet.
I don't think "backwards" is sufficiently descriptive ... I'd say "corrupt" more closely resembles the situation with regards to Imaginary Property. These laws didn't just happen ... in the U.S., Congress couldn't have cared less about patent and trademark law until they were paid by the private sector to revise it. We the People got sold out, and I'm sorry to say it's happening in the U.K. as well. That's too bad, because this is the very stuff that ends civilizations.
these guys do know what they're doing so far as security is concerned, that's true. The problem here, though, is less one of technical expertise as it is enforcement of standards and security best practices. The NSA would be the one of the best groups, I'd say, to lay out those standards in the first place ... whether they're a wise choice to enforce them is another question entirely. I don't have an answer to that.
The thing must run awfully hot, it's got enough cooling fans on it.
Yes, it will work better on those of us without Alzheimer's ... you're remember all sorts of things that were best left forgotten.
However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads
Good. Advertising revenue is not something that anyone is entitled to receive. Show me a site with useful content supported with unobtrusive advertising and maybe you'll get my eyeballs for a while. What we don't need are more linkfarms.
You got us into this mess. Now it's about time you got us out of it.
Honestly, if you keep this up sooner or later it's going to be open season on lawyers.
To turn research into a product, you need a lot of hype.
Technically, you need a lot of money to turn research into product, however, hype is a required intermediate process which extracts necessary funds from unwary investors.
Nah ... all they'll do is make such ventures too risky, nobody will undertake them, and that will be that. The consumer is who will get fucked over (again.)
Then, following a pre-agreed signal, they all simultaneously open their trench coats and show everybody a confusing web GUI full of rounded corners and running on top of a proprietary plug-in.
Ack. Thanks for the image.
Some people just want other people to pay for that which they personally disagree, even if it is perfectly legal.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spelling and Grammar Nazi
Yes, apostrophe abuse is one of my own pet peeves, however I feel compelled to point out that the Third Reich lost the war.
Sure ... when everybody on a crowded highway suddenly decide to get off at the same exit to go lynch somebody.
Why am I picturing everyone turning into vampire like creatures???
Probably because you just saw "I Am Legend".
they decided that Pluto isn't a planet?
The people in these threads who are defending what Apple has done are tools, though
... they're some kind of "ool", anyway.
Well
When it comes to (gagh) "intellectual property" our Congress is either on the take, or just doesn't care.