Diesel's patent was conceptually and mechanically unique in his time. Read the patent and actually understand what he's claiming. The thermodynamic cycle is a result of the unique approach to the problem, not the invention itself. Think of it as a "collateral-damage" patent.
You might want to actually understand what makes the Otto and Diesel cycles unique before continuing this discussion.
Using orbital mechanics to adjust the speed and trajectory of satellites and spacecraft would only have been unique in a time distant enough in the past that any patents on it would have expired by now. The only thing "unique" in this case is the times and velocities used. =Smidge=
He patented specific thermodynamic cycles, not the basic principles of thermodynamics themselves. Close but not quite. In this particular case, the key innovation was burning the fuel inside the engine using the same air that takes part in the cycle to extract the work. Compare that to a steam engine where the combustion gasses take no direct part in the cycle.
There are MANY ways to convert heat into work, so I really don't take much issue with patenting novel ways to do so. =Smidge=
But you're not patenting "a method for the thermal expansion of a gas" - you're patenting a specific arrangement of parts that allow you extract work from such an event. (And there are lots of different methods that can be used)
An orbit calculation is just (fairly) basic math involving position, velocity and time. Centuries-old math. Basically they patented a specific set of input values to the equations. I call bullshit. =Smidge=
Unfortunately your example of an employer coercing someone to use drugs is just as stupid as your own opinion of forcing people to NOT use drugs on their own volition. Is that irony or hypocrisy?
That Traffic James is a total dick. Constantly swerving between lanes and cutting people off. The faster they get him off the roads the better we'll all be.
(Headline currently reads "MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic James" - hope they fix that...) =Smidge=
Capital costs (including installation and equipment), along with debit service on that sum, must be recovered over the useful life of the asset for a business to be viable.
Guess that explains why so many huge corporations and government agencies are still running COBOL codebases on mainframe equipment from the 70's...
First, it appears that no attempt to request the images be removed was made.
Second, doing shit like this only makes it worse. If there really was any concern over privacy then this is by far the worst thing you could do to protect it.
Third, I would love so hear how taking pictures of a property devalues it. At best you can charge them with trespassing since it was private property - a criminal charge which would probably be more effective at changing Google's policies than a civil suit - but you can't get any cash out of a criminal charge.
In other words, this has all the seemings of someone who decided to look up their own house on Street View and thought "free money!" =Smidge=
I'm sorry, NOT! If Comcast built their network correctly to begin with, the infrastructure COULD handle specific bandwidth requirements that could in turn be advertised correctly. And what happens when the source of the slow-down is external to your ISP's infrastructure? This, I think, is the real problem with "guaranteeing" connection speeds.
You might be able to guarantee YOUR network, but Joe Shmoe isn't going to understand the difference when his favorite website gets slashdotted and takes forever to load. Then the lawyers come out.
The only solution is to put that little * next to the speed on the advert and not actually guarantee anything. =Smidge=
If these boxes are anything like the once Cablevision uses, then the firmware is upgradable remotely. The only excuse they have is not wanting to spend money improving a service they more or less have a monopoly on.
Depending on your application, filing a patent already costs upwards of a grand. What could a tax possibly do besides hurt the smaller players in the game?
And frankly folks, Joe Sixpack still doesn't trust what he reads about online more than he does the idiot box. I don't know what planet you live on, but around here it seems people will believe damn near anything they see on TV if it gets repeated enough.
As I said above, it's a matter of game developers tailoring their product to the market. There is absolutely no technical reason that you couldn't have four people playing a game on the same PC, so it's not like a console is technically superior in that respect.
The question is, why would you want to? PC gaming is still leaps and bounds ahead of the console market for internet/LAN gaming and PCs are far more common so it's not a challenge to find someone to play with. Consoles and their games are made to support multiple players because otherwise there is very little to justify the cost. In general, you can't really use a gaming console for anything other than gaming. =Smidge=
In other words, you can turn a $1,000+ PC into a $500 console? If you're paying $1000+ for a PC system, you're either buying premium hardware, a lot of extra junk you don't actually need, or buying name-brand system. There certainly is a FLOOR when it comes to PC building costs, however that's about $300 or so for a system that would be just under what most consoles are capable of. In other words, their price points are about the same when you consider consoles benefit from economies of scale and sometimes sell at a loss to gain market share.
Take the 360 for example. 3.2GHz Three-core PowerPC architecture, 1MB L2 cache. NVIDIA graphics core. 512MB RAM (shared between graphics and CPU) at 700MHz. Sound hardware pretty much on par with any integrated audio package on a decent PC mainboard. 12x DVD-ROM. Optional hard drive (costs extra).
Just about the only thing you couldn't match or beat for little more than $300 is the RAM, but that's a non-issue 'cause the video card would have it's own RAM comparable to the 360's while the CPU could get by with something a little slower.
PC games don't tend to support multi-player on the same system because PCs have inherently single-user interfaces, as the vast majority of PC games use the keyboard and mouse.
Console games, however, center around the controller pad (of whatever sort the system uses), and all systems are explicitly designed to support multiple players. In other words, games are designed to make optimal use of their target hardware. What a revelation that must have been for you...
Maybe all console games are designed to be multiplayer because there is no other way to justify the price. Who would buy a console that DIDN'T support multiplayer?
And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations. This contradicts your first argument. If the keyboard and mouse are so much better, why would you *want* to use a console-type controller on a PC? It doesn't contradict anything. In "certain situations" a keyboard and mouse are arguably superior. For example, Real-Time Strategy and Simulation games benefit a great deal from having point-and-click interfaces and dozens of key shortcuts. If you like analog stick or mouse for your FPS game is a matter of preference, but a mouse is definitely a more precise instrument for quick and minute movements. My point was, with PCs you have the option and with consoles you don't.
There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles. Gaming PCs *can't* become more like consoles. If they did, you'd end up with something costing more than a console with a smaller screen and lacking the homogenous feature-set which make consoles "just work". Consoles come with screens? News to me.
I will concede one point to you, though: Consoles are very homogeneous. A developer knows exactly what hardware he has to work with. This, however, is not always a good thing. If a developer requires more than what the console has to offer, then he either needs to compromise his game or choose another platform. In a PC market, you have to deal with more variability (but not much, x86 family CPU and one of two or three video hardware manufacturers) but you also know what kind of specs you can expect.
Also, people are more likely to invest in PC hardware to begin with because they can. It's possible to upgrade a PC's hardware. This means PCs are generally get the really high-end games because developers know there is an upgrade path for most of their target users. Hard drive space, RAM, video hardware.
Buying a console is like buying a factory-made street rod. Buying a PC is converting out your own. It might cost more but you get way more for your investment. =Smidge=
How many PCs do you have to buy for four players? A console can accommodate more than one player per machine, either by splitting the screen (e.g. Goldeneye) or by using non-first-person game designs that put all players on the same view (e.g. Bomberman). This works in part because unlike most PCs, consoles come with instructions to connect them to a 24-inch or bigger TV monitor. A PC can accommodate more than one palyer, too, if the game is designed for it. Most PCs come with at LEAST four to six USB ports and console-style controllers are not expensive at all. You can also hook your computer up to a TV too, especially with newer TVs that have compatible inputs.
And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations.
There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles. =Smidge=
An incandescent bulb can cause a fire too. What's your point?
As many have pointed out, temperature is not heat. A single atom that has an effective temperature of a billion degrees isn't gonna cause a fire, but a billion atoms that have an average effective temperature of a few hundred degrees easily will. =Smidge=
You do not need to fiddle with the machines at the polling places, or even the machines themselves. There are plenty of places where you can tamper with them (options vary with the exact system in use):
1) Tamper with the machines themselves at the storage location before they are distributed to the polling locations This includes OS/software hacks and can be done basically once to pollute hundreds or thousands of machines as they are set up with the latest candidate/ballot data.
2) Tamper with the memory cards that hold the results:
2a) On their way to the polling places
2b) On their way from to wherever they are read into the tabulation system
This can be done by exchanging the memory cards with premade ones or preloading fake data onto them, such as candidates with non-zero vote totals (candidate A starts with 100 votes, B starts with -100 votes, and the total number of votes recorded still adds up)
3) Tamper with the central tabulator so it miscounts the votes
4) Tamper with the vote results directly after everything is tabulated
That's just off the top of my head without any serious knowledge about how the entire process works. I'm sure there are plenty of other opportunities to mess things up without leaving much, if any, evidence.
There is no way to make any form of voting tamper proof unless aninimity is given up. Where you get a card saying who you voted for (in case of a discrepancy) and you can review yours and everyone else's votes after they have been cast. Easy solution: Be required to leave that card at the polling place. One method I've seen used is basically large bubble-scan sheets - fill in the bubbles for your votes, and it gets scanned on-site to cast your vote. The paper copy still exists as a record and you leave empty-handed.
I'd personally like to have the machine print that card instead of people filling them in with (erasable) #2 pencil... use the machine to cast the vote, print and review the paper receipt (shred and redo if necessary) then scan the document on a separate machine before you leave. Now you have two independent copies of the digital tally plus a paper backup. A barcode or other non-human-readable* system can be used to add a unique but non-identifying ID to each ballot to correlate the three records. =Smidge=
*Being a total geek, I had once learned to read UPC style barcodes by eye. Maybe something a tad harder to learn should be used.
What's the ratio of developers:non-developers for people who use computers at work?
I'm guessing comparatively small, given that computer stations are set up for just about every employee that has a dedicated space, even if it's just a countertop. =Smidge=
Interesting how you say that "installing unauthorized software" = "more productive"
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of "unauthorized software" are things like chat clients, media players, RSS/Weather update notifiers, games and software for personal devices (iTunes etc). =Smidge=
You know, it might be possible that these topics dominate the news so because they are the most important issues we currently face. Kindly explain how Eliot Spitzer hiring a pricey escort is among "the most important issues we currently face."
That's just a recent example. "News" today is not about highlighting what's "important" in the sense we'd all like to think, but about ratings and mindshare. It's about making money. Modern journalism is about milking sensationalist topics for all they're worth. The only place you'll find an unpopular story is in an unpopular news source - exactly because they run unpopular stories.
If the war got any kind of press coverage, chances are they were almost entirely "hero and victory" type stories. I challange you to find any two major news sources (at least one national) that reported on the war's death toll in 2007. =Smidge=
Perhaps you should read the full Ted Stevens quote before you say it's accurate.
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially...
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
The truck analogy is actually much better, IMHO, because it represents the fact that large data sets need to be broken up into multiple packets and delivered separately. Each truck can take a different path, maybe even break down or get lost, and arrive at different times. A tube analogy makes it seem like all the data flows in a constant stream along a single, predetermined and rigid path. It's a horrible analogy, especially considering he compared it to a better one that he threw out. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
Diesel's patent was conceptually and mechanically unique in his time. Read the patent and actually understand what he's claiming. The thermodynamic cycle is a result of the unique approach to the problem, not the invention itself. Think of it as a "collateral-damage" patent.
You might want to actually understand what makes the Otto and Diesel cycles unique before continuing this discussion.
Using orbital mechanics to adjust the speed and trajectory of satellites and spacecraft would only have been unique in a time distant enough in the past that any patents on it would have expired by now. The only thing "unique" in this case is the times and velocities used.
=Smidge=
He patented specific thermodynamic cycles, not the basic principles of thermodynamics themselves. Close but not quite. In this particular case, the key innovation was burning the fuel inside the engine using the same air that takes part in the cycle to extract the work. Compare that to a steam engine where the combustion gasses take no direct part in the cycle.
There are MANY ways to convert heat into work, so I really don't take much issue with patenting novel ways to do so.
=Smidge=
But you're not patenting "a method for the thermal expansion of a gas" - you're patenting a specific arrangement of parts that allow you extract work from such an event. (And there are lots of different methods that can be used)
An orbit calculation is just (fairly) basic math involving position, velocity and time. Centuries-old math. Basically they patented a specific set of input values to the equations. I call bullshit.
=Smidge=
Unfortunately your example of an employer coercing someone to use drugs is just as stupid as your own opinion of forcing people to NOT use drugs on their own volition. Is that irony or hypocrisy?
=Smidge=
That Traffic James is a total dick. Constantly swerving between lanes and cutting people off. The faster they get him off the roads the better we'll all be.
(Headline currently reads "MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic James" - hope they fix that...)
=Smidge=
Capital costs (including installation and equipment), along with debit service on that sum, must be recovered over the useful life of the asset for a business to be viable.
Guess that explains why so many huge corporations and government agencies are still running COBOL codebases on mainframe equipment from the 70's...
=Smidge=
First, it appears that no attempt to request the images be removed was made.
Second, doing shit like this only makes it worse. If there really was any concern over privacy then this is by far the worst thing you could do to protect it.
Third, I would love so hear how taking pictures of a property devalues it. At best you can charge them with trespassing since it was private property - a criminal charge which would probably be more effective at changing Google's policies than a civil suit - but you can't get any cash out of a criminal charge.
In other words, this has all the seemings of someone who decided to look up their own house on Street View and thought "free money!"
=Smidge=
You might be able to guarantee YOUR network, but Joe Shmoe isn't going to understand the difference when his favorite website gets slashdotted and takes forever to load. Then the lawyers come out.
The only solution is to put that little * next to the speed on the advert and not actually guarantee anything.
=Smidge=
50/20 service is available in my area at $90/mo. Add their FiOS TV service and it's $138/mo. (annual contracts)
=Smidge=
=Smidge=
If these boxes are anything like the once Cablevision uses, then the firmware is upgradable remotely. The only excuse they have is not wanting to spend money improving a service they more or less have a monopoly on.
=Smidge=
Depending on your application, filing a patent already costs upwards of a grand. What could a tax possibly do besides hurt the smaller players in the game?
=Smidge=
=Smidge=
As I said above, it's a matter of game developers tailoring their product to the market. There is absolutely no technical reason that you couldn't have four people playing a game on the same PC, so it's not like a console is technically superior in that respect.
The question is, why would you want to? PC gaming is still leaps and bounds ahead of the console market for internet/LAN gaming and PCs are far more common so it's not a challenge to find someone to play with. Consoles and their games are made to support multiple players because otherwise there is very little to justify the cost. In general, you can't really use a gaming console for anything other than gaming.
=Smidge=
You can always mod the console, but that has it's own set of problems.
=Smidge=
Take the 360 for example. 3.2GHz Three-core PowerPC architecture, 1MB L2 cache. NVIDIA graphics core. 512MB RAM (shared between graphics and CPU) at 700MHz. Sound hardware pretty much on par with any integrated audio package on a decent PC mainboard. 12x DVD-ROM. Optional hard drive (costs extra).
Just about the only thing you couldn't match or beat for little more than $300 is the RAM, but that's a non-issue 'cause the video card would have it's own RAM comparable to the 360's while the CPU could get by with something a little slower. PC games don't tend to support multi-player on the same system because PCs have inherently single-user interfaces, as the vast majority of PC games use the keyboard and mouse.
Console games, however, center around the controller pad (of whatever sort the system uses), and all systems are explicitly designed to support multiple players. In other words, games are designed to make optimal use of their target hardware. What a revelation that must have been for you...
Maybe all console games are designed to be multiplayer because there is no other way to justify the price. Who would buy a console that DIDN'T support multiplayer? And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations. This contradicts your first argument. If the keyboard and mouse are so much better, why would you *want* to use a console-type controller on a PC? It doesn't contradict anything. In "certain situations" a keyboard and mouse are arguably superior. For example, Real-Time Strategy and Simulation games benefit a great deal from having point-and-click interfaces and dozens of key shortcuts. If you like analog stick or mouse for your FPS game is a matter of preference, but a mouse is definitely a more precise instrument for quick and minute movements. My point was, with PCs you have the option and with consoles you don't. There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles. Gaming PCs *can't* become more like consoles. If they did, you'd end up with something costing more than a console with a smaller screen and lacking the homogenous feature-set which make consoles "just work". Consoles come with screens? News to me.
I will concede one point to you, though: Consoles are very homogeneous. A developer knows exactly what hardware he has to work with. This, however, is not always a good thing. If a developer requires more than what the console has to offer, then he either needs to compromise his game or choose another platform. In a PC market, you have to deal with more variability (but not much, x86 family CPU and one of two or three video hardware manufacturers) but you also know what kind of specs you can expect.
Also, people are more likely to invest in PC hardware to begin with because they can. It's possible to upgrade a PC's hardware. This means PCs are generally get the really high-end games because developers know there is an upgrade path for most of their target users. Hard drive space, RAM, video hardware.
Buying a console is like buying a factory-made street rod. Buying a PC is converting out your own. It might cost more but you get way more for your investment.
=Smidge=
And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations.
There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles.
=Smidge=
I never said they can't cause fires. I said they were safe. Specifically, safe enough to have one on your desk. Huge difference there.
=Smidge=
An incandescent bulb can cause a fire too. What's your point?
As many have pointed out, temperature is not heat. A single atom that has an effective temperature of a billion degrees isn't gonna cause a fire, but a billion atoms that have an average effective temperature of a few hundred degrees easily will.
=Smidge=
Not to mention that halogen bulbs get up to 3000K or more. Why is 6000K too dangerous but 3000K just fine for something you put on your desk?
=Smidge=
1) Tamper with the machines themselves at the storage location before they are distributed to the polling locations This includes OS/software hacks and can be done basically once to pollute hundreds or thousands of machines as they are set up with the latest candidate/ballot data.
2) Tamper with the memory cards that hold the results:
2a) On their way to the polling places
2b) On their way from to wherever they are read into the tabulation system
This can be done by exchanging the memory cards with premade ones or preloading fake data onto them, such as candidates with non-zero vote totals (candidate A starts with 100 votes, B starts with -100 votes, and the total number of votes recorded still adds up)
3) Tamper with the central tabulator so it miscounts the votes
4) Tamper with the vote results directly after everything is tabulated
That's just off the top of my head without any serious knowledge about how the entire process works. I'm sure there are plenty of other opportunities to mess things up without leaving much, if any, evidence. There is no way to make any form of voting tamper proof unless aninimity is given up. Where you get a card saying who you voted for (in case of a discrepancy) and you can review yours and everyone else's votes after they have been cast. Easy solution: Be required to leave that card at the polling place. One method I've seen used is basically large bubble-scan sheets - fill in the bubbles for your votes, and it gets scanned on-site to cast your vote. The paper copy still exists as a record and you leave empty-handed.
I'd personally like to have the machine print that card instead of people filling them in with (erasable) #2 pencil... use the machine to cast the vote, print and review the paper receipt (shred and redo if necessary) then scan the document on a separate machine before you leave. Now you have two independent copies of the digital tally plus a paper backup. A barcode or other non-human-readable* system can be used to add a unique but non-identifying ID to each ballot to correlate the three records.
=Smidge=
*Being a total geek, I had once learned to read UPC style barcodes by eye. Maybe something a tad harder to learn should be used.
What's the ratio of developers:non-developers for people who use computers at work?
I'm guessing comparatively small, given that computer stations are set up for just about every employee that has a dedicated space, even if it's just a countertop.
=Smidge=
Interesting how you say that "installing unauthorized software" = "more productive"
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of "unauthorized software" are things like chat clients, media players, RSS/Weather update notifiers, games and software for personal devices (iTunes etc).
=Smidge=
That's just a recent example. "News" today is not about highlighting what's "important" in the sense we'd all like to think, but about ratings and mindshare. It's about making money. Modern journalism is about milking sensationalist topics for all they're worth. The only place you'll find an unpopular story is in an unpopular news source - exactly because they run unpopular stories.
If the war got any kind of press coverage, chances are they were almost entirely "hero and victory" type stories. I challange you to find any two major news sources (at least one national) that reported on the war's death toll in 2007.
=Smidge=