>>> "Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?"
No but some people don't expect Google to sell them down the river for a few bucks to some spammer/scammer. Can't anyone with money uphold there morals?
>>> "Whoever thought the name 'Revolution' was passe and decided to name their next generation console after the sound kids make falling out of airplanes should be cornholed wiikly..."
Revolution could not have been trademarked, would not have been very good for gamers wanting to get domain names, nor could it have been used effectively for internet searches, nor would it have gained any comment in the press. I suspect it's also hard for a lot of east asian folk to pronounce.
As it is just the name Wii has set off a minor storm, great ahead of the tantalising feeding of further tidbits.
Sounds like you're probably dehydrated. You should take on about 30-50 ml per kg of fluid per day to maintain hydration levels. So, 70 kg -> 2.8 litres, admittedly some of that can come from foodstuffs (cucumber is nearly all water for example).
In answer to your question... I think the tea drinking habit is a socialising / work avoidance tactic. One can't sit for 8 hours working without dying of boredom, making a hot drink is accepted as reason to leave your desk / station. It's unfortunate that a mass addiction to caffeine is the result.
Under the freedom of information act (IIRC) you have the right here in the UK to view your personnel file, for a small administration fee... so have a look (I'll bet they hide half of it! How would you know?).
Kword, which I haven't actually used much, seems to be simpler in terms of GUI clutter but still quite powerful. I'd have thought it was better for someone new to computers than OOo. I gather it reads and writes ODF and other major formats too.
Except a better analogy would be if you were talking about breaking the DRM on every copy of a piece of software world-wide. Or, to phreak every phone in France (or wherever) to give free calls.
Both of your supposed analogies are actions against single instances of an inanimate object.
Perhaps you're trolling but, you know, spam scales to affect millions of people (if it works!).
>>> "Ok so CDs still break, they still get chargebacks, so there's still justification for the charge, even if it's much less than the percentage."
Much less! I imagine that the manufacture costs for the whole run are less than 15% of the total sales (unless the record company can't estimate very well and over-prints vastly). Now what percentage of the sales do breakages and returns represent? Less than 2% I'd have thought, perhaps a lot less. So they (the record companies) only appear to overcharge by about 14.7% of the sales cost. And even then they get the store to carry some of their 0.3% by "negotiating". They are "good" capitalists.
I'll bet that sales price is with tax and includes all non-media based sales (mp3, wmv, et cetera)...
>>> "if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you"
Possibly not, it probably hinges around the legal interpretation of the "importation" part. I suspect as you haven't personally carried the recording across the border then you won't be deemed to have imported it?! It's not important to the RIAA (when they sue you) who did import it, they only need to know that when they sue the company that sold you the recording... even then they can probably just get them for assisting you in copyright infringement.
Re:Open to view, not so open to enter.
on
Public Patents?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
>>> "The database does not contain ideas that someone comes up with but doesn't care for protection."
Except that many of the databases used have non-patent information in them. Back copies of computer magazines, IBM technical disclosure bulletins, journals of the IEE and IEEE, British Computer Society publications (to name but a few)... and the one big cheap database, the web. So yes "the database" used for patent searches (at least in UKPO and EPO) does have "free ideas" in.
Re:Defensive pub ... not limited to journals
on
Public Patents?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The notional proponent of the art, the position of whom is addressed in patent inventiveness/novelty decisions, is taken to be aware of all prior worldwide _publications_ (and not just paper ones, audio, video, scratched tree bark,...). A defense of inventiveness can be mounted for obscure publications (I won't go into that).
There are several services that offer defensive publication.
One such route would be to file a patent _application_ and have it published. It then falls squarely within the gamut of documents regularly searched by patent examiners.
The stages of an application up to publication require fees of about £130 (sterling). This compares favourably with facilities like www.researchdisclosures.com (which I occassionally cited for patent searches) which charges £75 *per page*!!
This is not the hard bit at all.
The hard part is legally challenging a mega-corp with a prior publication of their "invention". Public money would never be able to meet the costs.
Yes... I used to be a UK Patent Examiner... how did you guess??
Patents ... Open database; Costs
on
Public Patents?
·
· Score: 1
A brief response:
1) there's an open database already... you're looking at it, it's regularly and extensively used by patent researchers and not just to look at dilbert cartoons. There are literally millions of patent documents, then there are research papers and other notable journals, reference books, proceedings,... It's not a lack of recording that's the problem it's one of economics. The patent has to be processed, there's not alot of time to do it in because time is money and taxpayers don't want to shut hospitals to pay patent examiners.
2) it costs about £5000 to get a patent in the UK (IIRC) including about £200 of fees and the rest drafting and patent attorney costs. You then have to pay yearly increasing fees. That's just for the UK... Europe I think will set you back about £20k, the US and ARIP0, OAPI, China and the Far and Middle East??
Patents have been weapons since their inception, they are aggressive methods to maintain a monopoly.
In my experience, as a weirdy-beardy type, hair is useful for insulation and cooling. I think it works this way because the trapping of escaping sweat enables it to be further heated; also the (exponentially) larger surface area offered by a decent beard should allow greater heat transfer to the air.
Yes there also appears to be a limit. That's why I get my hair cut in summer. Though with a nice white scalp the effect of poorer absorption makes a definitive answer more difficult.
>>> "Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?"
Yes.
I can't believe you got plus-5 insightful for that flame-bait.
If you don't question things you're not a scientist. I question evolution, I question every facet of existence that I come across.
Incidentally I've got an honours degree in Physics and Maths and an undergraduate diploma in computer science. No big guns I know but that's me. I consider myself to be a philosopher. What about you?
>>> "non-copyrighted prototype of any software drivers in source-code format"
Yeah, I hear where you're coming from. This sort of thing has been through the mill many times in patent circles (at least in Europe it has). The problems are manifold given that the companies aim is to obscure as much as possible the detail whilst still disclosing enough to get the requisite patent protection.
Which source language, Is assembler (or perhaps a proprietary language that can't be properly interpreted) acceptable? What format would the code be deposited in, not on paper, then what - DVD, BluRay, HDD? Don't you need also to deposit a compiler? Who will examine the millions of lines of source code created by your 50 top industry programmers over the last 8 years? Suppose the device doesn't exist yet (software to control a hyperdrive engine OR that runs on a quantum computer) what then?
It's not easy... but I do agree it would be nice in principle to have source code so that the inventors obligation of disclosure was properly fulfilled.
>>> "The Patent will protect the device no matter how public knowlege its interface is!"
You're quite right, indeed...
One makes a deal when you get a monopoly on a technology via a patent. You give full-disclosure in exchange for the monopoly. Hence the interface, if patented, is public knowledge - that's half of the original intent of patents ("Letters Patent", means "open letter").
>>> "Capitalism also implies that you're free to do what you wish with your capital."
Exactly... Google's shareholders are free to do what they collectively wish with their asset. I don't know who has controlling shares and all that, but I bet the majority are saying "sod philanthropy, show me the money!".
>>> "We found a game that lets kids just pound on the keys. She seems to like it."
FOSS game? Please share. Our 8 month old loves pounding on his keyboard. Actually he's just learnt to clap/slap so anything will do... but he specially likes sitting like his Dad and (literally) hacking away.
>> "I wonder, though, if a quantum singularty drive would have been shot down as well. It's not really common knowledge anymore that those don't work (yet) either. Worse yet, they won't be used in Federation starships."
As someone else indicate there is a business costing involved. With some perpetual motion machines it's extremely hard to explain why a system is faulty... perhaps a constant of integration in some quantum field equations. You'd literally have to be one of the top 10 experts to say, in the 6 hours or so that you've got, why the thing doesn't work.
Also some patent stuff is on the edges of scientific knowledge... some well respected companies, eg BAe (I think), have applied for antigravity patents based on graviton activity. Now, gravitons have yet to be observed... but does that invalidate the patent?
Sometimes a "it won't hurt if they get this patent" attitude prevails.
Slashdot Mirror
>>> "Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?"
No but some people don't expect Google to sell them down the river for a few bucks to some spammer/scammer. Can't anyone with money uphold there morals?
>>> "Whoever thought the name 'Revolution' was passe and decided to name their next generation console after the sound kids make falling out of airplanes should be cornholed wiikly..."
Revolution could not have been trademarked, would not have been very good for gamers wanting to get domain names, nor could it have been used effectively for internet searches, nor would it have gained any comment in the press. I suspect it's also hard for a lot of east asian folk to pronounce.
As it is just the name Wii has set off a minor storm, great ahead of the tantalising feeding of further tidbits.
That's wii.
>>> "How bout... nothing?"
... I think the tea drinking habit is a socialising / work avoidance tactic. One can't sit for 8 hours working without dying of boredom, making a hot drink is accepted as reason to leave your desk / station. It's unfortunate that a mass addiction to caffeine is the result.
Sounds like you're probably dehydrated. You should take on about 30-50 ml per kg of fluid per day to maintain hydration levels. So, 70 kg -> 2.8 litres, admittedly some of that can come from foodstuffs (cucumber is nearly all water for example).
In answer to your question
Under the freedom of information act (IIRC) you have the right here in the UK to view your personnel file, for a small administration fee ... so have a look (I'll bet they hide half of it! How would you know?).
Kword, which I haven't actually used much, seems to be simpler in terms of GUI clutter but still quite powerful. I'd have thought it was better for someone new to computers than OOo. I gather it reads and writes ODF and other major formats too.
>>> "genius programmer"
Sounds more like a software architect or a software engineer to me?
Except a better analogy would be if you were talking about breaking the DRM on every copy of a piece of software world-wide. Or, to phreak every phone in France (or wherever) to give free calls.
Both of your supposed analogies are actions against single instances of an inanimate object.
Perhaps you're trolling but, you know, spam scales to affect millions of people (if it works!).
>>> "Ok so CDs still break, they still get chargebacks, so there's still justification for the charge, even if it's much less than the percentage."
...
Much less! I imagine that the manufacture costs for the whole run are less than 15% of the total sales (unless the record company can't estimate very well and over-prints vastly). Now what percentage of the sales do breakages and returns represent? Less than 2% I'd have thought, perhaps a lot less. So they (the record companies) only appear to overcharge by about 14.7% of the sales cost. And even then they get the store to carry some of their 0.3% by "negotiating". They are "good" capitalists.
I'll bet that sales price is with tax and includes all non-media based sales (mp3, wmv, et cetera)
>>> "if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you"
... even then they can probably just get them for assisting you in copyright infringement.
Possibly not, it probably hinges around the legal interpretation of the "importation" part. I suspect as you haven't personally carried the recording across the border then you won't be deemed to have imported it?! It's not important to the RIAA (when they sue you) who did import it, they only need to know that when they sue the company that sold you the recording
>>> "The database does not contain ideas that someone comes up with but doesn't care for protection."
... and the one big cheap database, the web. So yes "the database" used for patent searches (at least in UKPO and EPO) does have "free ideas" in.
e nt/windsurf.html
Except that many of the databases used have non-patent information in them. Back copies of computer magazines, IBM technical disclosure bulletins, journals of the IEE and IEEE, British Computer Society publications (to name but a few)
For the breadth of available prior art check out this synopsis of the famous "Windsurfer" case http://slcc.strath.ac.uk/scotslawcourse/ip/ip/pat
The notional proponent of the art, the position of whom is addressed in patent inventiveness/novelty decisions, is taken to be aware of all prior worldwide _publications_ (and not just paper ones, audio, video, scratched tree bark, ...). A defense of inventiveness can be mounted for obscure publications (I won't go into that).
... I used to be a UK Patent Examiner ... how did you guess??
There are several services that offer defensive publication.
One such route would be to file a patent _application_ and have it published. It then falls squarely within the gamut of documents regularly searched by patent examiners.
The stages of an application up to publication require fees of about £130 (sterling). This compares favourably with facilities like www.researchdisclosures.com (which I occassionally cited for patent searches) which charges £75 *per page*!!
This is not the hard bit at all.
The hard part is legally challenging a mega-corp with a prior publication of their "invention". Public money would never be able to meet the costs.
Yes
A brief response:
... you're looking at it, it's regularly and extensively used by patent researchers and not just to look at dilbert cartoons. There are literally millions of patent documents, then there are research papers and other notable journals, reference books, proceedings, ... It's not a lack of recording that's the problem it's one of economics. The patent has to be processed, there's not alot of time to do it in because time is money and taxpayers don't want to shut hospitals to pay patent examiners.
... Europe I think will set you back about £20k, the US and ARIP0, OAPI, China and the Far and Middle East??
1) there's an open database already
2) it costs about £5000 to get a patent in the UK (IIRC) including about £200 of fees and the rest drafting and patent attorney costs. You then have to pay yearly increasing fees. That's just for the UK
Patents have been weapons since their inception, they are aggressive methods to maintain a monopoly.
>>> Why do you think you have hair on your head?
In my experience, as a weirdy-beardy type, hair is useful for insulation and cooling. I think it works this way because the trapping of escaping sweat enables it to be further heated; also the (exponentially) larger surface area offered by a decent beard should allow greater heat transfer to the air.
Yes there also appears to be a limit. That's why I get my hair cut in summer. Though with a nice white scalp the effect of poorer absorption makes a definitive answer more difficult.
Does that help?
Erector set ...? Sounds like email spam to me!
>>> "Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?"
Yes.
I can't believe you got plus-5 insightful for that flame-bait.
If you don't question things you're not a scientist. I question evolution, I question every facet of existence that I come across.
Incidentally I've got an honours degree in Physics and Maths and an undergraduate diploma in computer science. No big guns I know but that's me. I consider myself to be a philosopher. What about you?
>>> "evidence for evolution requires a lot of prior knowledge"
.. like this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behe mentioned in the article.
In fact creationists are all absolute drooling morons
>>> "How many thousands of generations of people lived and died over the millennia so that we might be where we are today?"
None.
Only I exist.
But it intrigues me that I generated that bit of sense data. Perhaps it's not just me?
Perhaps they meant "hakuna" (sp?) as in "hakuna mtate" (aka "no worries" in Kswahili).
>>> "non-copyrighted prototype of any software drivers in source-code format"
... but I do agree it would be nice in principle to have source code so that the inventors obligation of disclosure was properly fulfilled.
Yeah, I hear where you're coming from. This sort of thing has been through the mill many times in patent circles (at least in Europe it has). The problems are manifold given that the companies aim is to obscure as much as possible the detail whilst still disclosing enough to get the requisite patent protection.
Which source language, Is assembler (or perhaps a proprietary language that can't be properly interpreted) acceptable? What format would the code be deposited in, not on paper, then what - DVD, BluRay, HDD? Don't you need also to deposit a compiler? Who will examine the millions of lines of source code created by your 50 top industry programmers over the last 8 years? Suppose the device doesn't exist yet (software to control a hyperdrive engine OR that runs on a quantum computer) what then?
It's not easy
>>> "The Patent will protect the device no matter how public knowlege its interface is!"
...
You're quite right, indeed
One makes a deal when you get a monopoly on a technology via a patent. You give full-disclosure in exchange for the monopoly. Hence the interface, if patented, is public knowledge - that's half of the original intent of patents ("Letters Patent", means "open letter").
>>> "Many women specifically don't want diamonds"
I think you meant "some women say they 'dont want diamonds'"!?
>>> "Capitalism also implies that you're free to do what you wish with your capital."
... Google's shareholders are free to do what they collectively wish with their asset. I don't know who has controlling shares and all that, but I bet the majority are saying "sod philanthropy, show me the money!".
Exactly
>>> "We found a game that lets kids just pound on the keys. She seems to like it."
... but he specially likes sitting like his Dad and (literally) hacking away.
FOSS game? Please share. Our 8 month old loves pounding on his keyboard. Actually he's just learnt to clap/slap so anything will do
You need to visit http://tinyurl.com/
>> "I wonder, though, if a quantum singularty drive would have been shot down as well. It's not really common knowledge anymore that those don't work (yet) either. Worse yet, they won't be used in Federation starships."
... perhaps a constant of integration in some quantum field equations. You'd literally have to be one of the top 10 experts to say, in the 6 hours or so that you've got, why the thing doesn't work.
... some well respected companies, eg BAe (I think), have applied for antigravity patents based on graviton activity. Now, gravitons have yet to be observed ... but does that invalidate the patent?
As someone else indicate there is a business costing involved. With some perpetual motion machines it's extremely hard to explain why a system is faulty
Also some patent stuff is on the edges of scientific knowledge
Sometimes a "it won't hurt if they get this patent" attitude prevails.