Well one item they developed was the nuclear reactor, and when Feynman was aked what could be done with it, he proposed a number of ideas including the fact that it could be used to power a submarine (he was just thinking of stuff off the top of his head). From that point on he got either a letter (or a letter with royalties, can't quite remember) that stated he was the owner of the 'nuclear submarine' patent. Sounds pretty much like what you described up there doesn't it?
Not really. If this was true, then the patent would have gone to Jules Verne for the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where he describes a submarine that was propelled by electricity generated by a nuclear reactor. That book was written in the late 1800's.
Wouldn't that be cool? I bought a cube right before they were discontinued and never regretted it. Its sitting here rather nicely on a shelf.
If you could get something like the base of the iMac with video ports that would be neat. What would they call it though? I'd shoot for iMushroom as a name.
From the CNN article: "Claude Vorilhon, who founded the Raelians, told CNN in July 2001 that the long-term goal for human cloning is to live forever. Vorilhon says cloning a baby is only the first step: Eventually the group wants to learn how to clone an adult, then "transfer the brain to the clone."
Haven't these people ever heard of senility? The brain decays just as fast as the rest of the body. So they will put a dying brain in the body of an teenager. (Yes.. it has to be a teenager otherwise the skull won't be large enough). So you'll end up with a teenager that can't remember where he's been.
If you want a boycott to be effective you have RIAA/MPAA has to be aware there IS a boycott. To quote Dr. Strangelove "What good is a Doomsday weapon if you don't tell anyone you have it?!?"
A bunch of people suddenly stopping use of a product(s) does not send a company a message. It must involve some sort of media frenzy so that the message is clear. If we just stop buying/supporting RIAA/MPAA without letting them know that there is a boycott, then they'll just see that as further justification that pirates are cutting into their profits.
Yes, and I don't want to pay for VOD. Why is a PVR regarded differently than a VCR?
It isn't. The TV industry has hated VCRs for years and if it wasn't for the video tape market, you'd still be hearing them scream every chance they got.
Your point is flawed in that: What if everyone watched that TNT show on the first airing? Or, how is it any different than if I recorded that first showing with my VCR?
Unrealistic assumption. If everyone watched it the first time, then the ratings would be non-existant for the subsequent showings and they would stop doing it, thereby losing that ad revenue.
This bullshit with PVR is nothing new. Viewers not watching commercials is nothing new. That's what the fast-forward button on the VCR remote is for - to skip over them.
Once again, we've got hot-shot suit types in Hollywood and the cable industry holding the U.S. back in the technology department.
You won't get me disagreeing there.. I'm mostly just playing devils advocate since I spent a lot of time in the ad industry.
As was brought up elsewhere in this discussion, PVRs do not skew ad statistics. If my Tivo records a show (with commercials) then Nielsen counts me as a viewer. Whether I actually watch the commercials is not reported to the powers that be and is for all purposes irrelevant. Until they change the way they count viewers, then PVR's have absolutely no impact on advertising revenue.
VERY not true. Ad revenue isn't just based on viewership.. its also based on returns. If I buy a spot on Comedy Central and it doesn't sell anything for me, its not likely I'm going to buy more time there. If I don't buy time there, then Comedy Central loses that income.
It's not quite on demand programming, but the benefits and features cost the cable industry nothing.
Sure it does. Many cable companies are either offering or in the process of offereing Video on Demand services (for a fee, of course). By using TiVo, you don't need their services, hence they can't sell it to you. And since the Video on Demand is tied into other services that are bundled (for example, IO from Cablevision) they can't sell you those things either. So the cable companies loose out.
Lastly, if you use TiVo to record shows, they don't get the additional revenue from offering the show again. For example, TNT runs the same movie many times in a given week. This is so that people that were watching something else the first time it ran gets another chance to see it. If you record it with TiVo, then you don't need that second chance. Nor do you ever see the commercials that they insert to earn the cash to keep operating. So they loose that money as well. See the Slashdot article about "TiVo users are stealing"
Can anyone see how the cable industry might not be totall thrilled about TiVo?
It creates heat energy... I wonder if it can be tapped off to create hot water so you can have hot & cold water spigot on your fridge with your icemaker. Kinda like what you find on a water fountain. Make ice tea off the front of your refrigerator without having to turn on the stove (or the coffee maker, or the microwave, etc).
Re:Brief Plot Description
on
War of Honor
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· Score: 1
They seem Soviet after book 4(?) when the government changes and people start vanishing for all sorts of reasons.
Of course, that's not a Soviet exclusive, and their financial system isn't (even in name) a socialism, but the USSR is the most recent, obivous, example of this kind of totalitarianism. I think it's actually supposed to be revolutionary France.
I would have agreed with you if it didn't come straight from the horse's mouth. Since David Weber wrote the stuff, I gotta take his word for it.
Re:Brief Plot Description
on
War of Honor
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Imagine if the British and Spanish empires had endured 'til the 23rd century and were fighting in starships instead of sailing ships, and you're close. Except the Spanish are a lot like the Soviet Empire, and no-one really has control of the Americas.
Actually, there was an interview with David Weber in the latest Sci-Fi book club newsletter and he says that this is a common misconception. The Peeps aren't the soviets.. they are actually based on the United States after centuries of deficit spending and welfare.
Our present day school system is not pathetic because it is public - the countries whose students are kicking ours' asses all have strong public school systems. The reasons for our present day school system's problems is not really simple enough to put into a pithy slashdot response.
Sure it is. The reason we are having so many problems with are school system is:
Parents treat school like daycare
When a student screws up, in the parent's eyes its automatically the teacher's fault, not the student's fault.
Teachers can't deal with the parent's selective blindness (administration won't let them tell it like it is), so they do what's known as "social grading", basically giving the student the bare minimum grade so they can still graduate.
It becomes the next teacher's problem.
Now on top of this, toss in the fact that the parent's don't want their kids to be "labeled", so kids that used to be special ed when I went to school so they can get the extra help they need get tossed into general population to sink or swim.
The government penalizes the school for not keeping its grades up, so the school dummies down the tests so everyone can pass. And the schools also give pages of charts and formulas to the kids to use as reference.
Concequence? Uneducated kids graduating high school.
This isn't imagination. My wife's a high school teacher and she sees it every day.
Stand back for a minute and look at the big picture. Take a breath, take a minute, and think about it. They encrypt their content and then store it on self destructing disks. HA! It's so pathetic it's funny. If there was ever an example of the dead horse (Rosen?) getting another whack (DMCA?) this is IT. They lost.
So, if it starts the clock when it hits air, then it must be stored in a vacuum/inert gas container. What happens if the container gets cracked? Can you return it? Also, if it contains an inert gas, what happens when large amounts of that gas (assuming this is a popular format.. ha!) is released into the atmosphere?
Can someone go down the aisle and crack the containers, exposing all the disk?
Why don't they crack down on all the email porn that is sent out? Its amazing the amount of porn spam that is sent to various email address with photos in it. I think a child is more likey to see that than go looking for it on the net.
Or perhaps finally creating the.xxx tld that all porn must be limited to?
THEN you could set up your parental controls to filter out the porn and not legitimate traffic. Hell.. think of all the money the registrars can make confiscating urls and reselling them?
How about a compromise solution? I'm sure anyone who is all for unfiltered access can certainly agree that there is content that is completely inappropriate for a child to view under any circumstances. So... how about setting up separate banks of computers in the library instead? One could be completely unfiltered, and accessible only to adults, and the other could be in the children's section, with filtered access, and hopefully a requirement that parents actively supervise their children's web-surfing.
Any reason they can't just do this without forcing censorship?
2. Um... please explain how something that's free can get any cheaper.
Adobe charges money for its PDF creation products. They are not free. MS is competing with them. Therefore, Adobe's products will get cheaper or Adobe will lose the market. Imagine that.
No entirely true. Max OS X has the abilty to create PDFs without any other Adobe product installed. Yes, Apple probably paid royalties to Adobe to put the technology into their OS, but I didn't see a price change from the last OS update, so it couldn't have been that much. And that makes it free for me, doesn't it?
Ah.. I see where you are going with this. Didn't look at it that way, although I am disinclined to believe that the judge will do anything of the sort.
I hope you're correct. MS already has been accused of violating the terms of agreement well before this decision has been sent down but the judge didn't do anything about it. I hate to see another several years of the industry being stifled before someone finally gets a thumb out.
The board can go right ahead and be dishonorable and business as usual. It'll show up in memos and instructions and briefings and the inspectors will find it. They can go ahead and claim that everything is a 'security' issue. The inspectors can find the memos saying 'better lie about this being a security issue', and they can look over any and all of the code that is being withheld on the grounds of it being a security issue. I don't see anything about swearing the inspectors to secrecy and making them take NDAs. They're straight-up third parties who get to go in and look at anything they want- any and ALL things they want.
You're missing my point. All MS has to do is claim a security issue and they can withold ANYTHING. Legally. With the blessings of the court. Aside from the fact that they only have to reveal PORTIONS of the INTERFACE to qualified corporations. And who gets to decide who's qualified? Microsoft. With the blessings of the court. Thank you very much.
So, in effect, Microsoft doesn't have to change any of their business practices. As a matter of fact, this ruling makes their business practices legal as long as they follow the phraseology of the court document.
Given that other people can go in at any time during office hours and audit them at will... is this not a token committee? What do you think they would be doing that could not be uncovered by simple auditing of a third party?
Well.. since the Microsoft board is the one that approved the LAST set of actions that brought about the Anti-Trust suit in the first place, what makes you think that they are going to be suddenly "honorable" now? Aside from the fact all they need to do is claim its "Security" issue and nothing can be done about it.
Almost sounds like the judge was either bought off or didn't understand the whole thing in the first place.
The decision eliminates the establishment of a technical committee to assess Microsoft's compliance with the agreement. In its place, a corporate compliance committee -- consisting of Microsoft board members -- will make sure Microsoft lives up to the deal, the judge said.
So basically, MS (the people that broke the last agreement) can monitor themselves to make sure they stay in compliance. Does this strike anyone else as abysmially stupid?
Ah well.. it was a nice thought. I guess we'll be back here in about 4 years when MS violates every intent of this agreement.
Btw, in this statement: Nothing in this provision shall prohibit Microsoft from enforcing any provision of any license
with any OEM or any intellectual property right that is not inconsistent with this Final Judgment.
Microsoft shall not terminate a Covered OEM's license for a Windows Operating System
Product without having first given the Covered OEM written notice of the reasons for the
proposed termination and not less than thirty days' opportunity to cure.
What the hell is a Covered OEM and who decides if an OEM is "covered" or not?
Slashdot Mirror
Well one item they developed was the nuclear reactor, and when Feynman was aked what could be done with it, he proposed a number of ideas including the fact that it could be used to power a submarine (he was just thinking of stuff off the top of his head). From that point on he got either a letter (or a letter with royalties, can't quite remember) that stated he was the owner of the 'nuclear submarine' patent. Sounds pretty much like what you described up there doesn't it?
Not really. If this was true, then the patent would have gone to Jules Verne for the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where he describes a submarine that was propelled by electricity generated by a nuclear reactor. That book was written in the late 1800's.
Wouldn't that be cool? I bought a cube right before they were discontinued and never regretted it. Its sitting here rather nicely on a shelf.
If you could get something like the base of the iMac with video ports that would be neat. What would they call it though? I'd shoot for iMushroom as a name.
The subject line says it all...
From the CNN article: "Claude Vorilhon, who founded the Raelians, told CNN in July 2001 that the long-term goal for human cloning is to live forever. Vorilhon says cloning a baby is only the first step: Eventually the group wants to learn how to clone an adult, then "transfer the brain to the clone."
Haven't these people ever heard of senility? The brain decays just as fast as the rest of the body. So they will put a dying brain in the body of an teenager. (Yes.. it has to be a teenager otherwise the skull won't be large enough). So you'll end up with a teenager that can't remember where he's been.
If you want a boycott to be effective you have RIAA/MPAA has to be aware there IS a boycott. To quote Dr. Strangelove "What good is a Doomsday weapon if you don't tell anyone you have it?!?"
A bunch of people suddenly stopping use of a product(s) does not send a company a message. It must involve some sort of media frenzy so that the message is clear. If we just stop buying/supporting RIAA/MPAA without letting them know that there is a boycott, then they'll just see that as further justification that pirates are cutting into their profits.
Yes, and I don't want to pay for VOD. Why is a PVR regarded differently than a VCR?
It isn't. The TV industry has hated VCRs for years and if it wasn't for the video tape market, you'd still be hearing them scream every chance they got.
Your point is flawed in that: What if everyone watched that TNT show on the first airing? Or, how is it any different than if I recorded that first showing with my VCR?
Unrealistic assumption. If everyone watched it the first time, then the ratings would be non-existant for the subsequent showings and they would stop doing it, thereby losing that ad revenue.
This bullshit with PVR is nothing new. Viewers not watching commercials is nothing new. That's what the fast-forward button on the VCR remote is for - to skip over them.
Once again, we've got hot-shot suit types in Hollywood and the cable industry holding the U.S. back in the technology department.
You won't get me disagreeing there.. I'm mostly just playing devils advocate since I spent a lot of time in the ad industry.
As was brought up elsewhere in this discussion, PVRs do not skew ad statistics. If my Tivo records a show (with commercials) then Nielsen counts me as a viewer. Whether I actually watch the commercials is not reported to the powers that be and is for all purposes irrelevant. Until they change the way they count viewers, then PVR's have absolutely no impact on advertising revenue.
VERY not true. Ad revenue isn't just based on viewership.. its also based on returns. If I buy a spot on Comedy Central and it doesn't sell anything for me, its not likely I'm going to buy more time there. If I don't buy time there, then Comedy Central loses that income.
Why doesn't anyone see this?
It's not quite on demand programming, but the benefits and features cost the cable industry nothing.
Sure it does. Many cable companies are either offering or in the process of offereing Video on Demand services (for a fee, of course). By using TiVo, you don't need their services, hence they can't sell it to you. And since the Video on Demand is tied into other services that are bundled (for example, IO from Cablevision) they can't sell you those things either. So the cable companies loose out.
Lastly, if you use TiVo to record shows, they don't get the additional revenue from offering the show again. For example, TNT runs the same movie many times in a given week. This is so that people that were watching something else the first time it ran gets another chance to see it. If you record it with TiVo, then you don't need that second chance. Nor do you ever see the commercials that they insert to earn the cash to keep operating. So they loose that money as well. See the Slashdot article about "TiVo users are stealing"
Can anyone see how the cable industry might not be totall thrilled about TiVo?
It creates heat energy... I wonder if it can be tapped off to create hot water so you can have hot & cold water spigot on your fridge with your icemaker. Kinda like what you find on a water fountain. Make ice tea off the front of your refrigerator without having to turn on the stove (or the coffee maker, or the microwave, etc).
They seem Soviet after book 4(?) when the government changes and people start vanishing for all sorts of reasons.
Of course, that's not a Soviet exclusive, and their financial system isn't (even in name) a socialism, but the USSR is the most recent, obivous, example of this kind of totalitarianism. I think it's actually supposed to be revolutionary France.
I would have agreed with you if it didn't come straight from the horse's mouth. Since David Weber wrote the stuff, I gotta take his word for it.
Imagine if the British and Spanish empires had endured 'til the 23rd century and were fighting in starships instead of sailing ships, and you're close. Except the Spanish are a lot like the Soviet Empire, and no-one really has control of the Americas.
Actually, there was an interview with David Weber in the latest Sci-Fi book club newsletter and he says that this is a common misconception. The Peeps aren't the soviets.. they are actually based on the United States after centuries of deficit spending and welfare.
Who knew?
Sure it is. The reason we are having so many problems with are school system is:
- Parents treat school like daycare
- When a student screws up, in the parent's eyes its automatically the teacher's fault, not the student's fault.
- Teachers can't deal with the parent's selective blindness (administration won't let them tell it like it is), so they do what's known as "social grading", basically giving the student the bare minimum grade so they can still graduate.
- It becomes the next teacher's problem.
Now on top of this, toss in the fact that the parent's don't want their kids to be "labeled", so kids that used to be special ed when I went to school so they can get the extra help they need get tossed into general population to sink or swim.The government penalizes the school for not keeping its grades up, so the school dummies down the tests so everyone can pass. And the schools also give pages of charts and formulas to the kids to use as reference.
Concequence? Uneducated kids graduating high school.
This isn't imagination. My wife's a high school teacher and she sees it every day.
Stand back for a minute and look at the big picture. Take a breath, take a minute, and think about it. They encrypt their content and then store it on self destructing disks. HA! It's so pathetic it's funny. If there was ever an example of the dead horse (Rosen?) getting another whack (DMCA?) this is IT. They lost.
So, if it starts the clock when it hits air, then it must be stored in a vacuum/inert gas container. What happens if the container gets cracked? Can you return it? Also, if it contains an inert gas, what happens when large amounts of that gas (assuming this is a popular format.. ha!) is released into the atmosphere?
Can someone go down the aisle and crack the containers, exposing all the disk?
Why don't they crack down on all the email porn that is sent out? Its amazing the amount of porn spam that is sent to various email address with photos in it. I think a child is more likey to see that than go looking for it on the net.
.xxx tld that all porn must be limited to?
Or perhaps finally creating the
THEN you could set up your parental controls to filter out the porn and not legitimate traffic. Hell.. think of all the money the registrars can make confiscating urls and reselling them?
How about a compromise solution? I'm sure anyone who is all for unfiltered access can certainly agree that there is content that is completely inappropriate for a child to view under any circumstances. So... how about setting up separate banks of computers in the library instead? One could be completely unfiltered, and accessible only to adults, and the other could be in the children's section, with filtered access, and hopefully a requirement that parents actively supervise their children's web-surfing.
Any reason they can't just do this without forcing censorship?
2. Um... please explain how something that's free can get any cheaper.
Adobe charges money for its PDF creation products. They are not free. MS is competing with them. Therefore, Adobe's products will get cheaper or Adobe will lose the market. Imagine that.
No entirely true. Max OS X has the abilty to create PDFs without any other Adobe product installed. Yes, Apple probably paid royalties to Adobe to put the technology into their OS, but I didn't see a price change from the last OS update, so it couldn't have been that much. And that makes it free for me, doesn't it?
Ah.. I see where you are going with this. Didn't look at it that way, although I am disinclined to believe that the judge will do anything of the sort.
I hope you're correct. MS already has been accused of violating the terms of agreement well before this decision has been sent down but the judge didn't do anything about it. I hate to see another several years of the industry being stifled before someone finally gets a thumb out.
The board can go right ahead and be dishonorable and business as usual. It'll show up in memos and instructions and briefings and the inspectors will find it. They can go ahead and claim that everything is a 'security' issue. The inspectors can find the memos saying 'better lie about this being a security issue', and they can look over any and all of the code that is being withheld on the grounds of it being a security issue. I don't see anything about swearing the inspectors to secrecy and making them take NDAs. They're straight-up third parties who get to go in and look at anything they want- any and ALL things they want.
You're missing my point. All MS has to do is claim a security issue and they can withold ANYTHING. Legally. With the blessings of the court. Aside from the fact that they only have to reveal PORTIONS of the INTERFACE to qualified corporations. And who gets to decide who's qualified? Microsoft. With the blessings of the court. Thank you very much.
So, in effect, Microsoft doesn't have to change any of their business practices. As a matter of fact, this ruling makes their business practices legal as long as they follow the phraseology of the court document.
Given that other people can go in at any time during office hours and audit them at will... is this not a token committee? What do you think they would be doing that could not be uncovered by simple auditing of a third party?
Well.. since the Microsoft board is the one that approved the LAST set of actions that brought about the Anti-Trust suit in the first place, what makes you think that they are going to be suddenly "honorable" now? Aside from the fact all they need to do is claim its "Security" issue and nothing can be done about it.
Almost sounds like the judge was either bought off or didn't understand the whole thing in the first place.
The decision eliminates the establishment of a technical committee to assess Microsoft's compliance with the agreement. In its place, a corporate compliance committee -- consisting of Microsoft board members -- will make sure Microsoft lives up to the deal, the judge said.
So basically, MS (the people that broke the last agreement) can monitor themselves to make sure they stay in compliance. Does this strike anyone else as abysmially stupid?
Ah well.. it was a nice thought. I guess we'll be back here in about 4 years when MS violates every intent of this agreement.
Btw, in this statement:
Nothing in this provision shall prohibit Microsoft from enforcing any provision of any license with any OEM or any intellectual property right that is not inconsistent with this Final Judgment. Microsoft shall not terminate a Covered OEM's license for a Windows Operating System Product without having first given the Covered OEM written notice of the reasons for the proposed termination and not less than thirty days' opportunity to cure.
What the hell is a Covered OEM and who decides if an OEM is "covered" or not?
I used to race RC drag cars. The "Top Fuel" class used to hit 100 mph in 120 feet. On batteries.