Why can't someone and his criminal buddies just set up a SIP-based VOIP channel between them and encrypt the traffic?
They can, easily. And that's what scares me.
Because as you've noticed, these current laws are so easily circumvented as to be useless. The only way to make them useful will be to outlaw the private transmission of encrypted traffic, or possession of encryption software... and I wouldn't put it beyond Tom Ridge to attempt that.
(I know the USA people would never let him suceed, but they may try)
However, some of the "laundry lists" were actually coded messages
Uh, this still happens... but without the silliness of disguising it as laundry (which never fooled anyone). International spymasters run numbers stations, which just read out random-like numbers continually. Most of the numbers are random, but at certain pre-arranged times a spy will listen to the station and copy down his coded instructions.
Civilians can only speculate how often an actual message goes through, and how much is just chaff keeping the station busy.
I never would have thought I'd be using "monopoly" to describe Apple.
Just because Apple dominates the high-end portable music market doesn't make them a monopoly.
Although Sony's entry failed, it's shortcomings were obvious, and are surmountable. There are no tactics (legal or otherwise) Apple can use to prevent cheaper, MP3-based iPod clones from emerging. They may be lucky for a while, but unlike OS or Office software, there's no lock-in effect as a barrier-to-entry.
MP3 conversion is just to appease those with Mp3 only music files. It is an afterthought not a main feature. You are not the target market.
If Sony really wanted to succeed, especially as an "iPod Killer", then their target market has to include large quantities of current iPod owners looking to upgrade to a bigger/better device..
Those people who are willing to buy an expensive audio player have largely already got iPods. Sony could only compete by allowing switching from an iPod to be as transparent as possible. But since they can't play MP3 without a lossy conversion, that's not the case.
will likely not be relevant to you, as they are tailored for local readers
If the registration system is working properly, then the local newspaper will know you're not from their area, and pull in a national ad instead (or even a local ad for YOUR area). A server like Google.com's AdWords could easily expand to provide that feature.
And since you're just flying by, you're going to ignore the ads anyhow.
The argument that "They'll just ignore the ads" is somewhat true, but irrelevant. It far predates NYTimes-style registration, or even WWW banner-ads.
Your claim might even be backwards: if I read the Boston Picayune every day, I'll become accustomed to where they position advertisments on the page, and subconciously skip past them without noticing what they say. But a first-time reader will need to take more time scanning the whole page to distinguish between content & ads, creating a greater chance of actually reading into an ad.
Seems like the EU patent office is wasting your Euros.
It would cost more Euros not to grant them. Any patent that's rejected can just be slightly edited and re-filed next week. The corporation can keep hammering away at it, absorbing time and money from the patent office, until they finally give up and grant it.
(Of course, granting bad patents is a short-term way to save government money, at the long-term expense of damaging innovation... but the staff at the patent office aren't idealistic enough to see it that way)
I didn't make you say "10% of them die". But yes, I did knock it down.
If you want a discussion, rather than an argument and name calling,
You're delusional.
There. I "called you a name". It was the first time, as a simple scroll up the thread will show.
I never made any personalized attacks on you- I only pointed out that your numbers were simply wrong. Mt. Everest is not 10% deadly. It's barely even 5%. A simple web search will reveal that the only way to get a 10% rate is to take the whole history of Everest climbing, and that going back so far includes obselete periods of higher risk.
Somehow you managed to construe an observation about facts into a personal attack... that's your perogative, I suppose.
What's the source for your data? Back up your claims.
Official US Army medical reports. Their ratio of soldiers-shot over casaulties is higher than ever. The Iraqi opposition just didn't have the firepower to reliably pierce body armor at 100m.
Not necessarily. The holder of a patent didn't need to contribute anything.
If you look at the trends of technology and predict a valuable invention that will become possible 5 years down the line, you can go and patent it. Then all companies who eventually use it will owe you money. Does this mean they wouldn't have discovered it for themselves, when the time came?
Absolutely not. Being first doesn't imply being only.
Let's say I'm a chemist.
No. I'm talking about software here. I already stipulated that patents may help other fields. Chemistry is very different from software, because that whole "build a large scale production facilty" thing isn't major part of software publication.
The GPL was not created because the FSF is against copyright
A claim contradicted by the words of RMS & the FSF.
it would be easy for people to 'steal' code like is often done with BSD licenses.
Easy- and pointless. Who would do that 'stealing'? A traditional commericial software company? They can't exist, because without copyright, they only get one customer for each product.
using microsoft products or any other proprietary products will not protect them.
Yes they will. The liability for patent infringment goes to the developers. Using Microsoft ensures that you don't become a developer yourself, because without the source code, that's impossible. Likeliy, Munich using Linux would've involved contracting for several specifically-requested changes.
And also, although some Microsoft programs may turn out to violate the patents of others, software patents overall will help to consolidate software ownership in the biggest existing software companies. Anyone who charges Microsoft with patent violation will, in all likelihood, get a response listing 3 Microsoft patents they already violate. So Microsoft drives them out of business, buys that one patent, and then uses it to eliminate any other competition in that product-market...
Ask yourself: Why would the FFII do this research if it hinders the proces of linux in Munich?
Best case, is that they believe Europe doesn't want to be subservient to the USA in the software industry. Linux is Europe's chance to have it's own OS and "office" programmers, instead of being solely dependent on Microsoft.
Hopefully, pointing out that software patents would block Linux will help the eu population understand that software patents are just signing control of their PCs over to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sony, and Kodak (!).
I can focus on my next idea since I don't have to worry about promoting my last idea to pay the rent.
But SOMEBODY has to promote it to pay the rent. Usually, the work of practically-implementing a software idea and then doing all the marketing, sales, fulfillment, and customer-support is more effort and more important than coming up with the idea. So why should YOU be allowed to leech off those hard-working people?
My patent allows me to inovate.
Alternatively, if your patent was a very profitable one, it allows you to relax for 21 years and count money without needing to do any more innovation at all.
No. Even non-rediculous software patents are a problem. MAYBE software patents would be OK if software had always been patentable... but it hasn't! We've been writing software since 1960, but people only started trying to patent it in the 1990s.
That's 30 years of time when many inventions were made, but no patents were filed. So tons of software ideas were invented, used or not, and then programmers moved on, leaving old ideas free to be patented decades later by someone who wasn't really the first at all.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. Some big company sees it and copies it.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. You write a program, self-publish it, and the shareware-fees begin to roll in. Then IBM calls you and says they patented it years ago. Sure, they never brought it to market- they just have lawyers who patent every little idea that crosses their engineers' heads, without checking if it's practical or profitable.
But now that you've generously done the work of building a market for their patent, they'll be happy to drop the lawsuit against you, as long as you cease your business immediately. You took a big risk, it paid off, and you lost!
You've wasted a couple of years without any return.
The argument that patents protect little inventors from big corporations is mostly backwards today. Filing patents costs money, but it's something a big corp can handle easier than a little guy (by rolling the price of a dedicated IP lawyer into the overhead).
Patents are useful in some fields like pharmaceuticals, but not in software.
Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas,
Note that copying other's ideas is the foundation for capitalism...
I'm dealing with both multiple forces applying both angular and linear acceleration on a free floating body at the same time here
But... multiple forces just does the same thing as single forces... multiple times.
Of course, in 3d, each force is likely to be acting about a different axis than the previous one, making bookkeeping of all the axes quite painful (even in software). But that's where tensor analysis comes in handy... or so the engineering students tell me.
Yes, that's what you did. And it's wrong to do that- to be accurate, you should measure deaths/attempts. People who try and fail still count towards the overall safety record of the activity. That's how it works for spaceflight, after all. We wouldn't say that Apollo 13 didn't count towards surviving astronauts just because they failed the mission.
But I suppose mountaineers must use successful climbs instead of total attempts, because the former are better documented.
One decade.
No. Since 1924, more than 2000 people (paying customers, not guides) have attempted the climb, and fewer than 200 have died. That means the TOTAL rate is less than 10%. But it's become much safer since 1990, so the rate is less now.
Between 1992-2002, there were been 1165 successful climbs, and 65 deaths. That gives 5.5%. And if 2003/2004 were included, it'd be even lower.
Here's a factoid: "Best and Worst Years on Everest:
Why would averaging the best and worst give you a value applicable to the whole decade? If you did that with human IQs, you'd get a number much less than 100 (the real, defined average)*. Do it with human net worths, and you come to $20,000,000,000. Which is noticeably above average.
It is possible to add information without puting people down.
Maybe so, although that's not in my job description.
* Unless you did it back when that freak who scored 330 on a lucky test was still around...
WTF are you doing having a family when you haven't made the investment of time in obtaining a marketable skill or trade?
I often ask the same question myself, but only rhetorically, because the answer is clear.
That form of behavior is ingrained in humanity by Darwinism. People and animals are optimistic in breeding; if you have kids but can't provide for them, you lose just as bad as if you didn't have kids at all.
In the big picture, even questioning your ability to provide for a family is a losing proposition.
Note that the above line of reasoning applies more to males than females, whose ability to provide is more easily changable. (Finding a new boyfriend is faster than learning a new career)
That still wouldn't solve all problems with XFree86, but at least quite a lot.
In addition from allowing better recovery from XFree86 instability, it would also let Linux/X11 leapfrog back in front of MSWindows in terms of total GUI features. Right now WinXP Pro (not Home) users can easily remotely-connect to their desktops and interact with already-running programs. X11 only allows remote logins to give you a new blank desktop, not the previously active one.
While neither behavior is completely preferrable to the other, it'd be nice for X11 to give you the choice (without needing to run VNC or something ontop of it)
but "mechs" meaning the walking tanks of Battletech and Mechwarrior may one day happen.
Why make a "walking tank", when traditional tank treads will be both faster and more stable?
One could argue that it's to allow travel across very rough terrain, but in that case, the robot needs at least one arm so it has SOME way to get back up after falling over.
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't someone and his criminal buddies just set up a SIP-based VOIP channel between them and encrypt the traffic?
They can, easily. And that's what scares me.
Because as you've noticed, these current laws are so easily circumvented as to be useless. The only way to make them useful will be to outlaw the private transmission of encrypted traffic, or possession of encryption software... and I wouldn't put it beyond Tom Ridge to attempt that.
(I know the USA people would never let him suceed, but they may try)
However, some of the "laundry lists" were actually coded messages
Uh, this still happens... but without the silliness of disguising it as laundry (which never fooled anyone). International spymasters run numbers stations, which just read out random-like numbers continually. Most of the numbers are random, but at certain pre-arranged times a spy will listen to the station and copy down his coded instructions.
Civilians can only speculate how often an actual message goes through, and how much is just chaff keeping the station busy.
Yeah and the planes just navigated themselves into the trade center and the pentagon.
Considering that those buildings were very nearly the largest possible man-made targets on the whole continent... they weren't that hard to hit.
Clearly you're familiar with old skool gamer's ways to learn typing, including classics like Peasant's Quest.
You can learn to type just as well by spending 5 bucks on a Mavis Beacon CD.
In Slashdot style, I should point out there are Free typing-tutor programs. KTouch for just one.
I never would have thought I'd be using "monopoly" to describe Apple.
Just because Apple dominates the high-end portable music market doesn't make them a monopoly.
Although Sony's entry failed, it's shortcomings were obvious, and are surmountable. There are no tactics (legal or otherwise) Apple can use to prevent cheaper, MP3-based iPod clones from emerging. They may be lucky for a while, but unlike OS or Office software, there's no lock-in effect as a barrier-to-entry.
MP3 conversion is just to appease those with Mp3 only music files. It is an afterthought not a main feature. You are not the target market.
If Sony really wanted to succeed, especially as an "iPod Killer", then their target market has to include large quantities of current iPod owners looking to upgrade to a bigger/better device..
Those people who are willing to buy an expensive audio player have largely already got iPods. Sony could only compete by allowing switching from an iPod to be as transparent as possible. But since they can't play MP3 without a lossy conversion, that's not the case.
will likely not be relevant to you, as they are tailored for local readers
If the registration system is working properly, then the local newspaper will know you're not from their area, and pull in a national ad instead (or even a local ad for YOUR area). A server like Google.com's AdWords could easily expand to provide that feature.
And since you're just flying by, you're going to ignore the ads anyhow.
The argument that "They'll just ignore the ads" is somewhat true, but irrelevant. It far predates NYTimes-style registration, or even WWW banner-ads.
Your claim might even be backwards: if I read the Boston Picayune every day, I'll become accustomed to where they position advertisments on the page, and subconciously skip past them without noticing what they say. But a first-time reader will need to take more time scanning the whole page to distinguish between content & ads, creating a greater chance of actually reading into an ad.
Seems like the EU patent office is wasting your Euros.
It would cost more Euros not to grant them. Any patent that's rejected can just be slightly edited and re-filed next week. The corporation can keep hammering away at it, absorbing time and money from the patent office, until they finally give up and grant it.
(Of course, granting bad patents is a short-term way to save government money, at the long-term expense of damaging innovation... but the staff at the patent office aren't idealistic enough to see it that way)
I'm tired of you putting words in my mouth,
I didn't make you say "10% of them die". But yes, I did knock it down.
If you want a discussion, rather than an argument and name calling,
You're delusional.
There. I "called you a name". It was the first time, as a simple scroll up the thread will show.
I never made any personalized attacks on you- I only pointed out that your numbers were simply wrong. Mt. Everest is not 10% deadly. It's barely even 5%. A simple web search will reveal that the only way to get a 10% rate is to take the whole history of Everest climbing, and that going back so far includes obselete periods of higher risk.
Somehow you managed to construe an observation about facts into a personal attack... that's your perogative, I suppose.
What's the source for your data? Back up your claims.
Official US Army medical reports. Their ratio of soldiers-shot over casaulties is higher than ever. The Iraqi opposition just didn't have the firepower to reliably pierce body armor at 100m.
It's not leaching. It's mutually beneficial.
Not necessarily. The holder of a patent didn't need to contribute anything.
If you look at the trends of technology and predict a valuable invention that will become possible 5 years down the line, you can go and patent it. Then all companies who eventually use it will owe you money. Does this mean they wouldn't have discovered it for themselves, when the time came?
Absolutely not. Being first doesn't imply being only.
Let's say I'm a chemist.
No. I'm talking about software here. I already stipulated that patents may help other fields. Chemistry is very different from software, because that whole "build a large scale production facilty" thing isn't major part of software publication.
The GPL was not created because the FSF is against copyright
A claim contradicted by the words of RMS & the FSF.
it would be easy for people to 'steal' code like is often done with BSD licenses.
Easy- and pointless. Who would do that 'stealing'? A traditional commericial software company? They can't exist, because without copyright, they only get one customer for each product.
using microsoft products or any other proprietary products will not protect them.
Yes they will. The liability for patent infringment goes to the developers. Using Microsoft ensures that you don't become a developer yourself, because without the source code, that's impossible. Likeliy, Munich using Linux would've involved contracting for several specifically-requested changes.
And also, although some Microsoft programs may turn out to violate the patents of others, software patents overall will help to consolidate software ownership in the biggest existing software companies. Anyone who charges Microsoft with patent violation will, in all likelihood, get a response listing 3 Microsoft patents they already violate. So Microsoft drives them out of business, buys that one patent, and then uses it to eliminate any other competition in that product-market...
Ask yourself: Why would the FFII do this research if it hinders the proces of linux in Munich?
Best case, is that they believe Europe doesn't want to be subservient to the USA in the software industry. Linux is Europe's chance to have it's own OS and "office" programmers, instead of being solely dependent on Microsoft.
Hopefully, pointing out that software patents would block Linux will help the eu population understand that software patents are just signing control of their PCs over to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sony, and Kodak (!).
I can focus on my next idea since I don't have to worry about promoting my last idea to pay the rent.
But SOMEBODY has to promote it to pay the rent. Usually, the work of practically-implementing a software idea and then doing all the marketing, sales, fulfillment, and customer-support is more effort and more important than coming up with the idea. So why should YOU be allowed to leech off those hard-working people?
My patent allows me to inovate.
Alternatively, if your patent was a very profitable one, it allows you to relax for 21 years and count money without needing to do any more innovation at all.
The problem isn't software patents.
No. Even non-rediculous software patents are a problem. MAYBE software patents would be OK if software had always been patentable... but it hasn't! We've been writing software since 1960, but people only started trying to patent it in the 1990s.
That's 30 years of time when many inventions were made, but no patents were filed. So tons of software ideas were invented, used or not, and then programmers moved on, leaving old ideas free to be patented decades later by someone who wasn't really the first at all.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. Some big company sees it and copies it.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. You write a program, self-publish it, and the shareware-fees begin to roll in. Then IBM calls you and says they patented it years ago. Sure, they never brought it to market- they just have lawyers who patent every little idea that crosses their engineers' heads, without checking if it's practical or profitable.
But now that you've generously done the work of building a market for their patent, they'll be happy to drop the lawsuit against you, as long as you cease your business immediately. You took a big risk, it paid off, and you lost!
You've wasted a couple of years without any return.
The argument that patents protect little inventors from big corporations is mostly backwards today. Filing patents costs money, but it's something a big corp can handle easier than a little guy (by rolling the price of a dedicated IP lawyer into the overhead).
Patents are useful in some fields like pharmaceuticals, but not in software.
Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas,
Note that copying other's ideas is the foundation for capitalism...
I'm dealing with both multiple forces applying both angular and linear acceleration on a free floating body at the same time here
But... multiple forces just does the same thing as single forces... multiple times.
Of course, in 3d, each force is likely to be acting about a different axis than the previous one, making bookkeeping of all the axes quite painful (even in software). But that's where tensor analysis comes in handy... or so the engineering students tell me.
Have you tried Wiesel's Spaceflight Dynamics?
That's what I did.
Yes, that's what you did. And it's wrong to do that- to be accurate, you should measure deaths/attempts. People who try and fail still count towards the overall safety record of the activity. That's how it works for spaceflight, after all. We wouldn't say that Apollo 13 didn't count towards surviving astronauts just because they failed the mission.
But I suppose mountaineers must use successful climbs instead of total attempts, because the former are better documented.
One decade.
No. Since 1924, more than 2000 people (paying customers, not guides) have attempted the climb, and fewer than 200 have died. That means the TOTAL rate is less than 10%. But it's become much safer since 1990, so the rate is less now.
Between 1992-2002, there were been 1165 successful climbs, and 65 deaths. That gives 5.5%. And if 2003/2004 were included, it'd be even lower.
Here's a factoid: "Best and Worst Years on Everest:
Why would averaging the best and worst give you a value applicable to the whole decade? If you did that with human IQs, you'd get a number much less than 100 (the real, defined average)*. Do it with human net worths, and you come to $20,000,000,000. Which is noticeably above average.
It is possible to add information without puting people down.
Maybe so, although that's not in my job description.
* Unless you did it back when that freak who scored 330 on a lucky test was still around...
WTF are you doing having a family when you haven't made the investment of time in obtaining a marketable skill or trade?
I often ask the same question myself, but only rhetorically, because the answer is clear.
That form of behavior is ingrained in humanity by Darwinism. People and animals are optimistic in breeding; if you have kids but can't provide for them, you lose just as bad as if you didn't have kids at all.
In the big picture, even questioning your ability to provide for a family is a losing proposition.
Note that the above line of reasoning applies more to males than females, whose ability to provide is more easily changable. (Finding a new boyfriend is faster than learning a new career)
I have generally thought that a blog with registered users would be a good idea as a way of documenting prior art.
Just spam it out onto some USENET group. Google.com logs all that stuff...
That still wouldn't solve all problems with XFree86, but at least quite a lot.
In addition from allowing better recovery from XFree86 instability, it would also let Linux/X11 leapfrog back in front of MSWindows in terms of total GUI features. Right now WinXP Pro (not Home) users can easily remotely-connect to their desktops and interact with already-running programs. X11 only allows remote logins to give you a new blank desktop, not the previously active one.
While neither behavior is completely preferrable to the other, it'd be nice for X11 to give you the choice (without needing to run VNC or something ontop of it)
First, outside of the sniper role, a high-power round like .30-06 (or even 7.62 NATO) is overkill;
Tell that to all the Iraqi fighters who scored perfect center-of-mass hits with AK-47s and still killed less than 10% of targets.
but "mechs" meaning the walking tanks of Battletech and Mechwarrior may one day happen.
Why make a "walking tank", when traditional tank treads will be both faster and more stable?
One could argue that it's to allow travel across very rough terrain, but in that case, the robot needs at least one arm so it has SOME way to get back up after falling over.
Of course the Japanese have envisioned soldiers as walking gun platforms for years.
The robot battle suits common to anime, which you called "Mecha", were taken from the English "Starship Troopers" novel.
* "mecha" in Japanese means a mechanism, including all sorts of machines, beyond just robots.