"If you're going to BOLDFACE a word, at least spell it right"
No. I'm off by one dam letter. Deal with it.
(yes, that was intentional, for the humor impaired)
As I said, most of the attempted control over tech stuff comes from right-wing. But instead of looking for that, why don't you go and look (it won't take long) at the anti-left wing articles right here in YRO? Or how about this, which shows the house de-funding and basically killing TIA? That was a right-wing inititive.
"the left-wing, liberal slant to/. is painfully obvious"
Only if you haven't been paying attention./. has a very strong libitarian bias. So, depending on topic, it is either left or right wing. Taking the 'classical' definitions of left and right, not linking them to 'Democrat' and 'Republican'.
What you're seeing is that geek stuff, i.e. tech stuff, is mostly under attack lately by the right wing. So the bias pokes out a bit in that direction. If the Dems were screwing around a bit more strongly, you'd see the perceived 'left-right' bias shift again. But on average, the Republicans are more vocal and more draconian in persuit of their right(ish) wing concerns, while in comparison, the Dems are generally (although as this article points out, not exclusivly) more reasonable. This is probably because the Dems don't hold all 3 government branches like the Reps do right now.
That flash reminds me of a book... Go read 'Lacey and his friends', by David Drake. It's a set of short stories about a really screwed up cop (reason why not included due to spoiler). Every room, and I do mean EVERY room, has a camera in it, and they're all recorded all the time. Yet a few people still (in the book, almost) get away with murder.
"Perhaps those states have the strictest laws in response to their high crime rates"
In which case, it doesn't work, now does it?
If you want corolation, poke around a bit and look at the time when DC switched to havind hard to get gun ownership and no gun ownership. Crime went up in nearly every catagory. You can see the same thing happen in California with their big gun restriction in the mid 90s, and the reverse happen in Florida when they instituted concealed carry. They all have spikes in the crime rate, up when guns are made harder to get, and down when resrictions are eased.
No, he's right. And comparing countries isn't useful, because of the cultural differances. In Japan, people put up with police actions that would get riots here in the states. They have a 95+% confession rate and a 95+% conviction rate, and are on Amnisty International's watch list.
Heck, comparing states in some cases is pushing it.
Poke around here a bit for info. Last time I looked, the spot check I did on data accuracy made this one of the better sites on the web. It's a bit old at this point, but the trends are there.
"And since when did U.S. become weaker than Al Quaeda?"
According to them? We don't have allah on our side, so we are weaker.
And look at how they attack. They don't go after groups where they'd be evenly matched, like a militia group. They go after unarmed civilians (people in airplanes, etc.). They do attack those who are weaker.
As for managers not seeing the value of brilliant designs, I run into that in what I'm doing now. I made a change that took me a week. Requires a few months of testing... But it will end up saving better than $40k/year just in manufacturing, never mind ease of service (my primary reason for the design). But it keeps getting pushed off, for reasons that aren't reasonable.
My ideal job would be weapons design. As it happens, I have a very simple, quite moral reason for supporting this: People are demonstrably violent, and a minority (but a significant one) will attack those who are weaker.
Or, to put it into a cliché, peace through superior firepower. Humans aren't built for peace any other way.
What's really scary is where I went to, if you failed out of engineering, you could probably switch over to business. The business school honor roll was filled with people who couldn't hack engineering (at least 15 in the rolls). It's like politics: Anyone who would want to go into the feild should be barred from it.
You don't need 3D software, you need a 2D picture and a 3D 'surface map' of the car. (think pictures on the side panel, not whole-body work, which is a whole lot more effort). Create the image, and modify the Z to match the car. Or, if you use a 'feeler', you just need the X and Y (drop Z to zero until feeler triggers)
It's not that hard to build. We use a very similar device here where I work. (smaller scale, of course). There's 2 ways to do it. One, use a stepper motor. This is the better, more expensive solution. Second, use an optical encoder on the motor. This would be cheep, but requires constant monitering of the output (so it doesn't skip a bit).
I'm not surprised the driver took the longest amount of time. I imagine I could throw together the hardware in a day, and the electronics in a couple hours (less with help from someone with more electrical experiance, I'm a ME.)
Um... Impersonating a US police officer is a crime, in the US.
"Hello e-bay, I'm the Malasian US police representitive. In the process of tracking one of our CD pirate rings, I discovered that user gurps_npc has sold pirated things. Could you please send me his soul?" isn't strictly illegal, except in Malasia.
'Roberts said "like all good non-compete clauses it isn't [clear cut]. Each situation will have to be evaluated case by case".'
This is amusing, too. Like a GOOD legal contract, it is UNCLEAR what it says? Um, no... It's unclear so that MS can apply pressure without even needing to spend any effort. The other companies apply the pressure to themselves.
Methanol is like isoproponol. It'll evaporate fairly quickly, shouldn't damage your laptop's plastic much, etc. Unlike IPA, it can be absorbed through the skin and causes nerve damage, but it requires a fair amount for any significant effect. Basically, if you break a refill cartridge, wipe your hands then pick up the spill, and that's pretty much it. Only people like me who work with it all the time really need to be worried about exposure.
"perhaps its time for the open source/public domain movements to do the same"
No, no. Now you're trying to play on their terms.
Let's form an organization, and donate money to people like the esteemed senator from Disney, etc. We can name the organization... hmmm... 'Society for the Purchasing of Congressional Votes'. 'Pedophiles for Fritz Hollings.' 'de Sade Memorial Society Alteration Fund' 'Communists for a Better America'
That'll look REAL GOOD on his tax forms, wouldn't it?
What are you smoking? You're obviously missing something incredibly important, but I can't figure out what it is. Everything is layed out nice and clear above.
You make a design. It's a specific design, not some stupid 'one click and it's bought' crap, a real design, like I said. Specifics. You patent it. You shop it around for capital.
NDA? Oooo... You must not work for an actual company. No one will sign an NDA until you can prove part of what you say you can do. I can't walk into the lobby of some company and say 'I have a nifty idea, I'm shopping it around, sign this NDA so I can show you', you realize. Trade secret laws don't help, you are, after all, essentially giving them away to your competitor just by showing them the idea. Coke can't show Pepsi their trade secret recipe and then get mad when they use it, you'd need an NDA... which coke could get, because they have something real to show.
My grandfather: Sorry, but he didn't get a patent because he expected companies to be honest. A common mistake.
"Look at divinci. Would you grant him patenets[sic]"
On a lot of his stuff, yes. He had very specific designs. You ever see the patent for the set of railroad tracks on the top of a train, so that 2 trains going in opposite directions could pass each other on the same track (it's often found in the same section as 'silly inventions', like the automatic hat tipper)? You think he made a pair of trains to do that?
Cult of entitlement... because someone might not like giving corporations a leg up on ruling the planet? Because someone came up with, documented, and went through the process to make sure it was examined and found workable? Just because someone didn't have the resources of the elite and had the gall to come up with an idea, anyway? You have a very skewed view of reality, if you think that's what that phrase means.
"In your example for a proposed lightbulb patent, do you really think he wouldn't of gotten it to work"
Without a vacuum pump? No way.
You managed to ignore my entire point. You say "YOU HAVE TO BUILD IT OTHERWISE YOU HAVENT DONE THE WORK". Well guess what? Today... YOU CAN'T BUILD IT! Patents are the only protection an inventor has to stop them being screwed over by a company that can afford to do the work to make the idea into device. You still haven't explained how your method of granting patents protects the inventor of a idea from someone with money stealing it when he goes to get funding - the whole point of patents, promoting innovation.
I am a technical person. A Mechanical Engineer, to be precise. You're missing a lot about the patent process, as you're looking at how it works now, not how it is supposed to work (which is what my comment was 'The intention is' rather than 'the result is').
Patents are not supposed to be vague. They are supposed to be specific. For example, if Edison had tried to patent 'a means of creating light by passing electricity through a tungsten filament suspended in a vacuum tube', then even if he didn't actually get the damn thing working (to keep with the analogy, maybe because a vacuum pump cost in today dollars $500,000), it should be patentable.
You're trying to argue that if someone develops a novel idea, he has to work on it totally in secret until such time as he makes a functioning device from the idea. Things take millions of dollars to build nowadays, for nearly anything worthwhile. That means, using your interpretation of when patents should be granted, it will take a corporation to get to that point... Individuals rarely have the cash to support years of not working, prototype prices (I build instruments that sell for about $75,000 each (low margin, too). The prototype costs for 3 alphas was close to 5 times (conservatively) that amount, each, plus another 20 grand in spare parts.), etc. Plus the fact that it needed a year of work to even get to that stage from the breadboard. So $375,000 + 10 engineers of various types for a year + a dedicated purchaser for 6 months + 2 assembly technicians for 3 months + lab space at $10,000/sf/year (yes, it really is that much for flammable/chlorinated solvent capable labs. This is a 9sf instrument with a required computer.). And there's even more cost and personnel if you add in Reliability, which makes sure the thing will actually run for a reasonable time, the people who write the interface with the PC software that drives it at what it's supposed to do as opposed to just more general tasks (in our case, running samples instead of just letting the pump flow), and similar production-related jobs.
Personally, I like the idea of an individual inventor getting what he deserves instead of being shafted.
"The primary purpose of the patent system seems to be allowing those that don't plan on developing technology"
Nope. The intention is to allow those who CAN'T develop, due to resource issues, to protect their idea so they can shop for capital.
Story, not sure if it is true or not, but it is illustrative. My grandfather came up with the idea of a retractable fuel pump hose. Basically, you take a big version of those things that you attach keys or badges too, the retractable reals, and 'tie' the midpoint of a hose to it. That will keep the hoses out of the way.
So he shopped it around to several chain fuel stations, like Shell, etc. Nothing came of it, he couldn't get a pump to try it on, never mind development funds. And 2 years later, the gadgets started appearing on stations all around the city.
That's what patents are supposed to protect. If my GF had a patent, there wouldn't be a problem, he would have gotten funds for his idea, whether they liked it or not. Instead, the big company stole the idea.
Like I said, not sure if it's true, but it's illustrative, at the least.
"Log the reasons for blocking (pornographic, political, etc)."
Nice idea, but haven't people been DMCAed for trying that? It's essentially trying to 'pry' into the 'trade secrets' that are the block lists. Which is why the SC threw out this idea the last time it came to them, I think...
Anyone know what the differance in the two cases was? I'm almost positive this contradicts something else they've said.
Slashdot Mirror
No. I'm off by one dam letter. Deal with it.
(yes, that was intentional, for the humor impaired)
As I said, most of the attempted control over tech stuff comes from right-wing. But instead of looking for that, why don't you go and look (it won't take long) at the anti-left wing articles right here in YRO? Or how about this, which shows the house de-funding and basically killing TIA? That was a right-wing inititive.
Only if you haven't been paying attention. /. has a very strong libitarian bias. So, depending on topic, it is either left or right wing. Taking the 'classical' definitions of left and right, not linking them to 'Democrat' and 'Republican'.
What you're seeing is that geek stuff, i.e. tech stuff, is mostly under attack lately by the right wing. So the bias pokes out a bit in that direction. If the Dems were screwing around a bit more strongly, you'd see the perceived 'left-right' bias shift again. But on average, the Republicans are more vocal and more draconian in persuit of their right(ish) wing concerns, while in comparison, the Dems are generally (although as this article points out, not exclusivly) more reasonable. This is probably because the Dems don't hold all 3 government branches like the Reps do right now.
Or maybe have a wife WITH a mistress.`
That flash reminds me of a book... Go read 'Lacey and his friends', by David Drake. It's a set of short stories about a really screwed up cop (reason why not included due to spoiler). Every room, and I do mean EVERY room, has a camera in it, and they're all recorded all the time. Yet a few people still (in the book, almost) get away with murder.
I was going to kill you for that, but then Slashdot would be banned in Washington.
Honestly? This sounds like a job for PowerLabs.
In which case, it doesn't work, now does it?
If you want corolation, poke around a bit and look at the time when DC switched to havind hard to get gun ownership and no gun ownership. Crime went up in nearly every catagory. You can see the same thing happen in California with their big gun restriction in the mid 90s, and the reverse happen in Florida when they instituted concealed carry. They all have spikes in the crime rate, up when guns are made harder to get, and down when resrictions are eased.
Heck, comparing states in some cases is pushing it.
Poke around here a bit for info. Last time I looked, the spot check I did on data accuracy made this one of the better sites on the web. It's a bit old at this point, but the trends are there.
According to them? We don't have allah on our side, so we are weaker.
And look at how they attack. They don't go after groups where they'd be evenly matched, like a militia group. They go after unarmed civilians (people in airplanes, etc.). They do attack those who are weaker.
As for managers not seeing the value of brilliant designs, I run into that in what I'm doing now. I made a change that took me a week. Requires a few months of testing... But it will end up saving better than $40k/year just in manufacturing, never mind ease of service (my primary reason for the design). But it keeps getting pushed off, for reasons that aren't reasonable.
My ideal job would be weapons design. As it happens, I have a very simple, quite moral reason for supporting this: People are demonstrably violent, and a minority (but a significant one) will attack those who are weaker.
Or, to put it into a cliché, peace through superior firepower. Humans aren't built for peace any other way.
Some of us have morals.
What's really scary is where I went to, if you failed out of engineering, you could probably switch over to business. The business school honor roll was filled with people who couldn't hack engineering (at least 15 in the rolls). It's like politics: Anyone who would want to go into the feild should be barred from it.
It's not that hard to build. We use a very similar device here where I work. (smaller scale, of course). There's 2 ways to do it. One, use a stepper motor. This is the better, more expensive solution. Second, use an optical encoder on the motor. This would be cheep, but requires constant monitering of the output (so it doesn't skip a bit).
I'm not surprised the driver took the longest amount of time. I imagine I could throw together the hardware in a day, and the electronics in a couple hours (less with help from someone with more electrical experiance, I'm a ME.)
I think you're being overly critical.
Damn, I saw the subject, and my first thought was 'Well, book me a trip!'
"Hello e-bay, I'm the Malasian US police representitive. In the process of tracking one of our CD pirate rings, I discovered that user gurps_npc has sold pirated things. Could you please send me his soul?" isn't strictly illegal, except in Malasia.
This is amusing, too. Like a GOOD legal contract, it is UNCLEAR what it says? Um, no... It's unclear so that MS can apply pressure without even needing to spend any effort. The other companies apply the pressure to themselves.
(MSDS sheet for MeOH.)
Admittedly, I'd be happier if they got ethanol fuel cells working. It's much less toxic, and supplies are easier to find.
No, no. Now you're trying to play on their terms.
Let's form an organization, and donate money to people like the esteemed senator from Disney, etc. We can name the organization... hmmm... 'Society for the Purchasing of Congressional Votes'. 'Pedophiles for Fritz Hollings.' 'de Sade Memorial Society Alteration Fund' 'Communists for a Better America'
That'll look REAL GOOD on his tax forms, wouldn't it?
What are you smoking? You're obviously missing something incredibly important, but I can't figure out what it is. Everything is layed out nice and clear above.
You make a design. It's a specific design, not some stupid 'one click and it's bought' crap, a real design, like I said. Specifics. You patent it. You shop it around for capital.
NDA? Oooo... You must not work for an actual company. No one will sign an NDA until you can prove part of what you say you can do. I can't walk into the lobby of some company and say 'I have a nifty idea, I'm shopping it around, sign this NDA so I can show you', you realize. Trade secret laws don't help, you are, after all, essentially giving them away to your competitor just by showing them the idea. Coke can't show Pepsi their trade secret recipe and then get mad when they use it, you'd need an NDA... which coke could get, because they have something real to show.
My grandfather: Sorry, but he didn't get a patent because he expected companies to be honest. A common mistake.
"Look at divinci. Would you grant him patenets[sic]"
On a lot of his stuff, yes. He had very specific designs. You ever see the patent for the set of railroad tracks on the top of a train, so that 2 trains going in opposite directions could pass each other on the same track (it's often found in the same section as 'silly inventions', like the automatic hat tipper)? You think he made a pair of trains to do that?
Cult of entitlement... because someone might not like giving corporations a leg up on ruling the planet? Because someone came up with, documented, and went through the process to make sure it was examined and found workable? Just because someone didn't have the resources of the elite and had the gall to come up with an idea, anyway? You have a very skewed view of reality, if you think that's what that phrase means.
Without a vacuum pump? No way.
You managed to ignore my entire point. You say "YOU HAVE TO BUILD IT OTHERWISE YOU HAVENT DONE THE WORK". Well guess what? Today... YOU CAN'T BUILD IT! Patents are the only protection an inventor has to stop them being screwed over by a company that can afford to do the work to make the idea into device. You still haven't explained how your method of granting patents protects the inventor of a idea from someone with money stealing it when he goes to get funding - the whole point of patents, promoting innovation.
Patents are not supposed to be vague. They are supposed to be specific. For example, if Edison had tried to patent 'a means of creating light by passing electricity through a tungsten filament suspended in a vacuum tube', then even if he didn't actually get the damn thing working (to keep with the analogy, maybe because a vacuum pump cost in today dollars $500,000), it should be patentable.
You're trying to argue that if someone develops a novel idea, he has to work on it totally in secret until such time as he makes a functioning device from the idea. Things take millions of dollars to build nowadays, for nearly anything worthwhile. That means, using your interpretation of when patents should be granted, it will take a corporation to get to that point... Individuals rarely have the cash to support years of not working, prototype prices (I build instruments that sell for about $75,000 each (low margin, too). The prototype costs for 3 alphas was close to 5 times (conservatively) that amount, each, plus another 20 grand in spare parts.), etc. Plus the fact that it needed a year of work to even get to that stage from the breadboard. So $375,000 + 10 engineers of various types for a year + a dedicated purchaser for 6 months + 2 assembly technicians for 3 months + lab space at $10,000/sf/year (yes, it really is that much for flammable/chlorinated solvent capable labs. This is a 9sf instrument with a required computer.). And there's even more cost and personnel if you add in Reliability, which makes sure the thing will actually run for a reasonable time, the people who write the interface with the PC software that drives it at what it's supposed to do as opposed to just more general tasks (in our case, running samples instead of just letting the pump flow), and similar production-related jobs.
Personally, I like the idea of an individual inventor getting what he deserves instead of being shafted.
Patent fraud?
Nope. The intention is to allow those who CAN'T develop, due to resource issues, to protect their idea so they can shop for capital.
Story, not sure if it is true or not, but it is illustrative. My grandfather came up with the idea of a retractable fuel pump hose. Basically, you take a big version of those things that you attach keys or badges too, the retractable reals, and 'tie' the midpoint of a hose to it. That will keep the hoses out of the way.
So he shopped it around to several chain fuel stations, like Shell, etc. Nothing came of it, he couldn't get a pump to try it on, never mind development funds. And 2 years later, the gadgets started appearing on stations all around the city.
That's what patents are supposed to protect. If my GF had a patent, there wouldn't be a problem, he would have gotten funds for his idea, whether they liked it or not. Instead, the big company stole the idea.
Like I said, not sure if it's true, but it's illustrative, at the least.
Nice idea, but haven't people been DMCAed for trying that? It's essentially trying to 'pry' into the 'trade secrets' that are the block lists. Which is why the SC threw out this idea the last time it came to them, I think...
Anyone know what the differance in the two cases was? I'm almost positive this contradicts something else they've said.
Not legal language. Grammer might, but if the meanings of words change, contracts would be impossible to figure out.