The USPTO does not have (any or) enough patent/trademark clerks to really search out all instances of prior-art and because of the large back log are encouraged to just rubber stamp everything they come across if/they/ (who could be below-average in knowledge about a particular field) don't know of any prior art off-hand.
How about making the USPTO pay the legal bill whenever a patent is invalidated through the court system?
That way, there'd be no immediate punishment for granting bullshit patents. Patents that aren't challenged, wouldn't affect the USPTO's bottom line. But (if successful) would make it free for the challenging party to invalidate a patent. It would be a great incentive to watch general quality of issued patents, and perhaps hire enough people / raise fees to cover the actual required effort. If an important patent means a bigger legal bill when invalidated, that would help to pay more attention to patent applications with (potentially) wide impact.
I'm not a fan of patents in the 1st place, but weeding out the many nonsense-patents that are on record, would be a good start. Especially those nonsense-patents that patent trolls uses as beating stick, and that cost society a lot more (down the line) than hiring a few qualified patent clerks.
The upshot is that the hundreds or thousands of other distros are irrelevant when it comes to why, e.g., Linux graphics suck or software distribution is hard. Nobody cares or pays attention to those one-off distros or super-custom distros.
Well, that distro's maintainers (and users) care, which means their effort is not spent on improving the distro it's derived from. Sure some fixes will make it back to the parent distro, but only to a limited degree. Also that distro maintainers have to set up a lot of things (package repositories, source control system, bug tracking system etc) that the parent distro already had in place. If the on-off distro is just a small modification, that is wasted effort no matter how you look at it.
Since the main distros use more or less the same software (..)
Yes, and yet many resources for using / maintaining that same software are not shared - more unnecessary waste.
... is that your privacy has value (including monetary), which may be a great value in some cases.
It has value for yourself, if you decide / manage to keep it (or at least some). It also has value to data mining companies / advertising firms / governments etc, should you decide (or be 'forced') to give it away. And it has negative value (aka damage) in case you lose it unintentionally.
Which brings me to a logical conclusion: when not forced, it's stupid to give away your privacy for free. If some company wants private information from you, you should always make sure to get something in return: either money, extra convenience in using their product, some 'privileges' that others don't have etc, whatever you think is worth giving up the private info you're turning over. And similarly: if some party violates your privacy (eg. data breach), they should pay, period. Either through monetary compensation or otherwise. Because they made you lose something valuable. Same way someone that makes a dent in your car should have to pay because it takes money to repair or makes your car worth less.
Agreed. If you look at how many Linux distro's there are, where they came from / how they are built, there are essentially a small number: some Fedora (.rpm) based, some Debian (.deb) based, some Slackware (plain.tar.gz), and a small number of distro's that have their own system for building packages from source (Gentoo & a few others).
Beyond that, practically all other distro's are just one of those above, with a specific package selection, a set of distro-specific patches applied to various packages, and customized artwork / default settings (like default user language). IMHO it would be a great advance if the Linux distro landscape could be reduced to just that: a small number of 'mother distros', and then for every other distro simply a pack of files that determines what makes that distro different from the one it's derived from. Distro's that deviate just a bit would have a small & easily maintained 'modification pack', distro's that move further away from their parent would have a bigger / more elaborate 'modification pack'.
That way there could be much more sharing of resources like package repositories, bug databases, programmer's time, etc, etc, versus each distro re-inventing their own wheels & having their own system for handling things that other distro's do as well. Maybe it wouldn't be possible to share binary packages (due to different compile flags & patches applied), but it could be possible to share a single build system, and a single source tree for all Linux distro's. Where each distro would consist of a set of patches against that source tree, a set of compile options, and a set of options that decide how the built binaries are divided over packages (and into CD images etc). With the custom artwork & distro-specific settings included somewhere along the build process.
And if there would ever be the chance of agreeing on a single package format, even those 'mother distros' might be integrated into one. But of course that's just daydreaming, another bridge too far that'll never happen because distro maintainers are stubborn people who want to do things their own way... (sigh)
Which may not be a bad thing - people with only happy memories, with no recollection of all the bad things that happened to him/her? Not so sure if you'd want that, there must be reasons that crap sticks in our minds (like: keeps you on the lookout to avoid more of it)...
Ehm... 'public servant' need not automatically imply 'open for public view'. Examples: court cases behind closed doors (rarely, but sometimes for good reasons), public servants working with privacy-sensitive information (like your tax returns, medical records), etc, etc.
Location where it happens is the deciding factor IMHO. If it can be seen on/from a public road, it's fair game regardless who or what.
Probably the point is not so much to shield radiation, but to reduce / prevent direct contact, or (worse) ingestion of radioactive material. Depending on conditions & duration of the job, masks, goggles & gloves may just be adequate.
I fail to see the 'unconventional' here - as if people in [underdeveloped country of your choice] don't want to talk to each other. Or somehow network effects or being able to connect to the rest of the world doesn't count, just because your cell tower is the first in the area.
So you can't really say Digicel created such market(s) IMHO. It's more like the market did exist, and (by taking a big risk) they where the first to crack it open. Kudoz to them for having the balls, but that's about it. What it does show, is that (potentially) you can sell telecoms gear anywhere where there are people. And in a booming market, no less. Oh wait... news at 11.
Likewise, the article's premise of 'build infrastructure & clients will come' is nonsense. Put cellphone network in the middle of the Atlantic, and all it will do is sink.
How about: extract energy from that agricultural waste using biogas (possible now) or some combination of physical/chemical process (being worked on, with success here & there)? That way:
You don't need to pile up anything or waste land to do that.
Each kWh extracted from the waste, is one kWh you don't need to produce using oil / natural gas / coal / nuclear.
Which saves you from the effort of obtaining those other fuels, like: less need to drill for oil in deep see or start war in oil-rich country.
Can be done small(er) scale, locally, so there's less stuff to haul around (and low to zero risk when transporting that agricultural waste).
Seems like more effective way, and required tech is available now.
When HTML spec is extended that obviously increases the attack surface since popular browsers will have to support it. But in time it may replace a number of other technologies (Flash comes to mind), that -combined- may have a larger attack surface. And since displaying HTML is the core function of a browser, implementations are likely to be pretty solid compared to some add-ons.
So you'd have to look forward, and compare [average setup now] with [average setup in XX years from now]. If that comparison turns out positive, HTML5 is a move in the right direction.
Writing malware has 0 effect at large, until it's put out into the wild. Once out, damage is done & cannot ever be undone. Yes it might help to increase OS security over time, yes it'll keep anti-virus companies in business, but it's always a net negative for society. Prevention & cleanup takes time. Time that will not be spent on more useful things.
What that malware will do over time & for what other purposes it might be used, will have little (if anything) to do with your original intentions. It's a vehicle, and if it works, others (with a different agenda) will ride that vehicle too.
Indeed there's times & places where it's important to be sure who you are dealing with (for example when opening a bank account, or do a driver's exam), and having a unique ID for that purpose is okay IMO. What's wrong is using such unique ID anywhere & everywhere just because it's convenient, and store loads of info coupled to that single ID that isn't absolutely necessary for its purpose. Train company shouldn't need to know who's on the train & exactly what route someone is traveling, just that passenger has paid his/her ticket. Keeping more personally identifiable info than that around, is the same as poking around in people's private lives where you have no business poking around. Which is even worse when governments are doing it... Also love this quote:
"For the poor this is a huge benefit because they have no identities, no birth certificates, degree certificates, driver's licences, passports or even addresses."
If I were one of those poor, I'd be deeply offended by silly statement like that. All people on this planet have identities (as in: unique person unlike any other), place/date where they were born & address / area where they live. The only thing you're talking about here, are pieces of dead tree that state one thing or the other (true or otherwise).
I'd think the main advantage would be one of convenience - come home, drop cellphone on charging pad. When leaving, just pick up cellphone from charging pad. No fiddling with small power plugs or figuring out which adapter/plug goes into which device, and (if some sort of compatibility is maintained between these devices): drop multiple devices on the same (larger) charging pad.
Of course some losses would be associated with inductive charging, but unless very significant I doubt that's a problem for low power devices like cellphones.
Schmeiser deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications.
That may be a valid point when Monsanto-supplied GM crops are grown on 'isolated' fields, and those genetic traits are easily told apart from your own saved seeds and/or naturally occurring ones.
But how about when those modified genes are 'everywhere'? When your own saved seeds include them, even if you would not select at all? When it becomes impossible to find naturally occurring varieties without those genes? Should Monsanto still have a right to sue when it becomes impossible to avoid using crop with their genes in it? When their modified genes have spread so wide that naturally occurring species all have those genes? When selecting crops based on weedkiller-resistance is no different from weighing one naturally occurring species against another naturally occurring one (on whatever selection criteria a farmer may use) ?
Perhaps that would be a short-term fix to problems like these: patent any gene you want, but once it gets out in the wild, lose any protection. That would be a big incentive for companies to keep tabs on where their GM stuff is going. And thus, avoid polluting neighbor fields or roadsides with GM-modified crop (which as we know, is impossible to prevent in the 1st place).
For starters: if weedkiller-resistance gives these species only a slight advantage over their natural cousins, it could be just a matter of time until those natural cousins are wiped out - entirely, forever. Regardless of effects I would equate that to ongoing, irreversible environmental pollution on a massive scale (and ideally the business forces behind it should cough up massive damages a la BP oil spill - too bad the mighty $$$ will probably win out). While you may not think much of those natural occurring species, for example they may have a much more varied genetic makeup than the weedkiller-resistant species that are replacing them. Once replaced, that genetic variety could be gone, and that is never a good thing. What's worse: we may never know what was lost, in the same way we won't know what's lost when you clear a large area of rain forest.
Secondly, what's product on one field, is weed on another. Harder-to-kill weed, which means you'd have to spray more / nastier chemicals, or have reduced yields on such a field. Thus the easier-to-grow canola may equate to harder-to-grow agricultural products elsewhere. That's cold, hard, cash losses (which farmers won't be able to claim back from those responsible).
Genes that spread from GM-crops to wild canola might spread to other species as well? If so, effects are hard to predict but (given time) likely world-wide. If not: are you sure about that? Can we afford the risk? Should we?
To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion.
'Freeloading' often has a negative meaning, but in open source land the opposite is true IMHO. Any additional user helps to improve the software just by using it:
Increased user base means increased market share, bringing open source software closer to the point where companies take Linux support more serious for their products, governments may take a 2nd look at their open source use & support for open standards, websites are checked more often in alternative (read: non-IE) browsers, etc, etc.
More users = more testers, more bug reports etc. This ultimately helps the software quality, if more bugs are found (& hopefully, fixed).
More users = (over time) more experienced users, that can help newcomers get started.
So regardless of who deserves credits, that's many networks effects that benefit all users of such software, Gnome included. Freeriding on that is about as harmful as watching new years' fireworks without lighting any of your own - you still contribute to the party, just by being there. And in that sense, Canonical has done a lot to support Linux - by attracting & supporting many new users.
Motion JPEG is a good format when storing/transmitting the raw video data is beyond the hardware's capabilities (=often), but you want to do as little as possible post-processing. For example when shooting 30 second clips with a digital camera. Writing that to a memory card might be more power-efficient than including the electronics for an advanced video codec. Also that 'semi-raw' data is better material for post-processing (on PC for example) than video that's stronger compressed at the beginning.
So basically: suited as intermediate storage format. If ordinary consumers don't bother to post-process their videos, that's their business/problem.
Also wouldn't seem practical to move a 'copper-printing pipette' around a silicon die to lay all the copper interconnects, unless you could have hundreds or thousands of such pipettes doing that simultaneous (still not efficient compared to existing methods I'd guess).
But perhaps a nice technique for silicon pad <-> I/O pin wiring. If result would be a stronger bond than what's currently done, perhaps that could improve reliability for some IC package types. And of course die-die interconnects for multi-chip modules.
The use of a few isolated cases to make the public panic and demand very expensive 100% fixes is not good for society.
A bit of Googling would tell you that HIV infections are relatively small part of China's population. BUT: blood transfusions being a significant cause. And with infections to donors too: donate blood, get HIV, can you believe that.
I read numbers ranging from thousands to tens of thousands in linked reports. That's AIDS caused in that manner. Confirmed cases and/or educated estimates. So that would not include HIV-infected people that haven't got AIDS yet (some multiple of above numbers). With the medical science being where it is, eventual AIDS cases too. That would also not include unconfirmed/unreported cases, people who are infected with HIV but don't know this yet, or recent infections due to blood transfusions. Which are probably still happening here & there.
All of this combined very newsworthy I think, and certainly more than 'a few isolated cases'. So Chinese government is definitely hurting their people by sweeping this under the carpet.
No one seriously disputes that the creator has a right to be compensated.
Well I will seriously dispute that... The usual argument goes like "I put in a lot of effort, so I deserve to be paid for my effort". Counterargument: I put up a webpage recently, documenting something that took a lot of effort on my part. High learning curve, time spent, equipment use, internet use, making photo's & editing those, editing HTML, testing in different browsers, etc. So I deserve to get paid for that effort too, right?
Here's why not: nobody hired me for an agreed-upon hourly rate to do this work. I chose to do this myself, fully aware that there might not be anything in return for the effort. Also: what I might consider a job worth doing, or a valuable result, might be considered worthless/waste of time by everybody else. Whether it is or not, is just a matter of opinion. Let's assume 99% of people think it's crap, why should I deserve being paid to waste time producing that crap? Or the other way round: if 99% of people love it, would that make me deserve more to be paid for the effort than if I made something that only 1% of people like, but took similar effort?
What we really need is an easier way to say "thank you", and express that "thank you" in cold, hard cash. Let's say you download an MP3 somewhere, and after listening there's a button in your MP3 player that says "donate 1c/2c/5c/10c/20c to musician". If you like it, would you mind sending that 20c his/her way? 10c? 5c? 2c? 1c? With just that 1 click? I think most people wouldn't mind, if:
It really was that easy.
'Going rates' were in the order of, say, 1/10~1/100 of what you'd pay for a bread. Importantly: small enough that it's feasible to hand out $$ "thank you's" to many people whose stuff you like, and small enough that everybody would be handing out such "thank you's" regularly.
You could be sure that the money would end up in the hands of original creator, that is: in the hands of the person that did the 'heavy lifting' to produce that MP3.
Right now 1) doesn't work because payment systems aren't that easy to use, and no system works everywhere. 2) Doesn't work because only a small minority of users are paying (and thus they pay more), 3) doesn't work because current business models rely on middlemen to collect the $$. Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy fix for these problems, or that we'll see significant progress in this area soon. But who knows...
What will cyberwar look like? In a new book Richard Clarke, a former White House staffer in charge of counter-terrorism and cyber-security, envisages a catastrophic breakdown within 15 minutes. Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems; oil refineries and pipelines explode; air-traffic-control systems collapse; freight and metro trains derail; financial data are scrambled; the electrical grid goes down in the eastern United States; orbiting satellites spin out of control. Society soon breaks down as food becomes scarce and money runs out. Worst of all, the identity of the attacker may remain a mystery.
If you enable above-mentioned critical infrastructure to be controlled over a public network (no matter how well secured), that's a design flaw. Any damage from that should go on the account of the boneheads that designed things that way, not on cybercriminals that find a way in & abuse it. It's okay to use network-connected equipment to help optimize / monitor whatever public utility. But the controls should always go through (on-site) humans and/or network-independent systems.
Such doomsday think is BS anyway: if you keep the above in mind, it couldn't happen as long as attacks are limited to network / cyberwar operations. In case of physical attacks: that's a whole different ballgame. And if systems are designed such that network break-ins alone can disrupt critical infrastructure, then you deserve whatever you get.
Your comment makes no sense. First, if there would be these 2 types of users (and each group is significant) then the only thing that makes sense, is to provide both search & navigation options to get around a site, not emphasize one method over the other.
Second, you suggest that one method may be more effective than the other. Which is also nonsense: this depends on the site, how large it is, how well layed out the site's navigation is, the site's users, individual user habits & preferences, and even what contents is being searched. And sometimes a combination of search + navigation may get better results than either method.
Instead web design should promote the use of in-site search and back button use.
I'd assume that users who rely on in-site search, also rely on search engines a la Google to find a site in the 1st place. In that case, 'back' either doesn't work (new browser tab/window), or gets you back to search engine results. Read: makes the user leave a site immediately after hitting 1 page. That makes no sense from web designer's point of view: if you have something to offer, you want users to stay on your site.
As for me, I prefer to start with answering visitors' question "WTF is this?" for each page they land on. As to not annoy / waste time of visitors who were looking for something else, and provide a sense of "I'm here" for users that were looking for whatever you put up.
(..) the ICE said that it had worked with officials in the Netherlands to execute search warrants for some of the domain names and content. (..) Joe Biden, who said that the U.S. would crack down on piracy, even overseas.
(emphasis mine).
Hey, most of the 'pirates' here are below sea level, you insensitive clod!
And on a side note: we even had some real pirates recently (captured off the coast of Somalia)... Don't think they had any movies or 19" servers on them - good movie material, though.
Slashdot Mirror
The USPTO does not have (any or) enough patent/trademark clerks to really search out all instances of prior-art and because of the large back log are encouraged to just rubber stamp everything they come across if /they/ (who could be below-average in knowledge about a particular field) don't know of any prior art off-hand.
How about making the USPTO pay the legal bill whenever a patent is invalidated through the court system?
That way, there'd be no immediate punishment for granting bullshit patents. Patents that aren't challenged, wouldn't affect the USPTO's bottom line. But (if successful) would make it free for the challenging party to invalidate a patent. It would be a great incentive to watch general quality of issued patents, and perhaps hire enough people / raise fees to cover the actual required effort. If an important patent means a bigger legal bill when invalidated, that would help to pay more attention to patent applications with (potentially) wide impact.
I'm not a fan of patents in the 1st place, but weeding out the many nonsense-patents that are on record, would be a good start. Especially those nonsense-patents that patent trolls uses as beating stick, and that cost society a lot more (down the line) than hiring a few qualified patent clerks.
The upshot is that the hundreds or thousands of other distros are irrelevant when it comes to why, e.g., Linux graphics suck or software distribution is hard. Nobody cares or pays attention to those one-off distros or super-custom distros.
Well, that distro's maintainers (and users) care, which means their effort is not spent on improving the distro it's derived from. Sure some fixes will make it back to the parent distro, but only to a limited degree. Also that distro maintainers have to set up a lot of things (package repositories, source control system, bug tracking system etc) that the parent distro already had in place. If the on-off distro is just a small modification, that is wasted effort no matter how you look at it.
Since the main distros use more or less the same software (..)
Yes, and yet many resources for using / maintaining that same software are not shared - more unnecessary waste.
It has value for yourself, if you decide / manage to keep it (or at least some). It also has value to data mining companies / advertising firms / governments etc, should you decide (or be 'forced') to give it away. And it has negative value (aka damage) in case you lose it unintentionally.
Which brings me to a logical conclusion: when not forced, it's stupid to give away your privacy for free. If some company wants private information from you, you should always make sure to get something in return: either money, extra convenience in using their product, some 'privileges' that others don't have etc, whatever you think is worth giving up the private info you're turning over. And similarly: if some party violates your privacy (eg. data breach), they should pay, period. Either through monetary compensation or otherwise. Because they made you lose something valuable. Same way someone that makes a dent in your car should have to pay because it takes money to repair or makes your car worth less.
(cue many replies about how this is a good thing)
Agreed. If you look at how many Linux distro's there are, where they came from / how they are built, there are essentially a small number: some Fedora (.rpm) based, some Debian (.deb) based, some Slackware (plain .tar.gz), and a small number of distro's that have their own system for building packages from source (Gentoo & a few others).
Beyond that, practically all other distro's are just one of those above, with a specific package selection, a set of distro-specific patches applied to various packages, and customized artwork / default settings (like default user language). IMHO it would be a great advance if the Linux distro landscape could be reduced to just that: a small number of 'mother distros', and then for every other distro simply a pack of files that determines what makes that distro different from the one it's derived from. Distro's that deviate just a bit would have a small & easily maintained 'modification pack', distro's that move further away from their parent would have a bigger / more elaborate 'modification pack'.
That way there could be much more sharing of resources like package repositories, bug databases, programmer's time, etc, etc, versus each distro re-inventing their own wheels & having their own system for handling things that other distro's do as well. Maybe it wouldn't be possible to share binary packages (due to different compile flags & patches applied), but it could be possible to share a single build system, and a single source tree for all Linux distro's. Where each distro would consist of a set of patches against that source tree, a set of compile options, and a set of options that decide how the built binaries are divided over packages (and into CD images etc). With the custom artwork & distro-specific settings included somewhere along the build process.
And if there would ever be the chance of agreeing on a single package format, even those 'mother distros' might be integrated into one. But of course that's just daydreaming, another bridge too far that'll never happen because distro maintainers are stubborn people who want to do things their own way... (sigh)
Which may not be a bad thing - people with only happy memories, with no recollection of all the bad things that happened to him/her? Not so sure if you'd want that, there must be reasons that crap sticks in our minds (like: keeps you on the lookout to avoid more of it) ...
Ehm... 'public servant' need not automatically imply 'open for public view'. Examples: court cases behind closed doors (rarely, but sometimes for good reasons), public servants working with privacy-sensitive information (like your tax returns, medical records), etc, etc.
Location where it happens is the deciding factor IMHO. If it can be seen on/from a public road, it's fair game regardless who or what.
Probably the point is not so much to shield radiation, but to reduce / prevent direct contact, or (worse) ingestion of radioactive material. Depending on conditions & duration of the job, masks, goggles & gloves may just be adequate.
I fail to see the 'unconventional' here - as if people in [underdeveloped country of your choice] don't want to talk to each other. Or somehow network effects or being able to connect to the rest of the world doesn't count, just because your cell tower is the first in the area.
So you can't really say Digicel created such market(s) IMHO. It's more like the market did exist, and (by taking a big risk) they where the first to crack it open. Kudoz to them for having the balls, but that's about it. What it does show, is that (potentially) you can sell telecoms gear anywhere where there are people. And in a booming market, no less. Oh wait... news at 11.
Likewise, the article's premise of 'build infrastructure & clients will come' is nonsense. Put cellphone network in the middle of the Atlantic, and all it will do is sink.
How about: extract energy from that agricultural waste using biogas (possible now) or some combination of physical/chemical process (being worked on, with success here & there)? That way:
Seems like more effective way, and required tech is available now.
When HTML spec is extended that obviously increases the attack surface since popular browsers will have to support it. But in time it may replace a number of other technologies (Flash comes to mind), that -combined- may have a larger attack surface. And since displaying HTML is the core function of a browser, implementations are likely to be pretty solid compared to some add-ons.
So you'd have to look forward, and compare [average setup now] with [average setup in XX years from now]. If that comparison turns out positive, HTML5 is a move in the right direction.
Two points:
Indeed there's times & places where it's important to be sure who you are dealing with (for example when opening a bank account, or do a driver's exam), and having a unique ID for that purpose is okay IMO. What's wrong is using such unique ID anywhere & everywhere just because it's convenient, and store loads of info coupled to that single ID that isn't absolutely necessary for its purpose. Train company shouldn't need to know who's on the train & exactly what route someone is traveling, just that passenger has paid his/her ticket. Keeping more personally identifiable info than that around, is the same as poking around in people's private lives where you have no business poking around. Which is even worse when governments are doing it... Also love this quote:
"For the poor this is a huge benefit because they have no identities, no birth certificates, degree certificates, driver's licences, passports or even addresses."
If I were one of those poor, I'd be deeply offended by silly statement like that. All people on this planet have identities (as in: unique person unlike any other), place/date where they were born & address / area where they live. The only thing you're talking about here, are pieces of dead tree that state one thing or the other (true or otherwise).
I'd think the main advantage would be one of convenience - come home, drop cellphone on charging pad. When leaving, just pick up cellphone from charging pad. No fiddling with small power plugs or figuring out which adapter/plug goes into which device, and (if some sort of compatibility is maintained between these devices): drop multiple devices on the same (larger) charging pad.
Of course some losses would be associated with inductive charging, but unless very significant I doubt that's a problem for low power devices like cellphones.
Schmeiser deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications.
That may be a valid point when Monsanto-supplied GM crops are grown on 'isolated' fields, and those genetic traits are easily told apart from your own saved seeds and/or naturally occurring ones.
But how about when those modified genes are 'everywhere'? When your own saved seeds include them, even if you would not select at all? When it becomes impossible to find naturally occurring varieties without those genes? Should Monsanto still have a right to sue when it becomes impossible to avoid using crop with their genes in it? When their modified genes have spread so wide that naturally occurring species all have those genes? When selecting crops based on weedkiller-resistance is no different from weighing one naturally occurring species against another naturally occurring one (on whatever selection criteria a farmer may use) ?
Perhaps that would be a short-term fix to problems like these: patent any gene you want, but once it gets out in the wild, lose any protection. That would be a big incentive for companies to keep tabs on where their GM stuff is going. And thus, avoid polluting neighbor fields or roadsides with GM-modified crop (which as we know, is impossible to prevent in the 1st place).
For starters: if weedkiller-resistance gives these species only a slight advantage over their natural cousins, it could be just a matter of time until those natural cousins are wiped out - entirely, forever. Regardless of effects I would equate that to ongoing, irreversible environmental pollution on a massive scale (and ideally the business forces behind it should cough up massive damages a la BP oil spill - too bad the mighty $$$ will probably win out). While you may not think much of those natural occurring species, for example they may have a much more varied genetic makeup than the weedkiller-resistant species that are replacing them. Once replaced, that genetic variety could be gone, and that is never a good thing. What's worse: we may never know what was lost, in the same way we won't know what's lost when you clear a large area of rain forest.
Secondly, what's product on one field, is weed on another. Harder-to-kill weed, which means you'd have to spray more / nastier chemicals, or have reduced yields on such a field. Thus the easier-to-grow canola may equate to harder-to-grow agricultural products elsewhere. That's cold, hard, cash losses (which farmers won't be able to claim back from those responsible).
Genes that spread from GM-crops to wild canola might spread to other species as well? If so, effects are hard to predict but (given time) likely world-wide. If not: are you sure about that? Can we afford the risk? Should we?
To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion.
'Freeloading' often has a negative meaning, but in open source land the opposite is true IMHO. Any additional user helps to improve the software just by using it:
So regardless of who deserves credits, that's many networks effects that benefit all users of such software, Gnome included. Freeriding on that is about as harmful as watching new years' fireworks without lighting any of your own - you still contribute to the party, just by being there. And in that sense, Canonical has done a lot to support Linux - by attracting & supporting many new users.
MJPEG is insanely ineffective.
Motion JPEG is a good format when storing/transmitting the raw video data is beyond the hardware's capabilities (=often), but you want to do as little as possible post-processing. For example when shooting 30 second clips with a digital camera. Writing that to a memory card might be more power-efficient than including the electronics for an advanced video codec. Also that 'semi-raw' data is better material for post-processing (on PC for example) than video that's stronger compressed at the beginning.
So basically: suited as intermediate storage format. If ordinary consumers don't bother to post-process their videos, that's their business/problem.
If the user's ever satisfied, he'll stop clicking.
Hmmm... I always thought: "If you keep users happy, they'll come back for more!". But maybe that's just old-fashioned.
Also wouldn't seem practical to move a 'copper-printing pipette' around a silicon die to lay all the copper interconnects, unless you could have hundreds or thousands of such pipettes doing that simultaneous (still not efficient compared to existing methods I'd guess).
But perhaps a nice technique for silicon pad <-> I/O pin wiring. If result would be a stronger bond than what's currently done, perhaps that could improve reliability for some IC package types. And of course die-die interconnects for multi-chip modules.
The use of a few isolated cases to make the public panic and demand very expensive 100% fixes is not good for society.
A bit of Googling would tell you that HIV infections are relatively small part of China's population. BUT: blood transfusions being a significant cause. And with infections to donors too: donate blood, get HIV, can you believe that.
I read numbers ranging from thousands to tens of thousands in linked reports. That's AIDS caused in that manner. Confirmed cases and/or educated estimates. So that would not include HIV-infected people that haven't got AIDS yet (some multiple of above numbers). With the medical science being where it is, eventual AIDS cases too. That would also not include unconfirmed/unreported cases, people who are infected with HIV but don't know this yet, or recent infections due to blood transfusions. Which are probably still happening here & there.
All of this combined very newsworthy I think, and certainly more than 'a few isolated cases'. So Chinese government is definitely hurting their people by sweeping this under the carpet.
No one seriously disputes that the creator has a right to be compensated.
Well I will seriously dispute that... The usual argument goes like "I put in a lot of effort, so I deserve to be paid for my effort". Counterargument: I put up a webpage recently, documenting something that took a lot of effort on my part. High learning curve, time spent, equipment use, internet use, making photo's & editing those, editing HTML, testing in different browsers, etc. So I deserve to get paid for that effort too, right?
Here's why not: nobody hired me for an agreed-upon hourly rate to do this work. I chose to do this myself, fully aware that there might not be anything in return for the effort. Also: what I might consider a job worth doing, or a valuable result, might be considered worthless/waste of time by everybody else. Whether it is or not, is just a matter of opinion. Let's assume 99% of people think it's crap, why should I deserve being paid to waste time producing that crap? Or the other way round: if 99% of people love it, would that make me deserve more to be paid for the effort than if I made something that only 1% of people like, but took similar effort?
What we really need is an easier way to say "thank you", and express that "thank you" in cold, hard cash. Let's say you download an MP3 somewhere, and after listening there's a button in your MP3 player that says "donate 1c/2c/5c/10c/20c to musician". If you like it, would you mind sending that 20c his/her way? 10c? 5c? 2c? 1c? With just that 1 click? I think most people wouldn't mind, if:
Right now 1) doesn't work because payment systems aren't that easy to use, and no system works everywhere. 2) Doesn't work because only a small minority of users are paying (and thus they pay more), 3) doesn't work because current business models rely on middlemen to collect the $$. Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy fix for these problems, or that we'll see significant progress in this area soon. But who knows...
Gotta love this paragraph:
What will cyberwar look like? In a new book Richard Clarke, a former White House staffer in charge of counter-terrorism and cyber-security, envisages a catastrophic breakdown within 15 minutes. Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems; oil refineries and pipelines explode; air-traffic-control systems collapse; freight and metro trains derail; financial data are scrambled; the electrical grid goes down in the eastern United States; orbiting satellites spin out of control. Society soon breaks down as food becomes scarce and money runs out. Worst of all, the identity of the attacker may remain a mystery.
If you enable above-mentioned critical infrastructure to be controlled over a public network (no matter how well secured), that's a design flaw. Any damage from that should go on the account of the boneheads that designed things that way, not on cybercriminals that find a way in & abuse it. It's okay to use network-connected equipment to help optimize / monitor whatever public utility. But the controls should always go through (on-site) humans and/or network-independent systems.
Such doomsday think is BS anyway: if you keep the above in mind, it couldn't happen as long as attacks are limited to network / cyberwar operations. In case of physical attacks: that's a whole different ballgame. And if systems are designed such that network break-ins alone can disrupt critical infrastructure, then you deserve whatever you get.
And it's working, too !!
Your comment makes no sense. First, if there would be these 2 types of users (and each group is significant) then the only thing that makes sense, is to provide both search & navigation options to get around a site, not emphasize one method over the other.
Second, you suggest that one method may be more effective than the other. Which is also nonsense: this depends on the site, how large it is, how well layed out the site's navigation is, the site's users, individual user habits & preferences, and even what contents is being searched. And sometimes a combination of search + navigation may get better results than either method.
Instead web design should promote the use of in-site search and back button use.
I'd assume that users who rely on in-site search, also rely on search engines a la Google to find a site in the 1st place. In that case, 'back' either doesn't work (new browser tab/window), or gets you back to search engine results. Read: makes the user leave a site immediately after hitting 1 page. That makes no sense from web designer's point of view: if you have something to offer, you want users to stay on your site.
As for me, I prefer to start with answering visitors' question "WTF is this?" for each page they land on. As to not annoy / waste time of visitors who were looking for something else, and provide a sense of "I'm here" for users that were looking for whatever you put up.
From the article:
(..) the ICE said that it had worked with officials in the Netherlands to execute search warrants for some of the domain names and content. (..) Joe Biden, who said that the U.S. would crack down on piracy, even overseas.
(emphasis mine).
Hey, most of the 'pirates' here are below sea level, you insensitive clod!
And on a side note: we even had some real pirates recently (captured off the coast of Somalia)... Don't think they had any movies or 19" servers on them - good movie material, though.