I was considering a situation like on a merry-go-round, where the center post is rotating, but is considered to have no velocity, however the further out you go, the faster you go.
Something at the pole just rotates.
Something at the equator travels one equatorial circumference per day.
Of course, its all a matter of whats moving in relation to what.
I was considering the center of the Earth as my reference point.
Relating to the merry-go-round, I considered the center of the merry-go-round as the reference point.
Global warming is going to result in more water in the atmosphere, as increased temperature permits air to hold more water. ( Decrease the temperature, as on the surface of a glass of cold beer, and you will see the atmospheric water condense out on the outside of the glass.)
Water goes through a significant change in volume between the liquid and vapor phase. Enough to explode boilers or vacuum-collapse cans of steam which are capped then cooled.
Couple the volume change of water passing from the vapor phase to the liquid phase, and throw in the velocity change as polar air is drawn equatorially by the sling of centrifugal force ( as cold air is heavier than hot air - hot air rises ), and you have the makings of hurricanes.
Remember, polar air is moving about 0 mph at the exact North pole, but will have to be accelerated to ( circumference of the earth/24 hours )MPH as it goes to the equator. We have a significant coriolis effect here.
I have cited my observation the very laws of physics themselves - which I understand govern this situation. It is my strongest belief that we are indeed making one helluva mess by messing with our planet's thermal systems.
This is a little off-topic, but note the time stamps on these two adjacent posts both noting "adriannneee".
I have seen a lot of this on Slashdot, where the same thought comes to different people, whom I suppose have very little proximity to each other, yet both post the same thought within seconds of each other.
Often, one gets modded "redundant", even as the time stamps indicate there was no way the person posting redundantly could have possibly known of the other entry.
Does anyone have any speculation on the probability, given the enormous arena of thoughts possible to the human mind, that two individuals have identical thoughts simultaneously?
I have seen this phenomena too many times where different people far apart from each other have the same thoughts and develop uncannily similar technologies damn near simultaneously.
I keep getting this weird idea that there is yet some communication channel - call it ESP, PSI, or whatever - still in us humans that we have yet to identify and understand how it works.
I know my entry is a terribly off-topic post, but I wanted to catch a clear instance of this happening and point it out.
One company I used to work for thought cubicles were great. I guess managers liked seeing their engineers all boxed up in rows like a barn full of laying hens.
Problem was I was productive in the lab, not in a cubicle. I didn't last long there.
Funny, managers want engineers with "people skills", then think that holing us up in an enclosure similar to a bathroom stall is going to encourage productivity?
There are not many things I can do in a cubicle-sized stall. Maybe testing efficacy of different laxatives, but thats about it.
I figured such insight probably is similar to one who sees a beautiful report coming from a printer, buys that printer, takes it to the office, sets it up, and expects more fine work to come from the slot on the side of the machine.... completely unaware that the printer was hooked to a computer at the showroom.
I know my parable looks ludicrous, but often appears to be the Occam's razor solution for what I observe.
After reviewing the link... now again remind yourself about the petabyte. We are talking a helluva lotta data.
But as far as the article for this story goes, my bullshit detector is fully lit. This is the kind of stuff best presented to the PHB crowd with nice Powerpoint presentations; we techies are way too laid back to get excited over this.
I recycle my old plastic vodka bottles to keep unused paint in.
They seal nicely, and the transparent bottle lets me easily verify how much of what colors of paint I have.
The plastic they use has so far been resistant to even oil based paints.
The handy pourer even helps me transfer just the right amount to the cup I use for holding a little for touchups, and the bottle itself is designed with a neat place for holding onto it securely.
If they get knocked around, they ususally survive intact, without losing their contents.
Soda pop bottles work too, but they tip over much easier and are quite a bit more apt to spill.
And milk jugs, forget it. That's a major mess just waiting to happen.
As much as I would like to smear Bill Gates and Microsoft with this whole sordid affair of finicky unrobust computational infrastructure, the avenues are there to pick on Linux, or any other system based on our present hardware just as easy, by tricking the user into installing crapware, just as we often sign legally binding documents today without understanding their alternate intent.
A major problem, as I see it, is in the hardware architecture of our machines, where we freely intermingle code and data.
Just feed the computer one "computational illusion" that snarls the CPU out of "code sync" and we find ourselves executing DATA. This data, of course, can be crafted that when executed can instruct the machine to perform damn near any arbitrary function.
Some of the "earlier" eh... "more primitive" ( tongue in cheek ) machines I have worked with used the "Harvard Architecture" which had completely different areas for code space and data space. You could NOT access code space without going through some rather elaborate procedures; in my case it involved a completely different physical drive which had connections to the processor to access code space.
One was free to do ANYTHING in data space. There was simply no hardware to allow data to modify code. If you needed to install an executable, you really had to go out of your way to do it, as the machine itself flat could not.
Personally, I question why these machines that freely intermingle code and data in the same address space can ever be trusted in public usage. Its like dealing with people who are known to obey whatever anyone tells them to do, irregardless of what YOU told them to do.
What concerns me a lot is that large businesses appear to be abandoning older ( yet extremely secure ) systems and migrating to inexpensive insecure stuff simply because they can get dime-a-dozen "certified" personnel streaming in masse from business schools.
These people often have very little training in computer science and mostly know only how to install and configure a very specific OS. About as useful as used-car salesmen ( albeit they ARE useful to people who own used car lots!). And there's a helluva difference between a used-car salesman and a good seasoned mechanic.
It seems all of America as I know it is in some sort of "Teach to the Test" kind of mode where the only knowledge deemed worthy of teaching is only that which some employment model deems as important. Knowledge outside of the "rut" others want us in is verboten, and forbidden by law, which ( of course ) the bad guys pay no attention to anyway, leaving the "good guys" as defenseless as sheep amongst wolves.
All this is coming back to bite us. Instead of solving our problems intelligently and arranging the laws of physics to achieve our desires, we must beg our congressmen to wave their pens at our adversaries and pass law. When will we learn that no law crafted by men can save us from our own ignorance?
Why do foreign nations kowtow to Microsoft anyway?
Just tell Microsoft that their Patent legislation only grants Patent protection for processes whose operation has been made public.
Otherwise, its treated as a "trade secret", protected by secrecy alone, and once breached, the cat is out of the bag forever, protectionless by any law.
Wasn't that the original idea of Patent anyway? Making the IP public in exchange for legal protection from copycats for a limited time so as to give the originator time to benefit from his creativity?
Yup, I would think MLB "owns" the database as they are the ones who generated it.
But, is the MLB making a wise move by picking fights over it? I would think not.
Look at something similar - the stock market database.
I note ( well, in Mutual Funds anyway ), it seems Lipper and Morningstar have been keeping score. And I also note a bevy of brokerage houses ( Scottrade, Fidelity, E-Trade, Schwab, and others ) are sponsoring quite a few nice internet research sites trying like the dickens to interest the public in their offerings.
Somehow, I would think it would be in the MLB's best interest to do whatever it takes to keep the public's interest whetted. And fan clubs do exactly that.
Bickering over something like this makes all the sense to me as some copyright-happy record company executive prohibiting radio stations from publicizing their artist's products.
He sits with all this authority to keep every cent of record sales, yet no one out there knows what he has, so no-one opens the wallet. He fully claims his 100% right to the nothing he sells.
Yet, some people seem to think that way. May be they teach that kind of logic in today's business schools, based on the way I see their graduates behaving.
Re:Pop Quiz for Chem Geeks or Biologists
on
Chemical Words List
·
· Score: 1
I am contemplating someone with eye damage, where their imaging and focusing mechanisms are impaired, yet they may still be able to receive crude fixed-focus images.
This device ( with appropriate lensing ) could do exactly that.
An IPOD-like device could then act as a camera, allowing its wearer to see again.
Combine this with bluetooth, and we could enable those of us who don't have all the biological resources most of us take for granted to receive a nice gift.
Much like Visual Basic requires a Windows system for support code.
Its a quandary many business executives will face - especially if there is a "paradigm shift" and Linux systems start becoming widespread.
Will a financial business which invested heavily in Microsoft systems be able to communicate with a wealthy investor who runs a Linux based system?
Using business skills taught in today's business schools, the executive needs to consider the needs of Microsoft versus the needs of his customers, and from that make the decision on whether or not his corporation will require vendor-specific technologies that their customers must comply to in order to be their customer.
As usual, there will be the big corporate entities who don't give a damm about what their customers need, leaving the paths paved in gold for the growing small-cap companies who are trying to meet the needs of the customer. This is the main reason I am extremely reluctant to invest in large-cap companies - as often large-cap companies have grown beyond serving the customer, and its all about obedience to the CEO.
When you are a multi-trillion dollar company, what difference would it make to you anyway if your customers can't do business with you? When the corporate website proudly proclaims that if you don't meet the latest release of vendor-specific software, they can't talk to you, they get more and more like an exclusive club... Trying to do business with them is flat more trouble than its worth. Its like trying to buy stock or mutual funds through a "full-service" broker. They won't do what you want - rather they insist you choose among only the things they will allow you. I have no place in my life for those kind of people.
There will be a Sam Walton that will gladly accept those business's unwanted customers.
The big corporate CEO can do the thing big corporate CEO's do best : showing downward sloping graphs in front of investors and claiming a "dissapointing return" in light of all the small-caps around them making impressive gains. What do big financial corporations need customers for anyway? At their level, its all about power, not service.
Its amazing to me just how inattentive large financial institutions are to their customers - seeing them drift away after discussions on things like website compatibility. Does the financial institution ever think those customers will come back once they get established somewhere else? Do they know any future mailings they issue will be thought of as "junk mail" and tossed in the can without even being opened? Any effort they make to phone you will be thought of as a highly unwelcome interruption? It is so *easy* to lose a customer... damn near impossible to *get* one.
You just entered what I consider the most insightful essay in this entire thread.
I'd mod you up myself if I had any points.
You might get a kick out of some research done by Yale University psychology graduate student Stanley Milgram back in the 1950's. His work, "Obedience to Authority", has ( much to my happiness ) been recently reprinted and is available in many bookstores. Its a tiny book - but what's inside will probably shock you. He showed where people are so trained to be "obedient" that they will literally and willingly ELECTROCUTE a completely innocent person on no more authority than the voice of a man in a white lab coat.
I have a copy of his earlier research, and fearing it would never be reprinted because of the quite shocking nature of its contents, hung onto it dearly.
A good rant always makes good reading here on Slashdot. I hope the others mod you up so your post gets snared by the corporate bots which mine Slashdot for public opinion.
My sentiments exactly. I wish I had mod points for you.
We live in a day where our lives are almost inextricably linked to machines.
It is in my best interest to know exactly what my machine is doing. Its an old variant of "Its 10:00 PM, do you know where your kids are?", but in my case, its "You are online. Do you know what your machine is doing?"
Modern corporate/governmental gamesmanship permit today's corporations to advertise nearly anything without requiring them to back it up... like slogans such as "plays for sure". Do you really think that's a guarantee the thing will work? Its no more serious than a campaign promise, whether its a vote or a spent dollar.
I have been fussing at my bank lately about their coding which requires me to enable scripting languages. I had to leave the broker my company had my retirement plan through because they required a Windows machine. I flat cannot trust a machine which has the history Windows has with viral problems, nor can I trust a bank that requires me to enable scripting languages.
I have enough respect for the bank to NOT walk into their place of business wearing a ski mask and concealing things that may be threatening. I expect the same courtesy, by having them discuss my banking affairs in pure simple verifiable HTML, and not use technologies that are commonly used on porn sites to try to shanghai info from my machine. How many times here on Slashdot have we noted to disable scripting languages when security is paramount? Why - of all people - would a financial institution require me to drop security to talk to them????
The 128 bit secure links work fine with plain HTML, and shutting down all scripting assures me I have no rogue delayed scripts just waiting to shanghai information which I intended to go to the financial institution I was logged on to.
Personally, I consider Windows to be a "Business-Class" system mostly marketed to those who delegate problems to someone else and don't have to take personal responsibility for screwups. Most of the people buying these systems do business with pens, handshakes, and lots of signatures on paper, but don't feel at home at all around a debugger.
( Yeh, I know that line may get me modded as flamebait, but thats exactly the way I feel about it, and I am trying any way I can to let the business types know how I feel about their buggy systems when I have to get involved with them.)
I see the Windows philosophy in the same light as a front-load mutual fund, where I relate Linus to the "no-load" stuff. On one, you pay a pretty substantial fee, and often receive poorly performing investments, whereas with the other, you have to do your homework, but often get stellar returns. However, with the load fund, you do get the personal attention of a broker, and get told you are making "sound financial plans for your future" and that kinda stuff, and get your hand shaken. If you have lotsa money and don't really wanna do your research, I guess its not a bad way to go.
I have noted before that a mountain climber and a shopkeeper may have entirely different parameters for evaluating rope. The "money people" seem to be looking to have their hand shaken by a well-dressed business representative who has the people skills to butter them up and call them a "technology partner" and that kind of stuff. A lot of us here deal with all the problems and choose robustness over anything else, for what good is a bunch of fancystuff if it is a maintenance nightmare?
So far, we have been extremely fortunate that the viral infections so far have been mostly benign, only trying to reproduce themselves.
Look how long that Sony virus was around... undetected!
The virus I am leery of is one specially targeted at specific institutions, not just a simple program designed to have an orgy in every machine it meets. Such a virus may be designed to lay low, then roam through the computer's files, maybe alter
Your insight on "eminent domain" was the very first thing that came to mind when I saw this topic. To avoid redunancy, I scanned the page for "eminent" before posting, and I see you already nailed it. If I had mod points, I would have bumped you up instead of posting.
Ever since the Kelo vs. New London case that was discussed here on Slashdot, I have wondered how long the sanctity of patenting would last, being the whole idea behind the eminent domain is the condemnation of private ownership when many would benefit from its deprivatization. The Supreme Court of this Land has said its OK to do this.
So how long can patents stand up if people have already lost their homes? We are talking real physical property confiscated, not just some permission from our government to do something while keeping anybody else from doing it too.
I somewhat anxiously await the day when businesses are prohibited from putting up fences to deter pedestrian traffic in this day of oil shortgages and as we try to encourage pedestrian, rather than motored, means of public transport. The situation coming immediately to mind is the Colton Company, who "repaired" the holes in the fences adjoining Anaheim Stadium right before the big game, so pedestrians would have to travel an extra mile out of their way to get to the game. If peoples very homes can be condemned so a business can take their land, can these very laws be interpreted to inhibit businesses from placing blockages on their land so that pedestrians can't even pass through?
I think we need enough people aware of what gift the Supreme Court has awarded us, and USE it! The Supreme Court of this Land has already said if more people would benefit from deprivatization, its OK to do so. So what are we waititng for?
( Yeh, some people may think this is flamebait. What I really want is to plant an idea and make everyone THINK about whats happening here... )
And note I was cagey around the Bible, as it is written by Man, whereas I consider the Laws of Physics to be written by God himself.
I don't know what God is, and am also quite firmly convinced no one else does either.
Thanks for the link BTW! I collect those links to help me support my position that we should use our BRAINS, not blind obedience, to seek God. Stanley Milgram did some extensive research on Obedience . I have his book, and found it to be a real eye-opener on how people can be led to do terrible things in the name of obedience. My own feeling is this book has helped me recognize the pattern of how the 'control people' operate - albeit it has damned near ruined my 'team player' attribute. It now takes a helluva lot more than some well-coifed head jabbering atop a $500 suit to sway me, I insist that the head make sense.
I have to take anything that has been exposed to an error prone channel as likely to have some error, and not take it as absolute - especially when contradictions show up. If one sees black specks in a jar of supposedly pure white sand, its kinda obvious its been contaminated. Once contamination has been observed, I feel free to speculate there may be other unseen contamination, like its easy to see salt contaminated with black pepper, but I also consider if pepper is present, salt or sand may be present too.
One of the teachings in the Bible concerns what servants given 'talents', which in those days supposedly referenced a quantity of money, were expected to do with them. If my maker gave me intelligence to try to seek him out via the native curiousity He endowed me with, does he really expect me to "bury" my reasoning senses and do nothing with them, only because some other head tells me that its wrong to question and I should just follow. ( And, of course, I am expected to follow the guy giving me the "I am closer to God than you are so you should do as I say", never the other way around!!! ).
Especially, knowing the kind of things things men will do when they blindly obey, and override their own intelligence?
Do you believe God made the Universe, Heaven, Earth, and everything in it?
I do.
Science is the word we use to describe our research trying to find God through evidence of his Creation.
You think Man authored the Laws of Physics which scientists hold so dear? Think again. No man set Avagadro's constant, or any of the other parameters of our observable universe.
If God did create us, did he intend us to try to find Him, or mull around like a bunch of obedient ignorant sheep doing the bidding of those who take it in their mind to control us?
Think of what each faction is trying to do. Scientists are trying to understand God's creation and what our place in it is supposed to be. Damn near every religion I have even run across is full of control and obedience to men, often without ANY concrete evidence of truth, just hearsay.
Now, in the BIBLE you referred to, even there, if you take the BIBLE to be literally the Word of God, it is full of warnings of the false prophet.
Personally, I feel a lot closer to my Creator knowing I can see and verify His work, knowing full good and well I am seeing work of intelligent design. I do not feel comfortable at all dealing with people who sell me a relationship with my Creator like they would sell me a speculative stock investment, based on hearsay and faith that its a sound investment.
Maybe I am a bit jaded by now, but it seems all I have seen religions do is fight. I get the idea all this fighting pleases God about as much as I appreciate my cats fighting. Believe me, I derive no pleasure at all in seeing my cats all scratched up, ears mangled, and bloody.
Am I supposed to believe there is a God up there somewhere who tells various factions all over the Earth to gather in his name and smite the other ones?
Or does simple knowledge of human behavioural psychologies and obedience structures indicate the Gods of Religion are just some entity created by men so they could use it to control other men?
If God created me with sufficient intelligence to seek Him, why is he gonna hold it against me for doing exactly that?
I can't tell you how many "close calls" I have had from people who apparently deliberately tried to have an accident with me by doing something incredibly stupid - like opening car doors right in front of me or zooming like hell to get around me only to slam on their brakes once they were in the lead.
I'd love to have the video witness of what the other guy did to help me present my side of what happened to the jury.
If I am at fault, fine, I'll pay my responsibilities, but its presently just way to easy to "frame" others so they can go after lucrative insurance settlements.
Having a system such as this ( as well as decoys available for those who cannot afford the operative unit ) along with several well publicized fraud attempts backfiring on the perpetrators, would probably do much to deter those who deliberately instigate accidents to rip off insurance companies.
Nice, clean ANALOG RGB signals MUST be presented to the CRT cathodes before the tube can present an image.
And there are beautiful horizontal and vertical sync signals available at the deflection yoke.
Isn't this like selling some business a ten-foot thick steel door to protect the front of his business, while ignoring the cardboard wall next to it?
It makes a helluva lot of money for the steel door vendor, but does the businessman no good at all, matter of fact, its just a hinderance for his paying customers, no hinderance at all for the thief, who simply cuts through the cardboard wall.
This is the kind of "protection" one sells to the corporate tie-guy, not what you sell to people knowledgeable in the field.
There is just so much stuff I do not know, and the more things I find out, the less confidence I have in things I once thought to be immutable and true to be so.
Slashdot Mirror
The significance of the plain naked number, an integer, 137, has puzzled physicists for decades.
Google's list.
I was considering a situation like on a merry-go-round, where the center post is rotating, but is considered to have no velocity, however the further out you go, the faster you go.
Something at the pole just rotates.
Something at the equator travels one equatorial circumference per day.
Of course, its all a matter of whats moving in relation to what.
I was considering the center of the Earth as my reference point.
Relating to the merry-go-round, I considered the center of the merry-go-round as the reference point.
Global warming is going to result in more water in the atmosphere, as increased temperature permits air to hold more water. ( Decrease the temperature, as on the surface of a glass of cold beer, and you will see the atmospheric water condense out on the outside of the glass.)
Water goes through a significant change in volume between the liquid and vapor phase. Enough to explode boilers or vacuum-collapse cans of steam which are capped then cooled.
Couple the volume change of water passing from the vapor phase to the liquid phase, and throw in the velocity change as polar air is drawn equatorially by the sling of centrifugal force ( as cold air is heavier than hot air - hot air rises ), and you have the makings of hurricanes.
Remember, polar air is moving about 0 mph at the exact North pole, but will have to be accelerated to ( circumference of the earth/24 hours )MPH as it goes to the equator. We have a significant coriolis effect here.
I have cited my observation the very laws of physics themselves - which I understand govern this situation. It is my strongest belief that we are indeed making one helluva mess by messing with our planet's thermal systems.
I have seen a lot of this on Slashdot, where the same thought comes to different people, whom I suppose have very little proximity to each other, yet both post the same thought within seconds of each other.
Often, one gets modded "redundant", even as the time stamps indicate there was no way the person posting redundantly could have possibly known of the other entry.
Does anyone have any speculation on the probability, given the enormous arena of thoughts possible to the human mind, that two individuals have identical thoughts simultaneously?
I have seen this phenomena too many times where different people far apart from each other have the same thoughts and develop uncannily similar technologies damn near simultaneously.
I keep getting this weird idea that there is yet some communication channel - call it ESP, PSI, or whatever - still in us humans that we have yet to identify and understand how it works.
I know my entry is a terribly off-topic post, but I wanted to catch a clear instance of this happening and point it out.
One company I used to work for thought cubicles were great. I guess managers liked seeing their engineers all boxed up in rows like a barn full of laying hens.
Problem was I was productive in the lab, not in a cubicle. I didn't last long there.
Funny, managers want engineers with "people skills", then think that holing us up in an enclosure similar to a bathroom stall is going to encourage productivity?
There are not many things I can do in a cubicle-sized stall. Maybe testing efficacy of different laxatives, but thats about it.
I figured such insight probably is similar to one who sees a beautiful report coming from a printer, buys that printer, takes it to the office, sets it up, and expects more fine work to come from the slot on the side of the machine.... completely unaware that the printer was hooked to a computer at the showroom.
I know my parable looks ludicrous, but often appears to be the Occam's razor solution for what I observe.
Its posts like yours that make a read of Slashdot worthwhile.
After reviewing the link... now again remind yourself about the petabyte. We are talking a helluva lotta data.
But as far as the article for this story goes, my bullshit detector is fully lit. This is the kind of stuff best presented to the PHB crowd with nice Powerpoint presentations; we techies are way too laid back to get excited over this.
Need I say more?
They seal nicely, and the transparent bottle lets me easily verify how much of what colors of paint I have.
The plastic they use has so far been resistant to even oil based paints.
The handy pourer even helps me transfer just the right amount to the cup I use for holding a little for touchups, and the bottle itself is designed with a neat place for holding onto it securely.
If they get knocked around, they ususally survive intact, without losing their contents.
Soda pop bottles work too, but they tip over much easier and are quite a bit more apt to spill.
And milk jugs, forget it. That's a major mess just waiting to happen.
As much as I would like to smear Bill Gates and Microsoft with this whole sordid affair of finicky unrobust computational infrastructure, the avenues are there to pick on Linux, or any other system based on our present hardware just as easy, by tricking the user into installing crapware, just as we often sign legally binding documents today without understanding their alternate intent.
A major problem, as I see it, is in the hardware architecture of our machines, where we freely intermingle code and data.
Just feed the computer one "computational illusion" that snarls the CPU out of "code sync" and we find ourselves executing DATA. This data, of course, can be crafted that when executed can instruct the machine to perform damn near any arbitrary function.
Some of the "earlier" eh... "more primitive" ( tongue in cheek ) machines I have worked with used the "Harvard Architecture" which had completely different areas for code space and data space. You could NOT access code space without going through some rather elaborate procedures; in my case it involved a completely different physical drive which had connections to the processor to access code space.
One was free to do ANYTHING in data space. There was simply no hardware to allow data to modify code. If you needed to install an executable, you really had to go out of your way to do it, as the machine itself flat could not.
Personally, I question why these machines that freely intermingle code and data in the same address space can ever be trusted in public usage. Its like dealing with people who are known to obey whatever anyone tells them to do, irregardless of what YOU told them to do.
What concerns me a lot is that large businesses appear to be abandoning older ( yet extremely secure ) systems and migrating to inexpensive insecure stuff simply because they can get dime-a-dozen "certified" personnel streaming in masse from business schools. These people often have very little training in computer science and mostly know only how to install and configure a very specific OS. About as useful as used-car salesmen ( albeit they ARE useful to people who own used car lots!). And there's a helluva difference between a used-car salesman and a good seasoned mechanic.
It seems all of America as I know it is in some sort of "Teach to the Test" kind of mode where the only knowledge deemed worthy of teaching is only that which some employment model deems as important. Knowledge outside of the "rut" others want us in is verboten, and forbidden by law, which ( of course ) the bad guys pay no attention to anyway, leaving the "good guys" as defenseless as sheep amongst wolves.
All this is coming back to bite us. Instead of solving our problems intelligently and arranging the laws of physics to achieve our desires, we must beg our congressmen to wave their pens at our adversaries and pass law. When will we learn that no law crafted by men can save us from our own ignorance?
Just tell Microsoft that their Patent legislation only grants Patent protection for processes whose operation has been made public.
Otherwise, its treated as a "trade secret", protected by secrecy alone, and once breached, the cat is out of the bag forever, protectionless by any law.
Wasn't that the original idea of Patent anyway? Making the IP public in exchange for legal protection from copycats for a limited time so as to give the originator time to benefit from his creativity?
But, is the MLB making a wise move by picking fights over it? I would think not.
Look at something similar - the stock market database.
I note ( well, in Mutual Funds anyway ), it seems Lipper and Morningstar have been keeping score. And I also note a bevy of brokerage houses ( Scottrade, Fidelity, E-Trade, Schwab, and others ) are sponsoring quite a few nice internet research sites trying like the dickens to interest the public in their offerings.
Somehow, I would think it would be in the MLB's best interest to do whatever it takes to keep the public's interest whetted. And fan clubs do exactly that.
Bickering over something like this makes all the sense to me as some copyright-happy record company executive prohibiting radio stations from publicizing their artist's products.
He sits with all this authority to keep every cent of record sales, yet no one out there knows what he has, so no-one opens the wallet. He fully claims his 100% right to the nothing he sells.
Yet, some people seem to think that way. May be they teach that kind of logic in today's business schools, based on the way I see their graduates behaving.
Sodium?
I am contemplating someone with eye damage, where their imaging and focusing mechanisms are impaired, yet they may still be able to receive crude fixed-focus images.
This device ( with appropriate lensing ) could do exactly that.
An IPOD-like device could then act as a camera, allowing its wearer to see again.
Combine this with bluetooth, and we could enable those of us who don't have all the biological resources most of us take for granted to receive a nice gift.
Much like Visual Basic requires a Windows system for support code.
Its a quandary many business executives will face - especially if there is a "paradigm shift" and Linux systems start becoming widespread.
Will a financial business which invested heavily in Microsoft systems be able to communicate with a wealthy investor who runs a Linux based system?
Using business skills taught in today's business schools, the executive needs to consider the needs of Microsoft versus the needs of his customers, and from that make the decision on whether or not his corporation will require vendor-specific technologies that their customers must comply to in order to be their customer.
As usual, there will be the big corporate entities who don't give a damm about what their customers need, leaving the paths paved in gold for the growing small-cap companies who are trying to meet the needs of the customer. This is the main reason I am extremely reluctant to invest in large-cap companies - as often large-cap companies have grown beyond serving the customer, and its all about obedience to the CEO.
When you are a multi-trillion dollar company, what difference would it make to you anyway if your customers can't do business with you? When the corporate website proudly proclaims that if you don't meet the latest release of vendor-specific software, they can't talk to you, they get more and more like an exclusive club... Trying to do business with them is flat more trouble than its worth. Its like trying to buy stock or mutual funds through a "full-service" broker. They won't do what you want - rather they insist you choose among only the things they will allow you. I have no place in my life for those kind of people.
There will be a Sam Walton that will gladly accept those business's unwanted customers.
The big corporate CEO can do the thing big corporate CEO's do best : showing downward sloping graphs in front of investors and claiming a "dissapointing return" in light of all the small-caps around them making impressive gains. What do big financial corporations need customers for anyway? At their level, its all about power, not service.
Its amazing to me just how inattentive large financial institutions are to their customers - seeing them drift away after discussions on things like website compatibility. Does the financial institution ever think those customers will come back once they get established somewhere else? Do they know any future mailings they issue will be thought of as "junk mail" and tossed in the can without even being opened? Any effort they make to phone you will be thought of as a highly unwelcome interruption? It is so *easy* to lose a customer... damn near impossible to *get* one.
Its what's making Sam Walton rich.
You just entered what I consider the most insightful essay in this entire thread.
I'd mod you up myself if I had any points.
You might get a kick out of some research done by Yale University psychology graduate student Stanley Milgram back in the 1950's. His work, "Obedience to Authority", has ( much to my happiness ) been recently reprinted and is available in many bookstores. Its a tiny book - but what's inside will probably shock you. He showed where people are so trained to be "obedient" that they will literally and willingly ELECTROCUTE a completely innocent person on no more authority than the voice of a man in a white lab coat.
I have a copy of his earlier research, and fearing it would never be reprinted because of the quite shocking nature of its contents, hung onto it dearly.
A good rant always makes good reading here on Slashdot. I hope the others mod you up so your post gets snared by the corporate bots which mine Slashdot for public opinion.
My sentiments exactly. I wish I had mod points for you.
We live in a day where our lives are almost inextricably linked to machines.
It is in my best interest to know exactly what my machine is doing. Its an old variant of "Its 10:00 PM, do you know where your kids are?", but in my case, its "You are online. Do you know what your machine is doing?"
Modern corporate/governmental gamesmanship permit today's corporations to advertise nearly anything without requiring them to back it up... like slogans such as "plays for sure". Do you really think that's a guarantee the thing will work? Its no more serious than a campaign promise, whether its a vote or a spent dollar.
I have been fussing at my bank lately about their coding which requires me to enable scripting languages. I had to leave the broker my company had my retirement plan through because they required a Windows machine. I flat cannot trust a machine which has the history Windows has with viral problems, nor can I trust a bank that requires me to enable scripting languages.
I have enough respect for the bank to NOT walk into their place of business wearing a ski mask and concealing things that may be threatening. I expect the same courtesy, by having them discuss my banking affairs in pure simple verifiable HTML, and not use technologies that are commonly used on porn sites to try to shanghai info from my machine. How many times here on Slashdot have we noted to disable scripting languages when security is paramount? Why - of all people - would a financial institution require me to drop security to talk to them???? The 128 bit secure links work fine with plain HTML, and shutting down all scripting assures me I have no rogue delayed scripts just waiting to shanghai information which I intended to go to the financial institution I was logged on to. Personally, I consider Windows to be a "Business-Class" system mostly marketed to those who delegate problems to someone else and don't have to take personal responsibility for screwups. Most of the people buying these systems do business with pens, handshakes, and lots of signatures on paper, but don't feel at home at all around a debugger.
( Yeh, I know that line may get me modded as flamebait, but thats exactly the way I feel about it, and I am trying any way I can to let the business types know how I feel about their buggy systems when I have to get involved with them.)
I see the Windows philosophy in the same light as a front-load mutual fund, where I relate Linus to the "no-load" stuff. On one, you pay a pretty substantial fee, and often receive poorly performing investments, whereas with the other, you have to do your homework, but often get stellar returns. However, with the load fund, you do get the personal attention of a broker, and get told you are making "sound financial plans for your future" and that kinda stuff, and get your hand shaken. If you have lotsa money and don't really wanna do your research, I guess its not a bad way to go.
I have noted before that a mountain climber and a shopkeeper may have entirely different parameters for evaluating rope. The "money people" seem to be looking to have their hand shaken by a well-dressed business representative who has the people skills to butter them up and call them a "technology partner" and that kind of stuff. A lot of us here deal with all the problems and choose robustness over anything else, for what good is a bunch of fancystuff if it is a maintenance nightmare?
So far, we have been extremely fortunate that the viral infections so far have been mostly benign, only trying to reproduce themselves.
Look how long that Sony virus was around... undetected!
The virus I am leery of is one specially targeted at specific institutions, not just a simple program designed to have an orgy in every machine it meets. Such a virus may be designed to lay low, then roam through the computer's files, maybe alter
Ever since the Kelo vs. New London case that was discussed here on Slashdot, I have wondered how long the sanctity of patenting would last, being the whole idea behind the eminent domain is the condemnation of private ownership when many would benefit from its deprivatization. The Supreme Court of this Land has said its OK to do this.
So how long can patents stand up if people have already lost their homes? We are talking real physical property confiscated, not just some permission from our government to do something while keeping anybody else from doing it too.
I somewhat anxiously await the day when businesses are prohibited from putting up fences to deter pedestrian traffic in this day of oil shortgages and as we try to encourage pedestrian, rather than motored, means of public transport. The situation coming immediately to mind is the Colton Company, who "repaired" the holes in the fences adjoining Anaheim Stadium right before the big game, so pedestrians would have to travel an extra mile out of their way to get to the game. If peoples very homes can be condemned so a business can take their land, can these very laws be interpreted to inhibit businesses from placing blockages on their land so that pedestrians can't even pass through?
I think we need enough people aware of what gift the Supreme Court has awarded us, and USE it! The Supreme Court of this Land has already said if more people would benefit from deprivatization, its OK to do so. So what are we waititng for?
( Yeh, some people may think this is flamebait. What I really want is to plant an idea and make everyone THINK about whats happening here... )
I perceive you and I think very similar.
Note I never defined God.
And note I was cagey around the Bible, as it is written by Man, whereas I consider the Laws of Physics to be written by God himself.
I don't know what God is, and am also quite firmly convinced no one else does either.
Thanks for the link BTW! I collect those links to help me support my position that we should use our BRAINS, not blind obedience, to seek God. Stanley Milgram did some extensive research on Obedience . I have his book, and found it to be a real eye-opener on how people can be led to do terrible things in the name of obedience. My own feeling is this book has helped me recognize the pattern of how the 'control people' operate - albeit it has damned near ruined my 'team player' attribute. It now takes a helluva lot more than some well-coifed head jabbering atop a $500 suit to sway me, I insist that the head make sense.
I have to take anything that has been exposed to an error prone channel as likely to have some error, and not take it as absolute - especially when contradictions show up. If one sees black specks in a jar of supposedly pure white sand, its kinda obvious its been contaminated. Once contamination has been observed, I feel free to speculate there may be other unseen contamination, like its easy to see salt contaminated with black pepper, but I also consider if pepper is present, salt or sand may be present too.
One of the teachings in the Bible concerns what servants given 'talents', which in those days supposedly referenced a quantity of money, were expected to do with them. If my maker gave me intelligence to try to seek him out via the native curiousity He endowed me with, does he really expect me to "bury" my reasoning senses and do nothing with them, only because some other head tells me that its wrong to question and I should just follow. ( And, of course, I am expected to follow the guy giving me the "I am closer to God than you are so you should do as I say", never the other way around!!! ).
Especially, knowing the kind of things things men will do when they blindly obey, and override their own intelligence?
No sir.
Do you believe God made the Universe, Heaven, Earth, and everything in it?
I do.
Science is the word we use to describe our research trying to find God through evidence of his Creation.
You think Man authored the Laws of Physics which scientists hold so dear? Think again. No man set Avagadro's constant, or any of the other parameters of our observable universe.
If God did create us, did he intend us to try to find Him, or mull around like a bunch of obedient ignorant sheep doing the bidding of those who take it in their mind to control us?
Think of what each faction is trying to do. Scientists are trying to understand God's creation and what our place in it is supposed to be. Damn near every religion I have even run across is full of control and obedience to men, often without ANY concrete evidence of truth, just hearsay.
Now, in the BIBLE you referred to, even there, if you take the BIBLE to be literally the Word of God, it is full of warnings of the false prophet.
Personally, I feel a lot closer to my Creator knowing I can see and verify His work, knowing full good and well I am seeing work of intelligent design. I do not feel comfortable at all dealing with people who sell me a relationship with my Creator like they would sell me a speculative stock investment, based on hearsay and faith that its a sound investment.
Maybe I am a bit jaded by now, but it seems all I have seen religions do is fight. I get the idea all this fighting pleases God about as much as I appreciate my cats fighting. Believe me, I derive no pleasure at all in seeing my cats all scratched up, ears mangled, and bloody.
Am I supposed to believe there is a God up there somewhere who tells various factions all over the Earth to gather in his name and smite the other ones?
Or does simple knowledge of human behavioural psychologies and obedience structures indicate the Gods of Religion are just some entity created by men so they could use it to control other men?
If God created me with sufficient intelligence to seek Him, why is he gonna hold it against me for doing exactly that?
I can't tell you how many "close calls" I have had from people who apparently deliberately tried to have an accident with me by doing something incredibly stupid - like opening car doors right in front of me or zooming like hell to get around me only to slam on their brakes once they were in the lead.
I'd love to have the video witness of what the other guy did to help me present my side of what happened to the jury.
If I am at fault, fine, I'll pay my responsibilities, but its presently just way to easy to "frame" others so they can go after lucrative insurance settlements.
Having a system such as this ( as well as decoys available for those who cannot afford the operative unit ) along with several well publicized fraud attempts backfiring on the perpetrators, would probably do much to deter those who deliberately instigate accidents to rip off insurance companies.
Does it use a CRT?
Nice, clean ANALOG RGB signals MUST be presented to the CRT cathodes before the tube can present an image.
And there are beautiful horizontal and vertical sync signals available at the deflection yoke.
Isn't this like selling some business a ten-foot thick steel door to protect the front of his business, while ignoring the cardboard wall next to it?
It makes a helluva lot of money for the steel door vendor, but does the businessman no good at all, matter of fact, its just a hinderance for his paying customers, no hinderance at all for the thief, who simply cuts through the cardboard wall.
This is the kind of "protection" one sells to the corporate tie-guy, not what you sell to people knowledgeable in the field.
Could it be as simple as rerouting engine noise back to perturb or dither the airflow on the wings be sufficient?
Or maybe one would have to tune the spectral content of the noise for the flight condition of the moment?
Interesting observation, but I am not one to wanna make anything more complicated than it needs to be.
There is just so much stuff I do not know, and the more things I find out, the less confidence I have in things I once thought to be immutable and true to be so.
Geez, onset of Alzheimer's???