Whatever the original intent may have been, look at the teaparty.org homepage. These are not people interested in civil debate of how to implement their principles.
Taking a quick scan of the teaparty.org home page, they seem to be more anti-Democrat than for anything in particular.
If they were really an organization of principle instead of partisanship they would be trying to push both parties to work with their principles, in particular note their stance on Gen. McChrystal's comments. It doesn't matter whether he was right or wrong, that level of public insubordination is unprofessional and behavior unbecoming an officer in the US military.
That they have an article supporting him on their home page indicates that they simply hate President Obama, no matter what he does, rather than a principled stand in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.
It looks like one but a Magnetic Grid fusion device replaces the electric grid of the Fusor with a self-shielding magnetic grid. The idea is to create a "virtual Fusor" with the magnetic fields inside, thus eliminating grid losses.
A full-scale prototype has yet to be built, but I have seen an estimate that a magnetic grid of under 2m diameter is necessary for break-even which is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper to build and test than even the cheapest Tokomak.
To paraphrase a great quote: You are so wrong that even in a universe where you were somehow right you would still be wrong.
When you start treating common tools as weapons you turn vast swaths of the population into criminals, which is only a good thing if you consider a police state where everyone is a criminal a good thing.
The (not so) funny part is that's where eternal copyright+DMCA leads us, too.
Have you done anything illegal this week?
If you think the answer is "no", how sure are you of that really?
The public domain can still be profitable, even if it is only a couple decades past.
Primarily in response to:
If there was a massive public domain filled with all the cool movies made in the 80's, would we really bother to watch new ones as much?
Styles change, techniques change, it doesn't take that long for even a great film to start looking dated. There will always be a market for new productions, even (or especially) of past works.
To each their own then. I prefer the movie theater experience even though I indulge much less frequently in recent years. Fortunately we have a couple nice, clean second run theaters in my area.
Well, as someone who goes to second run theaters and only buys CD's and DVD's used simply because I dislike being treated as a criminal I can guarantee you that anti-piracy has cost the music and movie industry thousands to tens of thousands of dollars *from me alone*. One movie a week, cable subscription, and one CD a month not purchased that I used to adds up to a lot when taken over decades (OK, only 5 years cable-free, but that's around $4K all by itself).
50 Foot screen. Sound system I couldn't get away with playing at that volume without the neighbors complaining in any urban/suburban neighborhood. I can get a half dozen friends with their families into a movie theater comfortably.
Unless you are genuinely wealthy and can afford a home theater that is essentially a real theater it just can't compare.
I humbly disagree, and offer these profitable movies in evidence: Sherlock Holmes Frankenstein Snow White The Hunchback of Notre Dame Hamlet Romeo and Juliet A Midsummer Night's Tale Alice in Wonderland (including the not-Alice sequel just produced, without needing so much as a by-your-leave from the author's estate)
If you haven't made enough money in 14 years, get a better agent.
It is an example of a patent that is nothing more than pretty words that was not rejected in accordance with the patent code.
There is no proof, not even any viable evidence, that the described "invention" would function in any way at all, let alone that it would satisfy the claims made in the patent. We aren't even talking Marketability, we are talking "It just can't work".
If this sort of patent is being issued regularly by the patent office for the sake of collecting issuance fees, that would seem to indicate that the patent office itself is in habitual violation of the patent code for economic benefit.
In simpler days we would call such actions "corrupt".
They are required to describe something that works, but the requirement to demonstrate in an unambiguous way to the patent examiner a working implementation of the patented process or device was removed quite some time ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_model
Patent filings used to require a working copy of the device to be patented.
Since that restriction was removed many patents, including software patents, are really nothing more than ideas that may or may not actually work. I would not be surprised to see perpetual motion machines in the post-working model era of patents.
The commercial games market for *nix is almost vanishingly small, pretty much limited to a half dozen big name offline titles and about as many big name online titles in the past 10 years.
Nonetheless, it is the DRM-laden titles released for MS platforms that have fostered the pirate community under DOS and then Windows over the years. Apple used to have trouble too, and now that more titles are being released for OSX probably will again.
The amateurs go where they want to play, which is going to be where the shiny new titles are released, and some percentage of the amateurs turn pro with deep knowledge of OS and application vulnerabilities and pre-compromised moral standing.
The amateur software development niches for Unix-type systems generally does not include breaking copy protection on games.
Since the copy-wars of the '80's this has been a well entrenched portion of the Microsoft amateur programmer community. This helps develop the skills needed to be an effective malware author.
Interestingly enough, Apple has been courting this developer group intensely with their restrictions on the iPhone and other products, so it is not surprising to see more general malware turning up on MacOSX.
I am not aware of the current state of Microsoft security, but it is possible to set up Unix-type systems with non-writable executable partitions, and non-executable mounts for all writable partitions.
Even that is not 100% proof against malware, but it raises the bar beyond any attack I have seen so far.
Nothing short of massively restricting users' privileges on a system will fix the security problem.
For a truly secure system, system maintenance must be separate from use of the system.
Users whose job duties require creating executable content should be educated in security also, but everyone else should be stuck with whatever IT deigns to install. That way, should anything be compromised at least there is a known baseline that doesn't include "SuperHotModelsXXX-Screensaver.exe".
At some point you have left the space where it is reasonable to expect the source of a product to provide support for it. Whether it is attaching a turbocharger to your coffee maker or installing unvetted third-party system software eventually you hit a point where the original source has to throw up their hands and give up because they can't tell what the hades you were trying to do in the first place, let alone what you actually did.
At that point you own it completely, whether it works or not.
I live in violated warranty land so I do appreciate more folks coming to join me, but I find the folks who don't realize that they've strayed across the border and think the commercial land rules still apply kind of annoying.
Well, you go mucking about in the system files like that you'll break most anything. It's like complaining that your coffee maker is broken after taking it apart and putting it back together wrong. Darn Mr. Coffee can't make a good coffee maker!
That's why the Ubuntu team packages up reasonably current NVidia drivers in the first place. Reduces the temptation for people to do such things
Wait, what? I've been running NVidia cards under Ubuntu for years now using the NVidia commercial driver which was autodetected and installed when I popped the thumb drive in (Y'all still using disks, how quaint).
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience of offending people, "Conservatives" and "Liberals" are equally easy to offend, you just need to push different buttons.
So Ms. Coulter appears to be lying again.
And we have a winner!
There are no conservatives in Washington, D.C.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Whatever the original intent may have been, look at the teaparty.org homepage.
These are not people interested in civil debate of how to implement their principles.
Taking a quick scan of the teaparty.org home page, they seem to be more anti-Democrat than for anything in particular.
If they were really an organization of principle instead of partisanship they would be trying to push both parties to work with their principles, in particular note their stance on Gen. McChrystal's comments. It doesn't matter whether he was right or wrong, that level of public insubordination is unprofessional and behavior unbecoming an officer in the US military.
That they have an article supporting him on their home page indicates that they simply hate President Obama, no matter what he does, rather than a principled stand in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.
Which is why it isn't a Fusor he's building.
It looks like one but a Magnetic Grid fusion device replaces the electric grid of the Fusor with a self-shielding magnetic grid. The idea is to create a "virtual Fusor" with the magnetic fields inside, thus eliminating grid losses.
A full-scale prototype has yet to be built, but I have seen an estimate that a magnetic grid of under 2m diameter is necessary for break-even which is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper to build and test than even the cheapest Tokomak.
To paraphrase a great quote:
You are so wrong that even in a universe where you were somehow right you would still be wrong.
When you start treating common tools as weapons you turn vast swaths of the population into criminals, which is only a good thing if you consider a police state where everyone is a criminal a good thing.
The (not so) funny part is that's where eternal copyright+DMCA leads us, too.
Have you done anything illegal this week?
If you think the answer is "no", how sure are you of that really?
It depends on your definition of "wasted time".
Anything that includes "ville" in the name would be a good place to start.
I C, though perhaps choosing SOL as an abbreviation would be inappropriate?
People work really hard designing new fancy wheels all the time.
This doesn't give them a right to profit from doing so, just the right to have the opportunity to try.
Video and audio codecs are and should be treated as infrastructure. They are only there to get the content to our eyes and ears.
As such, good enough is perfect.
The public domain can still be profitable, even if it is only a couple decades past.
Primarily in response to:
Styles change, techniques change, it doesn't take that long for even a great film to start looking dated.
There will always be a market for new productions, even (or especially) of past works.
To each their own then. I prefer the movie theater experience even though I indulge much less frequently in recent years. Fortunately we have a couple nice, clean second run theaters in my area.
Well, as someone who goes to second run theaters and only buys CD's and DVD's used simply because I dislike being treated as a criminal I can guarantee you that anti-piracy has cost the music and movie industry thousands to tens of thousands of dollars *from me alone*. One movie a week, cable subscription, and one CD a month not purchased that I used to adds up to a lot when taken over decades (OK, only 5 years cable-free, but that's around $4K all by itself).
I know, Anectode != Data, take it how you will.
50 Foot screen.
Sound system I couldn't get away with playing at that volume without the neighbors complaining in any urban/suburban neighborhood.
I can get a half dozen friends with their families into a movie theater comfortably.
Unless you are genuinely wealthy and can afford a home theater that is essentially a real theater it just can't compare.
I humbly disagree, and offer these profitable movies in evidence:
Sherlock Holmes
Frankenstein
Snow White
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Tale
Alice in Wonderland (including the not-Alice sequel just produced, without needing so much as a by-your-leave from the author's estate)
If you haven't made enough money in 14 years, get a better agent.
It is useless to hate a rabid dog, but it is dangerous to ignore that it is a rabid dog and will bite anyone who comes too close.
Microsoft is not to be loved or hated, but it is to be treated as a dangerous animal and kept in its place.
It is an example of a patent that is nothing more than pretty words that was not rejected in accordance with the patent code.
There is no proof, not even any viable evidence, that the described "invention" would function in any way at all, let alone that it would satisfy the claims made in the patent. We aren't even talking Marketability, we are talking "It just can't work".
If this sort of patent is being issued regularly by the patent office for the sake of collecting issuance fees, that would seem to indicate that the patent office itself is in habitual violation of the patent code for economic benefit.
In simpler days we would call such actions "corrupt".
They are required to describe something that works, but the requirement to demonstrate in an unambiguous way to the patent examiner a working implementation of the patented process or device was removed quite some time ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_model
Here's a nice anecdotal example of what can result: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1111_051111_junk_patent.html
Patent filings used to require a working copy of the device to be patented.
Since that restriction was removed many patents, including software patents, are really nothing more than ideas that may or may not actually work. I would not be surprised to see perpetual motion machines in the post-working model era of patents.
The commercial games market for *nix is almost vanishingly small, pretty much limited to a half dozen big name offline titles and about as many big name online titles in the past 10 years.
Nonetheless, it is the DRM-laden titles released for MS platforms that have fostered the pirate community under DOS and then Windows over the years. Apple used to have trouble too, and now that more titles are being released for OSX probably will again.
The amateurs go where they want to play, which is going to be where the shiny new titles are released, and some percentage of the amateurs turn pro with deep knowledge of OS and application vulnerabilities and pre-compromised moral standing.
Just one more way in which DRM is bad business.
The amateur software development niches for Unix-type systems generally does not include breaking copy protection on games.
Since the copy-wars of the '80's this has been a well entrenched portion of the Microsoft amateur programmer community. This helps develop the skills needed to be an effective malware author.
Interestingly enough, Apple has been courting this developer group intensely with their restrictions on the iPhone and other products, so it is not surprising to see more general malware turning up on MacOSX.
Perverse incentives, we has them!
I am not aware of the current state of Microsoft security, but it is possible to set up Unix-type systems with non-writable executable partitions, and non-executable mounts for all writable partitions.
Even that is not 100% proof against malware, but it raises the bar beyond any attack I have seen so far.
Nothing short of massively restricting users' privileges on a system will fix the security problem.
For a truly secure system, system maintenance must be separate from use of the system.
Users whose job duties require creating executable content should be educated in security also, but everyone else should be stuck with whatever IT deigns to install. That way, should anything be compromised at least there is a known baseline that doesn't include "SuperHotModelsXXX-Screensaver.exe".
There's a philisophical point there.
At some point you have left the space where it is reasonable to expect the source of a product to provide support for it. Whether it is attaching a turbocharger to your coffee maker or installing unvetted third-party system software eventually you hit a point where the original source has to throw up their hands and give up because they can't tell what the hades you were trying to do in the first place, let alone what you actually did.
At that point you own it completely, whether it works or not.
I live in violated warranty land so I do appreciate more folks coming to join me, but I find the folks who don't realize that they've strayed across the border and think the commercial land rules still apply kind of annoying.
Well, you go mucking about in the system files like that you'll break most anything. It's like complaining that your coffee maker is broken after taking it apart and putting it back together wrong. Darn Mr. Coffee can't make a good coffee maker!
That's why the Ubuntu team packages up reasonably current NVidia drivers in the first place. Reduces the temptation for people to do such things
Wait, what? I've been running NVidia cards under Ubuntu for years now using the NVidia commercial driver which was autodetected and installed when I popped the thumb drive in (Y'all still using disks, how quaint).
Just works.