Other responders have already said as much, but being an engineer with a few of my own ideas I've looked into filing on my own "on the cheap." The fact is the fees for filing amount to more than $150, more like $400. Then this assumes you know how to frame the language of your patent correctly, and if you don't then your patent is worthless as soon as a real patent lawyer shreds through it in court. So now you're talking about minimum another $600 to get someone to frame your claims in an ironclad way. Also, if for some reason the patent has a claim rejected or otherwise needs to repeat part of the process you have to pay some of the fees over again, and probably pay someone to help you sort it out. In the end I determined the very cheapest a layman could get a usable patent through is somewhere around $2000 if you're lucky. More like $5,000+. And if it's a highly technical invention expect north of $10,000. And good luck when someone with deep pockets decides to challenge your patent in court. Your choices will be similar to what the RIAA offers.
Hehe, I see no definitions of "supreme being" referenced by that section of the constitution. I would admit the existence of one, namely me. Supreme in that I understand both the reasons for seperation of religion and government, and the fact that an atheist can adequately hold an office. Not that it would win me any votes, but it would technically fit the requirement as written.;)
Uhh, I hate to even sound like I'm agreeing with the MAFIAA on anything, but when exactly are they supposed to depose him if not on a school day? The school week and the work week are pretty well aligned, and forcing them to either work
Well in most places I'm aware of the typical highschooler gets out between 2pm to 3pm, and the typical work day ends at 5pm to 6pm. So there's at least a 2 hour overlap there, as much as 4 hours. Now, of course the RIAA lawyers will no doubt wish to make the deposition as long and painful as possible, but accomodating the school schedule is not impossible. I'll not even get into the 24 horus notice and mis-sent deposition requests that others have pointed out.
That's a nice list to deflect attention from the GP poster's point, but according to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 he is in fact correct. Whereas before you had habeas corpus, and if it was denied to you then it was done so illegally, now if you are labeled an enemy combatant by the state (i.e. President) - regardless of your nationality or citizenship status - most of your rights, including a trial are legally stripped from you. So yes, we had some rights legally defined that have now been revoked. I encourage you to read the legislation and discussions of it for yourself. While wikipedia is not a perfect source, it is a good place to start as it has references to other more reliable sources that discuss this piece of legislation.
They would have the tools if laws like this weren't fought tooth and nail.
I think you misunderstand the difference between a parental tool and THE LAW. The law is no more a parental tool than is gravity. Parents don't have a choice in enforcing the law, it will be enforced regardless of their desire, it is out of their hands at that point and is no longer a tool for the parent, but for the state. In addition, you seem to imply by saying parents would have the tools, that they somehow do not have the tools they need now. That is patently false. Let's see, supervision of the child in the parent's own house, full access to all of the child's possessions and control over their entertainment time in front of the TV that the parent owns. The parent has a say in whether or not the child can earn their own money - if little Johnny's caught spending his paper route money on games he's not supposed to have then you prevent him from having a paper route, if he's going to his friend's house after school to play the game then you talk with the other parents about it and/or forbid visiting that friend unsuprvised. Yeah, it's not fun, it's not easy, and it won't make them your friend, but guess what - parenting is not supposed to be easy, always fun, or always going to make you the buddy, that's why you're the PARENT.
This is a personal decision to be made by the parents of the child on a family-by-family basis. Making it a law REMOVES that choice from the parent's control. Also this kind of law does not exist for other forms of media other than pornography, so comparisons to movies are null and void as there is no sanctioning by the STATE if a theater violates their R rated movies policy. So why have such a law that applies to scenes of simulated violence when highly-realistic scenes of real people being violent are not held to the same standard? And why then not books as other have mentioned. Stephen King's "It" is a fantastic book, but it is terrifying and gory, why is it we let minors check it out from the state-funded library? That's called hypocracy, and even so in the regulate-all-media-or-none debate I would side with "none" because again, it removes the CHOICE of the parent and hands it to the state where the parents no longer have a say. The right for your kids to not be exposed to violent media is equal to my kids' right to be exposed if I deem it proper for them. And all of this legislation is based on gut reactions and feel-good vote getting, not any definitive studies that show real harm. I'm sorry, but I have higher ideals for my government than laws of whim and fancy. If you want to encroach on the rights of others than you'd damn well better have proof that there is a compelling need that cannot be met by any other means, such as telling concerned parents to do something about it in their own house and not in mine. And if you can't stop your kid from playing a video game then good luck with alcohol, drugs, unsafe sex, gangs, dragracing, and any other dangerous thing that is more difficult to control and more dangerous to your child than any video game. Did you know kids dislike doing homework? We should make a law to make sure they all do their homework since how can the parents possibly have any tools to ensure it gets done?
[Thompson] should perhaps bear the costs of any lawsuits he was personally involved in, but you can't hold him responsible for the idiocy of elected officials.
In this case Thompson was in fact personally involved as he helped draft the legislation. See the second paragraph of the article here
That's all I've got time to dig up for now but it should give you enough key words to find further details. It's no secret that Thompson has been behind this bill, and he's filed amacus briefs in other lawsuits for laws that were eventually struck down. He doesn't have clean hands in any of this, there is no room for him to say he didn't know. He has a long sordid history of suggesting and defending frothing-at-the-mouth anti-game, anti-free speech policies that have been consistantly found unconstitutional.
More than likely those volunteers have to be paid so the politicans will still be being paid, just indirectly not directly.
Hi Falcon, I recognize your posts from your signature often, and I know you're an insightful contributor here, so please don't take offense when I say I think you missed the point of my question. Understandably the volunteers would be paid for their time, what I wonder is if it is lobbyists paying them to volunteer for Politician X then how is this much different that the lobbyist making a campiagn contribution that amounts to a bribe, and how would we check this behavior?
Right now campaign contributions can be offered or withheld by lobbyists in order to influence legislation, if we outlaw these kinds of monetary donations then the psuedo-bribes will likely find another outlet. I think that outlet would be that the money that previously would have gone into the campaign coffers will instead buy a volunteer who the lobbyists then offer in lieu of the now-illegal fund donation. Thus we see the bribes would remain but the medium of exchange is in man-hours instead of dollars. So how to seperate the sheep from the wolves in the volunteer staffs? It would likely require more legislation outlawing a direct relationship between campaign staffers and lobbyists, but this too might be avoidable through a little shell corporation or 3rd party. Now I'm not saying that removing the easy dollar donation route won't help the problem, but it's only a start. Bribes and influence peddling have been a part of politics since the concepts existed. I personally think that the laws/constitution should be rewritten such that only citizens representing other citizens or NON-Commercial entities be allowed to "solicit for redress of grievances", and that any citizens group that represents interests of a corporation may not be funded directly by that corporation (of course how do we deal with them being salaried employees?). The problem, as I see it, is that corporate lobbyists are lobbying for the good of the corporation - as in the board and share holders - but not necessarily the good of the PEOPLE who depend on that corporation - employees, and customers, i.e. the other 99% who don't get multimillion dollar salaries. Really corporate lobbyists are pushing for laws that benefit the top few who profit from the corporation, but can negatively affect the entire population of the country. Now while that may in a very few cases be a good thing, for the most part I don't believe it is, and the good of the NATION and the CITIZENS of the nation will far outweigh the desires of a single company almost every time.
Microsoft, AT&T, Dupont, Merck - all of these companies can afford to pay an entire office of people to lobby the government full time, while groups of citizens are at an inherent disadvantage because they do not have such resources to constantly whisper their wishes in the ear of their representatives. A good representative will of course query and listen to their constituents, but it seems many of them forget that when they're thousands of miles away with only the words of the lobbyists in their ears day-in day-out. Just my $0.02, I look forward to any response or comments you may have. Regards, ~J
When you say you're class of '00 I assume that measn you graduated in 2000, except that the lowered CS admission standards I'm talking about weren't implemented until after I was attending, and I'm class of '02. So the admissions standards you were accepted on would have been from 1996/97, a few years before the changes we're talking about. And while the cirriculum was certainly not dumbed down, I'd say the general level of programming competence of CS students entering with the lower standards were, both by definition, and in practice. Now of course, this doesn't mean these people were idiots, or guaranteed to fail, but failure rates certainly increased when people who previously would have been rejected were allowed into a very rigorous program. I have plenty of respect for anyone who graduates from the CMU CS/Engineering programs, or hell just about any of the colleges, and I'm curious to see how their experiment in admissions criteria is playing out half a decade later. Still, at the time it was a big topic of discussion for my group and we were rather upset that standards we were held to were lowered just to attract women, it seemed to us not only would that hurt the overall program, but it also sent a bad message to female applicants, that standards needed to be lowered just for them. That's insulting no matter what your skill level IMHO. And it also seemed to us that anyone who was interested enough in CS at CMU should have made some effort to have a programming background, otherwise why should they expect to get into one of the toughest CS programs (at the time, not sure how it ranks now) in the country just because they were motivated and "had an interest" in programming? Yes, it's sad that otherwise excellent students were being turned away because they didn't have enough computer background, but it's not like seats were going empty because of this, there were plenty of other equally motivated and exceptional students who *did* make programming a priority who were trying to get in. I do understand that striking a balance between hyper-focused programmers and people with broader interests is healthy for the university, but why then should the key programming standards be lowered, why not raise the requirements for having a broad range of interests? The answer is because then they still wouldn't get more girls in the program. So what it looks like is admissions standards were lowered specifically to allow more girls into the program. Equality of the sexes doesn't mean that a 1:1 gender ratio is always to be expected in all cases, sometimes other factors affect that. Most likely it's other influences from a much earlier age that result in fewer women being interested or motivated towards CS, so by the time you get to the college level it's late in the game to correct for that. Does it mean we shouldn't? No, certainly the university should fill admission slots for women as a priority if that is their aim, but making the pool of qualified applicants larger by lowering the bar doesn't seem like the right way to do it. Ideally of course, it is programs and mindsets outside of the university's control that need to be altered to increase the pool of qualified female CS applicants - more programming in grade schools, and cultural shifts are required. I think the rise of geek culture as something more respectible (we make the world's technology afterall) is going to help this in general, and constant exposure to computers at an early age should also help as well.
I totally agree with you, and have been advocating public funding of campaigns whenever the discussion comes up. Political fund raising must be decoupled from politics otherwise there is a conflict of interest. There are the usual problems like, how low is the bar, does every drunken lunatic who fills out the application for candidacy get campaign funds? There have been numerous discussions on that and other questions like it, and it seems like solutions exist, but I came up with another interesting problem recently and I wonder how we would get around it. It comes from that old addage "time is money" - if we ban all campaign fund donations, what about people volunteering time? Would corporations shift their lobbying contribution funds to hiring full time volunteers for campaigns? Then the subtle threat we see in this FL event might be more like "well sir, it would be a terrible shame if this legislation were allowed to pass, why many people might decide not to volunteer time for your re-election campaign...."
How would we effectively block lobbyists from donating volunteer hours in lieu of money? I ask this as a legitimate question that may have to be addressed. Removing the dollars from interest peddling will not remove the peddling, just that particular medium of exchange.
the service is not as good - voice quality is ok, but faxes fail
Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
They are talking about admissions criteria, in the context of high school computing backgrounds. Attracting talent that may or may not have extensive programming experience, rather than focusing just on the people who enter college with a lot of programming under their belt
It sounds all well and good when you put it like that, but as an undergrad at CMU in the ECE program (which shares a lot of classes with CS kids, and I had a lot of CS friends) what we witnessed in reality was: the program was dumbed down for girls to get in. This was reflected in many more incoming students not having a clue about how to use a computer, let alone program it, and a lot of female CS majors changing majors by sophomore year. I'm not being mysogenistic here, trust me, CS guys were THRILLED at the prospect of more girls in the program, but it didn't pan out that way. Caveat being this was 1999-2002, I have no knowledge of how it's working now, but in the first 3 years we witnessed lower quality students and more CS degree program dropouts.
Still, it was a web poll and the bulk of my other points are still valid
The BULK? What bulk? Here are your points from your original post:
* The contest was between exactly two companies - Hallibutron and the RIAA. Those were your choices if you participated in this survey. The RIAA won by 3.8%. Wal-mart or none of the above were not choices.
* The 'survey' was done by The Consumerist. Sounds impressive, eh? Like The Economist magazine, perhaps? No, not really. It's basically some shitty blog. Hint: their web page currently has ads for 'Replica Rolex Watches Rolex, Cartier, Gucci, Brietling Only $189!!'
* So, this poll was a web poll. Hardly what we'd expect from a true 'Most hated company in America' type deal.
* See it for yourself here [consumerist.com].
So out of these four bullets, one simply states that this was a web poll, ok true, but not exactly insightful. The last point is not a point at all, just a link to your source. The first point you already admitted was wrong, leaving only your second point as anything that could fall under your term of "bulk" and I would hardly call a single valid point bulk by any stretch.
In addition the consumerist website is not some tiny fly-by-night blog, it's been around for a while and they are the slashdot of constomer service issues and are part of Gawker Media which handles other such blogs as Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Kotaku, and Lifehacker just to name a few. While these may be niche blogs in that they have a sharp focus, they are by no means somebody's part time basement run website. In March 2007 the Consumerist received over 5 million visitors, and they have consistently had over 500,000 visitors per month for the past 12 months, and over 1 million visitors/month for the last 6. As for the SINGLE advertisement you chose to judge the quality of the page, (ignoring other advertisers such as the prominent T-Mobile ad) the replica watch company is not selling counterfit goods, it sells replicas, clearly marked in both their URL and product page, so it is not an ad from a scammer. Also considering the nature of the consumerist blog, I would certainly think that they vet companies before accepting ads from them.
So in short, you overreacted and shot down a completely legitmate site which ran a survey over a period of weeks that reached a very large audience. Is it a scientific poll? No, but it's also not some two-bit blogger ranting about poll results culled from a handful of readers. Kudos on you for posting a semi-retraction but your "bulk" of remaining points is essential naught.
yes, so the peak instead travels to the early morning hours
You're right that it travels to the earlier morning hours, but what travels is not the peak usage but the net difference in energy usage. So the evening hours are still peak use time - people are still going to use much more energy prepping dinner/watching evening tv/checking blogs than in the morning - but the morning peak has increased slightly. The afternoon/evening peak energy use is also usually reflected in the electricity prices, so it costs the consumer more per unit of energy in the afternoon and evening than it does in the early morning. So while there is not a net energy savings, there may be some cost savings. Granted, it will be miniscule to the average household energy consumer, but it is present. Unfortunately the way we tend to work in the US is if we have anything "extra" we decide it must be there to use, instead of save. And as others have stated, there is probably more of a cost in lost productivity because of the bi-annual clock change than a net savings of anything one would care to measure. Personally I've always been of the mind that after electric lighting went into widespread use it was time to do away with DST one way or another, I'd prefer to just set the clocks ahead 30 minutes one year to split the difference then never change them again.
where due process and habeas corpus have recently been ruled to not apply to "enemy combatants," a designation which is applied to non-citizens solely at the discretion of the executive branch.
According to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 the President can declare ANYONE an enemy combatant, regardless of citizenship: foriegn, naturalized, or citizen-by-birth. This is a key distinction that I often see made that is simply untrue, a lot of people shrug off the suspension of habeas corpus because "it can't happen to me" but it can. I hate the fact that some people seem to accept it for even this reason, there should be outrage that it is suspended at all for reasons other than what is clearly provided for in the Constitution - rebellion or invasion - neither of which have occurred.
For a quick reference, check the wikipedia article on it, it cites many useful sources under the 'Criticism' section, in particular see notes 17, 22, and 24.
I love that vehicle, a fantastic concept that I really hope catches on in cities. I expect that many asian countries will adopt them far before the US since they deal with a lot of overcrowding and already have more efficiently sized vehicles and booming bicycling populations. I fear, however, that one of the major hurdles of adoption of these vehicles in the US is the massive number of SUVs and trucks here. While the VentureOne may be relatively safe in a solo accident due to their safety design, when a vehicle weighing nearly 5 times as much plows into/over one there probably isn't going to be much left of the occupants. I love that alternative low-occupancy vehicles are starting to become available, but at least in the US our road culture of "bigger is better" has to change before there will be mass adoption. Thanks for the link!
Anyway, this is not true: think of musicians who make a living doing live shows. Maybe that wouldn't work for some types of artists, but again, why should they be guaranteed a certain way of making money?
It's not the artist's income only that copyright seeks to protect, it's also the cultural enhancement that society itself recieves and benefits from, which is more intangible but nevertheless a Good Thing. Yes, if all copyright were abolished some artists in some mediums would continue to produce, but we would not have anywhere near the amount of creative works we have now since it would be much harder to earn a living without doing some other parttime work. Copyright is supposed to strike a balance between the needs of the creator (income) and the needs of society (entertainment, culture) but lately the balance has been pushed by corporations far in favor of the creator, or rather the holder of the copyright. One way that this might also be addressed is to prohibit the wholesale transfer of copyrights to corporations, removing the incentive for a corp. to hoard works and lobby for ever stronger/longer terms. Just a quick thought, needs more fleshing out. My main point was to defend the parent who I believe is essentially correct: removing all copyrights will in the end hurt artists by making it harder for them to make a living solely from their works and returning us to a period where works are produced mostly on commission, which means only the wealthy could afford what we take for granted today. It won't happen overnight, and it won't stop all artists from producing, but the variety, quality, and breadth of works currently available will definitely decrease.
In a related story, American Heritage Dictionary says relatedly is a word.
Well the parent was complaining about the USE of 'relatedly' in the summary. Checking your own link you will see that relatedly is an ADVERB, pray tell then, what verb is it modifying in the summary? While it is a valid word, it's usage is incorrect here.
I mean come on, even a fresh-out-of-Starfleet ensign knows that wearing a red shirt is a mark of doom. It was inevitable, they should just be happy their sacrifices were for the greater good, and not just an arbitrary display of power by some alie^B^B^B^B contractor.
"...store windows that are also dynamic advertising surfaces"
Sounds wonderful *koff*koff*
I don't see why it wouldn't be. Right now store windows are *already* used for advertising, except that it involves printing new displays constantly on paper mediums and using tons of ink as well. It uses a lot of resources and generates a lot of waste that can't really be reused by the store. Sure, a video display will use energy so there's still enviromental costs involved at some level but the savings to the store in printing will pay itself back reasonably quickly. Note I didn't say "hooray the era of ubiquitous advertising is here!" I'm not interested in putting video ads everywhere like in Minority Report, although it seems an unfortunately inevitable future given how our society works. But where it is useful for store advertising applications that are already going on, why not apply the technology and get rid of wastful print advertising in store windows?
Well, I used a price estimate of $55 for the game, which is where the "almost double" came from. Wishful thinking, I know, since why would they charge $55 when they could charge $60? And likely it'll be $65 or $70 simply because they know we'll buy it. Granted, there is a good amount of extras in the legendary package, but I could care less about watching the behind the scenes, and even so, how many times is someone going to watch those DVDs? I was more interested in the replica helmet, but depsite what GameStop employees told me it's apparently only about 2/3rds scale. So what are we getting? DVDs we'll watch once (other than RvB which rocks), and a helmet that can't even be worn except by maybe small children. Not exactly blowing me away for $130. Plus the $100 "estimated" price point seems (in retrospect) to be suspiciously at one of the "trigger" points for consumers. I'm sure they were well aware it would be more than $100 but putting that number out there got them more preorders and people are lazy and so they're counting on people just letting the extra $30 slide. It's all quite maddening, but how does one vote with their dollars when there's X million consumers willing to take your place?.
Also, I read somewhere, I believe on bungie.net, that new map packs will be for 360 only. Why? Well, to force the last of us that haven't migrated yet to do so, just as you said you would. I'm included in that group, I was already waiting on the 360 just to save up the money, but when I heard rumors of the elite balck version I figured it'd be worth waiting as that will almost surely mean a price drop for the other versions, or possibly picking one up used at a bit of a discount - assuming the warranty period on the used console is any good.
In any case, at every turn it's pretty obvious MS is using Halo to leverage the hell out of the fanbase for cash. But considering how MS treats other loyal user groups - like MS Office users - it really shouldn't be a surprise, though it still pisses me off.:/
Ok, so in the last couple years or so we've seen the devlopment of: 1) electrically conductive plastics 2) transparent (when off) OLED-based displays, 3) transparent plastic-based circuits, 4) clear plastic-based batteries, 5) multitouch input capability, and 6) light-based data transfer methods and holographic data storage.
Within 10 years I hope to see all of these technologies combined into a geek fantasy device: a clear plastic tablet computer about the size of a pad of paper. Not to mention the hojillion other applications that suddenly become possible when you can embed a complete computer with I/O in a transparent medium: HUDs for glasses, store windows that are also dynamic advertising surfaces, image processing and data overlay on windshields (e.g. thermal or IR image data to augment the scene in poor visibility), etc. I especially like the plastic battery concept since in theory you could make certain structural elements also function as you battery so there is no need for a bulky power source attached to the device, this would work well for the glasses display - the frames themselves could be the battery and/or processor. Although we'd definitely want to make sure there aren't any exploding battery incidents like with recent laptops.
I expect a good lawyer won't so much have memorised all of the case law as much as generated a hash table [...] for case law like I have for my photo collection
You know, there could be money to be made in creating and selling access to such a meta-tagged caselaw DB. Although maybe not since it would reduce billable hours.;) Anyone know if such a DB service already exists, other than simply providing a swarm of human researchers?
The fact is, nobody is forcing you to have these extras.
Actually, for those of us who are big fans of Halo, MS is forcing us to buy the HD if we want to be able to play it on the 360.:/ Now, no one is holding a gun to our heads to migrate to the system, but it's MS's biggest title, of course they're using it to leverage sales of high-margin addons. I understand the business sense behind it, but it's still essentially a big FU to a loyal fanbase. "You want to continue to support us and play your favorite game on the new console? Cool, but it'll cost you $100 more than (almost) any other game's fans."
Offtopic from accessories, sorta, but related to milking the Halo fans for all they're worth: the elite collector's edition for Halo3 was advertised for preorder at $100, then earlier this month they announced the "official" pricing (WTF was the $100 price then??) and jacked it up to $130. I had a preorder for it, I was able to stomach almost double the cost of the game for the extras, but $130? An extra $30 on top of the extra $45 for extra content that still isn't playable means I cancelled my preorder. And they did it because they could, they knew that the fans were loyal enough that they'd soldier on and buy it. It disgusts me how blantantly MS is screwing the fans of their most successful xbox franchise, way to reward the loyal Microsoft.:(
This is one of the biggest problems I see with current governments' agendas to implement mass surveilance and other technology security measures - an almost total lack of cost-benefit analysis that demonstrate a clear need to implement the technology. For many of these cases there are clear privacy concerns, the potential for abuse of the system, and encroachment of liberties, and in addition there are the projected costs of implementing the systems - costs for hardware, software, infrastructure, agencies, staffing, etc. Most of the time the monetary estimates run into the billions, and that's before the usual reality of budget and schedule overruns, unforeseen implementation problems, contractor cost inflating, etc etc. And yet to balance all these costs, projected and real, there is usually not much more supporting argument than "it fights terrorism/crime/think of the children". Rarely with any sort of hard data backing up the plans, rarely with in-depth studies of test cases, or even analysis of how similar systems are working in other countries where they have already been implemented. This whole idea of "trust us, it's for the better" is infuriating coming from our chosen leaders.
And what about if the system doesn't provide the expected benefits? When was the last time a huge security program was dismantled when shown to not deliver what was promised, or even evaluated for success? (programs like Carnivore and Total Information Awareness continue on in other guises even now) Too often there are earmarks, kickbacks (monetary and political) and whatnot tied into the whole process so supporters are even less likely to admit failure when a program is still personally lucrative in some way. None of the funding for these mass surveilance and automated security measures seem to have any sort of merit-based budgeting built in. It ends up being a huge political fight to close useless programs, meanwhile the costs - monetary and liberty - continue to pile up, restricting freedoms and draining our public coffers (or in the case of the US continuing to pile onto a mountain of debt that cannot possibly be repaid without massive negative consequences). Our representatives in government need to be held accountable to hold these programs accountable! There need to be provisions, milestones, evaluations and hard-set sunset clauses that force these programs to deliver or die. And there needs to be more scepticism upfront with regard to the promised benefits that have little to no factual backing, and more than that, the coefficient placed in front of the value of infractions of liberty needs to be increased! The practice of implementing Security Theater programs with no accountability to success has got to stop. We're stepping on freedoms and spending like a drunk with no proven returns, how is that good public policy?
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Other responders have already said as much, but being an engineer with a few of my own ideas I've looked into filing on my own "on the cheap." The fact is the fees for filing amount to more than $150, more like $400. Then this assumes you know how to frame the language of your patent correctly, and if you don't then your patent is worthless as soon as a real patent lawyer shreds through it in court. So now you're talking about minimum another $600 to get someone to frame your claims in an ironclad way. Also, if for some reason the patent has a claim rejected or otherwise needs to repeat part of the process you have to pay some of the fees over again, and probably pay someone to help you sort it out. In the end I determined the very cheapest a layman could get a usable patent through is somewhere around $2000 if you're lucky. More like $5,000+. And if it's a highly technical invention expect north of $10,000. And good luck when someone with deep pockets decides to challenge your patent in court. Your choices will be similar to what the RIAA offers.
Hehe, I see no definitions of "supreme being" referenced by that section of the constitution. I would admit the existence of one, namely me. Supreme in that I understand both the reasons for seperation of religion and government, and the fact that an atheist can adequately hold an office. Not that it would win me any votes, but it would technically fit the requirement as written. ;)
That's a nice list to deflect attention from the GP poster's point, but according to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 he is in fact correct. Whereas before you had habeas corpus, and if it was denied to you then it was done so illegally, now if you are labeled an enemy combatant by the state (i.e. President) - regardless of your nationality or citizenship status - most of your rights, including a trial are legally stripped from you. So yes, we had some rights legally defined that have now been revoked. I encourage you to read the legislation and discussions of it for yourself. While wikipedia is not a perfect source, it is a good place to start as it has references to other more reliable sources that discuss this piece of legislation.
They would have the tools if laws like this weren't fought tooth and nail.
I think you misunderstand the difference between a parental tool and THE LAW. The law is no more a parental tool than is gravity. Parents don't have a choice in enforcing the law, it will be enforced regardless of their desire, it is out of their hands at that point and is no longer a tool for the parent, but for the state. In addition, you seem to imply by saying parents would have the tools, that they somehow do not have the tools they need now. That is patently false. Let's see, supervision of the child in the parent's own house, full access to all of the child's possessions and control over their entertainment time in front of the TV that the parent owns. The parent has a say in whether or not the child can earn their own money - if little Johnny's caught spending his paper route money on games he's not supposed to have then you prevent him from having a paper route, if he's going to his friend's house after school to play the game then you talk with the other parents about it and/or forbid visiting that friend unsuprvised. Yeah, it's not fun, it's not easy, and it won't make them your friend, but guess what - parenting is not supposed to be easy, always fun, or always going to make you the buddy, that's why you're the PARENT.
This is a personal decision to be made by the parents of the child on a family-by-family basis. Making it a law REMOVES that choice from the parent's control. Also this kind of law does not exist for other forms of media other than pornography, so comparisons to movies are null and void as there is no sanctioning by the STATE if a theater violates their R rated movies policy. So why have such a law that applies to scenes of simulated violence when highly-realistic scenes of real people being violent are not held to the same standard? And why then not books as other have mentioned. Stephen King's "It" is a fantastic book, but it is terrifying and gory, why is it we let minors check it out from the state-funded library? That's called hypocracy, and even so in the regulate-all-media-or-none debate I would side with "none" because again, it removes the CHOICE of the parent and hands it to the state where the parents no longer have a say. The right for your kids to not be exposed to violent media is equal to my kids' right to be exposed if I deem it proper for them.
And all of this legislation is based on gut reactions and feel-good vote getting, not any definitive studies that show real harm. I'm sorry, but I have higher ideals for my government than laws of whim and fancy. If you want to encroach on the rights of others than you'd damn well better have proof that there is a compelling need that cannot be met by any other means, such as telling concerned parents to do something about it in their own house and not in mine. And if you can't stop your kid from playing a video game then good luck with alcohol, drugs, unsafe sex, gangs, dragracing, and any other dangerous thing that is more difficult to control and more dangerous to your child than any video game. Did you know kids dislike doing homework? We should make a law to make sure they all do their homework since how can the parents possibly have any tools to ensure it gets done?
That's all I've got time to dig up for now but it should give you enough key words to find further details. It's no secret that Thompson has been behind this bill, and he's filed amacus briefs in other lawsuits for laws that were eventually struck down. He doesn't have clean hands in any of this, there is no room for him to say he didn't know. He has a long sordid history of suggesting and defending frothing-at-the-mouth anti-game, anti-free speech policies that have been consistantly found unconstitutional.
More than likely those volunteers have to be paid so the politicans will still be being paid, just indirectly not directly.
Hi Falcon, I recognize your posts from your signature often, and I know you're an insightful contributor here, so please don't take offense when I say I think you missed the point of my question.
Understandably the volunteers would be paid for their time, what I wonder is if it is lobbyists paying them to volunteer for Politician X then how is this much different that the lobbyist making a campiagn contribution that amounts to a bribe, and how would we check this behavior?
Right now campaign contributions can be offered or withheld by lobbyists in order to influence legislation, if we outlaw these kinds of monetary donations then the psuedo-bribes will likely find another outlet. I think that outlet would be that the money that previously would have gone into the campaign coffers will instead buy a volunteer who the lobbyists then offer in lieu of the now-illegal fund donation. Thus we see the bribes would remain but the medium of exchange is in man-hours instead of dollars. So how to seperate the sheep from the wolves in the volunteer staffs? It would likely require more legislation outlawing a direct relationship between campaign staffers and lobbyists, but this too might be avoidable through a little shell corporation or 3rd party.
Now I'm not saying that removing the easy dollar donation route won't help the problem, but it's only a start. Bribes and influence peddling have been a part of politics since the concepts existed. I personally think that the laws/constitution should be rewritten such that only citizens representing other citizens or NON-Commercial entities be allowed to "solicit for redress of grievances", and that any citizens group that represents interests of a corporation may not be funded directly by that corporation (of course how do we deal with them being salaried employees?). The problem, as I see it, is that corporate lobbyists are lobbying for the good of the corporation - as in the board and share holders - but not necessarily the good of the PEOPLE who depend on that corporation - employees, and customers, i.e. the other 99% who don't get multimillion dollar salaries. Really corporate lobbyists are pushing for laws that benefit the top few who profit from the corporation, but can negatively affect the entire population of the country. Now while that may in a very few cases be a good thing, for the most part I don't believe it is, and the good of the NATION and the CITIZENS of the nation will far outweigh the desires of a single company almost every time.
Microsoft, AT&T, Dupont, Merck - all of these companies can afford to pay an entire office of people to lobby the government full time, while groups of citizens are at an inherent disadvantage because they do not have such resources to constantly whisper their wishes in the ear of their representatives. A good representative will of course query and listen to their constituents, but it seems many of them forget that when they're thousands of miles away with only the words of the lobbyists in their ears day-in day-out. Just my $0.02, I look forward to any response or comments you may have.
Regards,
~J
When you say you're class of '00 I assume that measn you graduated in 2000, except that the lowered CS admission standards I'm talking about weren't implemented until after I was attending, and I'm class of '02. So the admissions standards you were accepted on would have been from 1996/97, a few years before the changes we're talking about. And while the cirriculum was certainly not dumbed down, I'd say the general level of programming competence of CS students entering with the lower standards were, both by definition, and in practice. Now of course, this doesn't mean these people were idiots, or guaranteed to fail, but failure rates certainly increased when people who previously would have been rejected were allowed into a very rigorous program. I have plenty of respect for anyone who graduates from the CMU CS/Engineering programs, or hell just about any of the colleges, and I'm curious to see how their experiment in admissions criteria is playing out half a decade later. Still, at the time it was a big topic of discussion for my group and we were rather upset that standards we were held to were lowered just to attract women, it seemed to us not only would that hurt the overall program, but it also sent a bad message to female applicants, that standards needed to be lowered just for them. That's insulting no matter what your skill level IMHO.
And it also seemed to us that anyone who was interested enough in CS at CMU should have made some effort to have a programming background, otherwise why should they expect to get into one of the toughest CS programs (at the time, not sure how it ranks now) in the country just because they were motivated and "had an interest" in programming? Yes, it's sad that otherwise excellent students were being turned away because they didn't have enough computer background, but it's not like seats were going empty because of this, there were plenty of other equally motivated and exceptional students who *did* make programming a priority who were trying to get in.
I do understand that striking a balance between hyper-focused programmers and people with broader interests is healthy for the university, but why then should the key programming standards be lowered, why not raise the requirements for having a broad range of interests? The answer is because then they still wouldn't get more girls in the program. So what it looks like is admissions standards were lowered specifically to allow more girls into the program. Equality of the sexes doesn't mean that a 1:1 gender ratio is always to be expected in all cases, sometimes other factors affect that. Most likely it's other influences from a much earlier age that result in fewer women being interested or motivated towards CS, so by the time you get to the college level it's late in the game to correct for that. Does it mean we shouldn't? No, certainly the university should fill admission slots for women as a priority if that is their aim, but making the pool of qualified applicants larger by lowering the bar doesn't seem like the right way to do it. Ideally of course, it is programs and mindsets outside of the university's control that need to be altered to increase the pool of qualified female CS applicants - more programming in grade schools, and cultural shifts are required. I think the rise of geek culture as something more respectible (we make the world's technology afterall) is going to help this in general, and constant exposure to computers at an early age should also help as well.
I totally agree with you, and have been advocating public funding of campaigns whenever the discussion comes up. Political fund raising must be decoupled from politics otherwise there is a conflict of interest. There are the usual problems like, how low is the bar, does every drunken lunatic who fills out the application for candidacy get campaign funds? There have been numerous discussions on that and other questions like it, and it seems like solutions exist, but I came up with another interesting problem recently and I wonder how we would get around it. It comes from that old addage "time is money" - if we ban all campaign fund donations, what about people volunteering time? Would corporations shift their lobbying contribution funds to hiring full time volunteers for campaigns? Then the subtle threat we see in this FL event might be more like "well sir, it would be a terrible shame if this legislation were allowed to pass, why many people might decide not to volunteer time for your re-election campaign...."
How would we effectively block lobbyists from donating volunteer hours in lieu of money? I ask this as a legitimate question that may have to be addressed. Removing the dollars from interest peddling will not remove the peddling, just that particular medium of exchange.
the service is not as good - voice quality is ok, but faxes fail
Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
They are talking about admissions criteria, in the context of high school computing backgrounds. Attracting talent that may or may not have extensive programming experience, rather than focusing just on the people who enter college with a lot of programming under their belt
It sounds all well and good when you put it like that, but as an undergrad at CMU in the ECE program (which shares a lot of classes with CS kids, and I had a lot of CS friends) what we witnessed in reality was: the program was dumbed down for girls to get in. This was reflected in many more incoming students not having a clue about how to use a computer, let alone program it, and a lot of female CS majors changing majors by sophomore year. I'm not being mysogenistic here, trust me, CS guys were THRILLED at the prospect of more girls in the program, but it didn't pan out that way. Caveat being this was 1999-2002, I have no knowledge of how it's working now, but in the first 3 years we witnessed lower quality students and more CS degree program dropouts.
kids honestly think that "hotmail" for instance, was the first e-mail provider or most significant
:/
Well don't I feel dated now, I had a hotmail account when it was originally Rocketmail.
Still, it was a web poll and the bulk of my other points are still valid
The BULK? What bulk? Here are your points from your original post:
* The contest was between exactly two companies - Hallibutron and the RIAA. Those were your choices if you participated in this survey. The RIAA won by 3.8%. Wal-mart or none of the above were not choices.
* The 'survey' was done by The Consumerist. Sounds impressive, eh? Like The Economist magazine, perhaps? No, not really. It's basically some shitty blog. Hint: their web page currently has ads for 'Replica Rolex Watches Rolex, Cartier, Gucci, Brietling Only $189!!'
* So, this poll was a web poll. Hardly what we'd expect from a true 'Most hated company in America' type deal.
* See it for yourself here [consumerist.com].
So out of these four bullets, one simply states that this was a web poll, ok true, but not exactly insightful. The last point is not a point at all, just a link to your source. The first point you already admitted was wrong, leaving only your second point as anything that could fall under your term of "bulk" and I would hardly call a single valid point bulk by any stretch.
In addition the consumerist website is not some tiny fly-by-night blog, it's been around for a while and they are the slashdot of constomer service issues and are part of Gawker Media which handles other such blogs as Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Kotaku, and Lifehacker just to name a few. While these may be niche blogs in that they have a sharp focus, they are by no means somebody's part time basement run website. In March 2007 the Consumerist received over 5 million visitors, and they have consistently had over 500,000 visitors per month for the past 12 months, and over 1 million visitors/month for the last 6.
As for the SINGLE advertisement you chose to judge the quality of the page, (ignoring other advertisers such as the prominent T-Mobile ad) the replica watch company is not selling counterfit goods, it sells replicas, clearly marked in both their URL and product page, so it is not an ad from a scammer. Also considering the nature of the consumerist blog, I would certainly think that they vet companies before accepting ads from them.
So in short, you overreacted and shot down a completely legitmate site which ran a survey over a period of weeks that reached a very large audience. Is it a scientific poll? No, but it's also not some two-bit blogger ranting about poll results culled from a handful of readers. Kudos on you for posting a semi-retraction but your "bulk" of remaining points is essential naught.
yes, so the peak instead travels to the early morning hours
You're right that it travels to the earlier morning hours, but what travels is not the peak usage but the net difference in energy usage. So the evening hours are still peak use time - people are still going to use much more energy prepping dinner/watching evening tv/checking blogs than in the morning - but the morning peak has increased slightly. The afternoon/evening peak energy use is also usually reflected in the electricity prices, so it costs the consumer more per unit of energy in the afternoon and evening than it does in the early morning. So while there is not a net energy savings, there may be some cost savings. Granted, it will be miniscule to the average household energy consumer, but it is present. Unfortunately the way we tend to work in the US is if we have anything "extra" we decide it must be there to use, instead of save. And as others have stated, there is probably more of a cost in lost productivity because of the bi-annual clock change than a net savings of anything one would care to measure.
Personally I've always been of the mind that after electric lighting went into widespread use it was time to do away with DST one way or another, I'd prefer to just set the clocks ahead 30 minutes one year to split the difference then never change them again.
where due process and habeas corpus have recently been ruled to not apply to "enemy combatants," a designation which is applied to non-citizens solely at the discretion of the executive branch.
According to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 the President can declare ANYONE an enemy combatant, regardless of citizenship: foriegn, naturalized, or citizen-by-birth. This is a key distinction that I often see made that is simply untrue, a lot of people shrug off the suspension of habeas corpus because "it can't happen to me" but it can. I hate the fact that some people seem to accept it for even this reason, there should be outrage that it is suspended at all for reasons other than what is clearly provided for in the Constitution - rebellion or invasion - neither of which have occurred.
For a quick reference, check the wikipedia article on it, it cites many useful sources under the 'Criticism' section, in particular see notes 17, 22, and 24.
I love that vehicle, a fantastic concept that I really hope catches on in cities. I expect that many asian countries will adopt them far before the US since they deal with a lot of overcrowding and already have more efficiently sized vehicles and booming bicycling populations. I fear, however, that one of the major hurdles of adoption of these vehicles in the US is the massive number of SUVs and trucks here. While the VentureOne may be relatively safe in a solo accident due to their safety design, when a vehicle weighing nearly 5 times as much plows into/over one there probably isn't going to be much left of the occupants. I love that alternative low-occupancy vehicles are starting to become available, but at least in the US our road culture of "bigger is better" has to change before there will be mass adoption. Thanks for the link!
Anyway, this is not true: think of musicians who make a living doing live shows. Maybe that wouldn't work for some types of artists, but again, why should they be guaranteed a certain way of making money?
It's not the artist's income only that copyright seeks to protect, it's also the cultural enhancement that society itself recieves and benefits from, which is more intangible but nevertheless a Good Thing. Yes, if all copyright were abolished some artists in some mediums would continue to produce, but we would not have anywhere near the amount of creative works we have now since it would be much harder to earn a living without doing some other parttime work. Copyright is supposed to strike a balance between the needs of the creator (income) and the needs of society (entertainment, culture) but lately the balance has been pushed by corporations far in favor of the creator, or rather the holder of the copyright. One way that this might also be addressed is to prohibit the wholesale transfer of copyrights to corporations, removing the incentive for a corp. to hoard works and lobby for ever stronger/longer terms. Just a quick thought, needs more fleshing out.
My main point was to defend the parent who I believe is essentially correct: removing all copyrights will in the end hurt artists by making it harder for them to make a living solely from their works and returning us to a period where works are produced mostly on commission, which means only the wealthy could afford what we take for granted today. It won't happen overnight, and it won't stop all artists from producing, but the variety, quality, and breadth of works currently available will definitely decrease.
In a related story, American Heritage Dictionary says relatedly is a word.
Well the parent was complaining about the USE of 'relatedly' in the summary. Checking your own link you will see that relatedly is an ADVERB, pray tell then, what verb is it modifying in the summary? While it is a valid word, it's usage is incorrect here.
I mean come on, even a fresh-out-of-Starfleet ensign knows that wearing a red shirt is a mark of doom. It was inevitable, they should just be happy their sacrifices were for the greater good, and not just an arbitrary display of power by some alie^B^B^B^B contractor.
"...store windows that are also dynamic advertising surfaces"
Sounds wonderful *koff*koff*
I don't see why it wouldn't be. Right now store windows are *already* used for advertising, except that it involves printing new displays constantly on paper mediums and using tons of ink as well. It uses a lot of resources and generates a lot of waste that can't really be reused by the store. Sure, a video display will use energy so there's still enviromental costs involved at some level but the savings to the store in printing will pay itself back reasonably quickly. Note I didn't say "hooray the era of ubiquitous advertising is here!" I'm not interested in putting video ads everywhere like in Minority Report, although it seems an unfortunately inevitable future given how our society works. But where it is useful for store advertising applications that are already going on, why not apply the technology and get rid of wastful print advertising in store windows?
Well, I used a price estimate of $55 for the game, which is where the "almost double" came from. Wishful thinking, I know, since why would they charge $55 when they could charge $60? And likely it'll be $65 or $70 simply because they know we'll buy it. Granted, there is a good amount of extras in the legendary package, but I could care less about watching the behind the scenes, and even so, how many times is someone going to watch those DVDs? I was more interested in the replica helmet, but depsite what GameStop employees told me it's apparently only about 2/3rds scale. So what are we getting? DVDs we'll watch once (other than RvB which rocks), and a helmet that can't even be worn except by maybe small children. Not exactly blowing me away for $130. Plus the $100 "estimated" price point seems (in retrospect) to be suspiciously at one of the "trigger" points for consumers. I'm sure they were well aware it would be more than $100 but putting that number out there got them more preorders and people are lazy and so they're counting on people just letting the extra $30 slide. It's all quite maddening, but how does one vote with their dollars when there's X million consumers willing to take your place?.
:/
Also, I read somewhere, I believe on bungie.net, that new map packs will be for 360 only. Why? Well, to force the last of us that haven't migrated yet to do so, just as you said you would. I'm included in that group, I was already waiting on the 360 just to save up the money, but when I heard rumors of the elite balck version I figured it'd be worth waiting as that will almost surely mean a price drop for the other versions, or possibly picking one up used at a bit of a discount - assuming the warranty period on the used console is any good.
In any case, at every turn it's pretty obvious MS is using Halo to leverage the hell out of the fanbase for cash. But considering how MS treats other loyal user groups - like MS Office users - it really shouldn't be a surprise, though it still pisses me off.
Ok, so in the last couple years or so we've seen the devlopment of: 1) electrically conductive plastics 2) transparent (when off) OLED-based displays, 3) transparent plastic-based circuits, 4) clear plastic-based batteries, 5) multitouch input capability, and 6) light-based data transfer methods and holographic data storage.
Within 10 years I hope to see all of these technologies combined into a geek fantasy device: a clear plastic tablet computer about the size of a pad of paper. Not to mention the hojillion other applications that suddenly become possible when you can embed a complete computer with I/O in a transparent medium: HUDs for glasses, store windows that are also dynamic advertising surfaces, image processing and data overlay on windshields (e.g. thermal or IR image data to augment the scene in poor visibility), etc.
I especially like the plastic battery concept since in theory you could make certain structural elements also function as you battery so there is no need for a bulky power source attached to the device, this would work well for the glasses display - the frames themselves could be the battery and/or processor. Although we'd definitely want to make sure there aren't any exploding battery incidents like with recent laptops.
I expect a good lawyer won't so much have memorised all of the case law as much as generated a hash table [...] for case law like I have for my photo collection
;) Anyone know if such a DB service already exists, other than simply providing a swarm of human researchers?
You know, there could be money to be made in creating and selling access to such a meta-tagged caselaw DB. Although maybe not since it would reduce billable hours.
The fact is, nobody is forcing you to have these extras.
:/ Now, no one is holding a gun to our heads to migrate to the system, but it's MS's biggest title, of course they're using it to leverage sales of high-margin addons. I understand the business sense behind it, but it's still essentially a big FU to a loyal fanbase. "You want to continue to support us and play your favorite game on the new console? Cool, but it'll cost you $100 more than (almost) any other game's fans."
:(
Actually, for those of us who are big fans of Halo, MS is forcing us to buy the HD if we want to be able to play it on the 360.
Offtopic from accessories, sorta, but related to milking the Halo fans for all they're worth: the elite collector's edition for Halo3 was advertised for preorder at $100, then earlier this month they announced the "official" pricing (WTF was the $100 price then??) and jacked it up to $130. I had a preorder for it, I was able to stomach almost double the cost of the game for the extras, but $130? An extra $30 on top of the extra $45 for extra content that still isn't playable means I cancelled my preorder. And they did it because they could, they knew that the fans were loyal enough that they'd soldier on and buy it. It disgusts me how blantantly MS is screwing the fans of their most successful xbox franchise, way to reward the loyal Microsoft.
This is one of the biggest problems I see with current governments' agendas to implement mass surveilance and other technology security measures - an almost total lack of cost-benefit analysis that demonstrate a clear need to implement the technology. For many of these cases there are clear privacy concerns, the potential for abuse of the system, and encroachment of liberties, and in addition there are the projected costs of implementing the systems - costs for hardware, software, infrastructure, agencies, staffing, etc. Most of the time the monetary estimates run into the billions, and that's before the usual reality of budget and schedule overruns, unforeseen implementation problems, contractor cost inflating, etc etc. And yet to balance all these costs, projected and real, there is usually not much more supporting argument than "it fights terrorism/crime/think of the children". Rarely with any sort of hard data backing up the plans, rarely with in-depth studies of test cases, or even analysis of how similar systems are working in other countries where they have already been implemented. This whole idea of "trust us, it's for the better" is infuriating coming from our chosen leaders.
And what about if the system doesn't provide the expected benefits? When was the last time a huge security program was dismantled when shown to not deliver what was promised, or even evaluated for success? (programs like Carnivore and Total Information Awareness continue on in other guises even now) Too often there are earmarks, kickbacks (monetary and political) and whatnot tied into the whole process so supporters are even less likely to admit failure when a program is still personally lucrative in some way. None of the funding for these mass surveilance and automated security measures seem to have any sort of merit-based budgeting built in. It ends up being a huge political fight to close useless programs, meanwhile the costs - monetary and liberty - continue to pile up, restricting freedoms and draining our public coffers (or in the case of the US continuing to pile onto a mountain of debt that cannot possibly be repaid without massive negative consequences). Our representatives in government need to be held accountable to hold these programs accountable! There need to be provisions, milestones, evaluations and hard-set sunset clauses that force these programs to deliver or die. And there needs to be more scepticism upfront with regard to the promised benefits that have little to no factual backing, and more than that, the coefficient placed in front of the value of infractions of liberty needs to be increased! The practice of implementing Security Theater programs with no accountability to success has got to stop. We're stepping on freedoms and spending like a drunk with no proven returns, how is that good public policy?