This entirely. When a MakerBot can start making things out of engineering materials capable of handing meaningful loads and temperatures (metal and ceramic, perhaps some high-performance plastics) then we have something.
I'd also like to see a MakerBot that can produce more general consumer goods, such as shoes, clothing, and other tools.
Of course, if many people have a general-purpose micro factory in their homes, then much of the world economy will be in for a new shock - and commodities prices and raw materials shipping industries will be quite interesting.
This statement implies taxes are not considered a "charge," workers installing and maintaining the infrastructure don't get paid, or a combination of the two.
After some consideration, I'm pretty sure that sentiment is empty: both rational and irrational actions can claim to be "based" on any given scriptural text.
I would argue that this can only be because of irrational text itself (in case the action does align with the text) or an irrational claim (the action does not really align with the text, despite the claim that it does).
More often than not, the latter case is true - for Christianity or any other belief system.
Yes, but only so many of those combinations "sound good" - you can probably algorithmically eliminate ones that would make no sense. After all, the goal would be to "protect" the good music, not the "noise."
Rules of music theory are simple enough to dramatically reduce the number of combinations.
(I never said such a thing would be practical, just that it would be theoretically possible. I actually got the idea from the little short story about "society that never forgets" and the unintended consequences of indefinite copyright.)
Do this until all possible combinations of words have been used and there are no free domain names.
Heh... I was actually musing about how to do this with music. After all, there are only so many combinations of notes - why not have computer programs just generating all possible single measures, then all possible combinations of those measures, and publishing them all online with a claimed copyright? (In the US at least, you don't have to spend money to register a work to obtain a copyright - you actually inherently have the copyright. Registering does have benefits though - but it's not required.)
Essentially, beat them at their own game. (And at the same time prove the silliness of it all. You could probably do the same with works of text as well by using a grammar generator to get legitimate sentences.)
This is actually one reason why I don't use Chrome. I don't like that the auto-updater was installed on my machine without notifying me that such an updater was installed (I don't like when I find new processes running at startup). I also don't like the fact that the upgrade occurs when perhaps I prefer the previous version to the newer one.
While I understand the benefit in having everyone have up-to-date code from a security standpoint, in my opinion those security measures should be independent from the UI and other feature set. So, if there is a minor security-only update I don't mind, but I want to be asked if I should install it. If it's a UI update, I want to be able to opt-out.
Promoting human rights and international laws of war.
I always laugh when I hear this, because if there is a war and one group "obeys the rules" and the other doesn't, all else being equal, which one is going to win?
I did try to read and understand the article on Bell's theorem, but it didn't really elucidate anything to me. Perhaps I'll read it again...
Ok, I've re-read it and I still don't understand it completely. The one interesting thing about Bell's inequality is that it (seems to?) only applies to correlations made on large numbers of trials rather than a specific trial itself. I'm not sure if I understood that correctly. I think I pretty clearly understood that the inequality only applies to entangled particles, though, not single-particle events.
I also don't quite understand the differentiation between local and non-local hidden parameters.
But, at the end of the day, I actually have to ask myself the question, Does it matter if the state of an unmeasured system is indeterminate? After all, isn't that the definition of an unobserved system? I've also been curious as to how the measurement itself affects the results - that is, is the measurement itself taken into account in the results? (Or is this what the article means by the 'detection loophole'?)
This is also the part of quantum superposition that I don't understand. Given the text in the article and other things I've read, it does seem like it's the case you described with the cards. Yet the claim of quantum mechanics is is that, no, really, the diamonds (in the experiment) are indeed in both states simultaneously until they are measured. What I don't understand is how the measurement collapses the state, versus the collapse happening before the measurement (more like the cards).
The conceptual problem I have is essentially one of causality - how do measurement cause the state to collapse in a probabilistic way (as opposed to some other way)? Especially when the measurement probe (in this case, a photon) only targets a specific geometric location.
My personal opinion is that any single quantum event is deterministic, but we can't predict single events, so we use many events; because we are measuring many events, we can only come up with a probabilistic description.
I liken this to flipping a fair coin: The coin undeniably lands with one side face up or face down, but I cannot reliably predict which side it will be. I can only measure it after the fact. But, I can reliably say that if I do the experiment enough times, I will get 50% heads and 50% tails.
For entangled particles, I see it like two coins taped to each other and flipped as one unit, then split apart without looking at either of them. Then, when you look at one of them, you know exactly what the other will be. But the nature of this is probabilistic rather than deterministic, because I don't know what the result of any particular test will be; only what the result of a collection of tests will be. The key difference is, they two coins are in a particular state both before and after I measure them; I just don't know which one it is.
Can any of the physics PhD's out there shed more light on this subject?
The sources I've found say that at its peak, new gold production was about 1.5-1.8% per year, and that may work so long as population growth remains low (or goes negative) and the rate of gold production can continue.
However, I also believe that some deflation isn't bad; some quick searching shows that something like 1% annual deflation is probably tolerable without detriment to economic growth.
At the end of the day, the only difference (albeit a very important one) between a commodity-based currency like gold and fiat currencies is that private parties can increase currency when it is commodity, whereas fiat money must have approval of the central banks. Of course, this sheds some light into why most governments don't like the idea of switching back to a commodity-based monetary system.
No, gold really is just currency, and it is still just an IOU. Just like money, it's an IOU for an indeterminate amount of goods or services ("indeterminate" meaning it could be for more or less than was exchanged for the gold in the first place).
One of the reasons gold has "appreciated" relative to other currencies is because there is essentially a fixed supply of gold chasing an ever-increasing number of goods and services; this means a smaller physical amount of gold is available to exchange for any given good or service.
Thus, gold is inherently a deflationary currency*, and it encourages hording rather than spending. On one hand this is good, because it means you only spend gold on things you absolutely need, but on the other side it's bad, because you only spend gold on things you absolutely need.
*Yes, there have been periods of inflation even under gold-based systems, but that was due to demand increases rather than money supply increases. Yes, I do not belong to the camp that says that inflation is purely a monetary phenomenon. I believe, in addition to the monetary causes of inflation, a reduction in standard of living can also cause inflation.
Whenever I see someone with an iPhone I think "you poor idiot". Blinded by bling without the ability to actually think things through for yourself.
Why does this type of sentiment exist? I don't mean specifically for Brand X or Brand Y, but in general? Shouldn't the sentiment be "I'm glad there are both Brand X and Brand Y, because there are indeed legitimate reasons to use either brand, not the least of which is simply personal preference"?
Consider this - while I prefer Coke, I'm glad there is Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, RC Cola, etc. because then everyone has a chance to drink the beverage they prefer. The only times I get really mad is when a restaurant has an exclusive contract with the beverage I least prefer (in this case I'm often better off to be honest, as I default to water).
This is the point I was trying to get across earlier through a very round-about means.
I agree entirely - there is something severely out of whack when the result of increased efficiency is not benefit to all parties, but benefit to some and dire detriment to others.
As others have mentioned, it is indeed going to be interesting when we no longer need human labor to produce food.
I can't remember the exact source (and because I'm really a secret Luddite I won't search for it) but this reminds me of the saying about the public works project where one overseer says that in order to increase employment they should take away the workers' shovels and give them spoons, and the other one says "why give them spoons?"
What I don't understand is how any single project can cost that much. Even at a generous $100k per man-year in salary and benefits, this would peg the project effort at 980 thousand man-years. A billion dollars is a lot of money.
Yes, this is an approximation because it turns material costs into labor costs (after all, all costs at the end of the day are labor), but it's good for a rough-order-of-magnitude assessment. Perhaps the largest part of the cost is in acquiring land rather than actual parts and labor (which is silly really)?
Even for something as complex as a bullet train, a man-millenium of effort seems to peg my ludicrousometer.
people are too busy rebuilding their homes after tornadoes or worry about rising sea levels that will swallow their houses
I would wager that this is affected more by a greater number of people building houses in severe weather areas than an increase in the number and severity of the weather events. Yes, changes in weather will make a change here, but the number of "targets" in a given area has changed much more rapidly than the weather(climate) changes.
I find it hilarious that the press seems to focus on "most expensive [weather event] in history" as a measure of the severity of the weather event instead of a measure of population density.
Except most modern vehicles will get BETTER fuel mileage running at 70-80+ MPH instead of puttering along at 65. This is because modern vehicles have overdrive transmissions and are DESIGNED to run most efficiently at typical highway speeds.
I've seen this claim before, but are there any actual reports anywhere? And not for one or two vehicles, but for a large collection? I have a sample size of three vehicles where 75 versus 70 gets 2mpg less (from different baselines, of course) - and that's a small car, a performance car, and a minivan, model years 1985 through 2011.
#1 Really? And how much does it save over, say, 100,000 miles? My quick math says it a 93 hour savings, how bout yours? That's 93 fewer hours sitting in traffic, exposed to others' risky driving.
Yes, 75 versus 70 may save 95 hours over 100k miles (and, gasp! you would save almost 360 hours going 40 instead of 35!), but spread over a very long period. But you would also save something between 200 and 300 gallons of gasoline (depending on the vehicle). So the question you have to ask, is an hour worth ~2-3 gallons of gasoline? At current retail gasoline price that's already basically on par with minimum wage, so it still doesn't even come close to making economic sense.
#2...it's none of your business if I decide to burn a little of MY fuel, or save a little of MY time, by driving faster...
It most certainly is, when by burning "your" fuel you reduce the amount available to others, and therefore increase costs. Even though you may be willing to pay more for your consumption, your higher consumption also inevitably increases my costs. That doesn't even include environmental aspects. An even more insidious thing people forget is that speeding is breaking a law. Yes, the law may be questionable, but willful disregard for laws, even "silly traffic laws," results in a society where rule of law no longer holds, because people have no respect for the concept of law (I'm not getting into corrupt administration of the law; you can still believe in the rule of law and acknowledge that such a thing is being abused). If you have a problem with a law, lobby and gather people together to change it, don't ignore it. This is probably the highest cost to society for speeding: the promotion of the concept that if you don't like a law you can just ignore it.
....when study after study...
Like the ones that say 90% or whatever of all drivers think they are better than average?
the "safety" aspects of speed limits are basically bullshit, and the traffic camera in question here is nothing more than a new and improved means to generate more revenue
The safety aspects of speed are actually highly geographically dependent, but in general, yes, people misuse the studies. Also, I agree that the rationale people use for things like speed cameras is dubious at best. On the flip side, how else would you propose to fund your local police force? Would you prefer a bill that comes? Would you rather have no police force and hope you are better at combat than any other random person, spending all your time on personal defense rather than on whatever it is for which you're spending all that time in the car? Personally I have no problem with communities raising money by fining people who break the law.
As you seem to have grasped--but not articulated--speed limits are not for the good of the people, they're for the good of the revenuers.
My response to this is... "sometimes."
The fact is, while high speed limits may not have a direct impact on frequencies of accidents, they do have a significant impact on severity of an accident as well as overall societal fuel consumption.
While vehicle-vehicle accident damage does tend to scale with speed differential, accident damage also has to do with speed differential to the environment, especially when in an area where the most common type of accident is road departure.
I'm surprised that fuel consumption, being a big national issue, hasn't gained traction with the speed limit people. The state next to mine even recently increased their speed limits on a major road from 65 to 70, so all those SUVs can go even faster and burn even more fuel (no engine technology in the world will save you from speed-squared drag).
I also think that all those people who speed on their commutes must have failed math, because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light. Going 75 versus 65 only saves you 220 seconds - less than four minutes - over 30 miles. About the only time speeding makes sense is on very long trips or if every second counts.
Since anything wireless can only tell if the information it's receiving is what it should be to grant control, shouldn't we implement something like a geometric constraint such that a satellite will only accept commands if coming from a particular location on the planet?
Yes, this would still be possible to fake, but it should be significantly more difficult since it relies not only on information but also location.
it's a means to be able to delay other peoples production and win money through lawsuits. It has nothing to do with protecting innovation.
You'll not get much argument from me there - the problem is, unfortunately, that while the patent system does have the capability to "protect innovation" that "protection" is precisely why it is also open to abuses (compounded by the subjective descriptions in the law relating to what is and is not patentable).
I suppose the general rule of thumb is that any type of protectionist legislation always has its downsides, and those downsides almost always show up only when technology is changing rapidly (look at textile and steel industries for examples). Computers are inherently a fast-changing technology, so the flaws in the protectionist nature of patents are readily visible.
Perhaps rather than some arbitrary number (20 years, 17 years, 43.6234 years, etc.), patents (probably all IP except trademarks, really) should have as their protected period the expected "half-life" of the technology - so for something like software where new versions come out every 12 or 18 months, patents are only good for 6 to 9 months. For drugs that come out every decade or so, they are good for 5 years.
Suffice it to say, patents are definitely easy to abuse, and their benefits are questionable, but until someone gets enough people elected that are interested in free flow of information rather than protecting it as the last hope for the US (or EU, or wherever) economy, it's not going to change.
Basically, the time for the soap box has ended, and it's time to get to the ballot box.
The patent may be easier to circumvent than that - if you read the actual claims of the patent (yes, heresy I know), all you have to do is use multiple images; the patent specifically claims "the visual element is a single image."
While I agree the patent is pretty weak as far as quality goes, it is fairly specific.
In general, though, it's a good example of part of the difficulty in evaluating patents. If the task at hand is "provide a mechanism to prevent unwanted inputs to a touchscreen device held in your pocket" then "use a slide gesture" is one method (as opposed to, say, discrete button presses in a pattern like entering a key code). So that may be considered a specific means to address a goal.
Where people get confused is they think the task is "use a gesture to unlock the phone" and cry "foul!" because there's really only a few ways (if that many) to use a gesture to unlock a phone. The problem is turtles all the way down: which particular functionality is the "goal" and which is the "innovative device to meet the goal"?
What's preventing you (and possibly a group of other EITs) from pooling your resources, forming a company, and hiring a PE (or getting one to sponsor you under some other arrangement)?
Remember, "resources" doesn't necessarily mean "money" - if you have particularly good skills, or have good contacts, plain "vision," or some other resource, you should be able to work under some PE.
The problem is that, after leaving college, the current economic depression prevents them from getting a reasonably good job.
Eh, I've seen this sentiment enough in this thread that it's driving me nuts. "The economy" is not an active agent; it cannot "prevent" anything. Also, if these people are getting degrees, why not make their own jobs rather than expect someone else to make one for them?
A sizable portion of the population of the US was settled by people who made their own jobs. They didn't even have any degrees! So regardless of your "degree" situation, why not start your own job instead of complaining that someone else is not creating jobs?
(While creating your own job is by no means effortless, it's not as difficult or scary as people seem to think. They key is thinking small enough to start, not "how can I rake in six figures profit a year".)
you're SOL when the specialist is out of commission.
It's sort of fascinating how, despite all our technology, we still suffer from such problems. It seems we may have crossed beyond the point where gained efficiency from specialization has more total cost than slightly less efficient, more flexible (less specialized) industries. In this case the "specialist" is geographical rather than talent, but I think the concept applies well enough.
I think I have to agree with this. Although, I think XII was pretty decent; given its style, though, I think it was done by the teams involved with Tactics and Vagrant Story which were, if I recall correctly, before the merger.
XIII reminds me of Xenosaga II and III, which both destroyed the awesome Xenosaga (I) with its crazy linear gameplay and "narrative" loading screens.(Seriously - the story should come out during gameplay, not a loading screen!)
So, yes; while I purchased XIII, I think that's probably it for me. (Personally I fall into the camp that has VI as the favorite.)
Slashdot Mirror
This entirely. When a MakerBot can start making things out of engineering materials capable of handing meaningful loads and temperatures (metal and ceramic, perhaps some high-performance plastics) then we have something.
I'd also like to see a MakerBot that can produce more general consumer goods, such as shoes, clothing, and other tools.
Of course, if many people have a general-purpose micro factory in their homes, then much of the world economy will be in for a new shock - and commodities prices and raw materials shipping industries will be quite interesting.
This statement implies taxes are not considered a "charge," workers installing and maintaining the infrastructure don't get paid, or a combination of the two.
After some consideration, I'm pretty sure that sentiment is empty: both rational and irrational actions can claim to be "based" on any given scriptural text.
I would argue that this can only be because of irrational text itself (in case the action does align with the text) or an irrational claim (the action does not really align with the text, despite the claim that it does).
More often than not, the latter case is true - for Christianity or any other belief system.
Yes, but only so many of those combinations "sound good" - you can probably algorithmically eliminate ones that would make no sense. After all, the goal would be to "protect" the good music, not the "noise."
Rules of music theory are simple enough to dramatically reduce the number of combinations.
(I never said such a thing would be practical, just that it would be theoretically possible. I actually got the idea from the little short story about "society that never forgets" and the unintended consequences of indefinite copyright.)
Heh... I was actually musing about how to do this with music. After all, there are only so many combinations of notes - why not have computer programs just generating all possible single measures, then all possible combinations of those measures, and publishing them all online with a claimed copyright? (In the US at least, you don't have to spend money to register a work to obtain a copyright - you actually inherently have the copyright. Registering does have benefits though - but it's not required.)
Essentially, beat them at their own game. (And at the same time prove the silliness of it all. You could probably do the same with works of text as well by using a grammar generator to get legitimate sentences.)
This is actually one reason why I don't use Chrome. I don't like that the auto-updater was installed on my machine without notifying me that such an updater was installed (I don't like when I find new processes running at startup). I also don't like the fact that the upgrade occurs when perhaps I prefer the previous version to the newer one.
While I understand the benefit in having everyone have up-to-date code from a security standpoint, in my opinion those security measures should be independent from the UI and other feature set. So, if there is a minor security-only update I don't mind, but I want to be asked if I should install it. If it's a UI update, I want to be able to opt-out.
I always laugh when I hear this, because if there is a war and one group "obeys the rules" and the other doesn't, all else being equal, which one is going to win?
I did try to read and understand the article on Bell's theorem, but it didn't really elucidate anything to me. Perhaps I'll read it again...
Ok, I've re-read it and I still don't understand it completely. The one interesting thing about Bell's inequality is that it (seems to?) only applies to correlations made on large numbers of trials rather than a specific trial itself. I'm not sure if I understood that correctly. I think I pretty clearly understood that the inequality only applies to entangled particles, though, not single-particle events.
I also don't quite understand the differentiation between local and non-local hidden parameters.
But, at the end of the day, I actually have to ask myself the question, Does it matter if the state of an unmeasured system is indeterminate? After all, isn't that the definition of an unobserved system? I've also been curious as to how the measurement itself affects the results - that is, is the measurement itself taken into account in the results? (Or is this what the article means by the 'detection loophole'?)
This is also the part of quantum superposition that I don't understand. Given the text in the article and other things I've read, it does seem like it's the case you described with the cards. Yet the claim of quantum mechanics is is that, no, really, the diamonds (in the experiment) are indeed in both states simultaneously until they are measured. What I don't understand is how the measurement collapses the state, versus the collapse happening before the measurement (more like the cards).
The conceptual problem I have is essentially one of causality - how do measurement cause the state to collapse in a probabilistic way (as opposed to some other way)? Especially when the measurement probe (in this case, a photon) only targets a specific geometric location.
My personal opinion is that any single quantum event is deterministic, but we can't predict single events, so we use many events; because we are measuring many events, we can only come up with a probabilistic description.
I liken this to flipping a fair coin: The coin undeniably lands with one side face up or face down, but I cannot reliably predict which side it will be. I can only measure it after the fact. But, I can reliably say that if I do the experiment enough times, I will get 50% heads and 50% tails.
For entangled particles, I see it like two coins taped to each other and flipped as one unit, then split apart without looking at either of them. Then, when you look at one of them, you know exactly what the other will be. But the nature of this is probabilistic rather than deterministic, because I don't know what the result of any particular test will be; only what the result of a collection of tests will be. The key difference is, they two coins are in a particular state both before and after I measure them; I just don't know which one it is.
Can any of the physics PhD's out there shed more light on this subject?
The sources I've found say that at its peak, new gold production was about 1.5-1.8% per year, and that may work so long as population growth remains low (or goes negative) and the rate of gold production can continue.
However, I also believe that some deflation isn't bad; some quick searching shows that something like 1% annual deflation is probably tolerable without detriment to economic growth.
At the end of the day, the only difference (albeit a very important one) between a commodity-based currency like gold and fiat currencies is that private parties can increase currency when it is commodity, whereas fiat money must have approval of the central banks. Of course, this sheds some light into why most governments don't like the idea of switching back to a commodity-based monetary system.
No, gold really is just currency, and it is still just an IOU. Just like money, it's an IOU for an indeterminate amount of goods or services ("indeterminate" meaning it could be for more or less than was exchanged for the gold in the first place).
One of the reasons gold has "appreciated" relative to other currencies is because there is essentially a fixed supply of gold chasing an ever-increasing number of goods and services; this means a smaller physical amount of gold is available to exchange for any given good or service.
Thus, gold is inherently a deflationary currency*, and it encourages hording rather than spending. On one hand this is good, because it means you only spend gold on things you absolutely need, but on the other side it's bad, because you only spend gold on things you absolutely need.
*Yes, there have been periods of inflation even under gold-based systems, but that was due to demand increases rather than money supply increases. Yes, I do not belong to the camp that says that inflation is purely a monetary phenomenon. I believe, in addition to the monetary causes of inflation, a reduction in standard of living can also cause inflation.
Why does this type of sentiment exist? I don't mean specifically for Brand X or Brand Y, but in general? Shouldn't the sentiment be "I'm glad there are both Brand X and Brand Y, because there are indeed legitimate reasons to use either brand, not the least of which is simply personal preference"?
Consider this - while I prefer Coke, I'm glad there is Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, RC Cola, etc. because then everyone has a chance to drink the beverage they prefer. The only times I get really mad is when a restaurant has an exclusive contract with the beverage I least prefer (in this case I'm often better off to be honest, as I default to water).
This is the point I was trying to get across earlier through a very round-about means.
I agree entirely - there is something severely out of whack when the result of increased efficiency is not benefit to all parties, but benefit to some and dire detriment to others.
As others have mentioned, it is indeed going to be interesting when we no longer need human labor to produce food.
I can't remember the exact source (and because I'm really a secret Luddite I won't search for it) but this reminds me of the saying about the public works project where one overseer says that in order to increase employment they should take away the workers' shovels and give them spoons, and the other one says "why give them spoons?"
What I don't understand is how any single project can cost that much. Even at a generous $100k per man-year in salary and benefits, this would peg the project effort at 980 thousand man-years. A billion dollars is a lot of money.
Yes, this is an approximation because it turns material costs into labor costs (after all, all costs at the end of the day are labor), but it's good for a rough-order-of-magnitude assessment. Perhaps the largest part of the cost is in acquiring land rather than actual parts and labor (which is silly really)?
Even for something as complex as a bullet train, a man-millenium of effort seems to peg my ludicrousometer.
I would wager that this is affected more by a greater number of people building houses in severe weather areas than an increase in the number and severity of the weather events. Yes, changes in weather will make a change here, but the number of "targets" in a given area has changed much more rapidly than the weather(climate) changes.
I find it hilarious that the press seems to focus on "most expensive [weather event] in history" as a measure of the severity of the weather event instead of a measure of population density.
I've seen this claim before, but are there any actual reports anywhere? And not for one or two vehicles, but for a large collection? I have a sample size of three vehicles where 75 versus 70 gets 2mpg less (from different baselines, of course) - and that's a small car, a performance car, and a minivan, model years 1985 through 2011.
Yes, 75 versus 70 may save 95 hours over 100k miles (and, gasp! you would save almost 360 hours going 40 instead of 35!), but spread over a very long period. But you would also save something between 200 and 300 gallons of gasoline (depending on the vehicle). So the question you have to ask, is an hour worth ~2-3 gallons of gasoline? At current retail gasoline price that's already basically on par with minimum wage, so it still doesn't even come close to making economic sense.
It most certainly is, when by burning "your" fuel you reduce the amount available to others, and therefore increase costs. Even though you may be willing to pay more for your consumption, your higher consumption also inevitably increases my costs. That doesn't even include environmental aspects. An even more insidious thing people forget is that speeding is breaking a law. Yes, the law may be questionable, but willful disregard for laws, even "silly traffic laws," results in a society where rule of law no longer holds, because people have no respect for the concept of law (I'm not getting into corrupt administration of the law; you can still believe in the rule of law and acknowledge that such a thing is being abused). If you have a problem with a law, lobby and gather people together to change it, don't ignore it. This is probably the highest cost to society for speeding: the promotion of the concept that if you don't like a law you can just ignore it.
Like the ones that say 90% or whatever of all drivers think they are better than average?
The safety aspects of speed are actually highly geographically dependent, but in general, yes, people misuse the studies. Also, I agree that the rationale people use for things like speed cameras is dubious at best. On the flip side, how else would you propose to fund your local police force? Would you prefer a bill that comes? Would you rather have no police force and hope you are better at combat than any other random person, spending all your time on personal defense rather than on whatever it is for which you're spending all that time in the car? Personally I have no problem with communities raising money by fining people who break the law.
My response to this is... "sometimes."
The fact is, while high speed limits may not have a direct impact on frequencies of accidents, they do have a significant impact on severity of an accident as well as overall societal fuel consumption.
While vehicle-vehicle accident damage does tend to scale with speed differential, accident damage also has to do with speed differential to the environment, especially when in an area where the most common type of accident is road departure.
I'm surprised that fuel consumption, being a big national issue, hasn't gained traction with the speed limit people. The state next to mine even recently increased their speed limits on a major road from 65 to 70, so all those SUVs can go even faster and burn even more fuel (no engine technology in the world will save you from speed-squared drag).
I also think that all those people who speed on their commutes must have failed math, because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light. Going 75 versus 65 only saves you 220 seconds - less than four minutes - over 30 miles. About the only time speeding makes sense is on very long trips or if every second counts.
Since anything wireless can only tell if the information it's receiving is what it should be to grant control, shouldn't we implement something like a geometric constraint such that a satellite will only accept commands if coming from a particular location on the planet?
Yes, this would still be possible to fake, but it should be significantly more difficult since it relies not only on information but also location.
You'll not get much argument from me there - the problem is, unfortunately, that while the patent system does have the capability to "protect innovation" that "protection" is precisely why it is also open to abuses (compounded by the subjective descriptions in the law relating to what is and is not patentable).
I suppose the general rule of thumb is that any type of protectionist legislation always has its downsides, and those downsides almost always show up only when technology is changing rapidly (look at textile and steel industries for examples). Computers are inherently a fast-changing technology, so the flaws in the protectionist nature of patents are readily visible.
Perhaps rather than some arbitrary number (20 years, 17 years, 43.6234 years, etc.), patents (probably all IP except trademarks, really) should have as their protected period the expected "half-life" of the technology - so for something like software where new versions come out every 12 or 18 months, patents are only good for 6 to 9 months. For drugs that come out every decade or so, they are good for 5 years.
Suffice it to say, patents are definitely easy to abuse, and their benefits are questionable, but until someone gets enough people elected that are interested in free flow of information rather than protecting it as the last hope for the US (or EU, or wherever) economy, it's not going to change.
Basically, the time for the soap box has ended, and it's time to get to the ballot box.
The patent may be easier to circumvent than that - if you read the actual claims of the patent (yes, heresy I know), all you have to do is use multiple images; the patent specifically claims "the visual element is a single image."
While I agree the patent is pretty weak as far as quality goes, it is fairly specific.
In general, though, it's a good example of part of the difficulty in evaluating patents. If the task at hand is "provide a mechanism to prevent unwanted inputs to a touchscreen device held in your pocket" then "use a slide gesture" is one method (as opposed to, say, discrete button presses in a pattern like entering a key code). So that may be considered a specific means to address a goal.
Where people get confused is they think the task is "use a gesture to unlock the phone" and cry "foul!" because there's really only a few ways (if that many) to use a gesture to unlock a phone. The problem is turtles all the way down: which particular functionality is the "goal" and which is the "innovative device to meet the goal"?
What's preventing you (and possibly a group of other EITs) from pooling your resources, forming a company, and hiring a PE (or getting one to sponsor you under some other arrangement)?
Remember, "resources" doesn't necessarily mean "money" - if you have particularly good skills, or have good contacts, plain "vision," or some other resource, you should be able to work under some PE.
Eh, I've seen this sentiment enough in this thread that it's driving me nuts. "The economy" is not an active agent; it cannot "prevent" anything. Also, if these people are getting degrees, why not make their own jobs rather than expect someone else to make one for them?
A sizable portion of the population of the US was settled by people who made their own jobs. They didn't even have any degrees! So regardless of your "degree" situation, why not start your own job instead of complaining that someone else is not creating jobs?
(While creating your own job is by no means effortless, it's not as difficult or scary as people seem to think. They key is thinking small enough to start, not "how can I rake in six figures profit a year".)
you're SOL when the specialist is out of commission.
It's sort of fascinating how, despite all our technology, we still suffer from such problems. It seems we may have crossed beyond the point where gained efficiency from specialization has more total cost than slightly less efficient, more flexible (less specialized) industries. In this case the "specialist" is geographical rather than talent, but I think the concept applies well enough.
I think I have to agree with this. Although, I think XII was pretty decent; given its style, though, I think it was done by the teams involved with Tactics and Vagrant Story which were, if I recall correctly, before the merger.
XIII reminds me of Xenosaga II and III, which both destroyed the awesome Xenosaga (I) with its crazy linear gameplay and "narrative" loading screens.(Seriously - the story should come out during gameplay, not a loading screen!)
So, yes; while I purchased XIII, I think that's probably it for me. (Personally I fall into the camp that has VI as the favorite.)