You saw an article with simplistic pull quotes -- don't assume that's all there is.
Airliners avionics are comparatively stone age. This is not all bad. The connection between the two is one way - out.
Could someone be contemplating a linux based glass panel display that you can e-mail your flight plan to? Yes. Do private pilots often rely upon ipads for display even in IFR conditions -- probably yes. Can those instruments (both the theoretical and the actual) be compromised? Yes.
Are airliners flying that way? I highly doubt it. Private pilots use ipads or android tablets because they are orders of magnitued cheaper, and have much better user interfaces. A Garmin GTN750 (GPS with map and waypoint database with Comm and Nav radios) is about $20,000 installed - a G500 Glass panel (Attitude inticator, altimeter, navigation display, maps, etc) is about the same ($20k installed) A tablet $500 and an Ilevil AHRS ($1000) + ADS-B receiver ($600) duplicate many / most of those functions, and add a few (No comm/nav radios and guidance - but you get traffic and weather on your device) We're allowed to use these toys, but not RELY upon them. Most commercial pilots are doing milk runs, and are largely following ATC instructions rather than finding their own way. ATC talk to the planes via analog radio transmissions -- My fear for "hijacking" would be based upon taking out a controller's radio antenna and hopping on a radio to give bogus directions. That could be deadly -- and ADB-in receivers could give them info about what to do. I think a warning to keep things segmented as much as they are is warranted, the scare that they will p0wn the flightdeck is not really believable.
Really? It's the solution to the great majority of the issues here, (Bundled crapware) and just plain easy to use as well. Downside -- it always needs admin rights, not particularly surprising.
How to install? Hit the win key -- type cmd in the search box, hold control-shift - tap enter. Viola - An Administrative rights command prompt pops up. Then paste: @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin
(Note you should copy that from chocolatey.org's website yourself - don't trust me!)
When it finishes, type : choco install sysinternals or choco install libreoffice, choco install javaruntime, etc. Of course you can stack installs: choco install javaruntime libreoffice paint.net notepadplusplus.install googlechrome 7zip.install firefox putty filezilla
When you think there might be updates: type: cup all in a command prompt. It'll let you know when it's done.
You seem to be either creating an odd situation on purpose, or getting stuck on one you've come across. When you grab a section of formatted text from a PDF, LibreOffice considers it a unitary chunk -- and tries to keep it together. If you want to break this, or have LibreOffice treat it differently - there's a pretty wide variety of methods to do so: First method: grab the bit above your graphic - paste it, then paste your graphic, then paste the text below it. Second Method: paste as unformatted text, either by using paste-special "unformatted text" or washing in through notepad. If I want text, not formatting, I habitually wash it through notepad. Open notepad and paste in text, highlight and copy. So I'm not sure which part you object to and I don't know what your desired behavior is, but for me LibreOffice's behaviour is very reasonable -- and when I want it to do something different, it's fairly simple to accomplish.
If you want to point out a real weak point in Libre Writer? Labels. Labels implementation is still (I think) both bad and confusing. I know it is confusing. I wish I had time to look at it and offer to help fix it. For now, I just hope someone else does.
The plates are in plain view. As the first poster indicated, they could sit a cop on every corner and note down every plate. I can't think of any reasonable argument for this requiring a warrant. Forcing my ISP to cough up data on me, or planting a GPS tracker on my car -- or even asking those "nice folks" at onstar to spy on me (I don't, and won't have an onstar equipped vehicle) -- THAT should require a warrant.
Chances are that this "e-cat" is crap.
However all of the above blather is not relevant.
1. Catalysts can and do change the nature of reactions, whether they occur at all, and how exothermic or endothermic the reaction is - this can occur with chemical reactions
2. Chemical catalyst properties are irrelevant to the proposed process, which is supposed to be a fusion process.
3. The solar fusion reference makes sense only in the case of solar fusion -- yes -- in that process you bind up a tremendous amount of energy in nickel and iron. No it doesn't fuse higher naturally. So? Does that mean it's impossible? Absolutely not. We do all sorts of things that don't happen naturally. If as the original poster said: the binding energy is stronger for nickel than copper (I must admit I don't know if that's true -- but I'm willing to believe that it's possible)
Quote: "Nickel has the highest binding energy of any nucleus. When stars die it is because they've turned every element into iron and nickel and it is impossible to fuse anything further exothermically." If a catalyst changes the fusion "activation energy" could heat be released in that process?
I'm betting that it could.
This is a bit like the folks that jumped on the ice melting and assuming that it proves that climate change is caused by human factors. No, it simply proves that it is significant warming trend -- and NOTHING else. It's probably caused or helped by human input to the ecosystem -- but proving that is separate from proving warming.
Don't use a bit of knowledge to spread confusion and ignorance. This isn't a "free energy" scheme -- it's a fusion scheme. It may be highly improbable, but it's not a violation of thermodynamics. You eventually run out of nickel or hydrogen. Fission seemed like free energy at first as well - the fuel didn't burn or blow up, but still generated heat -- preposterous!
If you know enough detail to really critique it, please do! If you don't -- please don't pretend you do.
- Jeff Dodge
This guy on the silent pc forums seems to indicate he saved probably 2w, possibly 5w of power by removing his RAGE XL card. -- This is admittedly an older card -- but even if it's 5w -- at 24x7 we're looking at less than $6 per year at 12c / kwh.
More to the point re: power savings -- can you in fact shut down most of the video? -- how much power are we talking about?
I understand that when a high end gpu is loaded up it sucks down power like no tomorrow -- but how much does it burn at idle?
Assuming you don't boot X, can you put the graphics card to sleep pending a keypress?
1. Bios setup through serial console -- the great majority of motherboards do not support this -- but you might try LinuxBios (now known as coreboot) http://coreboot.org/ supports serial console.
2. A number of non-server Asus "enthusiast" boards do support remote/serial console I believe the A7N8-X did, and a few others - check, you might get lucky.
2. Serial support -- most medium old desktops kept a single serial port on the motherboard -- many systems didn't pin these out -- but check your manual and scrounge for old serial header to d-sub slot fillers.
3. People mentioning laptops re: lack of serial ports -- this is a discussion about headless desktops -- keep your mind on the problem and solutions and stop spitballing -- laptops don't go headless.
4. If it's a desktop without serial ports put in an add in card. Hopefully a common one that the kernel and grub will both be able to see (and presumably coreboot if you go that route for bios level serial)
I would not recommend trying to work out USB -> Serial for your console -- you'll almost certainly not be able to make it work with grub (pending some savant deciding to add PL203 support to grub)
Again -- how much power are you saving by going absolutely headless? Did you measure? I've generally assumed load from AGP card at rest is minimal -- am I wrong?
Actually they have vp6 and vp8
http://www.on2.com/index.php?564
which -- surprise, surprise -- on2 claims is better than h.264 -- if google decides to open up vp8 -- it would change the equation radically. Particularly the ogg/vp8 combo. It's also possible some vp3 diffs (theora) would still be useful when applied to vp8 -- although what the chances of this are, I couldn't say. It does solve the h.264 patent license problem for google with android and chrome os. A theora / vp8 release and a move to primacy of vp8 or derivative for youtube would reshape the whole playing field. I'm hopeful, but not gleeful yet.
Faster-than-light does necessarily not mean instantaneous. Ansibles (as Card used the term anyway) allow instant communication. What your reference claims is that ftl and instant communication end up being the same thing.
"For any faster-than-light system there will be some inertial frame in which it appears to act instantaneously, and so the same argument may easily be applied to any such system." But this is completely unproven in the reference, and doesn't seem quite right to me. If you are saying that special relativity does not correctly explain the behavior of faster than light travel or communication, you are completely correct. That says nothing about whether such things can or do happen.
NTP had no product -- they had no service. (on a push e-mail front)
They simply waited for someone else to do it and then sued them. This did not serve innovation.
Again: Can anyone come up with two cases where patents have driven innovation in software or even electronics?
Google didn't make it big based on pagerank alone.
erm -- that was my point -- they made the whole process WORK -- speed implementation -- it wasn't a patented idea -- it was simply doing it. That's the case with a lot of these ideas -- the ideas aren't key -- but you can sometimes prevent others from competing with them. That doesn't foster innovation and competition, it stifles it.
Let's say software and business process patents did not exist. Where would Google be now? Would Sergey and Brin not have bothered to work on search algorithms if there hadn't been a patent carrot at the end?
I highly doubt it -- and I doubt that there would be any change for the worse in the software or business landscape in terms of new ideas and new processes.
Let's use the example of "not a Patent troll" NTP. A very friendly write up (in Businessweek, iirc) noted that this company wasn't a patent troll because they guy who'd had the idea of push e-mail and worked in telecom for years, had the idea and patented it, then put it in a drawer for "later use" That's the problem -- 99% of these patents are either 1. Defensive or 2. Predatory.
I think Google's patents are defensive -- Google is doing so well because they figured out a way to make everything work.
I agree that the "particular machine" seems a bit odd, but I guess as with many others I'm so disgusted seeing a system which is supposed to promote new ideas and move the marketplace forward doing the exact opposite. It's being used to kill or extort companies that are actually making new ideas work -- say vonage -- by companies that just patented huge swaths of ideas speculatively and in that case both defense and predation. (Verizon patented a lot of VOIP stuff it doesn't use but by going after companies using it they protect their core business model using older methods)
Are there two examples of software patents that really helped innovation and would have been unlikely to be discovered / worked out if software was not patentable?
- Jeff Dodge
Different market actually -- bluetooth is slow -- and designed for easy mating (send business card via bluetooth connection) My understanding is that this will carry either the full bandwidth - or close to it of USB 2.0 Hi-Speed -- 480Mbs -- which puts it almost 10 times faster (theoretically) than 802.11g or 802.11a - we'll see what this turns into in reality. Bluetooth is at 721Kbs -- approx 3/4 of a megabit. Will work for simple streams -- but sending full motion video while simultaneously using it for your keyboard, mouse, and gps connectivity -- probably not. I think there's a higher speed version of bluetooth in the works -- but it's nowhere close to hi-speed.
Couple of things:
1. The objection was that BSD requires attribution -- and the claim was the MS was still using BSD code but not giving attribution -- therefore violating the BSD license (which allowed them to use it) therefore violating the copyright. I don't know whether that's true or not -- but that was the claim.
2. You're serously asserting that slashdot posters advocate downloading copies of windows xp? (Legal or not?) I don't think I've ever seen that. I've seen a lot of Microsoft bashing -- and a couple of times I made the suggestion that a very reasonable thing for the Federal Government to do was to refuse to handle ANY Microsoft copyright violation cases while Microsoft failed to comply with antitrust laws - or the consent decree microsoft also completely ignored. The last time I made that suggestion was at least three years ago -- I probably posted as an AC -- I read slashdot, but didn't post much and didn't have an account.
So: Criticise slashdot posters for what they really do -- oversimplify the issues and demonize microsoft. Copyright scofflaw'ing has a small amount of support, but it's certainly not the norm.
BTW - I think Microsoft deserves much of the abuse it gets -- I just wish more of it was well reasoned, rather than knee-jerk.
The study I read (from Berkeley) about 9 months ago admitted it's rather narrow scope (corn, soybean crop, current mass production process) It made a couple of semi-sweeping claims -- but generally limited itself to criticism of throwing money at the people who were generating ethanol in stupid ways.
(Note this reading was prompted by the West Wing ethanol as pork-barrel politics)
The numbers used were ridiculously rough -- the margin of error would be much greater than their results. They ESTIMATED the energy production costs of producing fertilizer. Now to me, a real world check on whether a gallon of pesticide took 5 gallons of gasoline to produce is to check and see how much they're selling for . . . simple eh?
(I know of and could find no significant tax incentives / government bribes for producing pesticide) So -- given that pesticide companies pay workers, make profits etc -- you cannot (honestly) conclude a gallon of pesticide took five gallons to produce if 5 gallons of gas costs anything close to the price the company is charging for a gallon of gas. Is pesticide well over $10 / gallon -- nope.
At least some of their numbers are garbage -- remember GIGO -- Garbage In Garbage Out.
I really would like to see an HONEST study of ethanol -- based on this (highly biased and speculative) study -- there are some significant inefficiencies in our current subsidized production.
One problem I suspect is the need to avoid making human consumable alcohol. There are a couple of sites describing how you can brew your own E85 (small scale) for under $2.00 / gal. The author notes that you are limited by law to certain volumes of production despite it not being safe to drink.
Are our blue laws ruining the efficiency of ethanol production? Did you know that denatured alcohol (sold as a cooking fuel) has been intentionally poisoned to prevent ingestion?
Not to start a war -- But I'm genuinely curious -- why do you think Linksys chose linux rather than a BSD for their WRT54G router? They (at the time) didn't really want to open up the code -- they've certainly reconsidered, and that's great -- they released the entire toolchain -- which they didn't need to do -- but why didn't they go with a BSD in the first place?
Simple solution -- deny them all enforcement rights for IP violations. Basically tell europe -- Microsoft won't play by the rules, fine: we won't enforce the rules for them -- go ahead and copy their software. Basically treat them like a terrorist nation -- they lose certain "sovereign" rights.
1. AMD used a standard mobile chipset for it's notebook -- and ATI chipset, with integrated graphics. Then they used an intel chipset with integrated graphics.
2. It compared a 2ghz part to a 2ghz part -- it's a reasonable thing to do as an AMD sponsored benchmark. Still no fiddling.
3. The register author does a lot more speculating and throws a few w.a.g'es out there regarding battery life. They're trying to get mfrs interested in their new product.
4. We won't really know about battery life until we see fraternal twin laptops. IE: all other things being equal -- processor / chipset different. To be honest, I have no idea how it will turn out -- it'll be interesting to see.
In short -- the author (dishonestly) takes a matter of opinion and presents it as a matter of principle. AMD vs Intel aside -- find some integrity buddy.
Erm -- No, Openvpn is an entirely different project, a cross platform SSL vpn, FreeS/Wan is an IPSec VPN solution, which halted development at 2.06 -- it has been succeeded by http://www.openswan.org/ and http://www.strongswan.org/
1. Cars are not going to disappear.
2. Because buses CAN stop every block doesn't mean they do. Most places I've seen stops are approx 1/4 to 1/2 mile apart. Closer than these station, but not the same as every 1/10 mile (approx avg city block length)
3. Much of the time - you can't park next to your destination. Add in parking time and walking time from your spot.
4. Assuming -- as you have worst case scenario (1 mile grid - you in the exact center) You'll have 4 "equidistant" as the crow flies stations. Walk to the one that allows you the shortest walk. Chances are you'll cut 10-20% off your "worst case" 1 manhattan mile distance.
Nothing earthshaking in any of this. It may not work out to be feasible. But I hate seeing the ultra-conservative - "it's not better than my car" attitude. In some ways, it isn't, in others it's MUCH better. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) should be all over projects like these.
Driving drunk is dangerous, driving while overtired is dangerous, driving while intensely distracted by anything (cellphone conversation?) is dangerous. Many people end up doing all three. It would be great to have safe options.
Erm -- If the stations are a mile apart -- that puts you a maximum of a HALF-Mile away from any given station. That is of course using linear measurement. If it's a 1 mile grid and you're in the exact center, then you've got a 0.707107 mile to any of four stations. So from the exact center of one to the exact center of another would be a 1.414214 mile walk. The theory is that there would always be cars in each station -- so while you would have to walk.7 (max) to your station, you would be able to get in a car and head for your destination immediately. The tracks are set up to be one way -- so you may need to do some looping around (longer trip) but it should be non-stop -- trip time should be much shorter than bus.
Is this workable? Maybe, it probably depends in large part upon location. To me it seems like a possible solution to road expansion in certain areas. Will the road construction lobby work hard to make sure it's stillborn? You bet.
(Check the funding for debt -- derail the bullet train group in florida)
I know it's been said before -- I'll post it again -- he's restricting distribution of BETA level software -- he has regularly made public releases.
While at first concerned about the change -- it's become clear that sveasoft is committed to continuing public release of firmware. There are no deals with Asus or Acer to produce a locked up "super hot-spot" router box. He simply wants a subscription to grant users something extra. Support and a chance to test beta version firmwares and give feedback. He's had to deal with a lot of shouting and hate mongering (read a few posts up -- use of the words greedy and stupid abound) Of course he gets a bit defensive - I probably would too. If in 8-10 months - there have been no new public releases of sveasoft firmware -- then people probably have a case to make -- right now, it's just harrassment.
- Jeff
Slashdot Mirror
That's funny! Nokia and microsoft split back in 2014/2015 -- Nokia phones are now "Android One" android phones.
How much?
You saw an article with simplistic pull quotes -- don't assume that's all there is.
Airliners avionics are comparatively stone age. This is not all bad. The connection between the two is one way - out.
Could someone be contemplating a linux based glass panel display that you can e-mail your flight plan to? Yes. Do private pilots often rely upon ipads for display even in IFR conditions -- probably yes. Can those instruments (both the theoretical and the actual) be compromised? Yes.
Are airliners flying that way? I highly doubt it.
Private pilots use ipads or android tablets because they are orders of magnitued cheaper, and have much better user interfaces. A Garmin GTN750 (GPS with map and waypoint database with Comm and Nav radios) is about $20,000 installed - a G500 Glass panel (Attitude inticator, altimeter, navigation display, maps, etc) is about the same ($20k installed) A tablet $500 and an Ilevil AHRS ($1000) + ADS-B receiver ($600) duplicate many / most of those functions, and add a few (No comm/nav radios and guidance - but you get traffic and weather on your device) We're allowed to use these toys, but not RELY upon them. Most commercial pilots are doing milk runs, and are largely following ATC instructions rather than finding their own way. ATC talk to the planes via analog radio transmissions -- My fear for "hijacking" would be based upon taking out a controller's radio antenna and hopping on a radio to give bogus directions. That could be deadly -- and ADB-in receivers could give them info about what to do.
I think a warning to keep things segmented as much as they are is warranted, the scare that they will p0wn the flightdeck is not really believable.
Really? It's the solution to the great majority of the issues here, (Bundled crapware) and just plain easy to use as well.
Downside -- it always needs admin rights, not particularly surprising.
How to install? Hit the win key -- type cmd in the search box, hold control-shift - tap enter. Viola - An Administrative rights command prompt pops up.
Then paste: @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin
(Note you should copy that from chocolatey.org's website yourself - don't trust me!)
When it finishes, type : choco install sysinternals
or choco install libreoffice, choco install javaruntime, etc.
Of course you can stack installs: choco install javaruntime libreoffice paint.net notepadplusplus.install googlechrome 7zip.install firefox putty filezilla
When you think there might be updates: type: cup all
in a command prompt. It'll let you know when it's done.
- Jeff
You seem to be either creating an odd situation on purpose, or getting stuck on one you've come across. When you grab a section of formatted text from a PDF, LibreOffice considers it a unitary chunk -- and tries to keep it together. If you want to break this, or have LibreOffice treat it differently - there's a pretty wide variety of methods to do so:
First method: grab the bit above your graphic - paste it, then paste your graphic, then paste the text below it.
Second Method: paste as unformatted text, either by using paste-special "unformatted text" or washing in through notepad. If I want text, not formatting, I habitually wash it through notepad. Open notepad and paste in text, highlight and copy.
So I'm not sure which part you object to and I don't know what your desired behavior is, but for me LibreOffice's behaviour is very reasonable -- and when I want it to do something different, it's fairly simple to accomplish.
If you want to point out a real weak point in Libre Writer? Labels. Labels implementation is still (I think) both bad and confusing. I know it is confusing. I wish I had time to look at it and offer to help fix it. For now, I just hope someone else does.
- Jeff
The plates are in plain view. As the first poster indicated, they could sit a cop on every corner and note down every plate. I can't think of any reasonable argument for this requiring a warrant. Forcing my ISP to cough up data on me, or planting a GPS tracker on my car -- or even asking those "nice folks" at onstar to spy on me (I don't, and won't have an onstar equipped vehicle) -- THAT should require a warrant.
Chances are that this "e-cat" is crap. However all of the above blather is not relevant. 1. Catalysts can and do change the nature of reactions, whether they occur at all, and how exothermic or endothermic the reaction is - this can occur with chemical reactions 2. Chemical catalyst properties are irrelevant to the proposed process, which is supposed to be a fusion process. 3. The solar fusion reference makes sense only in the case of solar fusion -- yes -- in that process you bind up a tremendous amount of energy in nickel and iron. No it doesn't fuse higher naturally. So? Does that mean it's impossible? Absolutely not. We do all sorts of things that don't happen naturally. If as the original poster said: the binding energy is stronger for nickel than copper (I must admit I don't know if that's true -- but I'm willing to believe that it's possible) Quote: "Nickel has the highest binding energy of any nucleus. When stars die it is because they've turned every element into iron and nickel and it is impossible to fuse anything further exothermically." If a catalyst changes the fusion "activation energy" could heat be released in that process? I'm betting that it could. This is a bit like the folks that jumped on the ice melting and assuming that it proves that climate change is caused by human factors. No, it simply proves that it is significant warming trend -- and NOTHING else. It's probably caused or helped by human input to the ecosystem -- but proving that is separate from proving warming.
Don't use a bit of knowledge to spread confusion and ignorance. This isn't a "free energy" scheme -- it's a fusion scheme. It may be highly improbable, but it's not a violation of thermodynamics. You eventually run out of nickel or hydrogen. Fission seemed like free energy at first as well - the fuel didn't burn or blow up, but still generated heat -- preposterous! If you know enough detail to really critique it, please do! If you don't -- please don't pretend you do. - Jeff Dodge
Power usage:
This guy on the silent pc forums seems to indicate he saved probably 2w, possibly 5w of power by removing his RAGE XL card. -- This is admittedly an older card -- but even if it's 5w -- at 24x7 we're looking at less than $6 per year at 12c / kwh.
Link: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=453510&sid=c07f21d546ad78002ce04fee65b0e989
More to the point re: power savings -- can you in fact shut down most of the video? -- how much power are we talking about?
I understand that when a high end gpu is loaded up it sucks down power like no tomorrow -- but how much does it burn at idle?
Assuming you don't boot X, can you put the graphics card to sleep pending a keypress?
1. Bios setup through serial console -- the great majority of motherboards do not support this -- but you might try LinuxBios (now known as coreboot) http://coreboot.org/ supports serial console.
2. A number of non-server Asus "enthusiast" boards do support remote/serial console I believe the A7N8-X did, and a few others - check, you might get lucky.
2. Serial support -- most medium old desktops kept a single serial port on the motherboard -- many systems didn't pin these out -- but check your manual and scrounge for old serial header to d-sub slot fillers.
3. People mentioning laptops re: lack of serial ports -- this is a discussion about headless desktops -- keep your mind on the problem and solutions and stop spitballing -- laptops don't go headless.
4. If it's a desktop without serial ports put in an add in card. Hopefully a common one that the kernel and grub will both be able to see (and presumably coreboot if you go that route for bios level serial)
I would not recommend trying to work out USB -> Serial for your console -- you'll almost certainly not be able to make it work with grub (pending some savant deciding to add PL203 support to grub)
Again -- how much power are you saving by going absolutely headless? Did you measure? I've generally assumed load from AGP card at rest is minimal -- am I wrong?
- Jeff Dodge
Actually they have vp6 and vp8 http://www.on2.com/index.php?564 which -- surprise, surprise -- on2 claims is better than h.264 -- if google decides to open up vp8 -- it would change the equation radically. Particularly the ogg/vp8 combo. It's also possible some vp3 diffs (theora) would still be useful when applied to vp8 -- although what the chances of this are, I couldn't say. It does solve the h.264 patent license problem for google with android and chrome os. A theora / vp8 release and a move to primacy of vp8 or derivative for youtube would reshape the whole playing field. I'm hopeful, but not gleeful yet.
Faster-than-light does necessarily not mean instantaneous. Ansibles (as Card used the term anyway) allow instant communication. What your reference claims is that ftl and instant communication end up being the same thing. "For any faster-than-light system there will be some inertial frame in which it appears to act instantaneously, and so the same argument may easily be applied to any such system." But this is completely unproven in the reference, and doesn't seem quite right to me. If you are saying that special relativity does not correctly explain the behavior of faster than light travel or communication, you are completely correct. That says nothing about whether such things can or do happen.
NTP had no product -- they had no service. (on a push e-mail front)
They simply waited for someone else to do it and then sued them. This did not serve innovation.
Again: Can anyone come up with two cases where patents have driven innovation in software or even electronics?
Google didn't make it big based on pagerank alone.
erm -- that was my point -- they made the whole process WORK -- speed implementation -- it wasn't a patented idea -- it was simply doing it. That's the case with a lot of these ideas -- the ideas aren't key -- but you can sometimes prevent others from competing with them. That doesn't foster innovation and competition, it stifles it.
Let's say software and business process patents did not exist. Where would Google be now? Would Sergey and Brin not have bothered to work on search algorithms if there hadn't been a patent carrot at the end? I highly doubt it -- and I doubt that there would be any change for the worse in the software or business landscape in terms of new ideas and new processes. Let's use the example of "not a Patent troll" NTP. A very friendly write up (in Businessweek, iirc) noted that this company wasn't a patent troll because they guy who'd had the idea of push e-mail and worked in telecom for years, had the idea and patented it, then put it in a drawer for "later use" That's the problem -- 99% of these patents are either 1. Defensive or 2. Predatory. I think Google's patents are defensive -- Google is doing so well because they figured out a way to make everything work. I agree that the "particular machine" seems a bit odd, but I guess as with many others I'm so disgusted seeing a system which is supposed to promote new ideas and move the marketplace forward doing the exact opposite. It's being used to kill or extort companies that are actually making new ideas work -- say vonage -- by companies that just patented huge swaths of ideas speculatively and in that case both defense and predation. (Verizon patented a lot of VOIP stuff it doesn't use but by going after companies using it they protect their core business model using older methods) Are there two examples of software patents that really helped innovation and would have been unlikely to be discovered / worked out if software was not patentable? - Jeff Dodge
Different market actually -- bluetooth is slow -- and designed for easy mating (send business card via bluetooth connection) My understanding is that this will carry either the full bandwidth - or close to it of USB 2.0 Hi-Speed -- 480Mbs -- which puts it almost 10 times faster (theoretically) than 802.11g or 802.11a - we'll see what this turns into in reality. Bluetooth is at 721Kbs -- approx 3/4 of a megabit. Will work for simple streams -- but sending full motion video while simultaneously using it for your keyboard, mouse, and gps connectivity -- probably not. I think there's a higher speed version of bluetooth in the works -- but it's nowhere close to hi-speed.
If people want to run windows (for whatever reason) but can't buy it -- how many people think they won't simply pirate it then?
Couple of things: 1. The objection was that BSD requires attribution -- and the claim was the MS was still using BSD code but not giving attribution -- therefore violating the BSD license (which allowed them to use it) therefore violating the copyright. I don't know whether that's true or not -- but that was the claim. 2. You're serously asserting that slashdot posters advocate downloading copies of windows xp? (Legal or not?) I don't think I've ever seen that. I've seen a lot of Microsoft bashing -- and a couple of times I made the suggestion that a very reasonable thing for the Federal Government to do was to refuse to handle ANY Microsoft copyright violation cases while Microsoft failed to comply with antitrust laws - or the consent decree microsoft also completely ignored. The last time I made that suggestion was at least three years ago -- I probably posted as an AC -- I read slashdot, but didn't post much and didn't have an account. So: Criticise slashdot posters for what they really do -- oversimplify the issues and demonize microsoft. Copyright scofflaw'ing has a small amount of support, but it's certainly not the norm. BTW - I think Microsoft deserves much of the abuse it gets -- I just wish more of it was well reasoned, rather than knee-jerk.
The study I read (from Berkeley) about 9 months ago admitted it's rather narrow scope (corn, soybean crop, current mass production process) It made a couple of semi-sweeping claims -- but generally limited itself to criticism of throwing money at the people who were generating ethanol in stupid ways. (Note this reading was prompted by the West Wing ethanol as pork-barrel politics) The numbers used were ridiculously rough -- the margin of error would be much greater than their results. They ESTIMATED the energy production costs of producing fertilizer. Now to me, a real world check on whether a gallon of pesticide took 5 gallons of gasoline to produce is to check and see how much they're selling for . . . simple eh? (I know of and could find no significant tax incentives / government bribes for producing pesticide) So -- given that pesticide companies pay workers, make profits etc -- you cannot (honestly) conclude a gallon of pesticide took five gallons to produce if 5 gallons of gas costs anything close to the price the company is charging for a gallon of gas. Is pesticide well over $10 / gallon -- nope. At least some of their numbers are garbage -- remember GIGO -- Garbage In Garbage Out. I really would like to see an HONEST study of ethanol -- based on this (highly biased and speculative) study -- there are some significant inefficiencies in our current subsidized production. One problem I suspect is the need to avoid making human consumable alcohol. There are a couple of sites describing how you can brew your own E85 (small scale) for under $2.00 / gal. The author notes that you are limited by law to certain volumes of production despite it not being safe to drink. Are our blue laws ruining the efficiency of ethanol production? Did you know that denatured alcohol (sold as a cooking fuel) has been intentionally poisoned to prevent ingestion?
Not to start a war -- But I'm genuinely curious -- why do you think Linksys chose linux rather than a BSD for their WRT54G router? They (at the time) didn't really want to open up the code -- they've certainly reconsidered, and that's great -- they released the entire toolchain -- which they didn't need to do -- but why didn't they go with a BSD in the first place?
Simple solution -- deny them all enforcement rights for IP violations. Basically tell europe -- Microsoft won't play by the rules, fine: we won't enforce the rules for them -- go ahead and copy their software. Basically treat them like a terrorist nation -- they lose certain "sovereign" rights.
1. AMD used a standard mobile chipset for it's notebook -- and ATI chipset, with integrated graphics. Then they used an intel chipset with integrated graphics. 2. It compared a 2ghz part to a 2ghz part -- it's a reasonable thing to do as an AMD sponsored benchmark. Still no fiddling. 3. The register author does a lot more speculating and throws a few w.a.g'es out there regarding battery life. They're trying to get mfrs interested in their new product. 4. We won't really know about battery life until we see fraternal twin laptops. IE: all other things being equal -- processor / chipset different. To be honest, I have no idea how it will turn out -- it'll be interesting to see. In short -- the author (dishonestly) takes a matter of opinion and presents it as a matter of principle. AMD vs Intel aside -- find some integrity buddy.
Erm -- No, Openvpn is an entirely different project, a cross platform SSL vpn, FreeS/Wan is an IPSec VPN solution, which halted development at 2.06 -- it has been succeeded by http://www.openswan.org/ and http://www.strongswan.org/
1. Cars are not going to disappear. 2. Because buses CAN stop every block doesn't mean they do. Most places I've seen stops are approx 1/4 to 1/2 mile apart. Closer than these station, but not the same as every 1/10 mile (approx avg city block length) 3. Much of the time - you can't park next to your destination. Add in parking time and walking time from your spot. 4. Assuming -- as you have worst case scenario (1 mile grid - you in the exact center) You'll have 4 "equidistant" as the crow flies stations. Walk to the one that allows you the shortest walk. Chances are you'll cut 10-20% off your "worst case" 1 manhattan mile distance. Nothing earthshaking in any of this. It may not work out to be feasible. But I hate seeing the ultra-conservative - "it's not better than my car" attitude. In some ways, it isn't, in others it's MUCH better. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) should be all over projects like these. Driving drunk is dangerous, driving while overtired is dangerous, driving while intensely distracted by anything (cellphone conversation?) is dangerous. Many people end up doing all three. It would be great to have safe options.
Erm -- If the stations are a mile apart -- that puts you a maximum of a HALF-Mile away from any given station. That is of course using linear measurement. If it's a 1 mile grid and you're in the exact center, then you've got a 0.707107 mile to any of four stations. So from the exact center of one to the exact center of another would be a 1.414214 mile walk. The theory is that there would always be cars in each station -- so while you would have to walk .7 (max) to your station, you would be able to get in a car and head for your destination immediately. The tracks are set up to be one way -- so you may need to do some looping around (longer trip) but it should be non-stop -- trip time should be much shorter than bus.
Is this workable? Maybe, it probably depends in large part upon location. To me it seems like a possible solution to road expansion in certain areas. Will the road construction lobby work hard to make sure it's stillborn? You bet.
(Check the funding for debt -- derail the bullet train group in florida)
I know it's been said before -- I'll post it again -- he's restricting distribution of BETA level software -- he has regularly made public releases. While at first concerned about the change -- it's become clear that sveasoft is committed to continuing public release of firmware. There are no deals with Asus or Acer to produce a locked up "super hot-spot" router box. He simply wants a subscription to grant users something extra. Support and a chance to test beta version firmwares and give feedback. He's had to deal with a lot of shouting and hate mongering (read a few posts up -- use of the words greedy and stupid abound) Of course he gets a bit defensive - I probably would too. If in 8-10 months - there have been no new public releases of sveasoft firmware -- then people probably have a case to make -- right now, it's just harrassment. - Jeff