You get used to it though. After the 10th time or so, you start appreciating how it clears your sinuses. I went through my officer basic course with a class that was about 75% ROTC, never been gassed before, and they got their first exposure in a full field training exercise instead of a chamber. You could tell who was former enlisted, cause their masks worked, and they were the ones who immediately had to go admin mode and start fixing the others. People never seemed to fit the filters right unless they were motivated. The look on some people's faces, when you take your mask off so you can see to fix theirs better, then hand it back without a tear, is priceless.
Amtrak's total subsidies have run about 10% of the subsidies provided for the airlines, and yet the public outcry over railroad subsidies has been greater. If you took away all the federal subsidies for air travel, the industry would have made a net profit of almost exactly zero dollars overall, since its inception. Either Amtrak isn't really all that inept, or the airline industry situation is severe enough to justify open rebellion against government by the three stooges.
Granted, the USPS seems to have become a much better service since it was privatized. It also faced some fair free market competition, e.g. from UPS and Fedex, to help that process along. The rail system's competitors are the heavily susidized airlines, commercial buses (which are also a struggling, some would even say floundering industry) and the interstate trucking system, and these impact different areas (passengers and cargo are effectively very different matters, finacially, and Amtrak's performance in one area is best judged seperately fron the other).
The timing on this being formally announced is a bit unfortunate, in that it comes so soon after the new De Toqueville Institute article, but the whole procedure is a measured response to older situations (SCO), and has been carefully evaluated by a pretty sharp legal team.
Unfortunately, one of the basic doctrines of modern warfare is that you win battles by maneuvering within the decision making radius of the enemy. Right now, Linux is facing the problem of responding through the legal system, which produces such delays they end up looking like they are still fixated on fighting the last war. A good military-style strategy here would be to respond in some totally unexpected way, so that their detractors have to slow the pace of operations while they evalueate the new situation.
Such options are limited. For example, Linus could escalate by seeking criminal charges for defamation on the De Toqueville article, but the chance he could make it stick is what should determine whether that's worth persuing, and not just whether it would make 'them' blink.
It's a hard subject to give advice about, but I hope this at least does no harm.
Some universities and medical schools have simulators, mostly designed to teach health care personnel a little about what Schizophrenia 'feels' like, and using one may help you or others in your family understand a little of what the patient is going through. They consist of short video and audio tracks and often computer systems to select and mix them. I was lucky enough to get to sample one. In particular, the effect of hearing voices is supposed to be very close to the experience of an auditory sufferer, with not just voices but many sounds, ranging from the threshold of audability and often hard to distinguish from a normal person's interior monolog to sounds so loud they cannot but be terribly destracting, coming from all sorts of odd directions and at all sorts of random intervals.
Also, for what it's worth, there's what sounds to me to be a good arguement about the problems with watching lots of television, which suggests Schizophrenia is a disease where you definitely don't want to use TV as a babysitter. Many TV shows will show persons talking at a distance, and use mikes to let the viewer hear what they are saying from farther away than would be possible in the real world. This seems to be too similar to delusional states where people claim to hear other people talking about them at similarly exceptional distances, and is often poorly processed by Schizophrenics with such delusions or potential to develop them.
I can't knock the idea that God can heal people. I sincerely believe God healed my wife. She had an atypical Melanoma that had already penetrated to over twice the depth needed to categorize it as stage 5, and an initial prognosis of death in less than 2 months. The odds for 1 year survival were rated at about 10 billion to 1, but that was just where the charts topped out, well below a tumor of that depth and size. We both spent the next week crying, praying, and waking up every hour or so every night, to feel relieved for ten seconds and then realize the bad dream was not just a dream. After about 8 or 10 days, she woke up in the middle of the night one last time, told me "God says he will not let me die of this. He says I should fight.". and got her first restful sleep since diagnosis. We went with surgery, followed up by massive doses of interferon for a year, and an experimental vaccine being tested at Duke university. Incidentally, Interferon is considered a minimally effective treatment for advanced Melanoma, i.e. it's much better than nothing, but by stage 5, it's most likely to just buy you an extra month or two and then make you so sick you can't finish the treatment.
The surgeon who removed the initial tumor said afterwards that he just felt like some invisible hand had steered his to include some areas on the fringe that he had been planning to leave, to trace one of the arteries and remove some tissue adjacent to it, and so on. He didn't say that to me, mind you, he was trying to explain to the hospital scheduling dept. why he took a couple of hours extra with the surgery, and they said later they'd never seen a man look so flabbergasted at having to admit something.
Then she went on interferon, and the nausea started getting severe, and suddenly we got a call at durned near midnight from our pharmacist telling us that the "big faceless insurance company" had just reviewed our case, and approved a new anti-nausea drug, and he didn't remember checking the box for it, but somehow, he'd accidentally ordered some, even while he was telling himself it was a long shot that they'd ever agree to it, and he got the approval e-mail from the oncologist at about 6 p.m., and thought, "I'd better order some right away", and then started unpacking incoming shipments, and there the stuff was in the box he'd just got. He'd been trying to get us on the phone ever since, and I'd better haul my butt down there, because "somebody" obviously wanted her to have it. And sure enough, the stuff worked.
At this point, my wife's been through that year of interferon IVs and such, and is about 18 months past that phase. She gets a pet scan every 6 months for at least another two years. We'll be watching her like hawks for signs of any repeats, but she has already beaten literally astronomical odds. I sincerely believe that when God wants somebody healed, it happens, and often, He uses the best that men can do to accomplish it.
I really think it's sad that most of the religious TV programs and such encourage people to not take steps that are available and simply throw the whole problem into God's lap. It seems like they want people to make it harder on themselves, in the hope that God will work more impressivie and obvious miracles to compensate, and they can then cover them when they need a new story. It doesn't look to me like they are actually putting the needs of the aflicted first. From the way you use the past tense about your friend, it sounds like the whole matter is unfortunately finalized, but if not, I hope he still has some presence of mind and can somehow consider that just maybe the doctors and meds ARE the way God would work in his life.
There are plenty of people who feel they are making bad mistakes in their sex life. Some of them are actually doing things such as flashing or groping random strangers on the subway, or worse. More of them just think that porn is influencing them in a negative way, messing up their attitude towards the opposite sex, (or whatever). To them, there's a big difference between having to go through a few actions to view porn and not getting a chance, or preferably multiple chances, to exercise self control, before the viewing starts.
That's pretty much the definition of compulsive afterall. We don't call a person a compulsive eater because they want to eat all the time, feel just fine about the consequences, and wouldn't change if they could, but because they want to before the fact, but regret having done so after the fact.
"Atheists do not assert God's non-existance at all, whether as a theorem or an axiom. It simply has no place in their philosophy."
Until you speciy that something is either a theorem or an axiom, you are not dealing with parts of logic. If you are not yet being logical, you lose the right to invoke a rule of logic in the discussion. You simply can't start applying logical rules to a proposition until you have classified a proposition as either an axiom or a theorem, anymore than a judge can properly pass sentence before guilt or innocence is determined. Judging from your first remark:
"That would lead to completely absurd deductions. Oh, wait, it does, that's the problem.:-)"
you are quite used to that particular form of putting the cart before the horse. Like it or not, it is only Axioms that can only be disproved by showing they lead to illogial or contradictory theorems. To make the assertion you just made, you had to classify the assertion "God Exists!" as an axiom. Sorry, but you have just committed a reducto-de-absurdam. Thank you for playing, and Joyce has a nice copy of our home edition.
You don't directly disprove axioms. They're usually coloqually considered disproved if they give rise to theorems that are false to facts or formally disproved if the theorems conflict with theorems generated in the same formal system.
There are so many comments already posted to this topic that seem to not grasp the following point, that I think the best way to deal with it is to start a completely new thread. I'm sorry if it seems more than a little obvious to some of you:
There are fundamentally only a few types of files when it comes to fragmentation.
1. There are files that simply never change size, and once written don't get overwritten. (Type 1). Most programs are actually type 1, if you use sufficiently small values of never:-), such as until you would need to perform disk maintenace anyway for lots of other reasons in any 'reasonable' file system. A typical media file is probably Type 1 in 99%+ of cases.
2. There are files that will often shorten or lengthen in use, for example a word processor document in.txt format, while it is stll being edited by its creator. (type 2). (That same document may behave as effectively Type 1 once it is finished, only to revert to type 2 when a second edition is created from it.)
Of type 2, there are files of type 2a. Files that may get either longer or shorter with use, on a (relatively) random basis. (as a relatively simple case, a.doc file, that may become longer for obvious reasons like more text, but may also become longer for less obvious reasons (such as the hidden characters created when you make some text italic or underlined). (These are reasons that are not obvious to most end users, and often not predictable in detail even to people who understand them better). The default configuration for a Windows swap file is type 2a. It is likely to be hard for an automated system to predict the final size of Type 2a files, as that would imply a software system of near human level intelligence to detect patterns that are not obvious and invariant to a normal human mind. It may be possible to predict in some cases only because many users are unlikely to make certain mistakes, (i.e. cutting and pasting an entire second copy of a text file into itself is unusual, while duplicating a single sentence or word isn't).
Then there are files of type 2b. Files that get longer or shorter only for predictable reasons, (such as a Windows.bmp, which will only get larger or smaller if the user changes the color depth or size of the image, and not if he just draws something else on the existing one.). A good portion of users (not all by any means) will learn what to expect for these files, which suggests a well-written defragger could theoretically also auto-predict the consequences of the changes a user is making).
3. Then there are type 3 files, which only get longer. These too have predictable and unpredictable subtypes. Most log files for example, are set up to keep getting longer on a predictable basis when their associated program is run (type 3b). Anything that has been compressed (i.e..zip) is hopefully a 3b, but only until it is run, then the contents may be of any type. A typical Microsoft patch is a 3a (it will somehow always end up longer overall, but you never know just what parts will vary or why).
4. Type 4 would be files that always get smaller, but there are no known examples of this type:-).
These types are basic in any system, as they are implied by fundamental physical constraints. However, many defrag programs use other types instead of starting from this model, often with poor results.
In analyizing what happens with various defrag methods, such as reserving space for predicted expansion or defragging in the background/on the fly methods, the reader should try these various types (at least 1 through 3), and see what will happen when that method is used on each type. Then consider how many of those type files will be involved in the overall process, and how often.
For example, Some versions of Microsoft Windows (tm) FAT32 defragger move files that have been accessed more than a certain number of times (typically f
In most jurisdictions (in the U.S., at least), a child who is wandering onto your property is not committing an illegal act, and certainly not trespass. Where's the malicious intent in a typical five year old looking at the shiny water? There are roughly a thousand cases every year nation wide where some home owner attempts to have a person arrested for trespassing simply for coming onto their property, and ends up losing a civil suit if they keep pushing it (think of process servers, bill collectors, postmen delivering unsolicited mail, and even in a few cases "good samaritans" responding to an accident visible on the property).
So, you are agueing that God cannot be treated as an axiom? I've noticed a lot of Athiests who assert God's non-existence as a theorem, rather than an axiom in their philosophical system, and then invoke the arguement against the requirement to prove a universal negative. (As you are doing in a reduced form with the phrase "burden of proof").
The problem is, to make your theorem the negation of my statement "God exists", my statement also has to be a theorem. Look up the rules of formal logic if you don't believe me - the opposite of an Axiom is another Axiom, and the method of disproving an Axiom is fundamentally different from disproving a Theorem. You prove your view is right, but only by redefining my view so that you can claim a universal negation of my axiom can somehow be a theorem. You also either offer a theorem without being willing or able to show a derivation, by claiming the burden of proof falls on me instead, and require me to prove an Axiom by means which only work for theorems, or alternately, you yourself believe in the non-existence of God as one of your fundamental Axioms, which means you too are begging the question by your own definition.
"Saying that the first waves of settlers were unprepared for the challenges of colonization is not the same as saying the land was uninhabitable."
But from the perspective of the colonizers, it WAS saying just that. There may have been one informed European in a hundred who thought that the Native Americans were perfectly good people to inhabit the New World, but to at least the other 99, people meant "People like us". Hell, a sustantial majority of them defined "people like us" to NOT include their fellow Europeans, and defined the Native Americans as "Not People, period". Their concerns were overwhelmingly "Is the New World inhabitable by Spanish Catholics (or whatever), and what will we do if those damned French Protestants (or whatever) get established first." They were by no means sure that the land was inhabitable by the only people that really counted.
(First, I am not a Patent Lawyer). Patents require that an invention be original, and in a non-obvious/non-trivial fashion. Unfortunately, the history of early patent law discloses some good and not-so-good cases to indicate just what was intended to count as originality. For example, an attempt to patent animal shaped balloons was rejected as too obvious, but an attempt to patent animal shaped bookends was accepted, as the patent office ruled that cutting the animal image in half passed the minimum standard for non-obviousness.
One rejected patent was for a process to dye coal blue, which the inventor used as part of a spray and masking template process to put a company logo on chunks of coal to be sold for home heating.
It was a general principle that a chemical, once invented, could not patented again, and what was patented there was the chemical process, not the substance itself, but Aspirin was awarded a patent as purified acetyl-salycillic acid, with the idea that the earlier process to produce it didn't make a pure enough form to be safe medicinally, and this one did, so it deserved not just a process patent, but a basic substance patent.
Within a few years of this, one person's attempt to patent a chemical was rejected because of prior art, but the "prior art" was a statement in a chemical handbook that the chemical in question was "impossible". Yep, he proved it wasn't, and as a 'reward', was denied a patent. This horrible case is one of the basic precidents that now sets the term of a year maximum after publication for the patent to be filed.
With examples such as these, no wonder the law is hard to interpret fairly and is in a horrible mess in practice, but here's my stab at a fair answer.
In regard to your question, I'm not at all sure a pot with built in drain holes should have been patentable, on the obviousness test and prior art tests. The way you phrase your question begs the answer. The answer that should be given is, it is only a case of "no obvious solution" if the steps you took are inobvious to a person well versed in the prior art, not just to Jethro Bodine. Note that I'm not saying the steps have to be totally incomprehensible to even a trained software developer, just that they must be more than trivial tasks for that person to understand and implement. Another way to look at it is to asy that inobviousness is necessary, but not, by itself, sufficent.
Take one click shopping models. The methods obviously weren't obvious to some managaement personnel who asked for a syngle click system, but to anyone who had written so much as a single macro, the idea of invoking an entire series of tasks with a single keystroke or mouse click was well known prior art. Abstracting that, what is left that is actually both inobvious and financially worth patenting? Even if we grant that software patents should in general be precisely as legal as ones for new cooking gear, most software innovations would result in patents, that, if they actually reflected only the geneuinely insightful parts not covered by prior art, were of little or no economic worth.
A handful each year would be both novel, and actually contribute to the progress of the useful arts, and have potential financial value. Given this disparity between that handful and the many, many patents actually awarded (and litigated over), it is actually somewhat better to reject the patentability of all software in an effor to protect society from the damage being done by totally unwarrented patents.
Of course, it would be better still to reform patent law.
Let's not forget what usually happens with road widening. The road is heavily congested with four lanes, and by the time two more are added, the road needs another two or its still just as congested. Highways through really developed areas are being widened every two years or so, some have reached phenominonal widths such as the 12 lane interstate now passing through the center of Atlanta GA and supported by a loop bypass that is at least 6 lanes in most parts, and yet these roads remain on the brink of massive rush hour gridlocks.
Won't broadband access go much the same way? By the time the technology exists and can be widely implemented to move X amount of data over TV bands, won't the demand be for 2X, or more?
Some people have claimed that widening highways is an expensive and very short term solution, and that some real developments of mass transit are both cheaper in the long run and more able to actually grow faster than demand. In the same way, isn't it likely that something else, such as (for just a few examples)laying some good solid fiber optic cable, or modifying the phone company's baseline all digital systems to extend the potential range of ADSL, are potentially much better solutions? I'd even look at Internet over Power Lines before I'd have much confidence in this (well, maybe not).
The US has some similar situations, like people still calling Denali Mt. McKinley. It hasn't taken pushing for the recognition of the change in the schools, however, as lots of outdoors types have figured out that it gets more chicks to brag about climbing thigs with Native American names. It's sort of an anti-PC reason to be PC.
While I seem to live in an area where medical support is usually provided to even the worst off on a pretty good basis, Ive seen a couple of cases where people reached a lifetime cap with their insuror and were denied care for such obvious problems as Pneumonia, with quickly fatal results. If anything, it's happening more to people who were middle to upper middle class and paid taxes, worked for their insurance, and generally were a productive part of society than to the lifelong poor, who often get better protection.
People keep claiming that my state can't continue to be this generous to the poorest cases, or it will go bankrupt. Since I have heard governors and legislators from other states, advise us by saying (approximately) "We don't do as much as your state, it would be fiscally irresponsible", I can easily believe there are more people (by percentages) being turned away in those states, but it would seem very doubtful there are less.
There's certain areas I'd like to see the state cut back (for example, anti-psychotic drugs are generally totally useless if the patient can't or won't stop drinking or using opiates, and they can cost 500$ a bottle, with some doctors being willing to try five or six different ones at once, in the hope that they will do at least a little good. After a certain point, this is gambling on thousand to one shots, and not covering those cases would be just about enough of a change to make the system break even.).
However, one of the adjacent states won't refer some black lung patients to VA hospitals, even if they meet both such tests as being honorably discharged veterans and having been employed as coal miners for a period of at least 10 years. They have dropped patients from the records for such reasons as the dates of employment being after the various clean air acts supposedly cleaned up the coal mines (which is really an insult to intelligence, considering how many of those mines paid whopping fines after those dates for non-compliance, or just went bankrupt and slipped out of town when they got caught). If a state government is going that far to avoid putting a load on the federal budget, instead of doing what one might normally expect and passing the problem on at no cost to itself, again, that seems pretty clear proof some people are falling through the cracks.
First, I am not a lawyer. If you're being sued by SCO, I reccomend you consult a professional. If you can't afford one, your area may have some organization , usually called Rural Legal Services (even if you are urban, it's often called this, go figure), which will provide legal aid.
Optionally, find a lawyer you think you can't afford, tell him "These Idiots want to sue me. They're already convinced they can beat Chrysler, Auto-zone, and IBM first. Taking my case on contingency is the same as betting they are wrong about that. Interested? (Some lawyers will figure out that there won't be anything left to grab on the countersuit after IBM, let alone the others, get through piling on. You want the lawyer who won't quite think the whole thing out.).
If it were me, I would first petition to have the venue changed to my state if it wasn't already done there. (Then I might want to petition to have the case moved to small claims.). Simultaneously, I would file a counterclaim for my litigation costs (I'll never see a dime, but the ciourt expects me to follow the legal fiction of treating SCO as a solvent company). The big one, though, would be the 4th document, a request that the trial be delayed pending the outcome of SCO's other litigation.
From there, a poor guy, with nothing but his own resources could still write a nice set of interrogatives for SCO to answer, file motion after motion designed to tie up SCOs legal staff, and end up costing them a small fortune that they couldn't possibly recover from him.
Oh, and contacting the press to pretry the whole matter in the courts of public opinion is a nice touch.
Retailers have some influence, particlarly mega-stores (If you thought Babbage's could impact the market,then the word for what Wallmart did is dominate). Independants don't have much influence at all. There are other factors. As just one example, if the prices for alternative entertainments (DVD movies, CD music, etc.) aren't fluid, then games tend to be compared to those alternates, and prices can't shift as much, or as quickly. However, there is always some play. It is literally impossible in the face of free-market forces to keep all prices in lockstep without industry people negotiating and agreeing to keep them that way. (And it's called anti-trust if they do.).
Beyond this, console game makers, including ones that write first for the PC, and plan to do console ports later, can't try to sell to some price points, because those points would only be available if X million people bought the console. You can't shoot for 120% of predicted market saturation.
1. If you charge a price equivalent to the value to the "average" honest consumer, you have just eliminated the 49% of your potential market that estimates a price below average, and even MBAs aren't usually dumb enough to throw away half the potential market.
2.Real pricing consists of finding a point where your total profit is highest, whether you make a few cents per item but sell millions, or a few tens of dollars a piece but sell only thousands.
Applying a little math on the level that most physics undergrads are used to will often reveal several different price points, with about the same predicted total profit. What will happen under real world conditions to these predictions? Some industries have been willing to test these variant price structures. (They are why Ford and Chevy make a bottom of the line model that usually sells for no profit at all, so that they get loyal consumers who move up to the mid-priced models. They are why you can probably buy a 2 liter generic soda for 50 cents if you live in a US location). The recording industry has been reluctant in the extreme to explore such alternate price structures. Outside people who have done the math tend to one of three conclusions. Either 1. The recording industry is seriously misreporting how much it pays artists, gross revenues, and other factors, and so the outsider's predictions are wrong for lack of data, OR 2. This is about power and control, with the industry willing to cut its own profits to maintain that power, OR 3. The industry is full of people who are unable to follow the mathematical arguements advanced, and should expect poor profits regardless of piracy until they hire some bean counters who can actually count beans.
1. "Now if people think that patents and copyright are bad, why not just say "abolish patents and copyright"? Lumping it all under the moniker intellectual property is either ignorant or intellectually dishonest."
Why just 'if people think (these things) are bad'? I'd say lumping it all together is either ignorant or dishonest, period.
The WIPO ARE the people who are trying to lump patents, trademarks, and other forms of of the INTELLECTUAL category IP under the blanket LEGAL category of IP. That doesn't sound so bad in itself (normally, one would hope that the legal categories are in accord with the facts, so if it's a fact that copyright law shares properties with trademark law, you'ld think it would be a good thing if the law recognized this). However, the WIPO has done it by arguing for law in one area such as Patents to be selectively interpreted so that it applies to other areas, and the persons doing the selecting would be the legal representitives of large corporations, whose lawyers are (coincidentally) WIPO members.
The latest US law they endorsed would have terribly blurred the distinction between civil and criminal law, and shows prtty clearly that the real issue here is fundamental and constitutional. Now if you want to go into court, in a civil suite, facing an opponent that has had the US govenment pay their costs of investigation and presecution, keep supporting the WIPO's acts and definitions. They do logically lead to IP law trumping all sorts of other laws, including the constitution.
2.It sounds like geographical indications could already be protected as trademarks (dual protection was exactly my complaint in my first post, if you recall, as in "The judge won't let us sue under trademark law, so we want to refile for a Tradesecret violation. Oops, he doesn't like that either, so can we refile for a copyright violation?").
You do know that a whole manufacturers organization like the Florida Orange Grower's Association can jointly file for a trademark?. Also, isn't a lot of this protected by 'consumer' representation laws? And if it isn't, shouldn't those laws be fixed instead of adding more IP laws? Or are you argueing that consumer protection also falls under IP law?
3. "Hey, it's only copyright... not part of the US constitution, so who cares."
Look up "straw man arguement" on Google. I certainly never said that copyright wasn't part of the US constitution. You've delivverd a little sermon on things I and many if not most Slashdot readers already know, missed apparently every point I made, and attempted to put words into my mouth. Is there anything else you would care to do to try to win your arguement?
If it makes you feel better, I'll gladly call Libertarians extremists. I don't want to include them with the faschist right and communist left types that tend to dominate alternative media though, but to put them in the category I'd like to see more people have a chance to hear from. Actually, they're just the type that needs to be represented, along with anarcho-syndicalsts, the Green Party, Technocrats, old fashioned Fabian socialists and Wobblies and other factions. Let people know that there are more than one or two alternatives, and maybe they will start thinking.
Most 'pirate' radio has tended to broadcast either 'college' rock/alternative or political speech from one of the two classical extreems (socialist left or faschist right). Substantive content choices will have to mean more than "Not Brittany". It will need to include educqtional programming, targeted at the specific neighborhood, or musical programming preserving vanishing jazz or blues artists, or op-ed that's more substantive (there's that pesky wood again) than the soundbite of the moment approack.
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And if the area is really a toxic waste dump?
You get used to it though. After the 10th time or so, you start appreciating how it clears your sinuses. I went through my officer basic course with a class that was about 75% ROTC, never been gassed before, and they got their first exposure in a full field training exercise instead of a chamber. You could tell who was former enlisted, cause their masks worked, and they were the ones who immediately had to go admin mode and start fixing the others. People never seemed to fit the filters right unless they were motivated. The look on some people's faces, when you take your mask off so you can see to fix theirs better, then hand it back without a tear, is priceless.
Amtrak's total subsidies have run about 10% of the subsidies provided for the airlines, and yet the public outcry over railroad subsidies has been greater. If you took away all the federal subsidies for air travel, the industry would have made a net profit of almost exactly zero dollars overall, since its inception. Either Amtrak isn't really all that inept, or the airline industry situation is severe enough to justify open rebellion against government by the three stooges.
Granted, the USPS seems to have become a much better service since it was privatized. It also faced some fair free market competition, e.g. from UPS and Fedex, to help that process along. The rail system's competitors are the heavily susidized airlines, commercial buses (which are also a struggling, some would even say floundering industry) and the interstate trucking system, and these impact different areas (passengers and cargo are effectively very different matters, finacially, and Amtrak's performance in one area is best judged seperately fron the other).
The timing on this being formally announced is a bit unfortunate, in that it comes so soon after the new De Toqueville Institute article, but the whole procedure is a measured response to older situations (SCO), and has been carefully evaluated by a pretty sharp legal team.
Unfortunately, one of the basic doctrines of modern warfare is that you win battles by maneuvering within the decision making radius of the enemy. Right now, Linux is facing the problem of responding through the legal system, which produces such delays they end up looking like they are still fixated on fighting the last war. A good military-style strategy here would be to respond in some totally unexpected way, so that their detractors have to slow the pace of operations while they evalueate the new situation.
Such options are limited. For example, Linus could escalate by seeking criminal charges for defamation on the De Toqueville article, but the chance he could make it stick is what should determine whether that's worth persuing, and not just whether it would make 'them' blink.
"He took it as a sign of his faith. If he's taking the meds, he thought his faith had no action."
Yeah, that's all too common. One small step away from snake handling.
It's a hard subject to give advice about, but I hope this at least does no harm.
Some universities and medical schools have simulators, mostly designed to teach health care personnel a little about what Schizophrenia 'feels' like, and using one may help you or others in your family understand a little of what the patient is going through. They consist of short video and audio tracks and often computer systems to select and mix them. I was lucky enough to get to sample one. In particular, the effect of hearing voices is supposed to be very close to the experience of an auditory sufferer, with not just voices but many sounds, ranging from the threshold of audability and often hard to distinguish from a normal person's interior monolog to sounds so loud they cannot but be terribly destracting, coming from all sorts of odd directions and at all sorts of random intervals.
Also, for what it's worth, there's what sounds to me to be a good arguement about the problems with watching lots of television, which suggests Schizophrenia is a disease where you definitely don't want to use TV as a babysitter. Many TV shows will show persons talking at a distance, and use mikes to let the viewer hear what they are saying from farther away than would be possible in the real world. This seems to be too similar to delusional states where people claim to hear other people talking about them at similarly exceptional distances, and is often poorly processed by Schizophrenics with such delusions or potential to develop them.
I can't knock the idea that God can heal people. I sincerely believe God healed my wife. She had an atypical Melanoma that had already penetrated to over twice the depth needed to categorize it as stage 5, and an initial prognosis of death in less than 2 months.
The odds for 1 year survival were rated at about 10 billion to 1, but that was just where the charts topped out, well below a tumor of that depth and size. We both spent the next week crying, praying, and waking up every hour or so every night, to feel relieved for ten seconds and then realize the bad dream was not just a dream. After about 8 or 10 days, she woke up in the middle of the night one last time, told me "God says he will not let me die of this. He says I should fight.". and got her first restful sleep since diagnosis. We went with surgery, followed up by massive doses of interferon for a year, and an experimental vaccine being tested at Duke university. Incidentally, Interferon is considered a minimally effective treatment for advanced Melanoma, i.e. it's much better than nothing, but by stage 5, it's most likely to just buy you an extra month or two and then make you so sick you can't finish the treatment.
The surgeon who removed the initial tumor said afterwards that he just felt like some invisible hand had steered his to include some areas on the fringe that he had been planning to leave, to trace one of the arteries and remove some tissue adjacent to it, and so on. He didn't say that to me, mind you, he was trying to explain to the hospital scheduling dept. why he took a couple of hours extra with the surgery, and they said later they'd never seen a man look so flabbergasted at having to admit something.
Then she went on interferon, and the nausea started getting severe, and suddenly we got a call at durned near midnight from our pharmacist telling us that the "big faceless insurance company" had just reviewed our case, and approved a new anti-nausea drug, and he didn't remember checking the box for it, but somehow, he'd accidentally ordered some, even while he was telling himself it was a long shot that they'd ever agree to it, and he got the approval e-mail from the oncologist at about 6 p.m., and thought, "I'd better order some right away", and then started unpacking incoming shipments, and there the stuff was in the box he'd just got. He'd been trying to get us on the phone ever since, and I'd better haul my butt down there, because "somebody" obviously wanted her to have it. And sure enough, the stuff worked.
At this point, my wife's been through that year of interferon IVs and such, and is about 18 months past that phase. She gets a pet scan every 6 months for at least another two years. We'll be watching her like hawks for signs of any repeats, but she has already beaten literally astronomical odds. I sincerely believe that when God wants somebody healed, it happens, and often, He uses the best that men can do to accomplish it.
I really think it's sad that most of the religious TV programs and such encourage people to not take steps that are available and simply throw the whole problem into God's lap. It seems like they want people to make it harder on themselves, in the hope that God will work more impressivie and obvious miracles to compensate, and they can then cover them when they need a new story. It doesn't look to me like they are actually putting the needs of the aflicted first. From the way you use the past tense about your friend, it sounds like the whole matter is unfortunately finalized, but if not, I hope he still has some presence of mind and can somehow consider that just maybe the doctors and meds ARE the way God would work in his life.
There are plenty of people who feel they are making bad mistakes in their sex life. Some of them are actually doing things such as flashing or groping random strangers on the subway, or worse. More of them just think that porn is influencing them in a negative way, messing up their attitude towards the opposite sex, (or whatever). To them, there's a big difference between having to go through a few actions to view porn and not getting a chance, or preferably multiple chances, to exercise self control, before the viewing starts.
That's pretty much the definition of compulsive afterall. We don't call a person a compulsive eater because they want to eat all the time, feel just fine about the consequences, and wouldn't change if they could, but because they want to before the fact, but regret having done so after the fact.
"Atheists do not assert God's non-existance at all, whether as a theorem or an axiom. It simply has no place in their philosophy."
:-)"
Until you speciy that something is either a theorem or an axiom, you are not dealing with parts of logic. If you are not yet being logical, you lose the right to invoke a rule of logic in the discussion. You simply can't start applying logical rules to a proposition until you have classified a proposition as either an axiom or a theorem, anymore than a judge can properly pass sentence before guilt or innocence is determined.
Judging from your first remark:
"That would lead to completely absurd deductions. Oh, wait, it does, that's the problem.
you are quite used to that particular form of putting the cart before the horse. Like it or not, it is only Axioms that can only be disproved by showing they lead to illogial or contradictory theorems. To make the assertion you just made, you had to classify the assertion "God Exists!" as an axiom. Sorry, but you have just committed a reducto-de-absurdam. Thank you for playing, and Joyce has a nice copy of our home edition.
You don't directly disprove axioms. They're usually coloqually considered disproved if they give rise to theorems that are false to facts or formally disproved if the theorems conflict with theorems generated in the same formal system.
There are so many comments already posted to this topic that seem to not grasp the following point, that I think the best way to deal with it is to start a completely new thread. I'm sorry if it seems more than a little obvious to some of you:
:-), such as until you would need to perform disk maintenace anyway for lots of other reasons in any 'reasonable' file system. A typical media file is probably Type 1 in 99%+ of cases.
.txt format, while it is stll being edited by its creator. (type 2). (That same document may behave as effectively Type 1 once it is finished, only to revert to type 2 when a second edition is created from it.)
.doc file, that may become longer for obvious reasons like more text, but may also become longer for less obvious reasons (such as the hidden characters created when you make some text italic or underlined). (These are reasons that are not obvious to most end users, and often not predictable in detail even to people who understand them better). The default configuration for a Windows swap file is type 2a. It is likely to be hard for an automated system to predict the final size of Type 2a files, as that would imply a software system of near human level intelligence to detect patterns that are not obvious and invariant to a normal human mind. It may be possible to predict in some cases only because many users are unlikely to make certain mistakes, (i.e. cutting and pasting an entire second copy of a text file into itself is unusual, while duplicating a single sentence or word isn't).
.bmp, which will only get larger or smaller if the user changes the color depth or size of the image, and not if he just draws something else on the existing one.). A good portion of users (not all by any means) will learn
.zip) is hopefully a 3b, but only until it is run, then the contents may be of any type. A typical Microsoft patch is a 3a (it will somehow always end up longer overall, but you never know just what parts will vary or why).
:-).
There are fundamentally only a few types of files when it comes to fragmentation.
1. There are files that simply never change size, and once written don't get overwritten. (Type 1). Most programs are actually type 1, if you use sufficiently small values of never
2. There are files that will often shorten or lengthen in use, for example a word processor document in
Of type 2, there are files of type 2a. Files that may get either longer or shorter with use, on a (relatively) random basis. (as a relatively simple case, a
Then there are files of type 2b. Files that get longer or shorter only for predictable reasons, (such as a Windows
what to expect for these files, which suggests a well-written defragger could theoretically also auto-predict the consequences of the changes a user is making).
3. Then there are type 3 files, which only get longer. These too have predictable and unpredictable subtypes. Most log files for example, are set up to keep getting longer on a predictable basis when their associated program is run (type 3b). Anything that has been compressed (i.e.
4. Type 4 would be files that always get smaller, but there are no known examples of this type
These types are basic in any system, as they are implied by fundamental physical constraints. However, many defrag programs use other types instead of starting from this model, often with poor results.
In analyizing what happens with various defrag methods, such as reserving space for predicted expansion or defragging in the background/on the fly methods, the reader should try these various types (at least 1 through 3), and see what will happen when that method is used on each type. Then consider how many of those type files will be involved in the overall process, and how often.
For example, Some versions of Microsoft Windows (tm) FAT32 defragger move files that have been accessed more than a certain number of times (typically f
In most jurisdictions (in the U.S., at least), a child who is wandering onto your property is not committing an illegal act, and certainly not trespass. Where's the malicious intent in a typical five year old looking at the shiny water? There are roughly a thousand cases every year nation wide where some home owner attempts to have a person arrested for trespassing simply for coming onto their property, and ends up losing a civil suit if they keep pushing it (think of process servers, bill collectors, postmen delivering unsolicited mail, and even in a few cases "good samaritans" responding to an accident visible on the property).
So, you are agueing that God cannot be treated as an axiom? I've noticed a lot of Athiests who assert God's non-existence as a theorem, rather than an axiom in their philosophical system, and then invoke the arguement against the requirement to prove a universal negative. (As you are doing in a reduced form with the phrase "burden of proof").
The problem is, to make your theorem the negation of my statement "God exists", my statement also has to be a theorem. Look up the rules of formal logic if you don't believe me - the opposite of an Axiom is another Axiom, and the method of disproving an Axiom is fundamentally different from disproving a Theorem. You prove your view is right, but only by redefining my view so that you can claim a universal negation of my axiom can somehow be a theorem. You also either offer a theorem without being willing or able to show a derivation, by claiming the burden of proof falls on me instead, and require me to prove an Axiom by means which only work for theorems, or alternately, you yourself believe in the non-existence of God as one of your fundamental Axioms, which means you too are begging the question by your own definition.
"Saying that the first waves of settlers were unprepared for the challenges of colonization is not the same as saying the land was uninhabitable."
But from the perspective of the colonizers, it WAS saying just that. There may have been one informed European in a hundred who thought that the Native Americans were perfectly good people to inhabit the New World, but to at least the other 99, people meant "People like us". Hell, a sustantial majority of them defined "people like us" to NOT include their fellow Europeans, and defined the Native Americans as "Not People, period". Their concerns were overwhelmingly "Is the New World inhabitable by Spanish Catholics (or whatever), and what will we do if those damned French Protestants (or whatever) get established first." They were by no means sure that the land was inhabitable by the only people that really counted.
(First, I am not a Patent Lawyer).
Patents require that an invention be original, and in a non-obvious/non-trivial fashion. Unfortunately, the history of early patent law discloses some good and not-so-good cases to indicate just what was intended to count as originality. For example, an attempt to patent animal shaped balloons was rejected as too obvious, but an attempt to patent animal shaped bookends was accepted, as the patent office ruled that cutting the animal image in half passed the minimum standard for non-obviousness.
One rejected patent was for a process to dye coal blue, which the inventor used as part of a spray and masking template process to put a company logo on chunks of coal to be sold for home heating.
It was a general principle that a chemical, once invented, could not patented again, and what was patented there was the chemical process, not the substance itself, but Aspirin was awarded a patent as purified acetyl-salycillic acid, with the idea that the earlier process to produce it didn't make a pure enough form to be safe medicinally, and this one did, so it deserved not just a process patent, but a basic substance patent.
Within a few years of this, one person's attempt to patent a chemical was rejected because of prior art, but the "prior art" was a statement in a chemical handbook that the chemical in question was "impossible". Yep, he proved it wasn't, and as a 'reward', was denied a patent. This horrible case is one of the basic precidents that now sets the term of a year maximum after publication for the patent to be filed.
With examples such as these, no wonder the law is hard to interpret fairly and is in a horrible mess in practice, but here's my stab at a fair answer.
In regard to your question, I'm not at all sure a pot with built in drain holes should have been patentable, on the obviousness test and prior art tests. The way you phrase your question begs the answer. The answer that should be given is, it is only a case of "no obvious solution" if the steps you took are inobvious to a person well versed in the prior art, not just to Jethro Bodine. Note that I'm not saying the steps have to be totally incomprehensible to even a trained software developer, just that they must be more than trivial tasks for that person to understand and implement. Another way to look at it is to asy that inobviousness is necessary, but not, by itself, sufficent.
Take one click shopping models. The methods obviously weren't obvious to some managaement personnel who asked for a syngle click system, but to anyone who had written so much as a single macro, the idea of invoking an entire series of tasks with a single keystroke or mouse click was well known prior art. Abstracting that, what is left that is actually both inobvious and financially worth patenting? Even if we grant that software patents should in general be precisely as legal as ones for new cooking gear, most software innovations would result in patents, that, if they actually reflected only the geneuinely insightful parts not covered by prior art, were of little or no economic worth.
A handful each year would be both novel, and actually contribute to the progress of the useful arts, and have potential financial value. Given this disparity between that handful and the many, many patents actually awarded (and litigated over), it is actually somewhat better to reject the patentability of all software in an effor to protect society from the damage being done by totally unwarrented patents.
Of course, it would be better still to reform patent law.
Let's not forget what usually happens with road widening. The road is heavily congested with four lanes, and by the time two more are added, the road needs another two or its still just as congested. Highways through really developed areas are being widened every two years or so, some have reached phenominonal widths such as the 12 lane interstate now passing through the center of Atlanta GA and supported by a loop bypass that is at least 6 lanes in most parts, and yet these roads remain on the brink of massive rush hour gridlocks.
Won't broadband access go much the same way? By the time the technology exists and can be widely implemented to move X amount of data over TV bands, won't the demand be for 2X, or more?
Some people have claimed that widening highways is an expensive and very short term solution, and that some real developments of mass transit are both cheaper in the long run and more able to actually grow faster than demand. In the same way, isn't it likely that something else, such as (for just a few examples)laying some good solid fiber optic cable, or modifying the phone company's baseline all digital systems to extend the potential range of ADSL, are potentially much better solutions? I'd even look at Internet over Power Lines before I'd have much confidence in this (well, maybe not).
The US has some similar situations, like people still calling Denali Mt. McKinley. It hasn't taken pushing for the recognition of the change in the schools, however, as lots of outdoors types have figured out that it gets more chicks to brag about climbing thigs with Native American names. It's sort of an anti-PC reason to be PC.
the US has about .89 guns/person.
Wow, I'd be average if it wasn't for that pesky decimal point.
While I seem to live in an area where medical support is usually provided to even the worst off on a pretty good basis, Ive seen a couple of cases where people reached a lifetime cap with their insuror and were denied care for such obvious problems as Pneumonia, with quickly fatal results. If anything, it's happening more to people who were middle to upper middle class and paid taxes, worked for their insurance, and generally were a productive part of society than to the lifelong poor, who often get better protection.
People keep claiming that my state can't continue to be this generous to the poorest cases, or it will go bankrupt. Since I have heard governors and legislators from other states, advise us by saying (approximately) "We don't do as much as your state, it would be fiscally irresponsible", I can easily believe there are more people (by percentages) being turned away in those states, but it would seem very doubtful there are less.
There's certain areas I'd like to see the state cut back (for example, anti-psychotic drugs are generally totally useless if the patient can't or won't stop drinking or using opiates, and they can cost 500$ a bottle, with some doctors being willing to try five or six different ones at once, in the hope that they will do at least a little good. After a certain point, this is gambling on thousand to one shots, and not covering those cases would be just about enough of a change to make the system break even.).
However, one of the adjacent states won't refer some black lung patients to VA hospitals, even if they meet both such tests as being honorably discharged veterans and having been employed as coal miners for a period of at least 10 years. They have dropped patients from the records for such reasons as the dates of employment being after the various clean air acts supposedly cleaned up the coal mines (which is really an insult to intelligence, considering how many of those mines paid whopping fines after those dates for non-compliance, or just went bankrupt and slipped out of town when they got caught). If a state government is going that far to avoid putting a load on the federal budget, instead of doing what one might normally expect and passing the problem on at no cost to itself, again, that seems pretty clear proof some people are falling through the cracks.
First, I am not a lawyer. If you're being sued by SCO, I reccomend you consult a professional. If you can't afford one, your area may have some organization , usually called Rural Legal Services (even if you are urban, it's often called this, go figure), which will provide legal aid.
Optionally, find a lawyer you think you can't afford, tell him "These Idiots want to sue me. They're already convinced they can beat Chrysler, Auto-zone, and IBM first. Taking my case on contingency is the same as betting they are wrong about that. Interested? (Some lawyers will figure out that there won't be anything left to grab on the countersuit after IBM, let alone the others, get through piling on. You want the lawyer who won't quite think the whole thing out.).
If it were me, I would first petition to have the venue changed to my state if it wasn't already done there. (Then I might want to petition to have the case moved to small claims.). Simultaneously, I would file a counterclaim for my litigation costs (I'll never see a dime, but the ciourt expects me to follow the legal fiction of treating SCO as a solvent company). The big one, though, would be the 4th document, a request that the trial be delayed pending the outcome of SCO's other litigation.
From there, a poor guy, with nothing but his own resources could still write a nice set of interrogatives for SCO to answer, file motion after motion designed to tie up SCOs legal staff, and end up costing them a small fortune that they couldn't possibly recover from him.
Oh, and contacting the press to pretry the whole matter in the courts of public opinion is a nice touch.
Retailers have some influence, particlarly mega-stores (If you thought Babbage's could impact the market,then the word for what Wallmart did is dominate). Independants don't have much influence at all.
There are other factors. As just one example, if the prices for alternative entertainments (DVD movies, CD music, etc.) aren't fluid, then games tend to be compared to those alternates, and prices can't shift as much, or as quickly. However, there is always some play. It is literally impossible in the face of free-market forces to keep all prices in lockstep without industry people negotiating and agreeing to keep them that way. (And it's called anti-trust if they do.).
Beyond this, console game makers, including ones that write first for the PC, and plan to do console ports later, can't try to sell to some price points, because those points would only be available if X million people bought the console. You can't shoot for 120% of predicted market saturation.
1. If you charge a price equivalent to the value to the "average" honest consumer, you have just eliminated the 49% of your potential market that estimates a price below average, and even MBAs aren't usually dumb enough to throw away half the potential market.
2.Real pricing consists of finding a point where your total profit is highest, whether you make a few cents per item but sell millions, or a few tens of dollars a piece but sell only thousands.
Applying a little math on the level that most physics undergrads are used to will often reveal several different price points, with about the same predicted total profit. What will happen under real world conditions to these predictions? Some industries have been willing to test these variant price structures. (They are why Ford and Chevy make a bottom of the line model that usually sells for no profit at all, so that they get loyal consumers who move up to the mid-priced models. They are why you can probably buy a 2 liter generic soda for 50 cents if you live in a US location). The recording industry has been reluctant in the extreme to explore such alternate price structures. Outside people who have done the math tend to one of three conclusions. Either 1. The recording industry is seriously misreporting how much it pays artists, gross revenues, and other factors, and so the outsider's predictions are wrong for lack of data, OR 2. This is about power and control, with the industry willing to cut its own profits to maintain that power, OR 3. The industry is full of people who are unable to follow the mathematical arguements advanced, and should expect poor profits regardless of piracy until they hire some bean counters who can actually count beans.
1. "Now if people think that patents and copyright are bad, why not just say "abolish patents and copyright"? Lumping it all under the moniker intellectual property is either ignorant or intellectually dishonest."
Why just 'if people think (these things) are bad'? I'd say lumping it all together is either ignorant or dishonest, period.
The WIPO ARE the people who are trying to lump patents, trademarks, and other forms of of the INTELLECTUAL category IP under the blanket LEGAL category of IP. That doesn't sound so bad in itself (normally, one would hope that the legal categories are in accord with the facts, so if it's a fact that copyright law shares properties with trademark law, you'ld think it would be a good thing if the law recognized this).
However, the WIPO has done it by arguing for law in one area such as Patents to be selectively interpreted so that it applies to other areas, and the persons doing the selecting would be the legal representitives of large corporations, whose lawyers are (coincidentally) WIPO members.
The latest US law they endorsed would have terribly blurred the distinction between civil and criminal law, and shows prtty clearly that the real issue here is fundamental and constitutional. Now if you want to go into court, in a civil suite, facing an opponent that has had the US govenment pay their costs of investigation and presecution, keep supporting the WIPO's acts and definitions. They do logically lead to IP law trumping all sorts of other laws, including the constitution.
2.It sounds like geographical indications could already be protected as trademarks (dual protection was exactly my complaint in my first post, if you recall, as in "The judge won't let us sue under trademark law, so we want to refile for a Tradesecret violation. Oops, he doesn't like that either, so can we refile for a copyright violation?").
You do know that a whole manufacturers organization like the Florida Orange Grower's Association can jointly file for a trademark?. Also, isn't a lot of this protected by 'consumer' representation laws? And if it isn't, shouldn't those laws be fixed instead of adding more IP laws? Or are you argueing that consumer protection also falls under IP law?
3. "Hey, it's only copyright... not part of the US constitution, so who cares."
Look up "straw man arguement" on Google. I certainly never said that copyright wasn't part of the US constitution. You've delivverd a little sermon on things I and many if not most Slashdot readers already know, missed apparently every point I made, and attempted to put words into my mouth. Is there anything else you would care to do to try to win your arguement?
If it makes you feel better, I'll gladly call Libertarians extremists. I don't want to include them with the faschist right and communist left types that tend to dominate alternative media though, but to put them in the category I'd like to see more people have a chance to hear from. Actually, they're just the type that needs to be represented, along with anarcho-syndicalsts, the Green Party, Technocrats, old fashioned Fabian socialists and Wobblies and other factions. Let people know that there are more than one or two alternatives, and maybe they will start thinking.
Most 'pirate' radio has tended to broadcast either 'college' rock/alternative or political speech from one of the two classical extreems (socialist left or faschist right). Substantive content choices will have to mean more than "Not Brittany". It will need to include educqtional programming, targeted at the specific neighborhood, or musical programming preserving vanishing jazz or blues artists, or op-ed that's more substantive (there's that pesky wood again) than the soundbite of the moment approack.