Exactly. Patents for "predictive text" shouldn't be allowed, but I have no problem with patenting a particular method for predictive text, like T9. I mean, have as many patents as people want that cover a specific method, but not for EVERY method in existence. It's like allowing me to patent the automobile. I shouldn't be able to patent the whole thing, just be able to patent part of it, like a steering system. I don't see how these patent examiners can't make that relation to non-software items.
Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone, Ratchet and Clank, and Haze. That's a variety of games, other than just shooters that are coming in the next year. Other than that, most of the stuff that is highly anticipated is coming out on BOTH systems (COD4, Burnout, Need for Speed), plus don't forget that Final Fantasy is huge for the Playstation.
A cop can't actually ask you that question because it is self-incriminating (I have many cop friends). Now, if he reads you the Miranda rights, and then asks you that question, it's ok, because he's now told you that you don't have to incriminate yourself. Any decent lawyer could get the charge thrown out if you incriminate yourself before you were told that you have the right NOT to. So, go ahead and talk away. That particular bit of info can't be used against you.
Well first, there are disclaimers in the Ford ads saying "this isn't possible". Also, notice how car companies say "starting at X, as shown Y". So if you want what you see, you have to pay more. Instead, the computer manufacturers and/or vista left of the "as shown Y" portion, which is a big deal. I want to buy Vista and run it. Dell said it would work. Now, I go and install it, run it, and I'm only able to use half of what I bought, I'd be pretty pissed that my machine can't do everything it is supposed to do, due no fault of my own.
How about blu-ray player? You may not want it, but I use mine quite a bit and it was at quite an affordable price when compared to a standalone player.
I kind of read through the google paper, but just skimmed it. I was hoping for more specific numbers, etc. But I saw the CMU paper first, and focused on it.
I will also add to what you said. After looking at the Weibull they performed, they are completely incorrect when they say "there is no infant mortality effect". Whenever you have a weibull shape factor of less than 1 (and in their case it was 0.71), that tells you that your system exhibits signs of infant mortality. Add to the fact that they are erroneously comparing MTBF to MTTF when the two are very different and tell you very different things. Also, I tried to talk to one of the researchers, and her reply to me was starting to give me the idea that she really doesn't know what she is talking about.
They may have had very good ambitions, but when you show that you don't understand the very basics of Reliability, then your entire research is in question. They either performed their Weibull very incorrectly, don't understand infant mortality, wearout, and random modes of failure, or a combination of the two.
And if I get any replies from anyone that states "MTBF = MTTF + MTTR" and then goes on to say that hard drives are not repairable, then you obviously don't understand Reliability. There is a huge difference between MTTF of a single drive, and the MTBF/MTTR of a SYSTEM of drives. One relates to a single piece of hardware, and the other two relate to a system. This is one thing where I got a strong impression that the CMU researchers don't know what they are saying. They aren't purposefully stating things incorrectly, they just are ignorant.
And in further other news....Carnegie Mellon researchers don't know enough about statistics as they think they do.
Let me explain. They show a weibull slope of 0.71. This is highly indicative of infant mortality in their system, and leaning towards random failure. So, to say that it isn't infant mortality goes against their actual statistical results. So, they've got some mix-up of data. One thing says "failure rates increased with time", but then their weibull shows otherwise. They didn't do it right. Also, they confused MTTF and MTBF. They tried to call them the same when they're not. There is a big difference, and there's a reason manufacturers state MTTF instead of MTBF. I even ran a simulation based off the CMU data and I can show an MTTF of 1M hours for the drives, yet my MTBF is five times lower. They attempted reliability and failed. If they actually got some help from someone knowledgeable in the field, then they wouldn't have made these HUGE, glaring errors, and their results would be more believable.
And for my final trick, let me give you an example.
Let's say you have five units with an MTTF of 5000 hours, and we put a new one into service every 500 hours.
It'll look something like this:
0-5000
500-5500
1000-6000
1500-6500
2000-7000
Now, each drive failed after five thousand hours. This is the mean time to failure. In other words, each drive had, on average, 5000 hours on it when it failed.
Next, let's calculate MTBF. There were 5 failures, with a total of 7000 hours of operation. This would result in a cumulative MTBF of 7000/5 = 1400 for the system. If you really look at it even closer you can see that you had an MTBF of infinity for the first 5000 hours, then an MTBF of only 500 hours for the last 2000 hours. Noticed how MTBF has changed over time but MTTF has remained the same? Notice the huge difference between MTBF and MTTF now? Noticed how I didn't take repair into account at all?
So repeat after me....MTBF is NOT the same as MTTF. The paper is incorrect in this regard.
Repair doesn't matter for MTTF and MTBF. Repairable, replaceable, whatever. It makes no difference.
Now, you can have all sorts of distributions that you draw that mean from, but a mean is a mean.
Yes, but the MTBF and MTTF are two different types of mean. MTBF is the mean time between failures, i.e. how many hours can we expect between failures in our system, whereas MTTF is the mean time to failure, i.e. how many hours, on average, does each drive see before it fails. MTTF is the mean of the distribution. MTTF = MTBF when the distribution is exponential. In this case, it is not an exponential failure distribution. It follows the Weibull distribution VERY closely as they have indicated. So MTBF MTTF.
No, they don't. Hard drive manufacturers state an MTTF, which is very different from MTBF. The two can be similar, but they are not interchangeable. The author of this paper has calculated MTBF, and tried to compare it to MTTF, which is WRONG. They really should've consulted a reliability engineer. Any competent one worth their salt would see the difference. One of them varies with time, the other is static and unchanging based on age.
I'm also going to add to my statement and mention that the authors of the article do not understand MTTF. They have calculated MTBF, not MTTF. They are not the same. In fact, they have assumed that the drives fail in a random way by doing a simple hours/failures. They need to really to look at failures and suspensions and perform a weibull analysis to see how close their stuff is to the manufacturers stated values.
Well, I guess you don't really understand reliability then. You also don't understand MTBF/MTTF (hint: they aren't the same) What they have said is a big "no duh" to anyone in the field. MTTF will work regardless of whether or not your failure rate is linear with time. Also, there are other distribution of failure beyond just exponential, such as the Weibull. Exponential is a subset of the Weibull. Using this distribution you can accurately calculate an MTTF. Now, the MTBF will not match the MTTF initially, but given enough time, it will eventually match the MTTF. All of this information is very useful to anyone that actually knows what to do with those numbers.
Actually, you just made his point. Why should you expect to only pay what you were supposed to pay and Amazon can't charge you what they were supposed to charge you? Why is there a double standard?
You know...you just made me think of something. You're right, at what point is it considered infringement. Aren't there fair use clauses that allow for clips of 3-4 seconds or so? If so, why not create some software that would go and get 3-4 seconds worth of music from different individuals. A torrent of sorts. But see, you don't allow for more than that little piece of music to be gathered from any one person. The only problem is that a three minute song would require 60 unique users. But, you could have the software grab pieces over the course of a few days, or however long it would take. The tougher to get files, the ones that not a lot of people listen to, aren't going to be able to be gotten easily this way. But it seems that for right now, the RIAA is focusing on the people sharing the most mainstream music, and I would bet dollars to donuts that there are enough people that could provide a snippet of those songs that it would be virtually invisible to the end user.
Well...the sixteenth amendment has been challenged, progressed to the supreme court, and it won. So, court cases would say that income taxes are the law according to the sixteenth amendment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_v._Glens haw_Glass_Co.
Re:My favorite new toy is the $40 helicopter
on
The Return of Toys
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yeah, except that's one of the fakes. See here:
http://www.silverlit-flyingclub.com/UrgentAnnounce .htm
Those guys make the real one that has been knocked off about 100 times. The worst part is that NYTimes who wrote the article referenced one of the fakes instead of the real one. Silverlit actually has sued Hobbytron (maker of the articles referenced copter) over making and distributing a knock-off.
Re:My favorite new toy is the $40 helicopter
on
The Return of Toys
·
· Score: 1
Here's why. As he said, on their most popular player, only 22 songs are from his company out of 1000 songs on that player. So, he's obviously not making money selling music. His money is from selling hardware. The money made on those 22 songs is a lot less than the money made on that one player.
agreed. Most of the 360's i've run across don't even have a demo running. They simply have the dashboard up that you can scroll through. At launch, COD2 was up on them, but now, they just run a crappy demo disk.
The difference is that these are not passive countermeasures, but instead are active. It disables the missile. If you want, Gulfstream has been selling their jets with a missile countermeasure option for some years now.
I remember hearing about a study from the University of New Mexico (iirc) some years ago (3-5) that came to a similar conclusion. It said that when women are ovulating, there was a larger percentage of skin that was shown vs. what was covered up.
Well....I'll refute some of your points as they relate to Netflix at least.
1. You do know the movie you are getting with Netflix. It is the number one item in your list.
2. This occurs with Netflix, Blockbuster, and every other movie rental in history, so the downloads win.
3. Netflix doesn't suspend your account for a month due to a lost movie. It would take multiples before they stopped.
4. Sounds like inefficiency of the Canadian mail system. My dvd's from Netflix get to me in 1 day from when they shipped.
5. Not sure about Netflix's internal procedures on that one.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Patents for "predictive text" shouldn't be allowed, but I have no problem with patenting a particular method for predictive text, like T9. I mean, have as many patents as people want that cover a specific method, but not for EVERY method in existence. It's like allowing me to patent the automobile. I shouldn't be able to patent the whole thing, just be able to patent part of it, like a steering system. I don't see how these patent examiners can't make that relation to non-software items.
Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone, Ratchet and Clank, and Haze. That's a variety of games, other than just shooters that are coming in the next year. Other than that, most of the stuff that is highly anticipated is coming out on BOTH systems (COD4, Burnout, Need for Speed), plus don't forget that Final Fantasy is huge for the Playstation.
A cop can't actually ask you that question because it is self-incriminating (I have many cop friends). Now, if he reads you the Miranda rights, and then asks you that question, it's ok, because he's now told you that you don't have to incriminate yourself. Any decent lawyer could get the charge thrown out if you incriminate yourself before you were told that you have the right NOT to. So, go ahead and talk away. That particular bit of info can't be used against you.
Well first, there are disclaimers in the Ford ads saying "this isn't possible". Also, notice how car companies say "starting at X, as shown Y". So if you want what you see, you have to pay more. Instead, the computer manufacturers and/or vista left of the "as shown Y" portion, which is a big deal. I want to buy Vista and run it. Dell said it would work. Now, I go and install it, run it, and I'm only able to use half of what I bought, I'd be pretty pissed that my machine can't do everything it is supposed to do, due no fault of my own.
How about blu-ray player? You may not want it, but I use mine quite a bit and it was at quite an affordable price when compared to a standalone player.
I will also add to what you said. After looking at the Weibull they performed, they are completely incorrect when they say "there is no infant mortality effect". Whenever you have a weibull shape factor of less than 1 (and in their case it was 0.71), that tells you that your system exhibits signs of infant mortality. Add to the fact that they are erroneously comparing MTBF to MTTF when the two are very different and tell you very different things. Also, I tried to talk to one of the researchers, and her reply to me was starting to give me the idea that she really doesn't know what she is talking about.
They may have had very good ambitions, but when you show that you don't understand the very basics of Reliability, then your entire research is in question. They either performed their Weibull very incorrectly, don't understand infant mortality, wearout, and random modes of failure, or a combination of the two.
And if I get any replies from anyone that states "MTBF = MTTF + MTTR" and then goes on to say that hard drives are not repairable, then you obviously don't understand Reliability. There is a huge difference between MTTF of a single drive, and the MTBF/MTTR of a SYSTEM of drives. One relates to a single piece of hardware, and the other two relate to a system. This is one thing where I got a strong impression that the CMU researchers don't know what they are saying. They aren't purposefully stating things incorrectly, they just are ignorant.
Let me explain. They show a weibull slope of 0.71. This is highly indicative of infant mortality in their system, and leaning towards random failure. So, to say that it isn't infant mortality goes against their actual statistical results. So, they've got some mix-up of data. One thing says "failure rates increased with time", but then their weibull shows otherwise. They didn't do it right. Also, they confused MTTF and MTBF. They tried to call them the same when they're not. There is a big difference, and there's a reason manufacturers state MTTF instead of MTBF. I even ran a simulation based off the CMU data and I can show an MTTF of 1M hours for the drives, yet my MTBF is five times lower. They attempted reliability and failed. If they actually got some help from someone knowledgeable in the field, then they wouldn't have made these HUGE, glaring errors, and their results would be more believable.
Let's say you have five units with an MTTF of 5000 hours, and we put a new one into service every 500 hours.
It'll look something like this:
0-5000
500-5500
1000-6000
1500-6500
2000-7000
Now, each drive failed after five thousand hours. This is the mean time to failure. In other words, each drive had, on average, 5000 hours on it when it failed.
Next, let's calculate MTBF. There were 5 failures, with a total of 7000 hours of operation. This would result in a cumulative MTBF of 7000/5 = 1400 for the system. If you really look at it even closer you can see that you had an MTBF of infinity for the first 5000 hours, then an MTBF of only 500 hours for the last 2000 hours. Noticed how MTBF has changed over time but MTTF has remained the same? Notice the huge difference between MTBF and MTTF now? Noticed how I didn't take repair into account at all?
So repeat after me....MTBF is NOT the same as MTTF. The paper is incorrect in this regard.
Repair doesn't matter for MTTF and MTBF. Repairable, replaceable, whatever. It makes no difference. Now, you can have all sorts of distributions that you draw that mean from, but a mean is a mean. Yes, but the MTBF and MTTF are two different types of mean. MTBF is the mean time between failures, i.e. how many hours can we expect between failures in our system, whereas MTTF is the mean time to failure, i.e. how many hours, on average, does each drive see before it fails. MTTF is the mean of the distribution. MTTF = MTBF when the distribution is exponential. In this case, it is not an exponential failure distribution. It follows the Weibull distribution VERY closely as they have indicated. So MTBF MTTF.
No, they don't. Hard drive manufacturers state an MTTF, which is very different from MTBF. The two can be similar, but they are not interchangeable. The author of this paper has calculated MTBF, and tried to compare it to MTTF, which is WRONG. They really should've consulted a reliability engineer. Any competent one worth their salt would see the difference. One of them varies with time, the other is static and unchanging based on age.
I'm also going to add to my statement and mention that the authors of the article do not understand MTTF. They have calculated MTBF, not MTTF. They are not the same. In fact, they have assumed that the drives fail in a random way by doing a simple hours/failures. They need to really to look at failures and suspensions and perform a weibull analysis to see how close their stuff is to the manufacturers stated values.
Well, I guess you don't really understand reliability then. You also don't understand MTBF/MTTF (hint: they aren't the same) What they have said is a big "no duh" to anyone in the field. MTTF will work regardless of whether or not your failure rate is linear with time. Also, there are other distribution of failure beyond just exponential, such as the Weibull. Exponential is a subset of the Weibull. Using this distribution you can accurately calculate an MTTF. Now, the MTBF will not match the MTTF initially, but given enough time, it will eventually match the MTTF. All of this information is very useful to anyone that actually knows what to do with those numbers.
Actually, you just made his point. Why should you expect to only pay what you were supposed to pay and Amazon can't charge you what they were supposed to charge you? Why is there a double standard?
You know...you just made me think of something. You're right, at what point is it considered infringement. Aren't there fair use clauses that allow for clips of 3-4 seconds or so? If so, why not create some software that would go and get 3-4 seconds worth of music from different individuals. A torrent of sorts. But see, you don't allow for more than that little piece of music to be gathered from any one person. The only problem is that a three minute song would require 60 unique users. But, you could have the software grab pieces over the course of a few days, or however long it would take. The tougher to get files, the ones that not a lot of people listen to, aren't going to be able to be gotten easily this way. But it seems that for right now, the RIAA is focusing on the people sharing the most mainstream music, and I would bet dollars to donuts that there are enough people that could provide a snippet of those songs that it would be virtually invisible to the end user.
You want somethign even more fscked up? In georgia, two minors having sex is a misdameanor, but having oral is a felony. Read this: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page= wilson
Sad....so sad.
Well...the sixteenth amendment has been challenged, progressed to the supreme court, and it won. So, court cases would say that income taxes are the law according to the sixteenth amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_v._Glens haw_Glass_Co.
Yeah, except that's one of the fakes. See here: http://www.silverlit-flyingclub.com/UrgentAnnounce .htm
Those guys make the real one that has been knocked off about 100 times. The worst part is that NYTimes who wrote the article referenced one of the fakes instead of the real one. Silverlit actually has sued Hobbytron (maker of the articles referenced copter) over making and distributing a knock-off.
Here's why: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ces2007/low-end-theory- rc-helicopters-want-to-be-free-227943.php
In synopsis...one company made it, and a bunch copied.
Here's why. As he said, on their most popular player, only 22 songs are from his company out of 1000 songs on that player. So, he's obviously not making money selling music. His money is from selling hardware. The money made on those 22 songs is a lot less than the money made on that one player.
agreed. Most of the 360's i've run across don't even have a demo running. They simply have the dashboard up that you can scroll through. At launch, COD2 was up on them, but now, they just run a crappy demo disk.
Actually, it is Linux, because most of the linux stuff copies more of the Mac than it does windows.
The difference is that these are not passive countermeasures, but instead are active. It disables the missile. If you want, Gulfstream has been selling their jets with a missile countermeasure option for some years now.
I remember hearing about a study from the University of New Mexico (iirc) some years ago (3-5) that came to a similar conclusion. It said that when women are ovulating, there was a larger percentage of skin that was shown vs. what was covered up.
Don't expect the hardware makers to want and go pony up the licensing fees for CSS to include the feature to decode it in the drive though.
Well....I'll refute some of your points as they relate to Netflix at least. 1. You do know the movie you are getting with Netflix. It is the number one item in your list.
2. This occurs with Netflix, Blockbuster, and every other movie rental in history, so the downloads win.
3. Netflix doesn't suspend your account for a month due to a lost movie. It would take multiples before they stopped.
4. Sounds like inefficiency of the Canadian mail system. My dvd's from Netflix get to me in 1 day from when they shipped.
5. Not sure about Netflix's internal procedures on that one.