Ah, yes, the dirty little secret of small business in America - everybody skims. Everybody. As my dad used to tell me, "If I didn't take cash off the top, I couldn't afford to stay in business. Nobody could. The taxes are too high." It wasn't a matter of wanting to cheat the tax man. It was a matter of survival for him.
I always make a point of paying in cash at local family-owned businesses whenever I can. Times are tough for those folks, and I can assure you that they appreciate a cash transaction.
The conclusions of this study are not exactly news. It's been known for some time that early homo sapiens tools were no more advanced than Neanderthal tools. But at some point, there was an explosion of creativity and inventiveness in modern man that the Neanderthals could not equal, probably due to home sapiens having superior language skills and capabilities, and the ability to share and communicate ideas in ways the Neanderthals could not. Modern man then evolved superior cultures and technologies that surpassed the Neanderthals.
One on one, raised without the benefit of language and culture, a modern man would probably be no brighter, and in fact considerably physically weaker, than a Neanderthal. But collectively, Neanderthals were no match for modern men with their more advanced languages, societies, and weapons.
Very few faculty members are willing to write textbooks, at least in science and engineering. Writing a text is hard, thankless work, and most professors have better things to do with their time. I would personally be willing to help contribute to an open-source text, but I would never tackle the whole thing myself.
You can't treat an open-source textbook like a Wikipedia article. Errors and occasional vandalism are par for the course in Wikipedia articles, but textbooks have to be held to a higher standard if professors are going to adopt them. Some means of vetting the people who contribute will have to be implemented.
Such as the university printer. I remember buying bound lecture notes for about $5 each
I'm not talking about spiral-bound pages from the school printer. I'm talking about a decent copy with a good spine and a high-quality soft cover - something that will handle the wear-and-tear of the semester, and you can keep on your bookshelf afterwards. Something like that will cost about $20, but I think most students would pay the nominal cost for better quality.
whatever side becomes dominant, gray market or open source, students having access to $20 textbooks is a win for them.
Exactly. My point was just that gray-market texts will slow the growth of open-source texts, because economically the result is the same as far as students are concerned. Their textbook costs will drop by an order of magnitude, one way or the other. Faculty members won't feel the same need to create open-source alternatives when they know that students can get inexpensive traditional textbooks instead.
Open source texts are a great idea, but you'll need two things to make them work: (1) credentialed people willing to write and edit them, and (2) companies willing to supply a nicely bound printed version of the text for a reasonable price. Purely online texts won't cut it; reading a highly technical text on a computer screen becomes tiring very quickly.
But let's say someone does write an open source text, and someone else offers you a printed, bound version for $20. The problem is that you're now competing with gray-market textbooks intended for overseas markets. I see more and more of those in my classes every semester. Yes, you're not supposed to be able to buy them in the U.S.A., but the Internet takes care of that. Why pay $150 for a text when you can get the same text for $20? Granted, it's a soft-bound grayscale version, but that makes zero difference in the course.
That's the battle that open source texts have to fight. They're not competing with $200 hardbound traditional textbooks; they're competing with $20 softbound gray-market versions instead. I think we're going to see publishers unintentionally subsidizing the low-cost textbook model for some time to come. Eventually the gray-market growth is going to seriously impact their bottom lines, at which point they'll probably try to force faculty and universities to help them enforce their marketing rules (fat chance of that). Hopefully by that time enough open source texts will be available to fill the gaps.
IANAL, but I have consulted with legal firms over patent suits, and I've developed a different perspective over the years. First of all, don't presume that your boss' desire to patent your software is necessarily a bad thing. Patent portfolios are a valuable asset in the modern business world. Management may simply be thinking in terms of defending the company from lawsuits by competitors and patent trolls. A good portfolio is one of your best defenses in such situations.
Second, trying to use prior art to short-circuit the patent may not work the way you expect. First, the prior art you locate may become part of the application wrapper, and thereby strengthen the patent. Second, if you send an email to your supervisor saying "I based my idea on Widget A", and your company is sued by a company with a patent on Widget A, the other side may use your email as evidence of willful infringement.
Your employer has every right to patent your work, as others have pointed out. Whether or not you personally agree with software patents is irrelevant; the fact is that they exist, and companies are sued over them every day. As long as the USPTO grants them, everyone (including your employer) has to play the game by the government's rules, or else they may find themselves put out of business by a patent troll.
Of course the authorities don't bother to prosecute online criminals, any more than most metro police departments bother to investigate non-violent property crimes nowadays. You have too many criminals and too few people available to hunt them down. The government gives priority to violent crime and high-profile pubic cases, and everything else falls by the wayside. On top of that, the government won't bother with crimes where no one (including the judge, jury, or prosecutor) can understand the facts of the case. Face it - online fraud is typically a non-violent crime where only small amounts of money are lost. The police have no more interest in hunting down online crooks than they do in finding the guy who broke into your car to steal the radio. They give you a police report, you file a claim with your insurance carrier, and that's that.
A slightly off-topic comment: Personally I have always believed that the perfect crime is to start a "free energy" company, and claim to be developing a device that violates the laws of physics. As long as you don't violate any securities laws, and hire some good attorneys to intimidate any of your investors who start to complain, you can rake in millions and no one can touch you. Nobody will understand the physics, and you can simply claim that you had problems with your R&D process that prevented commercialization of the product. Take a look at Randy Mills and Blacklight Power for a perfect example.
The anonymity of this author doesn't mean anything. All of his arguments stand on their own, and are supported by trivially verifiable math. Rather than complain about the authenticity, spend 3 minutes reproducing the results and you'll see that he's right.
What "math"? There is no math in the rebuttal, besides a number for orbital energy. No equations, no calculated results, no nothing. I truly hope that Dr. Landis is not the person who submitted the story, because if so my respect for him has taken a hit. A real scientist knows better.
Tell you what. Why don't you post the complete mathematical analysis that proves Oberg wrong? It should take you 3 minutes to complete, and maybe 15 minutes to post. And while you're at it, provide some math to explain why hazardous debris from COSMOS 954 and the shuttle Columbia somehow did reach the ground, despite their obviously comparable ballistic coefficients.
I just love how someone can say "I work in the industry!", post as an AC, toss out a couple of buzzwords with no math to speak of, and scream "we're being lied to!". As the submitter of this story so clearly put it when posting his own "analysis":
if I can't even trust the simplest things he says that can be easily checked, why should I trust anything else?
Translation: "There is a conspiracy here! Trust no one! We're all being lied to!" If there's one thing I've learned over the years, there is nothing the government can say or do to convince someone who thinks like this.
Personally, I have little doubt that the satellite was shot down for exactly the official reason. We've had plenty of space junk hit the ground in recent years; as I remember, people were specifically warned not to handle debris from the space shuttle Columbia, because of concerns of hydrazine contamination. Clearly the shuttle's high ballistic coefficient didn't prevent that, did it? The hydrazine tank didn't have to reach the ground intact to cause concerns. And just imagine the headlines if nothing had been done, and debris from that spy satellite had eventually reached the ground. Russia still gets flack about the nuclear reactor debris that landed in Canada after the re-entry of COSMOS 954, and that was 30 years ago!
Of course, it was obviously an added bonus that the shoot-down was a nice demo of the military's capabilities. But if the U.S. military really wanted to test its ASAT technology, it would hardly need to hold a press conference beforehand, or issue a press release to China or Russia to inform them afterwards! China and Russia track our satellites the same as we do theirs. If one of our dead satellites conveniently "exploded", they would get the message quite clearly.
In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?
And that pretty much sums up the attitude of many vocal/.ers, at least based on my years of experience: "I want my own personal information to be private, but everyone else's should be public." Or to put it another way: "I demand the right to control my own data, but I will do as I please with anyone else's data as long as it benefits me."
Even after all this time, I'm still amused by this double standard, and how blind many/.ers are to their own hypocrisy in situations such as this. To those who are unhappy about Google street view "violating" their privacy, I suggest they repeat the following mantra:
Logically speaking, if both parties take this approach, the relationship never moves beyond one Anonymous Coward messaging another. Which, of course, doesn't make it any less foolish to trust strangers; but if you want to find company over the Internet, you have to.
On the contrary, people often engage in mutually consensual sex without ever knowing the true names, addresses, or phone numbers of the people they're dealing with. Your blur your face in any photo you send. You use a throwaway email address. You use a pay-per-minute disposable cell phone to speak with your contacts. You meet them in a mutually acceptable public place and check them out in person beforehand. You talk about yourself and your interests in general terms, without supplying actual names and specific details. You buy food and drinks with cash. You rent a motel room and pay cash. You can do all of these things, have your fun, and never have to ask a single personal detail.
It's not rocket science. It's just plain common sense. Hey, people looking for kinky sex generally aren't looking for lifelong friends. They're looking for variety in quick, semi-anonymous hookups. Both parties understand this unless they're complete idiots.
So, by your thinking, the woman who gets raped because she was in the wrong part of town doesn't deserve any sympathy either, because after all, she should have known better?
Nice straw man. Look, the "victims" were foolishly soliciting sex from a complete stranger, and providing personal information without a clue as to who they were dealing with. They were not innocent bystanders. If you blindly stick your hand into a beehive looking for honey, why should you be surprised if you get stung?
Were these people boneheads? Sure. And frankly, if it hadn't been this stunt, by this troll, their lack of discretion probably would have caught up to them sooner or later. Fact remains, though, they were lied to and their trust was abused for the purpose of hurting and humiliating them. They may have been complicit in their own victimization, but that doesn't mean they deserve what happened to them.
I did not say they deserved what happened to them. I said I had no sympathy for any of them. There is a distinct difference between the two statements.
Really? How about the guy who lost his job when his consenting sexual activity was publicized by Fortuny?
If the guy's sexual activity was something he felt he needed to hide, why in the world did he provide his photo and contact information to a person he'd never even met? Why didn't he take the most basic steps to anonymize himself until he knew just who he was dealing with? What possible common-sense expectation of privacy did he expect when he sent that stuff to a complete stranger who (judging by "her" posting) was playing with something less than a full deck?
I have no issue with anyone's sexual tastes, or anything that happens between consenting adults. I'm simply commenting on the ridiculous idea that someone would be astonished that the information that he or she freely supplies to an anonymous person might be abused.
Or the woman who was publicly humiliated when her husband's infidelity was publicized?
I was referring to Fortuny and the guys who answered him. Sure, the woman is humiliated, but she wouldn't be any less humiliated if she learned about it 6 months or 6 years from now in completely different circumstances. There is no "good" outcome where adultery is concerned. That wife might be at risk for HIV or half a dozen other STDs because of her husband's "hobby", and frankly she's better off knowing sooner than later.
Or the couple who had a consenting open relationship, but were publicly humiliated?
See my first paragraph. If a married couple get their kicks from sleeping with complete strangers, precisely what do they think those complete strangers owe them in terms of privacy? And why should they be offended because random strangers know about their behavior, when they were sleeping with other random strangers to begin with?
Seriously, people need to get a clue and exercise an ounce of common sense, rather than whine because they were too foolish to take the most basic precautions when dealing with a complete stranger on Craigslist.
What about the unmarried and otherwise single men? Should there be any sympathy for them? What about the plaintiff? Nowhere in the article does it say that he was married.
Let's see... you answer an anonymous ad on Craigslist offering kinky sex from a person whom you do not know, and know nothing about, except for a photo of "her" ass and genitalia. You send that person photographs of your own face and genitalia and a detailed description of what you'd like to do to "her", using a non-disposable e-mail address, and in some cases providing your true name. Then you complain because this information doesn't remain private?? For all you know you could be providing a criminal with everything he/she needs to keep you paying hush money for the rest of your life. In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that quite a few people are being blackmailed right now because of ads they foolishly answered on Craigslist.
So, no - I have no sympathy for any of them. Nor should any intelligent person who has a clue how the Internet (and the real world) actually works.
It's no great accomplishment to trick people if they trust you. You can argue that people should be less trusting -- and I'd have to agree -- but for the hard-core troll, all trust is viewed as weakness, and the position they are taking is essentially that no one should trust anyone, ever. Obviously, society couldn't function in such a scenario.
Yet my experience has been that hard-core trolls are generally outraged when the tables are turned and their trust is in turn violated. They can dish it out, but never take it.
It's impossible to generate an ounce sympathy for anyone in this story. Anyone who would pull such a prank needs a life, a soul, and a conscience to begin with. And any married man who would respond to such an ad is a contemptible idiot by definition.
They already nearly give Windows away in developing countries in order to try to sustain their market dominance in the face of competition from Linux. And they admit that piracy isn't a problem because it gets developing countries hooked on their products. Why wouldn't they give Windows away to keep from losing this market as well? They can see the writing on the wall as well as we can that this is a great opportunity for Linux to break out and will pretty much do anything to stop that.
Yes, but these ultra-cheap laptops are going to make a huge impact in first-world countries, not just in the developing world. Sure, Microsoft may practically give away Windows to an African customer, but not to customers in Europe or North America. People in the U.S. alone will buy millions of these laptops, and Microsoft cannot maintain first-world profit margins with third-world pricing. Who is going to pay for a $200, or even $50, for an operating system on a $100 computer?
Microsoft can't win this battle in developed countries, because the price of the hardware puts a ceiling on the price they can charge on their software. Either Windows drops to $10 a license, or Microsoft concedes the low end of the market to Linux. And once that happens, Linux will start eating its way up the price-point ladder.
Most of these are very poorly thought out designs, especially today's link. Most will fail in the marketplace, only a few will even get into mass retail channels as even the morons at Best Buy can smell the fail. But all it takes is for ONE to succeed and that will probably happen. When that happens everything changes.
At around $100, a laptop becomes an impulse buy for many people. Need a disposable machine you can buy for an overseas vacation? Need something you can give the kids where you don't have to worry if it gets lost or trashed? Need a laptop you can buy from a vending machine? How about handing out free laptops that tie you into some monthly subscription service? All of these become possible at a $100 price point.
Despite the best efforts of Microsoft, Linux is going to dominate the low end of laptop computing within three years. Microsoft will have to give away Windows in order to compete, and that ain't gonna happen. If the low-end manufacturers can standardize on a particular Linux distro/interface, the revolution will happen that much faster. Then, once everyone is used to operating these cut-rate machines, some enterprising vendors will need only package "deluxe" versions of the same Linux distro along with support for pricier laptops, and Windows will start to see some serious market erosion.
You've got to be kidding. Unless you dose up all these travelers with Ambien, many of them are going to sleep very poorly. Even the best luxury cars aren't noise-free and vibration-free enough to provide a decent level of comfort rivaling a standard bed in a quiet room.
And yet millions of people have no problem whatsoever sleeping in cars, on planes, on trains, in buses, or on subways every day, right now. Married truckers drive in pairs and take turn driving and sleeping. People sleep in RVs while someone drives. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you can't sleep in a moving vehicle, that no one else can either.
While robocars would certainly make sense in suburban areas, there are lots of high-density cities (esp in Europe) where subways make more sense. Even with automated control, cars simply consume too much space to efficiently move millions of people around quickly, as subways do every day.
I agree. I didn't say that mass transit would be completely replaced, I said it would be largely replaced. Very dense urban living areas will still use subways and the like, but relatively few cities in the U.S. have that kind of density. Note that robocars will also make much more efficient use of the road than human drivers, so you'll be able to pack a lot more vehicles on the highway and still move traffic smoothly.
I ahve no doubt it will happen, but we are generations away. My son(now 10) might start to see real world use from these. If people like them, you still ahve another generation, at best, before they gin to approach critical mass. This is do to the fact that people like their freedom when driving, and/or already own cars.
So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.
And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.
Also, driving is fun.
Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.
I give a talk on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshman class every year, and one of my topics is autonomous vehicles. This web site does a great job of summarizing the future of personal transportation. A few other points I discuss with the class:
(1) Mass transit as we think of it will largely vanish within 20 years. Cities will find it far easier to maintain fleets of robocars, and dispatch them right to the doors of residents, rather than maintain traditional subway and bus lines. The "last half-mile" problem of getting from the door of your home to the door of your destination will be solved.
(2) The authors discuss "sleeper cars", but they don't really consider all the ramifications. A huge chunk of overnight business travel (everything within a few hundred miles) will be taken over by robocars. People will go to bed in the sleeper car, open the door the next day, and find themselves at their destination. Consequently, hotels and motels will offer short-term rooms (for one or two hours) so that people can shower and dress on the road. A significant portion of the U.S. population will literally become nomadic, sleeping in robotic RVs every night, and waking up to a new destination every morning.
(3) Once robocars are widely accepted, human drivers will be forced off the roads very quickly. How? By 100% enforcement of all traffic laws with high-tech imaging (also thanks to Moore's Law). A human will be unable to conform to the ultra-rigid driving laws that robocars will handle with ease.
As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."
A computer that requires only 2 W of power has a lot more utility than just being someone's desktop replacement. Small solar PV panels capable of 5W output cost around $50. Combine that with a charging circuit and a small NiMH battery pack, and you've got an ideal device for portable or embedded remote operation. Combine it with low-bandwidth (i.e. low power) wireless networking and there's a whole new world of applications you can tackle.
saying something is lost with less people talking to each other in person or on the phone is bullshit. its not better. email and text is far superior to the telephone
Back when the telephone was first invented, people complained that the art of writing letters to one's friends and families was being lost, and nostalgia for the pre-telephone era was rampant. Now more than a century has passed and we have come full circle, with people have once again writing friends and relatives on a regular basis, albeit in a different medium.
So take heart: your great-great-great-grandfather would be in complete agreement with your sentiment. Writing is often better than talking face-to-face.
In the case of autopiloted cars, I suspect that people will find the experience similar to riding the subway or a bus. People do not get the same temporary increase in satisfaction riding the subway or bus that they do from driving their own vehicles.
You're comparing apples to oranges. An autopiloted car is not like a bus or subway (crowded, inconvenient, and operating on its own schedule, not yours), but instead like a personal chauffeur (always on call, takes you wherever you want, whenever you want). In an autopiloted car you can nap, you can read the paper, you can watch TV, you can work... and all in personal comfort and safety.
Your attitude is very much like that of some students when they hear my lecture. They are young, and to them driving represents maturity and independence. They haven't yet had the "pleasure" of commuting an hour through rush hour traffic 5 days a week for twenty years. When I tell them "I would give up driving tomorrow if I could buy an autonomous vehicle", every person over the age of 35 who may be in the audience nods his or her head in agreement.
On top of that, once autonomous vehicles become a reality, and we no longer have 40,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of maimings, and hundreds of billions of medical costs every year in the U.S. alone, the insurance companies and the politicians will put an end to human driving quickly enough. Personal transportation is a necessity in America; having a human behind the wheel will not be.
...i.e. that in 20 years, automobiles will be driving themselves. I give a lecture on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshmen class every year. Some of the things I tell students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children it will be an option. To your grandchildren it will be as quaint a concept as learning to saddle and ride a horse. Best of all, you will never have to face the decision that your parents must face with your grandparents - when to take away the car keys. You and your parents will always have the independence of personal transportation, because you'll simply climb into a car and tell it where you want to go."
Vision enhancement for older drivers will be moot when they don't have to drive in the first place.
One of the strengths of OS X is that it runs on a limited, well-understood suite of hardware. Bugs are easier to fix, components are easier to tweak, and new features are more easily added. I do not, and never have, believed that Apple would be well served by opening up OS X. It's a tightly run ship (for the most part), and opening it up to all hardware would serve neither Apple nor end users.
Amen to that. I've got karma to burn, so I'll just come right out and say it: Slashdot has too many whiners who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Apple gives its users value, and that's why they keep coming back.
Let me give two examples: a month ago, the case of my Macbook developed a crack near the keyboard. I took it in to the Apple Store, and assumed it would not be covered by Applecare because it was "wear and tear" damage. They replaced the entire keyboard, mousepad, and upper case under warranty, and did it the same day, without question.
Last Saturday, my sister-in-law's out-of-warranty iMac developed a logic board problem. She took it in to the Apple Store. Apple had issued an old recall for a logic board power supply problem, but her iMac's problem was completely unrelated. That didn't matter. The Apple girl had it fixed the next day, free of charge, and used the recall notice to justify the logic board replacement. Can you imagine HP / Dell / Gateway / Psystar or any other crap-box PC seller doing anything remotely like that?
Some people on Slashdot seem to think it would be a good thing for Apple to be dragged down to the level of Dell, or HP, or Psystar. They're nuts. My time is valuable to me. I'm perfectly capable of building a machine from scratch, fixing broken boxes, and hacking software to get it to work. I did it many, many times when I was younger. I don't bother doing those things today because I can make a lot more money as a consultant, and I will gladly pay a premium price to a company that gives me a premium experience. Given Apple's success compared to its competition, I'm clearly not alone.
I have no illusions about Apple as a company. I know Apple is "evil". I know Apple is ruthless. I know Steve Jobs is a control freak. I don't care. As long as Apple provides a high-end product that saves me time and frustration compared to a Windows box, I'll buy their computers. The day Apple stops doing that, I'll take my money elsewhere.
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Ah, yes, the dirty little secret of small business in America - everybody skims. Everybody. As my dad used to tell me, "If I didn't take cash off the top, I couldn't afford to stay in business. Nobody could. The taxes are too high." It wasn't a matter of wanting to cheat the tax man. It was a matter of survival for him.
I always make a point of paying in cash at local family-owned businesses whenever I can. Times are tough for those folks, and I can assure you that they appreciate a cash transaction.
The conclusions of this study are not exactly news. It's been known for some time that early homo sapiens tools were no more advanced than Neanderthal tools. But at some point, there was an explosion of creativity and inventiveness in modern man that the Neanderthals could not equal, probably due to home sapiens having superior language skills and capabilities, and the ability to share and communicate ideas in ways the Neanderthals could not. Modern man then evolved superior cultures and technologies that surpassed the Neanderthals.
One on one, raised without the benefit of language and culture, a modern man would probably be no brighter, and in fact considerably physically weaker, than a Neanderthal. But collectively, Neanderthals were no match for modern men with their more advanced languages, societies, and weapons.
Very few faculty members are willing to write textbooks, at least in science and engineering. Writing a text is hard, thankless work, and most professors have better things to do with their time. I would personally be willing to help contribute to an open-source text, but I would never tackle the whole thing myself.
You can't treat an open-source textbook like a Wikipedia article. Errors and occasional vandalism are par for the course in Wikipedia articles, but textbooks have to be held to a higher standard if professors are going to adopt them. Some means of vetting the people who contribute will have to be implemented.
I'm not talking about spiral-bound pages from the school printer. I'm talking about a decent copy with a good spine and a high-quality soft cover - something that will handle the wear-and-tear of the semester, and you can keep on your bookshelf afterwards. Something like that will cost about $20, but I think most students would pay the nominal cost for better quality.
Exactly. My point was just that gray-market texts will slow the growth of open-source texts, because economically the result is the same as far as students are concerned. Their textbook costs will drop by an order of magnitude, one way or the other. Faculty members won't feel the same need to create open-source alternatives when they know that students can get inexpensive traditional textbooks instead.
Open source texts are a great idea, but you'll need two things to make them work: (1) credentialed people willing to write and edit them, and (2) companies willing to supply a nicely bound printed version of the text for a reasonable price. Purely online texts won't cut it; reading a highly technical text on a computer screen becomes tiring very quickly.
But let's say someone does write an open source text, and someone else offers you a printed, bound version for $20. The problem is that you're now competing with gray-market textbooks intended for overseas markets. I see more and more of those in my classes every semester. Yes, you're not supposed to be able to buy them in the U.S.A., but the Internet takes care of that. Why pay $150 for a text when you can get the same text for $20? Granted, it's a soft-bound grayscale version, but that makes zero difference in the course.
That's the battle that open source texts have to fight. They're not competing with $200 hardbound traditional textbooks; they're competing with $20 softbound gray-market versions instead. I think we're going to see publishers unintentionally subsidizing the low-cost textbook model for some time to come. Eventually the gray-market growth is going to seriously impact their bottom lines, at which point they'll probably try to force faculty and universities to help them enforce their marketing rules (fat chance of that). Hopefully by that time enough open source texts will be available to fill the gaps.
IANAL, but I have consulted with legal firms over patent suits, and I've developed a different perspective over the years. First of all, don't presume that your boss' desire to patent your software is necessarily a bad thing. Patent portfolios are a valuable asset in the modern business world. Management may simply be thinking in terms of defending the company from lawsuits by competitors and patent trolls. A good portfolio is one of your best defenses in such situations.
Second, trying to use prior art to short-circuit the patent may not work the way you expect. First, the prior art you locate may become part of the application wrapper, and thereby strengthen the patent. Second, if you send an email to your supervisor saying "I based my idea on Widget A", and your company is sued by a company with a patent on Widget A, the other side may use your email as evidence of willful infringement.
Your employer has every right to patent your work, as others have pointed out. Whether or not you personally agree with software patents is irrelevant; the fact is that they exist, and companies are sued over them every day. As long as the USPTO grants them, everyone (including your employer) has to play the game by the government's rules, or else they may find themselves put out of business by a patent troll.
Of course the authorities don't bother to prosecute online criminals, any more than most metro police departments bother to investigate non-violent property crimes nowadays. You have too many criminals and too few people available to hunt them down. The government gives priority to violent crime and high-profile pubic cases, and everything else falls by the wayside. On top of that, the government won't bother with crimes where no one (including the judge, jury, or prosecutor) can understand the facts of the case. Face it - online fraud is typically a non-violent crime where only small amounts of money are lost. The police have no more interest in hunting down online crooks than they do in finding the guy who broke into your car to steal the radio. They give you a police report, you file a claim with your insurance carrier, and that's that.
A slightly off-topic comment: Personally I have always believed that the perfect crime is to start a "free energy" company, and claim to be developing a device that violates the laws of physics. As long as you don't violate any securities laws, and hire some good attorneys to intimidate any of your investors who start to complain, you can rake in millions and no one can touch you. Nobody will understand the physics, and you can simply claim that you had problems with your R&D process that prevented commercialization of the product. Take a look at Randy Mills and Blacklight Power for a perfect example.
What "math"? There is no math in the rebuttal, besides a number for orbital energy. No equations, no calculated results, no nothing. I truly hope that Dr. Landis is not the person who submitted the story, because if so my respect for him has taken a hit. A real scientist knows better.
Tell you what. Why don't you post the complete mathematical analysis that proves Oberg wrong? It should take you 3 minutes to complete, and maybe 15 minutes to post. And while you're at it, provide some math to explain why hazardous debris from COSMOS 954 and the shuttle Columbia somehow did reach the ground, despite their obviously comparable ballistic coefficients.
I just love how someone can say "I work in the industry!", post as an AC, toss out a couple of buzzwords with no math to speak of, and scream "we're being lied to!". As the submitter of this story so clearly put it when posting his own "analysis":
Translation: "There is a conspiracy here! Trust no one! We're all being lied to!" If there's one thing I've learned over the years, there is nothing the government can say or do to convince someone who thinks like this.
Personally, I have little doubt that the satellite was shot down for exactly the official reason. We've had plenty of space junk hit the ground in recent years; as I remember, people were specifically warned not to handle debris from the space shuttle Columbia, because of concerns of hydrazine contamination. Clearly the shuttle's high ballistic coefficient didn't prevent that, did it? The hydrazine tank didn't have to reach the ground intact to cause concerns. And just imagine the headlines if nothing had been done, and debris from that spy satellite had eventually reached the ground. Russia still gets flack about the nuclear reactor debris that landed in Canada after the re-entry of COSMOS 954, and that was 30 years ago!
Of course, it was obviously an added bonus that the shoot-down was a nice demo of the military's capabilities. But if the U.S. military really wanted to test its ASAT technology, it would hardly need to hold a press conference beforehand, or issue a press release to China or Russia to inform them afterwards! China and Russia track our satellites the same as we do theirs. If one of our dead satellites conveniently "exploded", they would get the message quite clearly.
And that pretty much sums up the attitude of many vocal /.ers, at least based on my years of experience: "I want my own personal information to be private, but everyone else's should be public." Or to put it another way: "I demand the right to control my own data, but I will do as I please with anyone else's data as long as it benefits me."
Even after all this time, I'm still amused by this double standard, and how blind many /.ers are to their own hypocrisy in situations such as this. To those who are unhappy about Google street view "violating" their privacy, I suggest they repeat the following mantra:
"Information wants to be free."
Sound familiar?
On the contrary, people often engage in mutually consensual sex without ever knowing the true names, addresses, or phone numbers of the people they're dealing with. Your blur your face in any photo you send. You use a throwaway email address. You use a pay-per-minute disposable cell phone to speak with your contacts. You meet them in a mutually acceptable public place and check them out in person beforehand. You talk about yourself and your interests in general terms, without supplying actual names and specific details. You buy food and drinks with cash. You rent a motel room and pay cash. You can do all of these things, have your fun, and never have to ask a single personal detail.
It's not rocket science. It's just plain common sense. Hey, people looking for kinky sex generally aren't looking for lifelong friends. They're looking for variety in quick, semi-anonymous hookups. Both parties understand this unless they're complete idiots.
Nice straw man. Look, the "victims" were foolishly soliciting sex from a complete stranger, and providing personal information without a clue as to who they were dealing with. They were not innocent bystanders. If you blindly stick your hand into a beehive looking for honey, why should you be surprised if you get stung?
I did not say they deserved what happened to them. I said I had no sympathy for any of them. There is a distinct difference between the two statements.
If the guy's sexual activity was something he felt he needed to hide, why in the world did he provide his photo and contact information to a person he'd never even met? Why didn't he take the most basic steps to anonymize himself until he knew just who he was dealing with? What possible common-sense expectation of privacy did he expect when he sent that stuff to a complete stranger who (judging by "her" posting) was playing with something less than a full deck?
I have no issue with anyone's sexual tastes, or anything that happens between consenting adults. I'm simply commenting on the ridiculous idea that someone would be astonished that the information that he or she freely supplies to an anonymous person might be abused.
I was referring to Fortuny and the guys who answered him. Sure, the woman is humiliated, but she wouldn't be any less humiliated if she learned about it 6 months or 6 years from now in completely different circumstances. There is no "good" outcome where adultery is concerned. That wife might be at risk for HIV or half a dozen other STDs because of her husband's "hobby", and frankly she's better off knowing sooner than later.
See my first paragraph. If a married couple get their kicks from sleeping with complete strangers, precisely what do they think those complete strangers owe them in terms of privacy? And why should they be offended because random strangers know about their behavior, when they were sleeping with other random strangers to begin with?
Seriously, people need to get a clue and exercise an ounce of common sense, rather than whine because they were too foolish to take the most basic precautions when dealing with a complete stranger on Craigslist.
Let's see ... you answer an anonymous ad on Craigslist offering kinky sex from a person whom you do not know, and know nothing about, except for a photo of "her" ass and genitalia. You send that person photographs of your own face and genitalia and a detailed description of what you'd like to do to "her", using a non-disposable e-mail address, and in some cases providing your true name. Then you complain because this information doesn't remain private?? For all you know you could be providing a criminal with everything he/she needs to keep you paying hush money for the rest of your life. In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that quite a few people are being blackmailed right now because of ads they foolishly answered on Craigslist.
So, no - I have no sympathy for any of them. Nor should any intelligent person who has a clue how the Internet (and the real world) actually works.
Yet my experience has been that hard-core trolls are generally outraged when the tables are turned and their trust is in turn violated. They can dish it out, but never take it.
It's impossible to generate an ounce sympathy for anyone in this story. Anyone who would pull such a prank needs a life, a soul, and a conscience to begin with. And any married man who would respond to such an ad is a contemptible idiot by definition.
Yes, but these ultra-cheap laptops are going to make a huge impact in first-world countries, not just in the developing world. Sure, Microsoft may practically give away Windows to an African customer, but not to customers in Europe or North America. People in the U.S. alone will buy millions of these laptops, and Microsoft cannot maintain first-world profit margins with third-world pricing. Who is going to pay for a $200, or even $50, for an operating system on a $100 computer?
Microsoft can't win this battle in developed countries, because the price of the hardware puts a ceiling on the price they can charge on their software. Either Windows drops to $10 a license, or Microsoft concedes the low end of the market to Linux. And once that happens, Linux will start eating its way up the price-point ladder.
At around $100, a laptop becomes an impulse buy for many people. Need a disposable machine you can buy for an overseas vacation? Need something you can give the kids where you don't have to worry if it gets lost or trashed? Need a laptop you can buy from a vending machine? How about handing out free laptops that tie you into some monthly subscription service? All of these become possible at a $100 price point.
Despite the best efforts of Microsoft, Linux is going to dominate the low end of laptop computing within three years. Microsoft will have to give away Windows in order to compete, and that ain't gonna happen. If the low-end manufacturers can standardize on a particular Linux distro/interface, the revolution will happen that much faster. Then, once everyone is used to operating these cut-rate machines, some enterprising vendors will need only package "deluxe" versions of the same Linux distro along with support for pricier laptops, and Windows will start to see some serious market erosion.
And yet millions of people have no problem whatsoever sleeping in cars, on planes, on trains, in buses, or on subways every day, right now. Married truckers drive in pairs and take turn driving and sleeping. People sleep in RVs while someone drives. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you can't sleep in a moving vehicle, that no one else can either.
I agree. I didn't say that mass transit would be completely replaced, I said it would be largely replaced. Very dense urban living areas will still use subways and the like, but relatively few cities in the U.S. have that kind of density. Note that robocars will also make much more efficient use of the road than human drivers, so you'll be able to pack a lot more vehicles on the highway and still move traffic smoothly.
So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.
And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.
Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.
I give a talk on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshman class every year, and one of my topics is autonomous vehicles. This web site does a great job of summarizing the future of personal transportation. A few other points I discuss with the class:
(1) Mass transit as we think of it will largely vanish within 20 years. Cities will find it far easier to maintain fleets of robocars, and dispatch them right to the doors of residents, rather than maintain traditional subway and bus lines. The "last half-mile" problem of getting from the door of your home to the door of your destination will be solved.
(2) The authors discuss "sleeper cars", but they don't really consider all the ramifications. A huge chunk of overnight business travel (everything within a few hundred miles) will be taken over by robocars. People will go to bed in the sleeper car, open the door the next day, and find themselves at their destination. Consequently, hotels and motels will offer short-term rooms (for one or two hours) so that people can shower and dress on the road. A significant portion of the U.S. population will literally become nomadic, sleeping in robotic RVs every night, and waking up to a new destination every morning.
(3) Once robocars are widely accepted, human drivers will be forced off the roads very quickly. How? By 100% enforcement of all traffic laws with high-tech imaging (also thanks to Moore's Law). A human will be unable to conform to the ultra-rigid driving laws that robocars will handle with ease.
As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."
A computer that requires only 2 W of power has a lot more utility than just being someone's desktop replacement. Small solar PV panels capable of 5W output cost around $50. Combine that with a charging circuit and a small NiMH battery pack, and you've got an ideal device for portable or embedded remote operation. Combine it with low-bandwidth (i.e. low power) wireless networking and there's a whole new world of applications you can tackle.
Back when the telephone was first invented, people complained that the art of writing letters to one's friends and families was being lost, and nostalgia for the pre-telephone era was rampant. Now more than a century has passed and we have come full circle, with people have once again writing friends and relatives on a regular basis, albeit in a different medium.
So take heart: your great-great-great-grandfather would be in complete agreement with your sentiment. Writing is often better than talking face-to-face.
You're comparing apples to oranges. An autopiloted car is not like a bus or subway (crowded, inconvenient, and operating on its own schedule, not yours), but instead like a personal chauffeur (always on call, takes you wherever you want, whenever you want). In an autopiloted car you can nap, you can read the paper, you can watch TV, you can work ... and all in personal comfort and safety.
Your attitude is very much like that of some students when they hear my lecture. They are young, and to them driving represents maturity and independence. They haven't yet had the "pleasure" of commuting an hour through rush hour traffic 5 days a week for twenty years. When I tell them "I would give up driving tomorrow if I could buy an autonomous vehicle", every person over the age of 35 who may be in the audience nods his or her head in agreement.
On top of that, once autonomous vehicles become a reality, and we no longer have 40,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of maimings, and hundreds of billions of medical costs every year in the U.S. alone, the insurance companies and the politicians will put an end to human driving quickly enough. Personal transportation is a necessity in America; having a human behind the wheel will not be.
...i.e. that in 20 years, automobiles will be driving themselves. I give a lecture on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshmen class every year. Some of the things I tell students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children it will be an option. To your grandchildren it will be as quaint a concept as learning to saddle and ride a horse. Best of all, you will never have to face the decision that your parents must face with your grandparents - when to take away the car keys. You and your parents will always have the independence of personal transportation, because you'll simply climb into a car and tell it where you want to go."
Vision enhancement for older drivers will be moot when they don't have to drive in the first place.
Amen to that. I've got karma to burn, so I'll just come right out and say it: Slashdot has too many whiners who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Apple gives its users value, and that's why they keep coming back.
Let me give two examples: a month ago, the case of my Macbook developed a crack near the keyboard. I took it in to the Apple Store, and assumed it would not be covered by Applecare because it was "wear and tear" damage. They replaced the entire keyboard, mousepad, and upper case under warranty, and did it the same day, without question.
Last Saturday, my sister-in-law's out-of-warranty iMac developed a logic board problem. She took it in to the Apple Store. Apple had issued an old recall for a logic board power supply problem, but her iMac's problem was completely unrelated. That didn't matter. The Apple girl had it fixed the next day, free of charge, and used the recall notice to justify the logic board replacement. Can you imagine HP / Dell / Gateway / Psystar or any other crap-box PC seller doing anything remotely like that?
Some people on Slashdot seem to think it would be a good thing for Apple to be dragged down to the level of Dell, or HP, or Psystar. They're nuts. My time is valuable to me. I'm perfectly capable of building a machine from scratch, fixing broken boxes, and hacking software to get it to work. I did it many, many times when I was younger. I don't bother doing those things today because I can make a lot more money as a consultant, and I will gladly pay a premium price to a company that gives me a premium experience. Given Apple's success compared to its competition, I'm clearly not alone.
I have no illusions about Apple as a company. I know Apple is "evil". I know Apple is ruthless. I know Steve Jobs is a control freak. I don't care. As long as Apple provides a high-end product that saves me time and frustration compared to a Windows box, I'll buy their computers. The day Apple stops doing that, I'll take my money elsewhere.