Their case stayed in court because they delayed introducing the evidence for as long as possible. They foot-dragged for years before submitting their list of infringing code. Once it was finally submitted, the Court pared the list down to just a few hundred lines of possibly-infringing code. The court never ruled on whether any of that code actually infringed, because SCO declared bankruptcy and got the case stayed.
Actually the cellphone makers agreed to standardize their power connectors a few months ago, at least in Europe. All smartphones will have a common power connector, and you'll be able to use any power supply. Eventually, phones won't come with a power supply, you'll just keep using the old one.
I believe the new standard is one of the small USB connectors.
Good thing the Founders wrote Copyright into the Constitution, so it is on an equal footing with Free Speech, then. This is not an accident. Copyright is an intentional restriction of the public's rights to communicate and express themselves.
Nuclear plants won't run without an external power source. It's a safety feature. If the plant can't get power from the grid, the reactor shuts down automatically.
... ultimately, no system can guarantee that the actual finger or eye or DNA was scanned - all that the 'server' can verify is that the correct 'data' corresponding to previously recorded data, was transmitted over the network to the server. So, compromise a terminal (or setup a computer which masquerades as a valid 'terminal'), then send the correct 'data' from that terminal, and the server will assume that the user's thumb or retina was scanned.
A properly-designed system would have the data sent by the terminal encrypted, so to compromise the system the hacker needs not only the geometric information on your finger or retina, but also the terminal manufacturer's private encryption key.
Computerizing sign-out of books does make some sense. Once the system is set up, there is much less labor involved in tracking which books are out and when they are due back. The switch to this system may allow the library to be managed by a staff member part-time, rather than a full-time librarian.
It's not clear that the biometric ID is better than using a library card with a barcode, but perhaps the biometric system is cheaper since you don't have to print and issue library cards and deal with lost cards, etc.
You can compare back as far as 1984. The EPA has a website which publishes fuel economy ratings for just about everything on the market. They have updated the older cars to the new standard, to allow apples-to-apples comparison.
Re:They are waiting for copyright to expire in 2
on
The Hobbit On Hold
·
· Score: 1
Your information is out of date. U.S. copyright terms were extended by the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Assuming the copyright was renewed by 1965, its term was extended for 95 years from the date of publication, so the copyright will expire around 2032.
Not only will The Hobbit's copyright not expire in 2012, but in fact with rare exceptions no copyrights will expire in that year, or in any other year until 2019. The change in copyright terms was motivated by the then-imminent expiry of the copyright on Mickey Mouse.
SCO's claims were just plausible enough to get past the mechanisms for weeding out nonsense. Also, they managed to drag out the cases in discovery and by filing for bankruptcy just before the Novell case came to trial. Bankruptcy puts an automatic "hold" on court cases.
The Earth isn't even the only body in our solar system to have had liquid water. Mars has had liquid water in the past. Some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are believed to have subsurface oceans.
You're right that it's not easy to get anywhere close to the speed of light. Travel at close to light speed may well never be practical. You overstated the case, though, when you wrote "nothing with enough mass and complexity to be alive, much less intelligent, can travel at anywhere near c and hope to survive". The main limitation to traveling at close to light speed is just the energy supply that would be required. You have to accelerate for a long time to get anywhere close to c.
Interstellar communication is not as impractical as you think. Read Carl Sagan's novel Contact. He talks a lot about how a civilization might structure a message to be useful. Back and forth dialog isn't really possible, but you can broadcast a primer that teaches a language, and the transmit whatever information might be interesting to the recipients (eg. an encyclopedia, or various books). It might take the recipients many years to fully decode and translate the message, but so what? They have time.
Well, only the usual attempt to mislead that underlies most marketing. By using words that make the process sound more technical, they help convince naive buyers that they need this service. A more honest description of the services offered would probably inspire slightly fewer people to buy it. Hence, the attempt to mislead is intentional, but not especially severe.
Who decides who is working as an enemy combatant? What is the due process that ensures this decision is correctly made, and corrects it when (not if) errors are made?
Think about this the next time you leave the US on vacation. You have no way of knowing if you have been somehow designated an "enemy combatant".
No, a completely closed metal cage doesn't need to be grounded. You only have to ground the cage if the device inside has some other connection to ground.
The quiet parts are supposed to be quiet, but they are also supposed to be listened to in a theatre with good acoustics and a completely silent audience. If you've ever sat in a symphony performance with someone nearby moving around you'll know how much even a small amount of background noise interferes with the quiet parts of the music. When listening to the music on CD, one often just doesn't have a quiet enough background to appreciate the quiet parts at their intended volume.
Lonely people are more likely to be depressed and to spend time on the internet, and they spend proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and visiting online communities. No surprise there.
Not to start fusion, but to get fusion that sustains itself, so that more of the fuel in the pellet is consumed. They have been getting small amounts of fusion in these pellets for many years.
This approach has the side benefit that the pressure and temperature conditions in the pellets are suitable for studying the physics of nuclear weapons. That makes it easy to get funding for it...
No, the gp was right but you misunderstood. "Ignition" means that the laser triggers a self-sustained reaction within the pellet. The laser fires once per pellet. By itself, the laser doesn't provide enough energy to fuse more than a tiny fraction of the atoms in the pellet before it explodes. Ignition means that the energy from the laser-triggered fusion helps sustain the temperature and pressure in the pellet long enough for a greater fraction of the atoms to fuse. I don' t know if the amount expected to fuse is a significant fraction of the total atoms in the pellet--I suspect not, but ignition means that many times more atoms fuse than would otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
The US has a no-spam-call list too, and it worked very well for a while, but with telephone number spoofing the callers are too hard to catch now.
Because somebody canceled the project to design the specialized reentry bus a few years ago.
Their case stayed in court because they delayed introducing the evidence for as long as possible. They foot-dragged for years before submitting their list of infringing code. Once it was finally submitted, the Court pared the list down to just a few hundred lines of possibly-infringing code. The court never ruled on whether any of that code actually infringed, because SCO declared bankruptcy and got the case stayed.
Actually the cellphone makers agreed to standardize their power connectors a few months ago, at least in Europe. All smartphones will have a common power connector, and you'll be able to use any power supply. Eventually, phones won't come with a power supply, you'll just keep using the old one. I believe the new standard is one of the small USB connectors.
Good thing the Founders wrote Copyright into the Constitution, so it is on an equal footing with Free Speech, then. This is not an accident. Copyright is an intentional restriction of the public's rights to communicate and express themselves.
I defer to your greater knowlege of the subject.
Nuclear plants won't run without an external power source. It's a safety feature. If the plant can't get power from the grid, the reactor shuts down automatically.
... ultimately, no system can guarantee that the actual finger or eye or DNA was scanned - all that the 'server' can verify is that the correct 'data' corresponding to previously recorded data, was transmitted over the network to the server. So, compromise a terminal (or setup a computer which masquerades as a valid 'terminal'), then send the correct 'data' from that terminal, and the server will assume that the user's thumb or retina was scanned.
A properly-designed system would have the data sent by the terminal encrypted, so to compromise the system the hacker needs not only the geometric information on your finger or retina, but also the terminal manufacturer's private encryption key.
It's not clear that the biometric ID is better than using a library card with a barcode, but perhaps the biometric system is cheaper since you don't have to print and issue library cards and deal with lost cards, etc.
You can compare back as far as 1984. The EPA has a website which publishes fuel economy ratings for just about everything on the market. They have updated the older cars to the new standard, to allow apples-to-apples comparison.
Not only will The Hobbit's copyright not expire in 2012, but in fact with rare exceptions no copyrights will expire in that year, or in any other year until 2019. The change in copyright terms was motivated by the then-imminent expiry of the copyright on Mickey Mouse.
It seems kind of naive to assume that a nuke would be a useful solution to this problem. Do you try to seal a leaking pipe in your home with TNT?
Amendment 2 is legit. Novell did eventually find a signed copy in their own files.
SCO's claims were just plausible enough to get past the mechanisms for weeding out nonsense. Also, they managed to drag out the cases in discovery and by filing for bankruptcy just before the Novell case came to trial. Bankruptcy puts an automatic "hold" on court cases.
The Earth isn't even the only body in our solar system to have had liquid water. Mars has had liquid water in the past. Some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are believed to have subsurface oceans.
Interstellar communication is not as impractical as you think. Read Carl Sagan's novel Contact. He talks a lot about how a civilization might structure a message to be useful. Back and forth dialog isn't really possible, but you can broadcast a primer that teaches a language, and the transmit whatever information might be interesting to the recipients (eg. an encyclopedia, or various books). It might take the recipients many years to fully decode and translate the message, but so what? They have time.
Well, only the usual attempt to mislead that underlies most marketing. By using words that make the process sound more technical, they help convince naive buyers that they need this service. A more honest description of the services offered would probably inspire slightly fewer people to buy it. Hence, the attempt to mislead is intentional, but not especially severe.
Think about this the next time you leave the US on vacation. You have no way of knowing if you have been somehow designated an "enemy combatant".
No, a completely closed metal cage doesn't need to be grounded. You only have to ground the cage if the device inside has some other connection to ground.
The quiet parts are supposed to be quiet, but they are also supposed to be listened to in a theatre with good acoustics and a completely silent audience. If you've ever sat in a symphony performance with someone nearby moving around you'll know how much even a small amount of background noise interferes with the quiet parts of the music. When listening to the music on CD, one often just doesn't have a quiet enough background to appreciate the quiet parts at their intended volume.
Unfortunately, the majority of computer users are jackasses, and do better with the menus.
Lonely people are more likely to be depressed and to spend time on the internet, and they spend proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and visiting online communities. No surprise there.
Not to start fusion, but to get fusion that sustains itself, so that more of the fuel in the pellet is consumed. They have been getting small amounts of fusion in these pellets for many years.
This approach has the side benefit that the pressure and temperature conditions in the pellets are suitable for studying the physics of nuclear weapons. That makes it easy to get funding for it...
No, the gp was right but you misunderstood. "Ignition" means that the laser triggers a self-sustained reaction within the pellet. The laser fires once per pellet. By itself, the laser doesn't provide enough energy to fuse more than a tiny fraction of the atoms in the pellet before it explodes. Ignition means that the energy from the laser-triggered fusion helps sustain the temperature and pressure in the pellet long enough for a greater fraction of the atoms to fuse. I don' t know if the amount expected to fuse is a significant fraction of the total atoms in the pellet--I suspect not, but ignition means that many times more atoms fuse than would otherwise.