Nobody is going to sue MomAndPop.com for patent infringement because its not profitable. They sue the Microsofts and the Apples who have the deep pockets to shell out big settlements.
Patent trolls aren't going to sue MomAndPop.com, true; as you say they want money so they go for Microsoft or Apple. But Microsoft or Apple may well sue (not that it'll ever go to court) MomAndPop.com if they come up with something that could threaten established markets and business practices.
I pretty much agree with you, although I think saying unregistered works go permanently into the public domain is overly harsh - better to follow Lessig's idea that you can register your own work late and stop future uses of your work.
However I think you trivialise the opposition to this type of change when you say:
The current system sucks balls and no politician gives a shit because voters don't realize such issues exist, much less care about such issues.
If you go to a forum used by small content producers, eg webmasterworld.com, you will find a huge number of small content producers with very different opinions to the slashdot consensus.
Personally I think they're generally wrong, but it's their livelihood and most are dead set against anything that looks like it might endanger that.
So I agree with the ideas in your post, but I think you're fooling yourself that the argument has been won and is only being balked by corrupt or ignorant politicians and a few multinational monopolists. There is still a hell of a lot of evangelism to be done - to convince honest people who see this as a threat to their livelihoods - that this is a good idea.
The last 3 articles on technology I read on the BBC (years ago) were either riddled with misuse of certain words, left out some important and key details, misstated the implications of the story, and/or came up with a very strange and subjective conclusion that came out of the blue.
Pretty much all news is like this - you just know enough about this area to be able to spot it.
Basically the smart people aren't replacing themselves.
To play devil's advocate, that's a very subjective definition of "smart." From the point of view of your genes, not having children is an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Rather than saying the human race is selecting for stupididy, you might well say that we are selecting for a willingnes to have children, even in adverse conditions (ie modern developed society, with its multitude of distractions from procreation).
Given that the human race will hopefully live in these conditions for a long time to come, having our gene pool strengthening the instinct to have children may be no bad thing, even if other desirable trits decline.
Tourists walking on bicycle lanes because they don't know the concept or are just haplessly seeing the sights (or if they are from the UK in a drunken stupor) are a plague.
Yeah, that was me I'm afraid (although alcohole had little to do with it). The thing that impressed me about Amsterdam's atitude (1 short visit) was the dedicated cycle lanes in the middle of the city - admittedly not so great given the mental state of many visitors in the city - a friend of mine walking out straight in front of a fast moveing bike (bell ringing frantically) is one of my more enduring memories.
Cambridge's idea of in-town cycle lanes is to paint a white line down the edge of the road (without widening it or anything), or to have combined footpath and cycle lanes - this is why so many Brits walk out stupidly into 'Dam cycle lanes (apart from the booze, draw and other distractions of course) - those cycle lanes look like footpaths, so we assume the bikes will get out of our way..
The idea of having a separate system of cycle lanes, that everyone (local) knew to treat like a road, seemed a very good (and new) idea to me.
A great city all in all, although I did get sick of being treated like a piece of shit as soon as anyone realised I was British.. but given some of the behaviour I saw I guess I can understand it..
After suffering from the half hearted assinine approach to cycling in Cambridge which is supposed to be the "greenest" and "cycliest" UK city, I felt like I have died and went to heaven. It simply felt unreal. No deliberate obstructions on the cycle paths with bollards. Sufficient and properly positioned car parking so that people are not forced to park on top of cycle lanes. All cycle paths are maintained and have proper visibility. Compared to that in Cambridge the average visibility on most cycle paths drops to under 10m in mid-summer due to the city council not giving a flying fuck about cutting any branches and doing any maintenance.
It's not so much a half-hearted asinine approach - open hatred would describe it better.
Yes I realise that most of the problem is caused by brain-dead design (compared to most European cities, or by the sound of it, Boulder Colorado), but I'm so sick of idiots who think they're invincible on bikes (no lights at night, jumping red lights without even looking, swerving in front of a queue of cars at the lights just as they go green, never ever stopping if they hit your car, etc etc.) that I've decided to blame the cyclists.
More and better dedicated cycle lanes, like for example in Amsterdam, are probably the best answer. But right now a bounty on cyclists would get my vote.
Ah, some light begins to dawn. So it's run a number of drives for a set period of time, after this period of time add up the number of hours all the drives have run for and divide by the number of failed drives?
Makes sense, and the comment MTBF != drive lifetime becomes comprehensible, thanks!
Before you think that this means it has a lifetime of 182 years: this is not the case. The definition of MTBF is not related to lifetime.
I don't suppose you'd care to explain that a little? I've always assumed Mean Time Between Failure to be what you got if you took a bunch of drives, ran them until they broke, added up the amount of time they worked for and divided by the number of drives. Which would equate to drive lifetime in my book. Am I missing something? 182 years does seem completely insane..
He didn't get labeled a sex offender for showing a Playboy. It isn't a "sex crime." A child showing porn (no matter how lame) to other children is illegal, to the extent that children smoking cigarettes is illegal in many countries. It's the "lesser charge" to which he made a plea down.
That's not what TFA says. The prosecution wanted him registered as a sex offender even after the plea bargain, which logically implies that the law allows this. For sharing a playboy magazine. No I think the US still wins the international "most fucked up about sex award".
The relevant piece of the article:
But the Bandy family nightmare was not over. While the prosecution deal offered no jail time for Matthew, he would still be labeled a sex offender. Under Arizona law and in most states around the country, sex crimes carry with them a life of branding. Matthew would be forced to register as a sex offender everywhere he lived, for the rest of his life.
"I have to stay away from children," said Matthew. "I cannot be around any area where there might be minors, including the mall, or the movies, or restaurants or even church. To go to church I have to have written consent from our priest, I have to sit in a different pew, one that doesn't have a child sitting in it."
'Computers Are Not Safe'
The judge couldn't believe the prosecution was insisting on sex offender status and invited Matthew to appeal. "20/20" was there when two years of fear and misery finally ended. A message arrived from the judge, ironically on the computer, informing them that Matthew would not be labeled a sex offender. Matt and his parents had won his life back.
...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.
This isn't really true. Britons uses imperial measurements a lot for day to day use, but you'll find that anywhere something needs to be done precisely, it's done in metric.
For example, the hardware store will sell the same standardised pieces that have been around for years, and these will be in imperial. But I doubt you'll find a building site in the country which is working in anything apart from metric. Any architecht would make plans in metric, as would any engineer.
General rule of thumb would be imperial for casual stuff, metric for work - although there are going to be a few exceptions to this;)
Anderson [Cisco spokesman] said the networking company was not looking for money and recognized the hard work of the Apple team. But Cisco is looking for a "collaboration and joint development with Apple" to ensure that Apple's phone works with Cisco's networking gear.
Which could mean anything I suppose, sounds reasonable but may well not be.
How long do "earth like" civilizations put out RF energy that is detectable from space?
How long will we keep doing it?
Searching for XYZ years worth of RF in a bubble 60 light years across doesn't strike me as very promising.
Agree, but TFA mentions some future equipment that would be able to find signals within a radius of 300 light years - around 100 million stars. I'd say that would be a big enough sample size to draw some tentative conclusions - an absence of any signals at all would seem unlikely if intelligent life is as dense as most of us (I'm guessing) hope.
Anyway there's always the hope that we'll get lucky (or that the universe teems with intelligent life), and we'll find signals 30 light years away. I'm actually quite excited about this - it is possible we will shortly find proof of life on other planets, which would be pretty momentous.
If cars and pedestrians drive you to bold typeface I'm guessing you have not encountered the bicycle in any great quantities. If you ever play tourist in my home town of Cambridge (UK) I strongly suggest you take the bus.
I've given up wondering why so many people seem to simply not care whether they live or die, and keep all my attention on not killing them.
"dual carriageway" simply means a road where the two directions are separated by a barrier or strip of land.
I'm from the UK and I've always though of a dual carriageway as being exclusively 2 lanes each way. Now that you say that, I'm sure you're right about the actual meaning of the word, although I think in standard UK usage the word has changed to mean two and only two lanes each way.
Slashdot Mirror
Patent trolls aren't going to sue MomAndPop.com, true; as you say they want money so they go for Microsoft or Apple. But Microsoft or Apple may well sue (not that it'll ever go to court) MomAndPop.com if they come up with something that could threaten established markets and business practices.
However I think you trivialise the opposition to this type of change when you say:
If you go to a forum used by small content producers, eg webmasterworld.com, you will find a huge number of small content producers with very different opinions to the slashdot consensus.
Personally I think they're generally wrong, but it's their livelihood and most are dead set against anything that looks like it might endanger that.
So I agree with the ideas in your post, but I think you're fooling yourself that the argument has been won and is only being balked by corrupt or ignorant politicians and a few multinational monopolists. There is still a hell of a lot of evangelism to be done - to convince honest people who see this as a threat to their livelihoods - that this is a good idea.
Pretty much all news is like this - you just know enough about this area to be able to spot it.
To play devil's advocate, that's a very subjective definition of "smart." From the point of view of your genes, not having children is an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Rather than saying the human race is selecting for stupididy, you might well say that we are selecting for a willingnes to have children, even in adverse conditions (ie modern developed society, with its multitude of distractions from procreation).
Given that the human race will hopefully live in these conditions for a long time to come, having our gene pool strengthening the instinct to have children may be no bad thing, even if other desirable trits decline.
Yeah, that was me I'm afraid (although alcohole had little to do with it). The thing that impressed me about Amsterdam's atitude (1 short visit) was the dedicated cycle lanes in the middle of the city - admittedly not so great given the mental state of many visitors in the city - a friend of mine walking out straight in front of a fast moveing bike (bell ringing frantically) is one of my more enduring memories.
Cambridge's idea of in-town cycle lanes is to paint a white line down the edge of the road (without widening it or anything), or to have combined footpath and cycle lanes - this is why so many Brits walk out stupidly into 'Dam cycle lanes (apart from the booze, draw and other distractions of course) - those cycle lanes look like footpaths, so we assume the bikes will get out of our way..
The idea of having a separate system of cycle lanes, that everyone (local) knew to treat like a road, seemed a very good (and new) idea to me.
A great city all in all, although I did get sick of being treated like a piece of shit as soon as anyone realised I was British.. but given some of the behaviour I saw I guess I can understand it..
It's not so much a half-hearted asinine approach - open hatred would describe it better.
Yes I realise that most of the problem is caused by brain-dead design (compared to most European cities, or by the sound of it, Boulder Colorado), but I'm so sick of idiots who think they're invincible on bikes (no lights at night, jumping red lights without even looking, swerving in front of a queue of cars at the lights just as they go green, never ever stopping if they hit your car, etc etc.) that I've decided to blame the cyclists.
More and better dedicated cycle lanes, like for example in Amsterdam, are probably the best answer. But right now a bounty on cyclists would get my vote.
The really sad thing is that this was pretty much the depth of pre-war thinking in the US..
Thanks. I've been wondering for a while why MTBF never figures much in consumer marketing/reviews of drives, it now makes a lot more sense.
Ah, some light begins to dawn. So it's run a number of drives for a set period of time, after this period of time add up the number of hours all the drives have run for and divide by the number of failed drives?
Makes sense, and the comment MTBF != drive lifetime becomes comprehensible, thanks!
I don't suppose you'd care to explain that a little? I've always assumed Mean Time Between Failure to be what you got if you took a bunch of drives, ran them until they broke, added up the amount of time they worked for and divided by the number of drives. Which would equate to drive lifetime in my book. Am I missing something? 182 years does seem completely insane..
That's not what TFA says. The prosecution wanted him registered as a sex offender even after the plea bargain, which logically implies that the law allows this. For sharing a playboy magazine. No I think the US still wins the international "most fucked up about sex award".
The relevant piece of the article:
This isn't really true. Britons uses imperial measurements a lot for day to day use, but you'll find that anywhere something needs to be done precisely, it's done in metric.
For example, the hardware store will sell the same standardised pieces that have been around for years, and these will be in imperial. But I doubt you'll find a building site in the country which is working in anything apart from metric. Any architecht would make plans in metric, as would any engineer.
General rule of thumb would be imperial for casual stuff, metric for work - although there are going to be a few exceptions to this ;)
Just for anyone who doesn't know, check out Mike Lin's Startup Monitor and Startup Control Panel for a nice solution.
According to this LA Times article:
Which could mean anything I suppose, sounds reasonable but may well not be.
You can't uninstall evil.
Agree, but TFA mentions some future equipment that would be able to find signals within a radius of 300 light years - around 100 million stars. I'd say that would be a big enough sample size to draw some tentative conclusions - an absence of any signals at all would seem unlikely if intelligent life is as dense as most of us (I'm guessing) hope.
Anyway there's always the hope that we'll get lucky (or that the universe teems with intelligent life), and we'll find signals 30 light years away. I'm actually quite excited about this - it is possible we will shortly find proof of life on other planets, which would be pretty momentous.
ok I realise this is the final proof that I have no life, but.. Wow that's impressive!
If cars and pedestrians drive you to bold typeface I'm guessing you have not encountered the bicycle in any great quantities. If you ever play tourist in my home town of Cambridge (UK) I strongly suggest you take the bus.
I've given up wondering why so many people seem to simply not care whether they live or die, and keep all my attention on not killing them.
Sigh, that doesn't actually make sense. Oh well, more coffee.
SCO certainly exploded sucessfuly, but I don't think you can say they damaged their intended target very much.
heh, ok, I've just misunderstood the word my whole life I guess.. Always slightly weird when that happens.
The last 3 decades of scientific research, which have lead to the climate change hypothesis, don't count somehow?