Slashdot humour is solved by a self-consistent field method. You see a lot of the same gags because we're converging to the best joke. (There is an existence proof for the joke in question, and an accepted hypothesis that it involves leaves.)
Actually a netbook is broadly understood to be a cheap low-performance computer for a limited set of common computing tasks, inaugurated by the Eee PC which was explicitly a commercialised equivalent of the OLPC's "cheap but useful" approach to hardware design.
Only if you define netbooks to include all 12-inch-and-smaller laptops, a broadness which robs the term of its usefulness. People have been making very small laptops for about a decade. The netbook is a distinct subset.
As a partial scrubber that happens to make useful stuff, that'd work. I parsed beuges' comment as asking if we could pull off a complete scrubbing of our excess CO2 from the atmosphere, which isn't an option. You reach the stage where you're able to completely replace your fossil fuels with a new energy source, before you reach the stage where you keep your fossil fuels and clean up using a CO2->materials process.
Oh yeah, I'm familiar with his quote about tying up an entire nation in lawyers' fees. I just don't think that graphene itself would've been patentable. Devices and methods, yes.
"CO2 -> material" is a problem of energy rather than chemistry. The energy generated by making CO2 is less than the energy needed to turn that CO2 into something useful (assuming useful materials have a substantially higher enthalpy of formation and lower entropy than fuels). So you have to have an energy source which is capable of replacing fossil fuels first.
Nobody invented graphene. It was discovered, rendering it basically unpatentable, so I'm not sure why not sure what that has to do with small patent holders. However with regards to your second point, inventing a clever way of creating it was worth the Nobel Prize.
I read an argument recently (maybe on Language Log of all places) that this was an example of intelligence being disadvantage. Having a general awareness of the threats represented by viruses is a requisite for vulnerability to the scam, while someone completely ignorant of computer threats wouldn't be susceptible. Sort of the scam-art equivalent of the uncanny valley.
I'm not trying to assign blame, just point out that it gives us a huge inertia. Nobody really screamed out for $20 DVD players, they just can't do without them now Walmart has flooded us with them. It's very, very difficult to try to convince a society that it should take a hit in its quality of life for the greater good.
People just aren't interested in paying the premium that's needed to "buy American". Nobody's willing to give up their lifestyle of $20 Walmart DVD players for the greater good.
Right, they've gamed the system to the point where the trade-offs they were supposed to make haven't happened. There's supposed to be a public benefit paid back if you want the personal benefit of the patent. Now it's become a zero-sum game.
Don't forget that many PC games now force to you register the key online, blocking resale. I suspect they make very little money on PC games these days because they're a one-shot, so the "boycott" is probably more like cutting the least-profitable part of the business. Dressing it up this way just makes them seem like the victim.
Patents were good for the private sector competitors, too, in that within X years they could start doing their own version as the patent expired. It meant that breakthroughs were disseminated through the market, instead of being sat on as trade secrets.
If you need that historical data, it should be kept on some kind of permanent storage, which is backed up. Relying on old backups to keep it around after you deleted it is not a valid approach, any more than filing your old records in the trashcan is.
He says that it was "irreplacable data". The whole point of a backup is that the data is trivially replacable, because it has been duplicated. I suspect his backup routine is rather like this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot humour is solved by a self-consistent field method. You see a lot of the same gags because we're converging to the best joke. (There is an existence proof for the joke in question, and an accepted hypothesis that it involves leaves.)
Actually a netbook is broadly understood to be a cheap low-performance computer for a limited set of common computing tasks, inaugurated by the Eee PC which was explicitly a commercialised equivalent of the OLPC's "cheap but useful" approach to hardware design.
Only if you define netbooks to include all 12-inch-and-smaller laptops, a broadness which robs the term of its usefulness. People have been making very small laptops for about a decade. The netbook is a distinct subset.
2) You are giving Microsoft a pass by building an analogy between their javascript engine and an 8th grade history student.
Indeed. The student would make a better Javascript engine.
In fact, the "apology" states that they usually get their content by copying it from whatever cookbooks publishers send them to review!
As a partial scrubber that happens to make useful stuff, that'd work. I parsed beuges' comment as asking if we could pull off a complete scrubbing of our excess CO2 from the atmosphere, which isn't an option. You reach the stage where you're able to completely replace your fossil fuels with a new energy source, before you reach the stage where you keep your fossil fuels and clean up using a CO2->materials process.
Oh yeah, I'm familiar with his quote about tying up an entire nation in lawyers' fees. I just don't think that graphene itself would've been patentable. Devices and methods, yes.
"CO2 -> material" is a problem of energy rather than chemistry. The energy generated by making CO2 is less than the energy needed to turn that CO2 into something useful (assuming useful materials have a substantially higher enthalpy of formation and lower entropy than fuels). So you have to have an energy source which is capable of replacing fossil fuels first.
Nobody invented graphene. It was discovered, rendering it basically unpatentable, so I'm not sure why not sure what that has to do with small patent holders. However with regards to your second point, inventing a clever way of creating it was worth the Nobel Prize.
I think the cold-calling aspect is relatively new, no?
The scam isn't merely getting them to pay for un-needed antivirus software, it's installing a trojan which enables them to grab people's bank details.
I read an argument recently (maybe on Language Log of all places) that this was an example of intelligence being disadvantage. Having a general awareness of the threats represented by viruses is a requisite for vulnerability to the scam, while someone completely ignorant of computer threats wouldn't be susceptible. Sort of the scam-art equivalent of the uncanny valley.
I'm not trying to assign blame, just point out that it gives us a huge inertia. Nobody really screamed out for $20 DVD players, they just can't do without them now Walmart has flooded us with them. It's very, very difficult to try to convince a society that it should take a hit in its quality of life for the greater good.
People just aren't interested in paying the premium that's needed to "buy American". Nobody's willing to give up their lifestyle of $20 Walmart DVD players for the greater good.
I'm going to assume that it won't just plug into the cigarette lighter, mind you. Although a man can dream.
Yeah, or you could just put a wizard in there.
Right, they've gamed the system to the point where the trade-offs they were supposed to make haven't happened. There's supposed to be a public benefit paid back if you want the personal benefit of the patent. Now it's become a zero-sum game.
As pointed out elsewhere, retailers make most of their money on second-hand game sales. Steam etc. deprive them of that source of income.
Don't forget that many PC games now force to you register the key online, blocking resale. I suspect they make very little money on PC games these days because they're a one-shot, so the "boycott" is probably more like cutting the least-profitable part of the business. Dressing it up this way just makes them seem like the victim.
Exchange rates have been fine this generation, when you account for VAT.
GameStation was bought by GAME a while ago, it's just a sub-brand of the same company now.
Patents were good for the private sector competitors, too, in that within X years they could start doing their own version as the patent expired. It meant that breakthroughs were disseminated through the market, instead of being sat on as trade secrets.
I don't think there's any gene that allows an organism to spontaneously generate gold, so that's a speed-bump.
(I sure hope I didn't just give Dan Brown an idea. "Rosicrucian Man"?)
If you need that historical data, it should be kept on some kind of permanent storage, which is backed up. Relying on old backups to keep it around after you deleted it is not a valid approach, any more than filing your old records in the trashcan is.
He says that it was "irreplacable data". The whole point of a backup is that the data is trivially replacable, because it has been duplicated. I suspect his backup routine is rather like this one.