... and we're just two European Council votes short of preventing this catastrophe. Even the smallest countries (such as Luxembourg, Malta,...) can make a difference!
Lobby your representative before May 27th to prevent the worst!
Alternatively, if you lack a Fresnel lens and a suitable crucible, but you do have a pencil mine and a microwave oven you can melt glass with those.
Just put a tall drinking glass in the microwave oven. Rest the pencil mine on top of the glass. Close door, switch on.
The pencil mine will eat its way through the glass all through to the bottom.
Note 1: Fill a small amount of water into the glass (or into a different glass), in order to absorb excess energy, or you'll nuke your nuker.
Note 2: Yes, the pencil mine does get hot enough to dent the glass platter that comes with the nuker. Stop in time before the mine actually reaches the bottom of the drinking glass.
Today is the last day that European ministers can still make up their mind about the highly controversial European patent directvie. In theory, the vote already happened last Tuesday, but some countries, such as Poland have changed after having realized that they've had the wool pulled over their eyes...
Result: today, we're just two votes short of blocking the controversial software patent directive.
We're now at a stage were even the
smallest European countries can make a difference!
If any small country, who so far has voted yes, changes its vote into no or abstain, we can send back the proposal to COREP, and prevent the worst from happening.
According to Heise (german), the Germans forced a collection of amendments through.
Not quite. Their amendments were gutted of the most important parts. Here an extract of the Italian speech, nicely summing up the situation:
We have said that we agreed on the German proposal on the meaning of technical contribution, but we had meant the original German proposal. Now, I see that the Germans have left the last two sentences of their proposal and whilst the first two sentences might be left out without particularly constituting any change, the last sentence - "processing, handling, presentation etc [of information] do not belong to a technical field, even where technological devices are employed for such purposes - that sentence we think is essential, if we are to give our agreement to the German text. So we would want that sentence to be included again. If you could change it in that way, we will be able to vote in favor of the Presidency's and Commission's compromise proposal. We will be unable to accept the Commission's proposal, in other words. (abstention)
Basically, the German amendment was meant to define what "technical contribution" means (i.e. sth technical, with the exception of anything that happens within the computer itself). Now, what's left are vague formulations such as "computer programs as such are not patentable", etc. which have been shown to be weasely and highly ambiguous.
my understanding is that they could have held up the process if they had at least abstained.:-(
Your understanding is correct. As odd as it may sound, an abstention is equivalent to a no vote. The reason for this is that only yes votes are counted (rather than ration yes vs no). So, an abstention is a vote which is not yes, and thus equivalent to a no. Difference is only symbolic, no impact on the outcome.
I'm also disappointed that Germany didn't do more (and that they didn't insist that their entire amendment got into the final text, rather than just the unimportant part).
I'm also disappointed about the Luxembourgish delegation: Although Butcher's Son did get 6a in, an abstention would have been in order. Especially since Greece would probably have followed suit.
China's another popular place to block, not because of badly administered machines, but because of policies of tolerance of spammers and scammers and lack of useful response to abuse complaints.
However, Chinese authorities have no tolerance against people who download anti-regime propaganda, or who sympathize with Falun Gong.
Hence, I solved my Chinese spam problem by adding the following to my sendmail.mc (it's only 4 lines, but Slashdot will probably cut the 3rd...):
# Really give the Chinese Spammers a mouthful...
changequote([[,]])dnl
define([[confSMTP_LOGIN_MSG]], [[EFGIC: U.S. Congress Condemns China's Oppression of Falun Gong on\nU.S. Soil and in China\n\nHouse Concurrent Resolution 304 calls on China's agents in\n the United States to halt all operations being carried out against\n practitioners of Falun Gong on United States' soil, as well as the brutal\n persecution of millions inside China.\n\nLONDON (EFGIC) - Last week, the US Congress introduced a concurrent\n resolution calling on the Chinese government to end its brutal\n persecution of Falun Gong in China and stop all activities against Falun\n Gong practitioners inside the United States.\n House Concurrent Resolution 304 (full text), introduced by Congresswoman\n Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, references China's own constitution and\n international human rights accords in calling for China to uphold\n freedom of belief, assembly, and speech for the millions of Falun Gong\n practitioners in Mainland China.\n Resolution 304 also specifically mentioned section 401(a)(1)(B) of the\n International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401(a)(1)(B)):\n \"Whereas the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of\n religion, the right to assemble, and the right to speak freely, and the\n people of the United States strongly value protecting the ability of all\n people to live without fear and in accordance with their personal\n beliefs...\"\n Harassment, libel, and imprisonment have been widespread in\n Jiang Zemin's four-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. Torture and\n abuse in custody have led to thousands of wrongful deaths.\n]])dnl
changequote(`,')dnl
This will change your sendmail banner in such a way that spammers, should they dare to send to you, get a surprise visit from the political police;-)
Yes, that's why I've put "legal definition" between quotes. AFAIK, the practice has been outlawed since a while (or has the law simply been rewritten such that the expiration timer starts on date applied rather than date granted?), and since then the media have started reusing the term "submarine patents" for the practice of not enforcing granted patents until your competitor is big enough that it hurts.
Maybe this will be a call for everyone to switch to PNG.
Yes, but in a couple of years some smart company will spring some PNG related patents on us. Didn't we all see this with gif? And then moved from gif to jpg (and png) to avoid that patent issue?
Maybe now would be the time to move back to gif instead: At least the patents on gifs are expired by now!
The "legal definition" of "submarine patents" is not "obscure patent that is not enforced", but "patent which is kept in 'pending' state during an artificially long time".
The goal is to exploit a loop hole in patent law where validity of patent is counted from the date when it was granted, and not from date where it was applied for. So, if you've got a patent application, and you know that no competitor is even close to being able to commercially exploit it, you (the application) just slow down the approval process as best as you can (by filing papers as late as possible, by introducing trivial amendments which forces the patent office to restart the procedure from the beginning, etc.). You keep on stalling like this until you see that a competitor is almost ready to infringe: you then let the application proceed at normal speed, and enjoy 25 years of monopoly from that date on.
(2) Creativity is a core value; breaking expected norms is an expected norm.
With a surprising number of these pranks, the "expected norm" seems to be "fill mark's office with a megazillion of some funny object", be it packing peanuts, post-its, balloons, rubber ducks, bouncy balls, chad, you name it. The only thing creative about it seems the particular choice of "funny object" du jour, but apart from that it looks like the same old joke over and over again... Hey pranksters, next time try breaking this "expected norm", and come up with some truly novel prank, hehe;)
You are completely right, of course. It was not Dirac, but Poincare
who invented relativity theory. Correct basic idea, but wrong French Scientist;-)
Strangely enough, this glaring error still netted me a +4 Informative
(A more serious reference for the issue appeared in a not so recent edition of La Jaune et la Rouge, for those who doubt the link. Unfortunately, however, that story is not online)
I googled for the same thing, and the first match I found was this:
Oddly, googling "picard topology" returns no results. I wonder if it's simply an analogue of Gabriel's Horn, which would explain the "finite volume" comment. My calculus students always start gibbering incomprehensibly when I tell them that something can have finite volume but infinite surface area. (If that doesn't confuse you immediately, think about painting the interior: you couldn't ever coat the inside surface with a brush, but you could pour in a 4-gallon can and fill the whole thing.)
If the person in front of you slams on the brakes, you should be far enough behind that it doesn't cause you to hit him.
If the person before you was speeding, thus causing the light to switch to red instantly, and if you were so close behind him/her that you couldn't react in time, I think that means that not only were you tailgating, but speeding just as much as that "speeding idiot" in front of you.
Slashdot Mirror
Lobby your representative before May 27th to prevent the worst!
The bit of graphite that is inside the pencil.
You can buy them separately for use in rechargeable ("automatic") pencils.
Just put a tall drinking glass in the microwave oven. Rest the pencil mine on top of the glass. Close door, switch on.
The pencil mine will eat its way through the glass all through to the bottom.
Note 1: Fill a small amount of water into the glass (or into a different glass), in order to absorb excess energy, or you'll nuke your nuker.
Note 2: Yes, the pencil mine does get hot enough to dent the glass platter that comes with the nuker. Stop in time before the mine actually reaches the bottom of the drinking glass.
However, had you patented the joke, you'd have had a claim!
Easy. Just submit lots of nonsense suggestions to his http://www.microsoft.com/mswish URL, such as:
Result: today, we're just two votes short of blocking the controversial software patent directive.
We're now at a stage were even the smallest European countries can make a difference! If any small country, who so far has voted yes, changes its vote into no or abstain, we can send back the proposal to COREP, and prevent the worst from happening.
During our demo in Luxembourg, a couple of nuns came by. After I handed them our flyer, I whispered: "software patents are the work of the devil!".
10 minutes later, a groups of ten nuns were seen walking on the other side of the street, pointing to our banner. Obviously the word had spread! ;-)
Don't worry. At least we Luxembourgers learned our lesson. On June 13th, there will be dolphin for dinner, and butcher's son will be butchered!
Not quite. Their amendments were gutted of the most important parts. Here an extract of the Italian speech, nicely summing up the situation:
Basically, the German amendment was meant to define what "technical contribution" means (i.e. sth technical, with the exception of anything that happens within the computer itself). Now, what's left are vague formulations such as "computer programs as such are not patentable", etc. which have been shown to be weasely and highly ambiguous.Your understanding is correct. As odd as it may sound, an abstention is equivalent to a no vote. The reason for this is that only yes votes are counted (rather than ration yes vs no). So, an abstention is a vote which is not yes, and thus equivalent to a no. Difference is only symbolic, no impact on the outcome.
I'm also disappointed that Germany didn't do more (and that they didn't insist that their entire amendment got into the final text, rather than just the unimportant part).
I'm also disappointed about the Luxembourgish delegation: Although Butcher's Son did get 6a in, an abstention would have been in order. Especially since Greece would probably have followed suit.
However, Chinese authorities have no tolerance against people who download anti-regime propaganda, or who sympathize with Falun Gong.
Hence, I solved my Chinese spam problem by adding the following to my sendmail.mc (it's only 4 lines, but Slashdot will probably cut the 3rd...):
# Really give the Chinese Spammers a mouthful...
changequote([[,]])dnl
define([[confSMTP_LOGIN_MSG]], [[EFGIC: U.S. Congress Condemns China's Oppression of Falun Gong on\nU.S. Soil and in China\n\nHouse Concurrent Resolution 304 calls on China's agents in\n the United States to halt all operations being carried out against\n practitioners of Falun Gong on United States' soil, as well as the brutal\n persecution of millions inside China.\n\nLONDON (EFGIC) - Last week, the US Congress introduced a concurrent\n resolution calling on the Chinese government to end its brutal\n persecution of Falun Gong in China and stop all activities against Falun\n Gong practitioners inside the United States.\n House Concurrent Resolution 304 (full text), introduced by Congresswoman\n Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, references China's own constitution and\n international human rights accords in calling for China to uphold\n freedom of belief, assembly, and speech for the millions of Falun Gong\n practitioners in Mainland China.\n Resolution 304 also specifically mentioned section 401(a)(1)(B) of the\n International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401(a)(1)(B)):\n \"Whereas the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of\n religion, the right to assemble, and the right to speak freely, and the\n people of the United States strongly value protecting the ability of all\n people to live without fear and in accordance with their personal\n beliefs...\"\n Harassment, libel, and imprisonment have been widespread in\n Jiang Zemin's four-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. Torture and\n abuse in custody have led to thousands of wrongful deaths.\n]])dnl
changequote(`,')dnl
This will change your sendmail banner in such a way that spammers, should they dare to send to you, get a surprise visit from the political police ;-)
Yes, that's why I've put "legal definition" between quotes. AFAIK, the practice has been outlawed since a while (or has the law simply been rewritten such that the expiration timer starts on date applied rather than date granted?), and since then the media have started reusing the term "submarine patents" for the practice of not enforcing granted patents until your competitor is big enough that it hurts.
Yes, but in a couple of years some smart company will spring some PNG related patents on us. Didn't we all see this with gif? And then moved from gif to jpg (and png) to avoid that patent issue?
Maybe now would be the time to move back to gif instead: At least the patents on gifs are expired by now!
The goal is to exploit a loop hole in patent law where validity of patent is counted from the date when it was granted, and not from date where it was applied for. So, if you've got a patent application, and you know that no competitor is even close to being able to commercially exploit it, you (the application) just slow down the approval process as best as you can (by filing papers as late as possible, by introducing trivial amendments which forces the patent office to restart the procedure from the beginning, etc.). You keep on stalling like this until you see that a competitor is almost ready to infringe: you then let the application proceed at normal speed, and enjoy 25 years of monopoly from that date on.
Time to post this link!. The guy basically did what you said: throw sodium into his lake. Much of it. And had great fun!
hehe ;-)
No. Actually, the computer is switched on, and we're stress-testing its ability to dissipate heat in an adverse environment.
Oh, and btw, we're also stress testing the fire fighters emergency invervention time ;-)
With a surprising number of these pranks, the "expected norm" seems to be "fill mark's office with a megazillion of some funny object", be it packing peanuts, post-its, balloons, rubber ducks, bouncy balls, chad, you name it. The only thing creative about it seems the particular choice of "funny object" du jour, but apart from that it looks like the same old joke over and over again... Hey pranksters, next time try breaking this "expected norm", and come up with some truly novel prank, hehe ;)
Read the following article, and laugh: One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) ...
He began his new role April 1, Microsoft said Tuesday.
Strangely enough, this glaring error still netted me a +4 Informative
(A more serious reference for the issue appeared in a not so recent edition of La Jaune et la Rouge, for those who doubt the link. Unfortunately, however, that story is not online)
Another link (mentioning btw the La Jaune et la Rouge article): Henri Poincaré : A decisive contribution to Special Relativity The short story
Nope, he was cremated. However, his brain could be spinning in its jar
Remember, this was the man that came up with some of the most complicated theories in modern physics,
He used 'geddonken' experiments,
Gedankenexperimente, i.e. though experiments.
Ah, that explains all these annoying Slashdot dupes!
If the person before you was speeding, thus causing the light to switch to red instantly, and if you were so close behind him/her that you couldn't react in time, I think that means that not only were you tailgating, but speeding just as much as that "speeding idiot" in front of you.
Double wammy!