This belief that people do things for material profit only is a cancer of the mind and needs to die.
Yes, certainly, but any idea that people should only do things for free is also a cancer and should die. There's nothing wrong with putting ideas and functional objects in the public domain, but there's also nothing wrong with deciding to monetize an idea or a functional object. Personally, I find the GPL distasteful and wrongheaded, but even so, I see nothing wrong with it either in the sense that choosing it as a way to go is just fine if you like it. When you birth an idea, it should be yours to decide what to do with. Period. Ideas can have enormous value; people who claim any kind of automatic ownership of other people's ideas when they didn't contribute to the thing's genesis are simply pickpockets. If the idea is given to them by the inventor, that's something completely different.
I pop out the occasional public domain project and/or enhancement, but I also do commercial projects in the hardware and software realms, because I find I have this peculiar need to eat and cower within shelter from time to time, and I've noticed the same curious problems with the rest of my family.
It isn't a good first step. It's a step in the wrong direction. First to invent allows the entity who thought of it first to get the patent once they can afford to jump the huge financial barriers to patenting; First-to-file allows the entity with more money to get the patent. This hugely favors corporations over individuals. Which, of course, is why they did it.
And while patents may encourage (late, mostly useless) disclosure, I reject outright the idea that this is superior to requiring inventors throughout the economy because of a need to reinvent. Trade secret is not only superior for most inventions, it can last a lot longer; but on the other hand, if the invention is critical, it's worth re-inventing (and knowing it can be done, or what the goal is, is often more than enough, which ought to be a complete red flag that an idea isn't worthy of legal protection anyway.)
I think the barrier to a patent ought to be *huge*. You should be able to show that creating the invention required X resources only available with significant financial backing, and that patent ought to expire when it has recouped something like 2x that expenditure in gross receipts from its own sales, or if you fail to bring the idea physically to market within 1 year.
The current system is nothing but a mutual corporate and attorney blow job fest. The only thing it "fosters" is exclusion of the little guy from huge swaths of the economic creation game. But that is something it does extremely well.
Not only did I make a few of them, I am still using some of them, particularly some of the test equipment -- a transistor/FET checker, a few other things. And I still have a working two-channel digital scope that takes a waveform sample and provides it to a host computer; I bought it, built it, created Amiga drivers for it and used it for quite a while.
You know what I'd like to see? That new el-cheapo $25/$35 PC board working with some Heathkit designs for measuring house AC power consumption, maybe some water detectors, things like that. Perhaps an alarm system interface. Fun!
FedEx and UPS both provide tracking that works reasonably well. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both provide insurance that will pay out in a reasonable time if the item is damaged or lost. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both actually show if a package has been delivered. USPS doesn't (they SAY they do, but what it really means when they say "delivered" is they don't know where the package was delivered, who they delivered it to, or when -- but they probably don't have it any longer.) FedEx and UPS both bring the goods right to my door when the weather is really bad; USPS employees won't even come to my mailbox if there is snow on the curb. FedEx and UPS both will pick up packages I have to go out. USPS won't. USPS sometimes delivers letters sent to me (eastern MT) from the east coast (eastern PA) 2...3 weeks after they have been sent. These letters are dirty, sometimes wet, and often no longer timely. FedEx and UPS have never delivered anything more than a day or two later than expected, and every time it has happened to me, there's been severe weather to account for it.
USPS has stagnated while private companies whipped their asses for them. I find myself without sympathy.
Those same physics books have a few things to say about the amount of time that passes at lightspeed, too; as does the light that results from that supernova. Simultaneity is a little difficult to pin down in such cases.
Thought experiment for you: if we pointed a mirror back at the star so they could see their own explosion, according to your logic the light leaving the mirror and reaching the star would be simultaneous events too. So putting A and B together, the light leaving the star, and its mirror reflection returning to the star would be simultaneous events. This would imply instant interstellar communication.
If you were riding a particle of light in your experiment, that's pretty much what you'd see, yes.
Unless you're quite specific about your frame of reference here, it is easy to describe the event inaccurately, mismatching the frame with the description.
Because that's what nerds do (and consequently why everyone hates them). They're infuriatingly pedantic, and love to correct people even on the smallest details because it makes them seem smarter (and therefore better).
More accurately presented / corrected is better, and the reason the people you call "nerds" infuriate others is because the lazy and low-functioning hate being reminded the things they believe are imprecise because they don't take the time (or have the ability) to think things out to a more precise conclusion.
It is not anyone's job to dumb things down (or leave them down, when presented that way) so you'll be comfortable. If the status quo is to be moved, up is clearly the ethical and moral way to move it. If it is not to be moved, you'll need a better reason than "I'm uncomfortable with statements that are more accurate than mine."
"Getting things right" is a much more laudable human goal than "keeping things approximate."
Further, in this particular venue, the audience is generally a good deal smarter than, say, on Gawker. If you present in a clumsy or inaccurate manner here, it's really kind of silly to expect it to go unremarked.
Parent is simply lazy. Google it. You too. Go on, use the Intertubes. It's not difficult, and there are PLENTY of examples. I didn't give them because it's trivial. Look here: http://www.google.com/search?q=police+malfeasance
One point two MILLION results. How many of those do you think say "there isn't any"? Wanna go for half? (hah! In your dreams...) That still leaves 600,000 results. And that entirely leaves out any that don't specifically use the word malfeasance.
It's not my argument that's weak here. And I think you know it perfectly well.
Cops are tasked with detecting crime. Knowing it when they see it, taking action accordingly. Now, if my company was made up of people tasked with detecting crime, and none of them caught on to the fact that a goodly number of their co-workers were in fact committing crimes, I think I'd fire everyone and start over. Which, not co-incidentally, is exactly what I think most police departments should do.
Thats a bold statement, with vague accusations. What type of corruption? Bribes? Who is being bribed?
Arresting people for recording/photographing public scenes. Beating citizens harshly (aka committing assault) after they are down and helpless. Killing them with tasers. Shooting people's pets. Breaking down doors without warrants. Hiding the misdeeds of their fellow officers. Speeding without any legal reason to exceed the limit (and man is *that* ever common.) Lying under oath. If you want more, go troll through the mass of stuff Anonymous just dumped. There's plenty. Nothing surprising to me, but I'll bet it will surprise you pretty harshly. As for sources.... for Darwin's sake, don't you know how to use a search engine yet?
When these folks exposed the US diplomatic corps and the banks and *nothing happened to them*, that's how we (well, not you, obviously) all knew they weren't easily caught. It's nothing to expose Texas cops, sure... but that's just the latest in a series of their actions. If you were paying attention and your mind produced more than lame ad hominem, you'd understand what is going on. You should work on that. In the meantime, leave the thinking to the people who know how.
Yeah, I'm just trolling the moderators. Whoever it was was so stupid as to mod down my comment, they probably can't work out how moderation actually works anyway.
Come on. This is so exciting... For $35 (these have network ports), I'll probably buy 10 of them just to start with. How many cool projects could you bang out starting with $35 hardware and a wall-wart? Fish tank controllers, alarm systems, packet radio systems, aurora monitoring stations, power monitoring systems, train set controllers, (really any R/C model controller remot-ified by radio), atmospheric clarity monitors, weather loggers... c'mon. The applications are limited only by your imagination.
No, no. Read the 13th amendment. Slavery is perfectly ok -- as long as the government does it as punishment for a crime. And as we all know, all corporations are criminals, and furthermore the legal system is so overweight and complex no one can really be sure they're acting completely in accordance with the law at any point, so...
No, it's based on how difficult it would be to mine elements from a star. We *know* that is difficult to the point of near-impossibility; we *guess* that the universe started with a big bang (and we are trying hard to make a theory with a lot of holes fit better, since it fits the best of the various pretty bad theories we have.)
The OP said the star was mined. I responded by questioning our star formation theories instead because it's a much simpler and more likely place to find an answer. As opposed to aliens mining a star, you see.
You honestly think there is a single cop in Texas... no, wait... in the entire USA, smart enough to backwalk a chain of proxies? lol. Just.... lol.
The CIA hasn't done it... the FBI hasn't done it... Interpol hasn't done it... believe me, patrolman Bubba Powermad McHomophobe isn't going to do it either.
If your(sic) in a situation where you need help who are you going to call? Anonymous or a cop?
Yes, because when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. And when they do get there, they're actually pretty likely to arrest the victim. I've seen this personally more than once. Then there are these little techniques they use... you're upset, they lure you outside "c'mon, let's just step outside" and as soon as you're out your door, you're arrested for disturbing the peace. Yeah, don't fall for that one. Well, there is a silver lining. They're usually not quite as corrupt as our politicians and judges, and individual cops do a lot less harm than individual politicians and judges.
Whether they become good, honorable men/women is still up to them and many won't.
If they conceal the misdeeds of their fellow cops -- they're just as bad as they are. And if they're ignorant of those misdeeds... they aren't smart enough to be cops. The whole structure is corrupt, top to bottom. We'll know it isn't when the bad apples start getting thrown out. That hasn't started in any serious way, nor do I expect it to.... because the whole structure is corrupt, top to bottom.
Remember that the Constitution starts with "We the People". If we leave it to congress and the White House, they're going to change it to "We the Corporations".
Already done. They did it by having the supreme court define corporations as "people."
Maxwell has been making slow and steady progress for a while; out on a limb types have been hoping EEStor will finally produce something -- anything -- but that looks like they were either naive about the challenges they were facing, or outright deceptive about it. There are quite a few technologies in the lab, a quick search on Google turns up all manner of intriguing information.
The reason being that the amount of amperage and voltage necessary to charge a car in a reasonable amount of time is a lot more than what you want in a house.
No, that's a poor argument. It's not like these potentials will be lying around for babies to put in their mouths. You know how many people own a microwave? Do you have any idea of the currents and voltages used in one of those? Another good example was the tube-style color television... again, really, really dangerous potentials, and again, very low risk. That takes care of the safety issue.
As far as charge *rates* go, you can charge an ultracap at any rate you like. So if you're charging off the mains directly, you can limit it to under 20 amps and use a standard circuit; it'll just take a while to fully charge an empty array. That'll still be ok for most people, because they're not going to be driving that far on a normal day anyway. Then there are bucket brigade techniques, where the charger itself contains UCs, and is charging itself all the time (or perhaps during the cheap hours), and when you go to "fill" your vehicle, you get the current from the charger's UC array, rather than from the wall. Or you can go whole-hog and put in a high current circuit. We do that all the time now -- take a look at what feeds a typical electric stove, arc welder, or the electrical service for a commercial enterprise. It's all off the shelf tech, nothing magic here at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, certainly, but any idea that people should only do things for free is also a cancer and should die. There's nothing wrong with putting ideas and functional objects in the public domain, but there's also nothing wrong with deciding to monetize an idea or a functional object. Personally, I find the GPL distasteful and wrongheaded, but even so, I see nothing wrong with it either in the sense that choosing it as a way to go is just fine if you like it. When you birth an idea, it should be yours to decide what to do with. Period. Ideas can have enormous value; people who claim any kind of automatic ownership of other people's ideas when they didn't contribute to the thing's genesis are simply pickpockets. If the idea is given to them by the inventor, that's something completely different.
I pop out the occasional public domain project and/or enhancement, but I also do commercial projects in the hardware and software realms, because I find I have this peculiar need to eat and cower within shelter from time to time, and I've noticed the same curious problems with the rest of my family.
It isn't a good first step. It's a step in the wrong direction. First to invent allows the entity who thought of it first to get the patent once they can afford to jump the huge financial barriers to patenting; First-to-file allows the entity with more money to get the patent. This hugely favors corporations over individuals. Which, of course, is why they did it.
And while patents may encourage (late, mostly useless) disclosure, I reject outright the idea that this is superior to requiring inventors throughout the economy because of a need to reinvent. Trade secret is not only superior for most inventions, it can last a lot longer; but on the other hand, if the invention is critical, it's worth re-inventing (and knowing it can be done, or what the goal is, is often more than enough, which ought to be a complete red flag that an idea isn't worthy of legal protection anyway.)
I think the barrier to a patent ought to be *huge*. You should be able to show that creating the invention required X resources only available with significant financial backing, and that patent ought to expire when it has recouped something like 2x that expenditure in gross receipts from its own sales, or if you fail to bring the idea physically to market within 1 year.
The current system is nothing but a mutual corporate and attorney blow job fest. The only thing it "fosters" is exclusion of the little guy from huge swaths of the economic creation game. But that is something it does extremely well.
Yes, and flickr... I use flickr constantly, and as near as I can tell, the service is thriving. I'm worried about what will become of it.
Not only did I make a few of them, I am still using some of them, particularly some of the test equipment -- a transistor/FET checker, a few other things. And I still have a working two-channel digital scope that takes a waveform sample and provides it to a host computer; I bought it, built it, created Amiga drivers for it and used it for quite a while.
You know what I'd like to see? That new el-cheapo $25/$35 PC board working with some Heathkit designs for measuring house AC power consumption, maybe some water detectors, things like that. Perhaps an alarm system interface. Fun!
From TFS:
One word: religion. By comparison, the continuing use of the fax machine is a shining example of rational and forward thinking behavior.
FedEx and UPS both provide tracking that works reasonably well. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both provide insurance that will pay out in a reasonable time if the item is damaged or lost. USPS doesn't. FedEx and UPS both actually show if a package has been delivered. USPS doesn't (they SAY they do, but what it really means when they say "delivered" is they don't know where the package was delivered, who they delivered it to, or when -- but they probably don't have it any longer.) FedEx and UPS both bring the goods right to my door when the weather is really bad; USPS employees won't even come to my mailbox if there is snow on the curb. FedEx and UPS both will pick up packages I have to go out. USPS won't. USPS sometimes delivers letters sent to me (eastern MT) from the east coast (eastern PA) 2...3 weeks after they have been sent. These letters are dirty, sometimes wet, and often no longer timely. FedEx and UPS have never delivered anything more than a day or two later than expected, and every time it has happened to me, there's been severe weather to account for it.
USPS has stagnated while private companies whipped their asses for them. I find myself without sympathy.
Those same physics books have a few things to say about the amount of time that passes at lightspeed, too; as does the light that results from that supernova. Simultaneity is a little difficult to pin down in such cases.
If you were riding a particle of light in your experiment, that's pretty much what you'd see, yes.
Unless you're quite specific about your frame of reference here, it is easy to describe the event inaccurately, mismatching the frame with the description.
More accurately presented / corrected is better, and the reason the people you call "nerds" infuriate others is because the lazy and low-functioning hate being reminded the things they believe are imprecise because they don't take the time (or have the ability) to think things out to a more precise conclusion.
It is not anyone's job to dumb things down (or leave them down, when presented that way) so you'll be comfortable. If the status quo is to be moved, up is clearly the ethical and moral way to move it. If it is not to be moved, you'll need a better reason than "I'm uncomfortable with statements that are more accurate than mine."
"Getting things right" is a much more laudable human goal than "keeping things approximate."
Further, in this particular venue, the audience is generally a good deal smarter than, say, on Gawker. If you present in a clumsy or inaccurate manner here, it's really kind of silly to expect it to go unremarked.
Parent is simply lazy. Google it. You too. Go on, use the Intertubes. It's not difficult, and there are PLENTY of examples. I didn't give them because it's trivial. Look here: http://www.google.com/search?q=police+malfeasance
One point two MILLION results. How many of those do you think say "there isn't any"? Wanna go for half? (hah! In your dreams...) That still leaves 600,000 results. And that entirely leaves out any that don't specifically use the word malfeasance.
It's not my argument that's weak here. And I think you know it perfectly well.
Pop quiz, eh? ok. Here's my answer:
Cops are tasked with detecting crime. Knowing it when they see it, taking action accordingly. Now, if my company was made up of people tasked with detecting crime, and none of them caught on to the fact that a goodly number of their co-workers were in fact committing crimes, I think I'd fire everyone and start over. Which, not co-incidentally, is exactly what I think most police departments should do.
Arresting people for recording/photographing public scenes. Beating citizens harshly (aka committing assault) after they are down and helpless. Killing them with tasers. Shooting people's pets. Breaking down doors without warrants. Hiding the misdeeds of their fellow officers. Speeding without any legal reason to exceed the limit (and man is *that* ever common.) Lying under oath. If you want more, go troll through the mass of stuff Anonymous just dumped. There's plenty. Nothing surprising to me, but I'll bet it will surprise you pretty harshly. As for sources.... for Darwin's sake, don't you know how to use a search engine yet?
When these folks exposed the US diplomatic corps and the banks and *nothing happened to them*, that's how we (well, not you, obviously) all knew they weren't easily caught. It's nothing to expose Texas cops, sure... but that's just the latest in a series of their actions. If you were paying attention and your mind produced more than lame ad hominem, you'd understand what is going on. You should work on that. In the meantime, leave the thinking to the people who know how.
Yeah, I'm just trolling the moderators. Whoever it was was so stupid as to mod down my comment, they probably can't work out how moderation actually works anyway.
HDMI port? Why not just SSH and/or telnet into the thing, etc.? All you need is a $1 cable.
Come on. This is so exciting... For $35 (these have network ports), I'll probably buy 10 of them just to start with. How many cool projects could you bang out starting with $35 hardware and a wall-wart? Fish tank controllers, alarm systems, packet radio systems, aurora monitoring stations, power monitoring systems, train set controllers, (really any R/C model controller remot-ified by radio), atmospheric clarity monitors, weather loggers... c'mon. The applications are limited only by your imagination.
Oh. Wait. I see the problem.
No, no. Read the 13th amendment. Slavery is perfectly ok -- as long as the government does it as punishment for a crime. And as we all know, all corporations are criminals, and furthermore the legal system is so overweight and complex no one can really be sure they're acting completely in accordance with the law at any point, so...
No, it's based on how difficult it would be to mine elements from a star. We *know* that is difficult to the point of near-impossibility; we *guess* that the universe started with a big bang (and we are trying hard to make a theory with a lot of holes fit better, since it fits the best of the various pretty bad theories we have.)
The OP said the star was mined. I responded by questioning our star formation theories instead because it's a much simpler and more likely place to find an answer. As opposed to aliens mining a star, you see.
Ya gotta love a down-mod for simply telling the truth. Slashdot moderation... hilarious. I read at -1, idiots. Your moderation is meaningless to me.
You honestly think there is a single cop in Texas... no, wait... in the entire USA, smart enough to backwalk a chain of proxies? lol. Just.... lol.
The CIA hasn't done it... the FBI hasn't done it... Interpol hasn't done it... believe me, patrolman Bubba Powermad McHomophobe isn't going to do it either.
Yes, because when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. And when they do get there, they're actually pretty likely to arrest the victim. I've seen this personally more than once. Then there are these little techniques they use... you're upset, they lure you outside "c'mon, let's just step outside" and as soon as you're out your door, you're arrested for disturbing the peace. Yeah, don't fall for that one. Well, there is a silver lining. They're usually not quite as corrupt as our politicians and judges, and individual cops do a lot less harm than individual politicians and judges.
If they conceal the misdeeds of their fellow cops -- they're just as bad as they are. And if they're ignorant of those misdeeds... they aren't smart enough to be cops. The whole structure is corrupt, top to bottom. We'll know it isn't when the bad apples start getting thrown out. That hasn't started in any serious way, nor do I expect it to.... because the whole structure is corrupt, top to bottom.
It's considerably more likely that our theory(/ies) of star formation are lacking.
Already done. They did it by having the supreme court define corporations as "people."
whoosh
Maxwell has been making slow and steady progress for a while; out on a limb types have been hoping EEStor will finally produce something -- anything -- but that looks like they were either naive about the challenges they were facing, or outright deceptive about it. There are quite a few technologies in the lab, a quick search on Google turns up all manner of intriguing information.
No, that's a poor argument. It's not like these potentials will be lying around for babies to put in their mouths. You know how many people own a microwave? Do you have any idea of the currents and voltages used in one of those? Another good example was the tube-style color television... again, really, really dangerous potentials, and again, very low risk. That takes care of the safety issue.
As far as charge *rates* go, you can charge an ultracap at any rate you like. So if you're charging off the mains directly, you can limit it to under 20 amps and use a standard circuit; it'll just take a while to fully charge an empty array. That'll still be ok for most people, because they're not going to be driving that far on a normal day anyway. Then there are bucket brigade techniques, where the charger itself contains UCs, and is charging itself all the time (or perhaps during the cheap hours), and when you go to "fill" your vehicle, you get the current from the charger's UC array, rather than from the wall. Or you can go whole-hog and put in a high current circuit. We do that all the time now -- take a look at what feeds a typical electric stove, arc welder, or the electrical service for a commercial enterprise. It's all off the shelf tech, nothing magic here at all.