I recently bought a 20" iMac, my first Apple product ever. While researching it, I went through and configured, as best I could, a Dell with exactly the same components. In the end, the Apple was $4 cheaper. The baseline Dell was initially cheaper because the hard drive was 5400 RPM, the video card was an integrated Intel thing, the screen had a lower native resolution, etc. Once it matched the iMac's components, there was essentially no price difference.
Dell sell products. They're a reliable and trusted name, but they're not exciting. Good, solid, and dull.
Apple does sell some products, but more than that, they sell an image. Their stuff isn't always the best, but they act like it's the best, and they're so confident in it that people start to think that they're the best.
Suppose there's a ninety-year old black man living in a very small town in a very rural area. The town just has a small general store. The man is poor, but he gets by, and twice a week walks to the store to buy food. A new owner buys the store, and decides he doesn't want to serve blacks. The old man doesn't have the means to take his business elsewhere. The nearby towns are too far away, and he can't afford a car. Who's rights take precedence? The man's right to eat, or the owner's right to refuse service to blacks?
Can I submit my seventh grade Spanish book as an example of prior art? It has an interface (a table in the back) that allows the user to select verbs based on tense and person.
I agree with you - a temporary monopoly is the way to do it. I'm just saying that when the granting a temporary monopoly excessively stifles innovation (something like a patent on "systems to stop a moving vehicle"), then the need to promote innovation comes first.
Patents are granted in the United States "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The ultimate purpose of the patent (and also the copyright) is not to ensure that the creator is rewarded for his effort, but to promote innovation. The temporary monopoly that a patent provides is just a means to an end. If patents are granted in such a way that they inhibit innovation, then this is defeating their purpose, even if they do ensure that the inventor is compensated for his work.
Sure they do. There are accupuncture companies, crystal healing companies, psychic fortune telling companies, etc. All the major patent offices agree with me, which is why none of them will grant or even review patents applications for perpetual motion machines, which is what this is. When real revolutionary scientific discoveries are made, the scientists publish all the details. They don't issue vague statements about how amazing their findings are and complain about "inquisitions". That's what cranks do.
It would be nice to give everyone a fair hearing, but at a certain point, you have to just say, "Enough is enough." There are millions of crackpots all over the world who think that they're the next Einstein or Galileo or whoever. If you spend all your time fairly evaluating each of their claims, that's all you're going to be doing.
During 2005 Steorn embarked on a process of independent validation and approached a wide selection of academic institutions. The vast majority of these institutions refused to even look at the technology, however several did. Those who were prepared to complete testing have all confirmed our claims; however none will publicly go on record.
Please. Any physicist who figured out how this miraculous technology worked would be more revolutionary than Einstein or Newton. Showing how to violate conservation of energy would be an instant Nobel Prize. If their data really support this, why won't they go on record and become famous? They could win at least $2,000,000 (from the Nobel committee and from James Randi).
"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.
To me, this sounds a lot like a generator. You know, rotating a wire loop through a magnetic field to generate an electic current. That's only been around for, what, 180 years?
Of course you can get energy (in the form of an electric current) with magnets and wire. It's how generators work. Faraday figured it out over 180 years ago. The trick is that the wire and the magnetic field have to be moving relative to each other. That's where the energy for the current comes from - the motion of the wire.
As to gasoline, energy is released because the heat of formation of the products (carbon dioxide and water, mostly) is less than the heat of formation of the reactants (hydrocarbons and oxygen). No energy is created.
I read something by written by a guy who ran a scrap metal recycling company (it was a while ago, so I doubt all the details are correct). He was looking for a way to extract some particular metal from an alloy. He hired an engineering firm to find out if there was a way of doing this, and they searched the databases, and told him there wasn't. Then he hired a guy with a history degree, and although he knew nothing about metallurgy, he knew quite a bit about how to do research. He went into the library, and a few weeks later found a process for extracting the desired metal.
Technical skills and expertise are certainly important, but anyone can acquire those skills and certifications. The key to making yourself valuable is to also have the "fuzzier" skills in problem solving, research, and writing* that others ignore.
*You would not believe how bad some business writing is.
Those who can fend for themselves in a structured society can also fend for themselves in a unstructured one. The well-off can afford to protect themselves and their interests, and could in many instances do so better without the police.
Bullshit. Which of the following would you prefer:
1) Being taught Swedish and forced to live in the socialist Scandinavian nightmare that is Sweden.
2) Being taught Somali and forced to live in the libertarian utopia that is Somalia.
In Sweden, you would have to live under oppressive taxation, deal with inferior subsidized housing and healthcare, and have your life and property constantly threatened since you wouldn't have the firearms to defend them. In Somalia, there are no taxes, so you keep 100% of your profits. You'll have the total freedom to choose anything you can afford, with no government interference. And best of all, you'll be totally secure because of all the firearms you'll have and the guards you'll be able to hire.
Of course, this is an asinine choice. No one would choose to live in Somalia. The point is that these Libertarian-types say they want to be free of government regulations, but in reality they just want to keep the regulations that are good for them and get rid of those that would help anyone else. For all their posturing, these folks would not last long in a truly "unstructured society".
That's Marx's complaint about the capitalism. The profit that a corporation makes is the sum of the value added by the labor of workers minus the amount paid out in wages. Each laborer works enough each day to pay for his own wages, but then he works some more to generate profit for the capitalist. Thus, the capitalist appropriates some of the value or product of his employees' labor.
A lot of people seem to think playing WoW a lot is a waste of time, but you know what's worse? Arguing on/. about whether playing WoW a lot is a waste of time.
Microsoft is not evil. They engage in some unfair business practices, and make a lot of pretty mediocre products. To call that evil trivializes truly evil actions, like the ongoing genocide in Sudan. Do people on here even realize how fortunate they are to be able to devote their time to complaining about DRM or IE security holes? How many people have died because of Microsoft? Few, if any. How many people can be saved by things like vaccination programs? Millions. Gates is no saint, but what he's doing is good, and he deserves to be applauded for it.
That's basically the issue. During gestation, you develop the neurons and other structures you'll need for your brain to do what it does. Most of the "connections", however, are not in place - they are not specified genetically in any real way. After birth, development continues in the brain. There's a rough plan, whereby signals that travel down the optic nerve into the visual cortex are sort of presumed to be "visual signals", but things don't really get locked in and become fully functional until the system has input to play with. This is why, for example, babies don't really see much more than a haze for the first few days after birth - their visual system hasn't fully developed.
I don't know what the developmental window is for this process, but at some point, the visual cortex loses its plasticity at some age, and if you haven't developed the appropriate connections by then, the brain will never be able to do so.
There is an analogous phenomenon with language. They occassionally find people who, for a variety of tragic circumstances, never acquired any form of language. If they're under a certain age (12-15, I think), they can be taught and will eventually be able to speak normally. Those who are found after that, though, will never be able to develop normal language skills. They can be taught a sort of rudimentary communication ability, but they never develop a real sense of how language works (they have problems with switching 1st v. 2nd person in conversation, for example, IIRC). Similarly, kids can learn a language to fluency with little trouble up to roughly the same ages (15 is pushing it), since their brains are actively acquiring language, but after that point, the brain loses some of its plasticity and it becomes much more difficult to learn languages.
Uh, no. "Image sensors", like eyes, don't produce a signal that is fundamentally different from the signals produced by any other sensory organ. What matters is where in the location in the brain to which those signals are directed. Although I'm not certain, I'd guess that this is why the technique won't work on those who were never able to see - they never developed the necessary neural connections in the brain for vision.
I've been using a totally anonymous card for over a year now. The checker gave me a card and an application, and told me to bring the application back next time. I never did, and no one seems to care.
His derivative-based proof makes no sense. Consider the following:
Parameterize a particle's motion through spacetime as
[t, x(t), y(t), z(t)].
Let a = x(t). Then x^(-1)(a) = t.
Now substitute for t in the original parameterization to get
[x^(-1)(a), a, y(x^(-1)(a)), z(x^(-1)(a))].
Differentiate, and get
[dx^(-1)(a)/da, 1, dy(x^(-1)(a))/da, dz(x^(-1)(a))/da].
Therefore, motion along the x-axis is also impossible. Also, his dismissal of Godel just indicates that, like most people, he has no idea whatsoever what the man actually proved.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless part of their contract with Cingular is that they do neither of those things.
Check out the proposed SuperGrid - superconducting cables cooled by liquid hydrogen, which doubles as an energy storage medium.
Shannon-Nyquist is a really surprising theorem. Ever since I first learned about it, I've always thought it was weird.
I recently bought a 20" iMac, my first Apple product ever. While researching it, I went through and configured, as best I could, a Dell with exactly the same components. In the end, the Apple was $4 cheaper. The baseline Dell was initially cheaper because the hard drive was 5400 RPM, the video card was an integrated Intel thing, the screen had a lower native resolution, etc. Once it matched the iMac's components, there was essentially no price difference.
Gold is a commodity already, albeit an expensive one.
2. Go to car factory.
3. Get drunk.
Apple does sell some products, but more than that, they sell an image. Their stuff isn't always the best, but they act like it's the best, and they're so confident in it that people start to think that they're the best.
Suppose there's a ninety-year old black man living in a very small town in a very rural area. The town just has a small general store. The man is poor, but he gets by, and twice a week walks to the store to buy food. A new owner buys the store, and decides he doesn't want to serve blacks. The old man doesn't have the means to take his business elsewhere. The nearby towns are too far away, and he can't afford a car. Who's rights take precedence? The man's right to eat, or the owner's right to refuse service to blacks?
Can I submit my seventh grade Spanish book as an example of prior art? It has an interface (a table in the back) that allows the user to select verbs based on tense and person.
I agree with you - a temporary monopoly is the way to do it. I'm just saying that when the granting a temporary monopoly excessively stifles innovation (something like a patent on "systems to stop a moving vehicle"), then the need to promote innovation comes first.
Patents are granted in the United States "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The ultimate purpose of the patent (and also the copyright) is not to ensure that the creator is rewarded for his effort, but to promote innovation. The temporary monopoly that a patent provides is just a means to an end. If patents are granted in such a way that they inhibit innovation, then this is defeating their purpose, even if they do ensure that the inventor is compensated for his work.
Sure they do. There are accupuncture companies, crystal healing companies, psychic fortune telling companies, etc. All the major patent offices agree with me, which is why none of them will grant or even review patents applications for perpetual motion machines, which is what this is. When real revolutionary scientific discoveries are made, the scientists publish all the details. They don't issue vague statements about how amazing their findings are and complain about "inquisitions". That's what cranks do.
It would be nice to give everyone a fair hearing, but at a certain point, you have to just say, "Enough is enough." There are millions of crackpots all over the world who think that they're the next Einstein or Galileo or whoever. If you spend all your time fairly evaluating each of their claims, that's all you're going to be doing.
During 2005 Steorn embarked on a process of independent validation and approached a wide selection of academic institutions. The vast majority of these institutions refused to even look at the technology, however several did. Those who were prepared to complete testing have all confirmed our claims; however none will publicly go on record.
Please. Any physicist who figured out how this miraculous technology worked would be more revolutionary than Einstein or Newton. Showing how to violate conservation of energy would be an instant Nobel Prize. If their data really support this, why won't they go on record and become famous? They could win at least $2,000,000 (from the Nobel committee and from James Randi).
"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.
To me, this sounds a lot like a generator. You know, rotating a wire loop through a magnetic field to generate an electic current. That's only been around for, what, 180 years?
As to gasoline, energy is released because the heat of formation of the products (carbon dioxide and water, mostly) is less than the heat of formation of the reactants (hydrocarbons and oxygen). No energy is created.
Technical skills and expertise are certainly important, but anyone can acquire those skills and certifications. The key to making yourself valuable is to also have the "fuzzier" skills in problem solving, research, and writing* that others ignore.
*You would not believe how bad some business writing is.
Bullshit. Which of the following would you prefer:
1) Being taught Swedish and forced to live in the socialist Scandinavian nightmare that is Sweden.
2) Being taught Somali and forced to live in the libertarian utopia that is Somalia.
In Sweden, you would have to live under oppressive taxation, deal with inferior subsidized housing and healthcare, and have your life and property constantly threatened since you wouldn't have the firearms to defend them. In Somalia, there are no taxes, so you keep 100% of your profits. You'll have the total freedom to choose anything you can afford, with no government interference. And best of all, you'll be totally secure because of all the firearms you'll have and the guards you'll be able to hire.
Of course, this is an asinine choice. No one would choose to live in Somalia. The point is that these Libertarian-types say they want to be free of government regulations, but in reality they just want to keep the regulations that are good for them and get rid of those that would help anyone else. For all their posturing, these folks would not last long in a truly "unstructured society".
That's Marx's complaint about the capitalism. The profit that a corporation makes is the sum of the value added by the labor of workers minus the amount paid out in wages. Each laborer works enough each day to pay for his own wages, but then he works some more to generate profit for the capitalist. Thus, the capitalist appropriates some of the value or product of his employees' labor.
A lot of people seem to think playing WoW a lot is a waste of time, but you know what's worse? Arguing on /. about whether playing WoW a lot is a waste of time.
Microsoft is not evil. They engage in some unfair business practices, and make a lot of pretty mediocre products. To call that evil trivializes truly evil actions, like the ongoing genocide in Sudan. Do people on here even realize how fortunate they are to be able to devote their time to complaining about DRM or IE security holes? How many people have died because of Microsoft? Few, if any. How many people can be saved by things like vaccination programs? Millions. Gates is no saint, but what he's doing is good, and he deserves to be applauded for it.
I don't know what the developmental window is for this process, but at some point, the visual cortex loses its plasticity at some age, and if you haven't developed the appropriate connections by then, the brain will never be able to do so.
There is an analogous phenomenon with language. They occassionally find people who, for a variety of tragic circumstances, never acquired any form of language. If they're under a certain age (12-15, I think), they can be taught and will eventually be able to speak normally. Those who are found after that, though, will never be able to develop normal language skills. They can be taught a sort of rudimentary communication ability, but they never develop a real sense of how language works (they have problems with switching 1st v. 2nd person in conversation, for example, IIRC). Similarly, kids can learn a language to fluency with little trouble up to roughly the same ages (15 is pushing it), since their brains are actively acquiring language, but after that point, the brain loses some of its plasticity and it becomes much more difficult to learn languages.
Wow, that should be..
What matters is where in the brain those signals are directed.
Uh, no. "Image sensors", like eyes, don't produce a signal that is fundamentally different from the signals produced by any other sensory organ. What matters is where in the location in the brain to which those signals are directed. Although I'm not certain, I'd guess that this is why the technique won't work on those who were never able to see - they never developed the necessary neural connections in the brain for vision.
I've been using a totally anonymous card for over a year now. The checker gave me a card and an application, and told me to bring the application back next time. I never did, and no one seems to care.
His derivative-based proof makes no sense. Consider the following:
Parameterize a particle's motion through spacetime as
[t, x(t), y(t), z(t)].
Let a = x(t). Then x^(-1)(a) = t.
Now substitute for t in the original parameterization to get
[x^(-1)(a), a, y(x^(-1)(a)), z(x^(-1)(a))].
Differentiate, and get
[dx^(-1)(a)/da, 1, dy(x^(-1)(a))/da, dz(x^(-1)(a))/da].
Therefore, motion along the x-axis is also impossible. Also, his dismissal of Godel just indicates that, like most people, he has no idea whatsoever what the man actually proved.