I too believe this. Selling the information may enable competitors. Instead they sell ad placements. Or they simply sell clicks.
Correct me if I am wrong: A typical advertiser does not want to know everything about everybody. That is simply not useful to them. If you sell rubber boots, you want your ads placed where prospective rubber boot buyers see them. Determining who they are and how to reach them is a lot of work, that is usually best left to the experts - that is, to a service provider.
Disclaimer: I have never advertised anything, through FB or otherwise, so this is just how I imagine that it works: The vendor provides FB with sufficient information about who the likely respondents are, and FB matches that information with the profiles it keeps about its users and the visitors of each user's pages. That way FB decides on what pages to place ads for the vendor. The vendor does not need to know who owns the pages where the ads were placed. They just get billed for the number of placements, weighted by the number of clicks.
This also implies that FB most likely does not keep every bit of information that passes through their hands. Instead they aggregate the information. Most likely they have some kind of matrix diagonalization process, the outcome of which consists of fairly abstract categories, perhaps something like 10% responsivity, 32% likes-heavy-metal, etc,, rolled into one dimension. A profile then consists of scores along some 900 dimensions like that. Whatever enables the ad placement algorithms.
You forgot to explain a little better how exactly Google "is in China".
First, they are receiving money from Chinese advertisers, in return for placing ads on search pages seen by Chinese people.
Second, China has big, big firewalls.
Third, Google is running data centers inside China.
Google is bending backwards to protect the income mentioned in the first point, This income would be treated if the local data center is closed down, if the firewalls suppress all traffic to Google data centers abroad, and if China outlaws payments to Google.
I do not know if Google earns enough in China to make a huge difference for its owners, but I believe that they have not just bent backwards. They have on some occasion(s) threatened the Chinese with closing down the local data centers, and the Chinese have given in to demands. (Sorry I do not remember enough specifics to look it up for check and references. I think I remember that for some time they were servicing all searches at centers outside China.) That is, Google is, if I recall correctly, weighting the power balance and going as far as they deem wise, to protect, not just the short term money flow, but also their integrity and reputation as a good source of information, also inside China. This is not to say that Google is not censoring search results, just that they are doing at least some fighting too. Also, this is not to say that they are making sacrifices for the good or for freedom of information, but that they appear to have a longer perspective, whereby it becomes harder to distinguish "defending Internet freedom" from "defending future reputation and profitability".
Claim 1: A machine implemented system that facilitates and effectuates accurate communication of health data, comprising:a component that detects a proximity sensor and initiates data interchange with a records manager, the component selectively causes a physicians portal to acquire and display a personal health record associated with a user of the component.
Claim 7: The system of claim 1, the personal health record includes a familial disposition to a disease or an ethnological vulnerability to a particular ailment.
So if this patent is granted, you may still use a sleeve-worn communication device without paying royalties, but only to communicate non-infringing subject matters? Sexual orientation is OK, but familial disposition to disease infringes?
RFID already exists, and implements claim 1 generically, not just for health data. This patent does not claim or describe a particular data format for "accurate communication of health data". It just tries to patent the idea of communicating accurately certain subject matters. In other words, it patents the problem, not the solution. Therefore it patents all solutions, even those not yet invented.
They knew the flow, I am pretty sure. However, just knowing the pressure drop is not enough. You also need to know the cross section area of the narrowest passage, where most of that pressure drop happens. It seems to me like they pretend that they don't know the internal geometry of the BOP, in particular they appear to ignore the position of the blind shear rams that failed to cut the drill string. But they may be right in the end: they may be unsure about the amount of wear taken by the edges of the shear rams. I guess the flow through the narrowest passage along the path is 10-20 meter per second, and it contains sand and grit. The cross section of the passage is rather small (20,000 barrel per day = 36.8 liter per second = 36.8 square cm times 10 m/s). The gap between the rams is likely larger, but partially obstructed by the drill pipe (which is partially severed and so also has a partially unknown geometry) and possibly by pieces of cement and small pebbles. Enough to introduce a high percentage uncertainty in the calculation of the flow from the pressure drop and the geometry.
Another source of uncertainty is the composition of the flow. The well produces a mixture of water, oil, and supercritical gas. The ratio of oil in the total flow also needs to be measured. I guess they just don't want to tell what they know.
On the other hand, they say they pumped up to 80 barrels of mud per minute. Still they were not able to overwhelm the flow. This should indicate that the BOP and riser was letting out a similar amount of fluid (or more). Mud has higher viscosity than oil (I presume; they choose the kind of mud that suits the operation). On the other hand, the pressure below the BOP should become larger when they pump in the mud, but not much larger, just about as much larger as the flow-dependent pressure drops further down the well at the then-current rate of flow, and then some. Given the reported numbers for the reservoir pressure and the pressure below the BOP, and estimating the density of the fluid, there appears not to be room for more than about 1000psi of velocity-dependent pressure drops below the BOP. That is about 1/6 of the pressure drop in the BOP/riser.
Of lately I have Googled for descriptions of how BOP's are constructed. I have found a few verbal descriptions that are useless to me. Does anyone know of a good source? I suppose that the fact that this well is located under a mile of water matters, but I guess it is more important to consider the pressure that needs to be contained.
I have also tried to find a good source for the pressure of the upwelling stuff. Some sources talk about 30-40 thousand PSI. However, it appears to be just an unfounded rumor that is repeated again and again for lack of better source. Another hint I have found is a statement that there is a layer of 11000 foot of granite with density ~2700kg/m^3. Another blogger states its is 18000 foot. The latter blogger may have added, say, 5500 foor water and 11500 foot granite, but I think he was saying it's 18000 foot below the sea floor. Now, the pressure under 11000 foot granite should be (2700kg/m^3)*(g=9.81m/s^2)*(11000 foot) = 88.8 MPa = 12880 psi. I don't know how the pressure can get as high as 40000psi, but perhaps this is possible if part of the oil and gas reservoir is under 33000 foot of granite and communicating with the top part. Is there any better source out there?
In any case, the bop must be anchored so that the oil pressure will not just lift the bop up off the sea floor and tear it off the pipe. How is this done?
Finally, the statement that the causes are not known are just that - statements, and they appear to come from a company that may prefer that the public never gets to know the truth. How comes that a nation so full of "I don't trust government, I don't trust anybody, I want to wear my loaded guns just in case", is so gullible as to accept such statements without requiring that truly and credibly independent bodies do the investigation?
That is the question I too was having. But then I think it is a matter of appeasing the people at the primaries. Since only a tiny fraction of the population show up at the primaries, and that fraction consists of the most rabid conservatives, politicians cannot afford to have anything in their record that displease the rabid conservatives.
The fix is for sensible people to get organized, to identify the sensible candidates and show up at the primaries in numbers. This has to be repeated a couple of terms before the effects accumulate. Sensible politicians must discover that an opportunity has opened up, and other politicians must discover that a new block of voters has appeared, that they need to appease.
Also, in films the good guys have such a wonderfull intuition that proofs are not needed. They just know the bad guys when they see them, and the spectators agree, because the film makers arrange for the bad guys to give themselves away so clearly that even the dumbest of the spectators get it. Half a century ago films and novels often were about how the detective found out. In most modern films it's just about how they get involved in shootouts that make any questions about proofs moot.
It seems like GWBush thought he could behave like a film hero when he thought he knew that Saddam had nuke precursors. Any lack of proof, or any doubts the intelligence guys might have expressed... You know the rest.
You must have made a calculation error when you ended up with 30,000 as the worst case. I get 30,000,000 barrels per day using the same numbers.
The flow, oil volume per unit time equals velocity times cross section. Use cross section C=pi*radius^2, with radius=9". The velocity can be found from the kinetic energy, T=(1/2)*m*v^2, where m=mass of oil=V*rho_oil, where V is a sample volume, and rho_oil is the denisty of oil.
The kinetic energy of the oil as it exits the pipe equals the difference in potential energy when the volume previously occupied by oil below 11,000 foot granite is filled with granite that sinks in over the oil, while the oil rises atop these 11,000 foot granite. This difference in potential energy is
(U_1 - U_0) = V*(rho_granite - rho_oil) * g * h = (1/2)*V*rho_oil*v^2,
where g is the acceleration of gravity, 9.81m/s, h=11,000 foot, and V is the same volume as before. This gives velocity
v = sqrt( g*h*(rho_granite - rho_oil) / rho_oil).
Using rho_oil = 900kg/m^3 and rho_granite = 2700kg/m^3 = 3*rho_oil, I get the velocity almost 363m/s computed with a perl script. This gives almost 60 cubic meters of oil per second, or 32,361,001 barrels per day.
I realize that this calculation grossly underestimates such factors as the viscosity of the oil and the energy of elastic compression of the spongy rock that holds the oil below the granite. It also assumes that the flow is completely unobstructed by the structures in the well and the blow-out preventer.
On the other hand, 5000 barrels per day means 0.0092 cubic meters per second. This volume flowing through a pipe of internal diameter 18" means a flow velocity of 5.6 cm per second. The video shows a flow that is substantially faster. Although I do not have anything that gives a scale comparison, I think it is unlikely that we are seeing a close-up on a flow of just a few millimeters cross secton. I assume that the flow has a diameter of approximately 0.5 m. Then the flow velocity must be several meters per second. A flow velocity of 3m/s gives nearly 268,000 barrels per day.
In a case where a garage door vendor sued a customer for using a different opener than the one delivered by the door vendor, the vendor claimed patents (memory may fail me here, what other kind of IP could it be?) on the specific codes to activate the mechanism. The judge found that one had to assume the customer had bought the permission to use the patent when he bought the door.
I have no obligation to read the instruction manual. Even if I do, I protest against their right to impose such a burden on me as having to return the camera and go buy another. They could have stated the limitation prominently on the packaging, and I could have moved on to the next product on the same trip to town. (Or decided to create an animation rather than a film...)
When I buy a word processor, I can use commercially whatever I write with it. This is a reasonable expectation, even for video cameras.
Is there any antitrust provisions that are violated here, when they get to set so extraordinary conditions?
My Swedish ISP always gave me the same IP, though that was not official.
Then I changed ISP, and got officially a fixed IP at no extra cost. They made it a selling point.
Conversely, if the market allows, ISPs can charge extra for the "right" to run servers, and change your v6 address regularly if you don't pay.
There is another factor here, beyond cosmic rays. The way circuits are produced has a statistical element. The doping process introduces interstitial atoms along the conductive paths, but the density has random fluctuations. Some circuits may be more marginal than others, and it may be hard to discover when some such density fluctuations sit in places where they have effects only in rather special circumstances.
I doubt that Toyotas in different parts of the world are exactly the same. There are always a zillion small differences. The cars are often built in a number of places with a variety of smaller firms delivering parts. Rather, if no similar accidents are happening on other continents, this should indicate what parts to examine.
I think the Der Spiegel article is written in a somewhat condescending style. The writer does not seem particularly knowledgeable.
Then tell us what Maher Arar was tortured for during ten months.
Or what exactly Ahmed Agiza had done to deserve being kidnapped on the street and handed over to the Egyptians.
Kirk says the treaty will be published when it is finished - how long does the public have for filing responses and objections before the treaty becomes law? What possibilities are there for modifications? If the public, or their congressmen, want a modification, must the treaty be renegotiated?
In what ways does ACTA affect national security?
What other nations insist on secrecy for "national security" reasons?
Who would walk away?
Why would they walk away?
Why is that bad?
How is this different from any other international treaty? What other treaties have been negotiated in secrecy and published when "finished"?
IANAL, but this article does not make sense to me.
I do not write, or interpret, the Copyright law. The Parliament, and the courts, respectively, do. The Parliament or whatever you have in your country.
Copyright law disallows certain acts *unless I give permission*.
If an act is not regulated by Copyright law, then the question of my consent does not arise. If an act by its nature is regulated by Copyright law, but the object of the act is a work that is not so related to any work in which I hold rights, as to to require my permission according Copyright law, then the question does not arise. I case of doubt, any court should first determine if my permission is required, then ask if I have given such permission. Only then my answer is the GPL.
The GPL must then be interpreted in light of the question to which it is answering.
The GPL v. 2 contains this passage:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted (...)
This may seem like a contradiction: Does the license permit running the Program? But the whole document is clearly written in non-legalese language, with a long preamble, and many passages that clearly tries to explain to non-lawyers how copyright law works. What here is expressed is that the law, as the author of the license knew it at the time, did not require permission for the running of the program. This is of course unfortunate, as there are different laws in different countries. However, the GPL also says
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.
If any act requires permission from a copyright holder, and the text of the GPL forgets to give that permission, this is not a disaster. The copyright holders can always issue additional permissions later. In any case, permission is not given in the GPL in such cases.
I am not denying the virtues of clear unambiguous licenses. But courts routinely interpret contracts and agreements written by laypersons. Courts are supposed to estimate the intentions of the parties, and whether they have made reasonable efforts to communicate their intentions to the other party, and made reasonable efforts to understand the other party's intentions. No party shall be bound by conditions that he reasonably remained unaware of when he entered into the contract.
Underlying this is the understanding that an agreement is an attempt by two or more parties to establish a cooperation to mutual benefit. While standards may vary in different regions as to the extent of the obligation of the parties to actually read the small print -- that is, receive the communications from the other party about his intentions, or conversely the extent of the obligation to communicate your conditions with clarity, in no region is the entering into an agreement seen as a challenge to the other party to "game me if you can".
In the case of the GPL, the intention of the person who chooses the GPL for his work transpires with clarity from the whole document. The long preamble helps setting the context. It transpires that the copyright holder wish to initiate a commons, to which others may contribute, or to contribute to an existing one. In no statement of the GPL is it expressed any consent, supposing such consent is required, to contribute in any way to anything that is not itself in such a commons.
If I recall correctly from reading the code a few years ago, Gtk text widgets also use pointers and character ranges stored separately (in addition to some inline markup). However, this is in memory only, not in files. Tcl/Tk also has it.
As to using the same description for multiple documents, this fits the IP and TCP headers. Every IP header has a ttl field in a fixed position. Most programs that handle IP datagrams have the offsets hard-coded, while this patent is about looking up the offsets in a list. Now, what about protocol analyzers, don't they have the header layouts descriptions in separate files? There are endless examples of use of exactly the same techniques for analogous purposes. A compiler produces files containing sections, some of which have symbol tables and pointers into other sections. Linkers process such tables and edit the jump addresses in the code. The only real difference is the terminology. There are symbol tables, not "metacode storage means".
I have not read the whole patent, mostly because it is in an incomprensible language. (What means "mapped content distinct storage means"? Is it just a notepad style file with all markup removed, into which the pointers point? If so, what is "raw content distinct storage means"? In any case, how can they patent a straight file with completely unspecific contents?)
Yet it seems like a very simple recipe of things that have been done for ages. For instance, they claim a patent on stepping through a text taking note of where the markup is, while compacting the text removing the markup. They also patent the inverse process, inserting markup in positions specified in a list. They even patent the idea of showing the list of markup tags in a menu. Lists have been around since the invention of writing some 6000 years ago.
When every part of the patent is indistinguishable from long established practice, I suppose it must be the particular combination that is patented. How can anyone know when the limit is overstepped?
No! If you sell a license, you cannot just revoke it. That is breaking the contract implied by the sale. You received money for the license.
Everyone here repeats that stolen goods can be taken back, but that is also not so simple. You have to go through the courts for that.
The issue almost everyone here fail to mention is that people have a right to control their own lives. No-one can sell you a house and then a few years down the road change his mind and reverse the transaction, refund or not. That would mean people could never know what they can count with. This taking back of a book is a less severe intrusion, but still an intrusion into the lives of the buyers. In a state of law, everyone has a right to contradict statements. You may not agree that you have to give the book back. When there is a dispute, the courts, not raw power should decide.
There are also contradicting informations here as to the basis for the "reversal". Some say Amazon did not have the right to sell the book in the first place, others say they had but caved to demands from the publisher, who allegedly changed their mind. No-one has given any source, that I have seen.
But even if the book was sold in violation of copyright law, the normal result would be that the publisher sued Amazon and Amazon had to compensate the publisher, not that Amazon could reverse the sales.
Lastly, people are repeating that since the work is licensed, not sold, they can terminate the license. But the eula that has been posted here does not have any provisions for termination. Rather, it says explicitly right to keep a "permanent copy" on the device. While people find the language hard to understand and assume that the ambiguity must work to the benefit of Amazon, there is no basis for that assumption. A license is a permission. Permission to what? To keep a permanent copy. The final statement, "licensed to you by Amazon unless expressly provided otherwise" or similar, specifies who are the parties to the deal, not that the deal is retractable. It may be an attempt to prohibit you from transferring your rights to somebody else, in contravention of the first-sale doctrine. This attempt may or may not stand in court, as similar provisions have been struck down before, but not consistently.
Why do so many people think that "void * a = b->c" dereferences b? It takes the address of c in b and assigns it to a. It's only doing a pointer calculation: assigning an address of something to a pointer, it's not accessing any memory
This is wrong. The code computes the address of 'b->c', reads that memory location, and stores the data it gets, into 'a'.
The comment would have been correct if the code had been "void *a = &b->c;" In this case only the address of 'b->c' (which amounts to adding an offset to the contents of variable 'b') would have been loaded into variable 'a'. As it stands, the data stored in memory at that address is loaded into 'a'. The fact that 'a' is declared as a pointer does not change that. That only means that the data loaded from memory is assumed to be a valid pointer value (or NULL). This has the effect of determining how many bytes of register or stack space is used for the 'a' variable, 4 on 32-bit, 8 on 64-bit. The type declaration of the 'c' member of the 'typeof(*b)' struct determines how many bytes are read from memory.
Slashdot Mirror
I too believe this. Selling the information may enable competitors. Instead they sell ad placements. Or they simply sell clicks.
Correct me if I am wrong: A typical advertiser does not want to know everything about everybody. That is simply not useful to them. If you sell rubber boots, you want your ads placed where prospective rubber boot buyers see them. Determining who they are and how to reach them is a lot of work, that is usually best left to the experts - that is, to a service provider.
Disclaimer: I have never advertised anything, through FB or otherwise, so this is just how I imagine that it works: The vendor provides FB with sufficient information about who the likely respondents are, and FB matches that information with the profiles it keeps about its users and the visitors of each user's pages. That way FB decides on what pages to place ads for the vendor. The vendor does not need to know who owns the pages where the ads were placed. They just get billed for the number of placements, weighted by the number of clicks.
This also implies that FB most likely does not keep every bit of information that passes through their hands. Instead they aggregate the information. Most likely they have some kind of matrix diagonalization process, the outcome of which consists of fairly abstract categories, perhaps something like 10% responsivity, 32% likes-heavy-metal, etc,, rolled into one dimension. A profile then consists of scores along some 900 dimensions like that. Whatever enables the ad placement algorithms.
You forgot to explain a little better how exactly Google "is in China".
First, they are receiving money from Chinese advertisers, in return for placing ads on search pages seen by Chinese people.
Second, China has big, big firewalls.
Third, Google is running data centers inside China.
Google is bending backwards to protect the income mentioned in the first point, This income would be treated if the local data center is closed down, if the firewalls suppress all traffic to Google data centers abroad, and if China outlaws payments to Google.
I do not know if Google earns enough in China to make a huge difference for its owners, but I believe that they have not just bent backwards. They have on some occasion(s) threatened the Chinese with closing down the local data centers, and the Chinese have given in to demands. (Sorry I do not remember enough specifics to look it up for check and references. I think I remember that for some time they were servicing all searches at centers outside China.) That is, Google is, if I recall correctly, weighting the power balance and going as far as they deem wise, to protect, not just the short term money flow, but also their integrity and reputation as a good source of information, also inside China. This is not to say that Google is not censoring search results, just that they are doing at least some fighting too. Also, this is not to say that they are making sacrifices for the good or for freedom of information, but that they appear to have a longer perspective, whereby it becomes harder to distinguish "defending Internet freedom" from "defending future reputation and profitability".
So if this patent is granted, you may still use a sleeve-worn communication device without paying royalties, but only to communicate non-infringing subject matters? Sexual orientation is OK, but familial disposition to disease infringes? RFID already exists, and implements claim 1 generically, not just for health data. This patent does not claim or describe a particular data format for "accurate communication of health data". It just tries to patent the idea of communicating accurately certain subject matters. In other words, it patents the problem, not the solution. Therefore it patents all solutions, even those not yet invented.
And hold no f**king trials. (Environment) terrorists don't deserve trials. (Paraphrasing Rumsfeld)
They knew the flow, I am pretty sure. However, just knowing the pressure drop is not enough. You also need to know the cross section area of the narrowest passage, where most of that pressure drop happens. It seems to me like they pretend that they don't know the internal geometry of the BOP, in particular they appear to ignore the position of the blind shear rams that failed to cut the drill string. But they may be right in the end: they may be unsure about the amount of wear taken by the edges of the shear rams. I guess the flow through the narrowest passage along the path is 10-20 meter per second, and it contains sand and grit. The cross section of the passage is rather small (20,000 barrel per day = 36.8 liter per second = 36.8 square cm times 10 m/s). The gap between the rams is likely larger, but partially obstructed by the drill pipe (which is partially severed and so also has a partially unknown geometry) and possibly by pieces of cement and small pebbles. Enough to introduce a high percentage uncertainty in the calculation of the flow from the pressure drop and the geometry.
Another source of uncertainty is the composition of the flow. The well produces a mixture of water, oil, and supercritical gas. The ratio of oil in the total flow also needs to be measured. I guess they just don't want to tell what they know.
On the other hand, they say they pumped up to 80 barrels of mud per minute. Still they were not able to overwhelm the flow. This should indicate that the BOP and riser was letting out a similar amount of fluid (or more). Mud has higher viscosity than oil (I presume; they choose the kind of mud that suits the operation). On the other hand, the pressure below the BOP should become larger when they pump in the mud, but not much larger, just about as much larger as the flow-dependent pressure drops further down the well at the then-current rate of flow, and then some. Given the reported numbers for the reservoir pressure and the pressure below the BOP, and estimating the density of the fluid, there appears not to be room for more than about 1000psi of velocity-dependent pressure drops below the BOP. That is about 1/6 of the pressure drop in the BOP/riser.
80 barrels per minute = 115,200 barrels per day.
Nice try, but actually, people will pay for bandwidth AND copyright (contents) when that becomes possible and affordable.
Of lately I have Googled for descriptions of how BOP's are constructed. I have found a few verbal descriptions that are useless to me. Does anyone know of a good source? I suppose that the fact that this well is located under a mile of water matters, but I guess it is more important to consider the pressure that needs to be contained.
I have also tried to find a good source for the pressure of the upwelling stuff. Some sources talk about 30-40 thousand PSI. However, it appears to be just an unfounded rumor that is repeated again and again for lack of better source. Another hint I have found is a statement that there is a layer of 11000 foot of granite with density ~2700kg/m^3. Another blogger states its is 18000 foot. The latter blogger may have added, say, 5500 foor water and 11500 foot granite, but I think he was saying it's 18000 foot below the sea floor. Now, the pressure under 11000 foot granite should be (2700kg/m^3)*(g=9.81m/s^2)*(11000 foot) = 88.8 MPa = 12880 psi. I don't know how the pressure can get as high as 40000psi, but perhaps this is possible if part of the oil and gas reservoir is under 33000 foot of granite and communicating with the top part. Is there any better source out there?
In any case, the bop must be anchored so that the oil pressure will not just lift the bop up off the sea floor and tear it off the pipe. How is this done?
Finally, the statement that the causes are not known are just that - statements, and they appear to come from a company that may prefer that the public never gets to know the truth. How comes that a nation so full of "I don't trust government, I don't trust anybody, I want to wear my loaded guns just in case", is so gullible as to accept such statements without requiring that truly and credibly independent bodies do the investigation?
That is the question I too was having. But then I think it is a matter of appeasing the people at the primaries. Since only a tiny fraction of the population show up at the primaries, and that fraction consists of the most rabid conservatives, politicians cannot afford to have anything in their record that displease the rabid conservatives.
The fix is for sensible people to get organized, to identify the sensible candidates and show up at the primaries in numbers. This has to be repeated a couple of terms before the effects accumulate. Sensible politicians must discover that an opportunity has opened up, and other politicians must discover that a new block of voters has appeared, that they need to appease.
Also, in films the good guys have such a wonderfull intuition that proofs are not needed. They just know the bad guys when they see them, and the spectators agree, because the film makers arrange for the bad guys to give themselves away so clearly that even the dumbest of the spectators get it. Half a century ago films and novels often were about how the detective found out. In most modern films it's just about how they get involved in shootouts that make any questions about proofs moot.
It seems like GWBush thought he could behave like a film hero when he thought he knew that Saddam had nuke precursors. Any lack of proof, or any doubts the intelligence guys might have expressed... You know the rest.
The flow, oil volume per unit time equals velocity times cross section. Use cross section C=pi*radius^2, with radius=9". The velocity can be found from the kinetic energy, T=(1/2)*m*v^2, where m=mass of oil=V*rho_oil, where V is a sample volume, and rho_oil is the denisty of oil.
The kinetic energy of the oil as it exits the pipe equals the difference in potential energy when the volume previously occupied by oil below 11,000 foot granite is filled with granite that sinks in over the oil, while the oil rises atop these 11,000 foot granite. This difference in potential energy is
where g is the acceleration of gravity, 9.81m/s, h=11,000 foot, and V is the same volume as before. This gives velocity
Using rho_oil = 900kg/m^3 and rho_granite = 2700kg/m^3 = 3*rho_oil, I get the velocity almost 363m/s computed with a perl script. This gives almost 60 cubic meters of oil per second, or 32,361,001 barrels per day.
I realize that this calculation grossly underestimates such factors as the viscosity of the oil and the energy of elastic compression of the spongy rock that holds the oil below the granite. It also assumes that the flow is completely unobstructed by the structures in the well and the blow-out preventer.
On the other hand, 5000 barrels per day means 0.0092 cubic meters per second. This volume flowing through a pipe of internal diameter 18" means a flow velocity of 5.6 cm per second. The video shows a flow that is substantially faster. Although I do not have anything that gives a scale comparison, I think it is unlikely that we are seeing a close-up on a flow of just a few millimeters cross secton. I assume that the flow has a diameter of approximately 0.5 m. Then the flow velocity must be several meters per second. A flow velocity of 3m/s gives nearly 268,000 barrels per day.
In a case where a garage door vendor sued a customer for using a different opener than the one delivered by the door vendor, the vendor claimed patents (memory may fail me here, what other kind of IP could it be?) on the specific codes to activate the mechanism. The judge found that one had to assume the customer had bought the permission to use the patent when he bought the door.
I have no obligation to read the instruction manual. Even if I do, I protest against their right to impose such a burden on me as having to return the camera and go buy another. They could have stated the limitation prominently on the packaging, and I could have moved on to the next product on the same trip to town. (Or decided to create an animation rather than a film...)
When I buy a word processor, I can use commercially whatever I write with it. This is a reasonable expectation, even for video cameras.
Is there any antitrust provisions that are violated here, when they get to set so extraordinary conditions?
More specifically, our history of respecting treaties with weaker parties... ref the American Indians.
What will the v4 hosts put in the destination address fields?
My Swedish ISP always gave me the same IP, though that was not official. Then I changed ISP, and got officially a fixed IP at no extra cost. They made it a selling point.
Conversely, if the market allows, ISPs can charge extra for the "right" to run servers, and change your v6 address regularly if you don't pay.
"It's the market, Stupid!"
Government that knowingly hold innocent people as prisoners and tortures them in prison for eight (8) years
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NASA works in metric too.
There is another factor here, beyond cosmic rays. The way circuits are produced has a statistical element. The doping process introduces interstitial atoms along the conductive paths, but the density has random fluctuations. Some circuits may be more marginal than others, and it may be hard to discover when some such density fluctuations sit in places where they have effects only in rather special circumstances.
I doubt that Toyotas in different parts of the world are exactly the same. There are always a zillion small differences. The cars are often built in a number of places with a variety of smaller firms delivering parts. Rather, if no similar accidents are happening on other continents, this should indicate what parts to examine.
I think the Der Spiegel article is written in a somewhat condescending style. The writer does not seem particularly knowledgeable.
Then tell us what Maher Arar was tortured for during ten months. Or what exactly Ahmed Agiza had done to deserve being kidnapped on the street and handed over to the Egyptians.
Kirk says the treaty will be published when it is finished - how long does the public have for filing responses and objections before the treaty becomes law? What possibilities are there for modifications? If the public, or their congressmen, want a modification, must the treaty be renegotiated? In what ways does ACTA affect national security? What other nations insist on secrecy for "national security" reasons? Who would walk away? Why would they walk away? Why is that bad? How is this different from any other international treaty? What other treaties have been negotiated in secrecy and published when "finished"?
I do not write, or interpret, the Copyright law. The Parliament, and the courts, respectively, do. The Parliament or whatever you have in your country.
Copyright law disallows certain acts *unless I give permission*.
If an act is not regulated by Copyright law, then the question of my consent does not arise. If an act by its nature is regulated by Copyright law, but the object of the act is a work that is not so related to any work in which I hold rights, as to to require my permission according Copyright law, then the question does not arise. I case of doubt, any court should first determine if my permission is required, then ask if I have given such permission. Only then my answer is the GPL.
The GPL must then be interpreted in light of the question to which it is answering.
The GPL v. 2 contains this passage:
This may seem like a contradiction: Does the license permit running the Program? But the whole document is clearly written in non-legalese language, with a long preamble, and many passages that clearly tries to explain to non-lawyers how copyright law works. What here is expressed is that the law, as the author of the license knew it at the time, did not require permission for the running of the program. This is of course unfortunate, as there are different laws in different countries. However, the GPL also says
If any act requires permission from a copyright holder, and the text of the GPL forgets to give that permission, this is not a disaster. The copyright holders can always issue additional permissions later. In any case, permission is not given in the GPL in such cases.
I am not denying the virtues of clear unambiguous licenses. But courts routinely interpret contracts and agreements written by laypersons. Courts are supposed to estimate the intentions of the parties, and whether they have made reasonable efforts to communicate their intentions to the other party, and made reasonable efforts to understand the other party's intentions. No party shall be bound by conditions that he reasonably remained unaware of when he entered into the contract.
Underlying this is the understanding that an agreement is an attempt by two or more parties to establish a cooperation to mutual benefit. While standards may vary in different regions as to the extent of the obligation of the parties to actually read the small print -- that is, receive the communications from the other party about his intentions, or conversely the extent of the obligation to communicate your conditions with clarity, in no region is the entering into an agreement seen as a challenge to the other party to "game me if you can".
In the case of the GPL, the intention of the person who chooses the GPL for his work transpires with clarity from the whole document. The long preamble helps setting the context. It transpires that the copyright holder wish to initiate a commons, to which others may contribute, or to contribute to an existing one. In no statement of the GPL is it expressed any consent, supposing such consent is required, to contribute in any way to anything that is not itself in such a commons.
If I recall correctly from reading the code a few years ago, Gtk text widgets also use pointers and character ranges stored separately (in addition to some inline markup). However, this is in memory only, not in files. Tcl/Tk also has it.
As to using the same description for multiple documents, this fits the IP and TCP headers. Every IP header has a ttl field in a fixed position. Most programs that handle IP datagrams have the offsets hard-coded, while this patent is about looking up the offsets in a list. Now, what about protocol analyzers, don't they have the header layouts descriptions in separate files? There are endless examples of use of exactly the same techniques for analogous purposes. A compiler produces files containing sections, some of which have symbol tables and pointers into other sections. Linkers process such tables and edit the jump addresses in the code. The only real difference is the terminology. There are symbol tables, not "metacode storage means".
I have not read the whole patent, mostly because it is in an incomprensible language. (What means "mapped content distinct storage means"? Is it just a notepad style file with all markup removed, into which the pointers point? If so, what is "raw content distinct storage means"? In any case, how can they patent a straight file with completely unspecific contents?)
Yet it seems like a very simple recipe of things that have been done for ages. For instance, they claim a patent on stepping through a text taking note of where the markup is, while compacting the text removing the markup. They also patent the inverse process, inserting markup in positions specified in a list. They even patent the idea of showing the list of markup tags in a menu. Lists have been around since the invention of writing some 6000 years ago.
When every part of the patent is indistinguishable from long established practice, I suppose it must be the particular combination that is patented. How can anyone know when the limit is overstepped?
No! If you sell a license, you cannot just revoke it. That is breaking the contract implied by the sale. You received money for the license.
Everyone here repeats that stolen goods can be taken back, but that is also not so simple. You have to go through the courts for that.
The issue almost everyone here fail to mention is that people have a right to control their own lives. No-one can sell you a house and then a few years down the road change his mind and reverse the transaction, refund or not. That would mean people could never know what they can count with. This taking back of a book is a less severe intrusion, but still an intrusion into the lives of the buyers. In a state of law, everyone has a right to contradict statements. You may not agree that you have to give the book back. When there is a dispute, the courts, not raw power should decide.
There are also contradicting informations here as to the basis for the "reversal". Some say Amazon did not have the right to sell the book in the first place, others say they had but caved to demands from the publisher, who allegedly changed their mind. No-one has given any source, that I have seen.
But even if the book was sold in violation of copyright law, the normal result would be that the publisher sued Amazon and Amazon had to compensate the publisher, not that Amazon could reverse the sales.
Lastly, people are repeating that since the work is licensed, not sold, they can terminate the license. But the eula that has been posted here does not have any provisions for termination. Rather, it says explicitly right to keep a "permanent copy" on the device. While people find the language hard to understand and assume that the ambiguity must work to the benefit of Amazon, there is no basis for that assumption. A license is a permission. Permission to what? To keep a permanent copy. The final statement, "licensed to you by Amazon unless expressly provided otherwise" or similar, specifies who are the parties to the deal, not that the deal is retractable. It may be an attempt to prohibit you from transferring your rights to somebody else, in contravention of the first-sale doctrine. This attempt may or may not stand in court, as similar provisions have been struck down before, but not consistently.
IANAL.
Why do so many people think that "void * a = b->c" dereferences b? It takes the address of c in b and assigns it to a. It's only doing a pointer calculation: assigning an address of something to a pointer, it's not accessing any memory
This is wrong. The code computes the address of 'b->c', reads that memory location, and stores the data it gets, into 'a'.
The comment would have been correct if the code had been "void *a = &b->c;" In this case only the address of 'b->c' (which amounts to adding an offset to the contents of variable 'b') would have been loaded into variable 'a'. As it stands, the data stored in memory at that address is loaded into 'a'. The fact that 'a' is declared as a pointer does not change that. That only means that the data loaded from memory is assumed to be a valid pointer value (or NULL). This has the effect of determining how many bytes of register or stack space is used for the 'a' variable, 4 on 32-bit, 8 on 64-bit. The type declaration of the 'c' member of the 'typeof(*b)' struct determines how many bytes are read from memory.
Vista has a command-line ftp client. You can download the Firefox installer with it.