Don't know if it's a fraud or not, but there is an easy way to tell. If it comes incorporated into your new Honda, then it's for real. If they try to sell it to you as a DIY kit, it's a fraud. The car industry is competitive enough that it would kill for a 3% increase in MPG, let alone more than 10%.
Can't mod you up because I've posted in this discussion... My car emits 126 gram of CO2 per kilometer. 2 grams less, and my car tax would go down from £115 per year to £35 per year. Over ten years, that would save me £800. I expect that car to use about 14,000 litres of diesel over its life time. 16% of that is > 2,000 litres, about £2,500 at current prices. So the same car with 16% better fuel consumption would be worth £3,000 more today and the difference will only be going up in the future. The only problem is, they'd have to achieve this in the official fuel tests. So if this would work and could be done for £1000 to £2000 car, it would be used in cars.
Don't get me wrong, I would love this device to really work... But we don't need a magic wand, we need to look at why Europe can have 65MPG Ford (yes, the same Ford that has given us 15 years of single-digit MPG tanks) diesel hybrids, while we piss and moan in the US about whether to rase CAFE standards to a "competitively unfair" 35MPG.
Just be careful when you compare US and UK miles per gallon. UK gallons are about 20 percent larger than US gallons. A car that does 50 mpg with US gallons would do about 60 mpg with British gallons.
Half the problem with these magic devices is that people with these fitted will drive more conservatively etc - measuring people changes the way they behave.
Half the reason my new fuel efficient car gets better mileage is because it has a fuel efficiency measurement and I try to improve it. Result: I drive differently than I do in the other car
Doesn't that mean you should buy one for Christmas for each friend of yours who is really gullible, install it in their cars, show them all the fake scientific evidence, and they save a lot of fuel?
I guess no one remembers Apple's "working 80 hours a week and loving it" t-shirts?
I've seen one of these t-shirts, and you've got the number wrong. Personally, I like a quote from a Microsoft manager who wrote in a book: "You can make people stay at work 80 hours a week, but you can't make them work more than 40 hours a week".
The iPhone does allow Ad Hoc install of an Application to 100 phones for the purpose of beta testing apps. Podcaster is using this to sell the App outside Apple's control. I can't imagine that Apple will allow this to continue. They simply have to throw the kill switch on the App and it will vaporize from the phone, and since the purchaser bought the App outside of the App store, they will have no recourse. Apple does not allow local install of Apps. Ad Hoc and the App store are the only games in town.
I think some web site showed Apple's actual rejection letter for Podcaster and that letter _did suggest_ that the "ad hoc" installation method could be used to sell the application. What you suggest would change things from "Apple doesn't help you selling" to "Apple prevents you from selling" which might make a significant legal difference.
The article says among other things: The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers.
I must say that I sincerely doubt that older drivers have any reduction in reaction time.
There are various flaws with this line of thinking. First of all, most media market strategies rely on selling the media at a certain price initially, and then dropping the price over time. It's entirely possible that a hypothetical person might never be willing to pay $50 for game, so they pirate it, rationalizing it using the above method. Later on, the game drops to $20. The person might have been willing to pay $20, but now that they've already played the game, they probably won't.
Let's say a game is sold for $50, and a person wants this game, and seriously cannot afford to pay more than $20. That person could reasonably do three things: A. Not play the game. B. Get a copy from a friend and play that copy for free. C. Get a copy from a friend and play that copy, send a letter with $20 dollar explaining the situation to the games manufacturer. What do you think how many letters like this do game manufacturers receive? Or how many does Microsoft receive?
A game costs roughly $60.00. For each act of infringement, Activision wants, at the very least, 50000% of the initial price, or at the most, 250000% of the initial price. How is it even legal to demand that much? I truly don't understand our legal system.
Making an arbitrary number of copies of game 1 = one act of infringement. Making an arbitrary number of copies of game 2 = another act of infringement. If Activision believes the damage is more than $150,000, then they have to go for actual damages.
But wouldn't an excessive punishment run afoul of constitutional protections in numerous developed countries? For example, in the United States (home of Slashdot), the Eighth Amendment bans "excessive fines [from being] imposed", and the English Bill of Rights has nearly identical language.
It would be a bit stupid if the worst case that an offender would face would be to give up his gains. Not getting caught = keep the money, getting caught = don't keep it. There would be no reason not to offend. Clearly the offender must lose something if he is caught, and should lose a lot if only few offenders get caught.
Can rejected patent application be used as a precedent during patent trial case?
You can even be convicted of patent infringement for doing things that you have patented yourself, if someone else managed to get a patent for the same thing (either before you or after you).
If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot [wikimedia.org] when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).
I would have thought that if a police department creates a website, the intention is that as many people as possible would find it and access the information on it. So they should be glad if someone links to it.
The same turbo 4 gets 263 hp if it runs on regular gas. That's one reason the US hasn't fallen in love with underpowered, stinky diesels yet. Maybe if gas were heading towards $5 a gallon instead of back to $3 a gallon, diesels might gain some traction.
I would encourage you to have a look at a chart of torque and horse power vs. revs and compare the graphs for a diesel engine and a petrol engine. A diesel engine with a third less horse powers will have better acceleration as long as you go at any reasonable speed (any speed where the cops would let you keep your license).
Wired is running the same story, but with a $121 Million price tag
Best Buy is paying $121 million. However, Napster has about $67 million cash and short term investments, and since Best Buy buys the whole, complete company, they will aquire these $67 million as well, so their actual cost is only $54 million.
So Apple has applied for a patent that allows it to create connections that only work between one kind of player and one kind of shoe. When the patent is granted, Microsoft won't be able to build a connection that only works between a Zune and an Adidas shoe. They still can build connections between Zune and Adidas, or Zune and Nike, or iPod and Nike, they just can't make a connection that works only between one combination.
So Apple has a patent how to make a product less valuable for customers. So they are voluntarily giving advantages to their competitors. Why should we care about that?
AFAICT, you would not need a license for that even. You would only need a license if you wished to present that information in court as an expert witness.
My understanding - and anyone is welcome to correct it - is this:
If I connect to say Kazaa and look what songs people's computers are advertising, just because I am curious, that is fine and requires no license.
If I am a musician, and connect to Kazaa to see whether people's computers are advertising _my_ songs, and then I sue them, that is fine and requires no license.
If I accept payment to connect to Kazaa and look what songs people's computers are advertising, and I present these observations in court, then I need a license.
Which would make this companies argument completely wrong: The same activities can be completely legal when done for one purpose, and require a private investigator's license when done for another purpose.
To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for.
Let's see: Air. The view of a lovely landscape. The love of your parents. Or your children. Birthday presents. Your school education.
Or a bailiff taking a debtor's possessions. Policeman confiscating drugs, weapons, blood-stained clothes.
To most people, all of these are "taking things you didn't pay for", but none of them are theft.
They are honestly going to let Scientology get away with this bollocks? Wow. That sucks. It'd be funny to finally see themselves sucker punch their own faces by trying.
Nobody knows if this was done by official Scientology, by some scientologist who got carried away, or by some prankster who thought it would be fun. No matter who it was, the DMCA act states very clearly that claiming that you are acting for the copyright holder when you are not is _perjury_. Which is quite a serious matter. Which needs to be multiplied by 4000. Which means whoever did this needs to be caught and thrown into jail to discourage any repeats of this.
Imagine he or she gets away with it, and next week 8000 videos about flower arranging get a DMCA takedown notice. Which would be even more disruptive, because people putting up those videos probably have less experience handling such a situation.
Here's what I don't understand : what does it have to do with the iPod, shouldn't every other digital music player be equally affected, the patent slipped in the public in 1988, so why on Earth is that guy getting compensated by Apple??
Apple was being sued by Burst for infringing on some of their patents; this guy's patents were prior art and saved Apple lots of money. According to the real article, it seems that Apple may have agreed to pay him an unknown amount of money for the copyrights on his original designs and drawings; not because these drawings are of any value anymore, but because he saved the company a lot of money.
So I looked on their website, turned out what they called "unlimited" was 5 MEGABYTES
I think it would be sensible to have laws that say: If you are offered "unlimited" anything, then they cannot charge you for exceeding that limit. In this case, it should be _possibly_ Ok to cancel your contract if you exceed 5MB, or to stop downloads from working, but they should never be able to charge you more money than the 5 that you quoted.
And what is stopping you from negotiating your own terms? As far as I know, this is physically possible and even legal.
If you are anywhere in Europe, don't. If you find the terms in a contract unacceptable, they will most likely be unenforceable in a non-negotiated contract, and consumer laws will cover your ass. If you negotiated the terms, you are on your own.
You can get unlimited plans but they cost more money. I think what you want is an unlimited everything, worldwide plan for $20. I would like bread to cost a dime. I do not see that happening.
I don't think that is what anyone is asking for. Reasonable charges is what I would be asking for. Let's say you have an iPhone with a contract in the USA and you take it to France. I'd say a _reasonable_ charge would be the same monthly charge as a French customer would have paid on top of your normal US charge. And an alert popping up before you start getting charged informing you of the situation and giving you the choice of accepting the fees or not using the phone. Or lets say I have a data plan costing £20 per month for up to 3GB. Now if I got charged another £20 if I exceed the limit (with a new limit of 6GB), that would be reasonable. But charging £1 per Megabyte = £3,000 for the next 3GB, that is entirely unreasonable.
The UK system sounds better than the US system (at least with respect to bill sizes), but I'm guessing it has fine print too. The guy I was responding to specifically blamed the problem on the "fine print" in the contract being too confusing. If people are really saying "This is too complicated, I'll just agree to it and hope things turn out 'okay'," then there's a larger problem than some family gettting a big phone bill.
If you use a mobile phone just for making phone calls, using your phone abroad is on the expensive side, but not horribly so. Of course if you lie on the beach in Spain for hours and instead of talking to the other people on the beach you have to talk to your folks at home, you get what you deserve. And people who take their phone with them for emergencies only need to be aware that they have to switch the phone off before leaving the country, or it will cost.
However, with data rates the situation is awful and ridiculous. I can get a data stick that gives me 3GB per month at a reasonable price. If you exceed the 3GB per month, the cost is just ridiculous. If you use it abroad, the cost is equally ridiculous. I have no idea whether the phone companies can force you to pay these bills, but I don't intend to find out. They can keep their data sticks.
I noticed they claim 1,000,000+ h MTBF, but they only warranty for less than 10,000 h (or 20,000 in some cases). What makes you wonder why they have so little faith in their product (or in their own reliability estimate).
You need not wonder. The disks have a limited life time - like the brakes on your car, or the tyres, they will wear out eventually, and then you have to replace them. Nothing you can do about that. But that is not the same as "failures". A "failure" happens when your tyre blows after only 10,000 miles of normal use. Let's say a tyre is worn out after 800 hours of normal use. And one in thousand tyres has a failure before it is worn out, then you have 800,000 hours MTBF but only 800 hours life time.
Companies over here love Direct Debits. Every bill comes with a 'why not pay by Direct Debit?' leaflet. Sadly there's no tick box for "I really don't trust you". Stories of epic fails with DDs are legion - an extra zero on the bill makes the person go overdrawn, they get a bad credit record, they lose their house, they kill all their family and so on. I exaggerate. Slightly.
Direct debit is harmless. If they take too much you call your bank and they sort it. If any scumbags manage to talk you into a direct debit, and you want to cancel it, you call your bank, and it is cancelled. They can't get your money anymore. Legitimate companies actually use this as a very simple way to cancel contracts. You have a subscription, or an insurance, that is paid by direct debit, all you need to do to cancel the subscription or insurance is cancel the direct debit. And yes, you do exaggerate. Any problems with Direct Debit will be sorted easily.
If you give anyone access to your credit card on the other hand, you can get into deep shit. There is no way short of going to court and getting a court order to force a company to cancel their access to your credit card.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know if it's a fraud or not, but there is an easy way to tell. If it comes incorporated into your new Honda, then it's for real. If they try to sell it to you as a DIY kit, it's a fraud. The car industry is competitive enough that it would kill for a 3% increase in MPG, let alone more than 10%.
Can't mod you up because I've posted in this discussion... My car emits 126 gram of CO2 per kilometer. 2 grams less, and my car tax would go down from £115 per year to £35 per year. Over ten years, that would save me £800. I expect that car to use about 14,000 litres of diesel over its life time. 16% of that is > 2,000 litres, about £2,500 at current prices. So the same car with 16% better fuel consumption would be worth £3,000 more today and the difference will only be going up in the future. The only problem is, they'd have to achieve this in the official fuel tests. So if this would work and could be done for £1000 to £2000 car, it would be used in cars.
Don't get me wrong, I would love this device to really work... But we don't need a magic wand, we need to look at why Europe can have 65MPG Ford (yes, the same Ford that has given us 15 years of single-digit MPG tanks) diesel hybrids, while we piss and moan in the US about whether to rase CAFE standards to a "competitively unfair" 35MPG.
Just be careful when you compare US and UK miles per gallon. UK gallons are about 20 percent larger than US gallons. A car that does 50 mpg with US gallons would do about 60 mpg with British gallons.
Half the problem with these magic devices is that people with these fitted will drive more conservatively etc - measuring people changes the way they behave. Half the reason my new fuel efficient car gets better mileage is because it has a fuel efficiency measurement and I try to improve it. Result: I drive differently than I do in the other car
Doesn't that mean you should buy one for Christmas for each friend of yours who is really gullible, install it in their cars, show them all the fake scientific evidence, and they save a lot of fuel?
I guess no one remembers Apple's "working 80 hours a week and loving it" t-shirts?
I've seen one of these t-shirts, and you've got the number wrong. Personally, I like a quote from a Microsoft manager who wrote in a book: "You can make people stay at work 80 hours a week, but you can't make them work more than 40 hours a week".
Laptops are the worst. Users treat them like personal property rather than company property and inevitably they get thrashed.
That is strange. You would think they would last longer if users treat them like their personal property.
The iPhone does allow Ad Hoc install of an Application to 100 phones for the purpose of beta testing apps. Podcaster is using this to sell the App outside Apple's control. I can't imagine that Apple will allow this to continue. They simply have to throw the kill switch on the App and it will vaporize from the phone, and since the purchaser bought the App outside of the App store, they will have no recourse. Apple does not allow local install of Apps. Ad Hoc and the App store are the only games in town.
I think some web site showed Apple's actual rejection letter for Podcaster and that letter _did suggest_ that the "ad hoc" installation method could be used to sell the application. What you suggest would change things from "Apple doesn't help you selling" to "Apple prevents you from selling" which might make a significant legal difference.
The article says among other things: The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers.
I must say that I sincerely doubt that older drivers have any reduction in reaction time.
There are various flaws with this line of thinking. First of all, most media market strategies rely on selling the media at a certain price initially, and then dropping the price over time. It's entirely possible that a hypothetical person might never be willing to pay $50 for game, so they pirate it, rationalizing it using the above method. Later on, the game drops to $20. The person might have been willing to pay $20, but now that they've already played the game, they probably won't.
Let's say a game is sold for $50, and a person wants this game, and seriously cannot afford to pay more than $20. That person could reasonably do three things: A. Not play the game. B. Get a copy from a friend and play that copy for free. C. Get a copy from a friend and play that copy, send a letter with $20 dollar explaining the situation to the games manufacturer. What do you think how many letters like this do game manufacturers receive? Or how many does Microsoft receive?
A game costs roughly $60.00. For each act of infringement, Activision wants, at the very least, 50000% of the initial price, or at the most, 250000% of the initial price. How is it even legal to demand that much? I truly don't understand our legal system.
Making an arbitrary number of copies of game 1 = one act of infringement. Making an arbitrary number of copies of game 2 = another act of infringement. If Activision believes the damage is more than $150,000, then they have to go for actual damages.
But wouldn't an excessive punishment run afoul of constitutional protections in numerous developed countries? For example, in the United States (home of Slashdot), the Eighth Amendment bans "excessive fines [from being] imposed", and the English Bill of Rights has nearly identical language.
It would be a bit stupid if the worst case that an offender would face would be to give up his gains. Not getting caught = keep the money, getting caught = don't keep it. There would be no reason not to offend. Clearly the offender must lose something if he is caught, and should lose a lot if only few offenders get caught.
Can rejected patent application be used as a precedent during patent trial case?
You can even be convicted of patent infringement for doing things that you have patented yourself, if someone else managed to get a patent for the same thing (either before you or after you).
If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot [wikimedia.org] when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).
I would have thought that if a police department creates a website, the intention is that as many people as possible would find it and access the information on it. So they should be glad if someone links to it.
The same turbo 4 gets 263 hp if it runs on regular gas. That's one reason the US hasn't fallen in love with underpowered, stinky diesels yet. Maybe if gas were heading towards $5 a gallon instead of back to $3 a gallon, diesels might gain some traction.
I would encourage you to have a look at a chart of torque and horse power vs. revs and compare the graphs for a diesel engine and a petrol engine. A diesel engine with a third less horse powers will have better acceleration as long as you go at any reasonable speed (any speed where the cops would let you keep your license).
Wired is running the same story, but with a $121 Million price tag
Best Buy is paying $121 million. However, Napster has about $67 million cash and short term investments, and since Best Buy buys the whole, complete company, they will aquire these $67 million as well, so their actual cost is only $54 million.
So Apple has applied for a patent that allows it to create connections that only work between one kind of player and one kind of shoe. When the patent is granted, Microsoft won't be able to build a connection that only works between a Zune and an Adidas shoe. They still can build connections between Zune and Adidas, or Zune and Nike, or iPod and Nike, they just can't make a connection that works only between one combination.
So Apple has a patent how to make a product less valuable for customers. So they are voluntarily giving advantages to their competitors. Why should we care about that?
AFAICT, you would not need a license for that even. You would only need a license if you wished to present that information in court as an expert witness.
My understanding - and anyone is welcome to correct it - is this:
If I connect to say Kazaa and look what songs people's computers are advertising, just because I am curious, that is fine and requires no license.
If I am a musician, and connect to Kazaa to see whether people's computers are advertising _my_ songs, and then I sue them, that is fine and requires no license.
If I accept payment to connect to Kazaa and look what songs people's computers are advertising, and I present these observations in court, then I need a license.
Which would make this companies argument completely wrong: The same activities can be completely legal when done for one purpose, and require a private investigator's license when done for another purpose.
To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for.
Let's see: Air. The view of a lovely landscape. The love of your parents. Or your children. Birthday presents. Your school education.
Or a bailiff taking a debtor's possessions. Policeman confiscating drugs, weapons, blood-stained clothes.
To most people, all of these are "taking things you didn't pay for", but none of them are theft.
They are honestly going to let Scientology get away with this bollocks? Wow. That sucks. It'd be funny to finally see themselves sucker punch their own faces by trying.
Nobody knows if this was done by official Scientology, by some scientologist who got carried away, or by some prankster who thought it would be fun. No matter who it was, the DMCA act states very clearly that claiming that you are acting for the copyright holder when you are not is _perjury_. Which is quite a serious matter. Which needs to be multiplied by 4000. Which means whoever did this needs to be caught and thrown into jail to discourage any repeats of this.
Imagine he or she gets away with it, and next week 8000 videos about flower arranging get a DMCA takedown notice. Which would be even more disruptive, because people putting up those videos probably have less experience handling such a situation.
Here's what I don't understand : what does it have to do with the iPod, shouldn't every other digital music player be equally affected, the patent slipped in the public in 1988, so why on Earth is that guy getting compensated by Apple??
Apple was being sued by Burst for infringing on some of their patents; this guy's patents were prior art and saved Apple lots of money. According to the real article, it seems that Apple may have agreed to pay him an unknown amount of money for the copyrights on his original designs and drawings; not because these drawings are of any value anymore, but because he saved the company a lot of money.
So I looked on their website, turned out what they called "unlimited" was 5 MEGABYTES
I think it would be sensible to have laws that say: If you are offered "unlimited" anything, then they cannot charge you for exceeding that limit. In this case, it should be _possibly_ Ok to cancel your contract if you exceed 5MB, or to stop downloads from working, but they should never be able to charge you more money than the 5 that you quoted.
And what is stopping you from negotiating your own terms? As far as I know, this is physically possible and even legal.
If you are anywhere in Europe, don't. If you find the terms in a contract unacceptable, they will most likely be unenforceable in a non-negotiated contract, and consumer laws will cover your ass. If you negotiated the terms, you are on your own.
You can get unlimited plans but they cost more money. I think what you want is an unlimited everything, worldwide plan for $20. I would like bread to cost a dime. I do not see that happening.
I don't think that is what anyone is asking for. Reasonable charges is what I would be asking for. Let's say you have an iPhone with a contract in the USA and you take it to France. I'd say a _reasonable_ charge would be the same monthly charge as a French customer would have paid on top of your normal US charge. And an alert popping up before you start getting charged informing you of the situation and giving you the choice of accepting the fees or not using the phone. Or lets say I have a data plan costing £20 per month for up to 3GB. Now if I got charged another £20 if I exceed the limit (with a new limit of 6GB), that would be reasonable. But charging £1 per Megabyte = £3,000 for the next 3GB, that is entirely unreasonable.
The UK system sounds better than the US system (at least with respect to bill sizes), but I'm guessing it has fine print too. The guy I was responding to specifically blamed the problem on the "fine print" in the contract being too confusing. If people are really saying "This is too complicated, I'll just agree to it and hope things turn out 'okay'," then there's a larger problem than some family gettting a big phone bill.
If you use a mobile phone just for making phone calls, using your phone abroad is on the expensive side, but not horribly so. Of course if you lie on the beach in Spain for hours and instead of talking to the other people on the beach you have to talk to your folks at home, you get what you deserve. And people who take their phone with them for emergencies only need to be aware that they have to switch the phone off before leaving the country, or it will cost.
However, with data rates the situation is awful and ridiculous. I can get a data stick that gives me 3GB per month at a reasonable price. If you exceed the 3GB per month, the cost is just ridiculous. If you use it abroad, the cost is equally ridiculous. I have no idea whether the phone companies can force you to pay these bills, but I don't intend to find out. They can keep their data sticks.
I noticed they claim 1,000,000+ h MTBF, but they only warranty for less than 10,000 h (or 20,000 in some cases). What makes you wonder why they have so little faith in their product (or in their own reliability estimate).
You need not wonder. The disks have a limited life time - like the brakes on your car, or the tyres, they will wear out eventually, and then you have to replace them. Nothing you can do about that. But that is not the same as "failures". A "failure" happens when your tyre blows after only 10,000 miles of normal use. Let's say a tyre is worn out after 800 hours of normal use. And one in thousand tyres has a failure before it is worn out, then you have 800,000 hours MTBF but only 800 hours life time.
Companies over here love Direct Debits. Every bill comes with a 'why not pay by Direct Debit?' leaflet. Sadly there's no tick box for "I really don't trust you". Stories of epic fails with DDs are legion - an extra zero on the bill makes the person go overdrawn, they get a bad credit record, they lose their house, they kill all their family and so on. I exaggerate. Slightly.
Direct debit is harmless. If they take too much you call your bank and they sort it. If any scumbags manage to talk you into a direct debit, and you want to cancel it, you call your bank, and it is cancelled. They can't get your money anymore. Legitimate companies actually use this as a very simple way to cancel contracts. You have a subscription, or an insurance, that is paid by direct debit, all you need to do to cancel the subscription or insurance is cancel the direct debit. And yes, you do exaggerate. Any problems with Direct Debit will be sorted easily.
If you give anyone access to your credit card on the other hand, you can get into deep shit. There is no way short of going to court and getting a court order to force a company to cancel their access to your credit card.