So did MIT do their background research before starting this patents application?
Those products appear to be using (a) an attachable "sticker" or (b) a spray. Neither of which I would call particularly permanent. Anti-fog coatings (in general) have been around for years. The concept of applying them at manufacturing time using the particular process detailed in TFA is presumably the novel basis on which they are applying for a patent. If not, one would hope the Patents office will deny them the patent.
From TFA:
"The team has developed a unique polymer coating - made of silica nanoparticles - that they say can create surfaces that never fog."
"Some stores carry special anti-fog sprays that help reduce fogging on the inside of car windows, but the sprays must be constantly reapplied to remain effective."
So yes, I'm guessing they did do their background research. Did you, before posting? For example, by reading TFA?
Or add "Do Not Resuscitate" to your patient record. Or replace all instances of "appendectomy" with "gender reassignment surgery". Or... hang on, my tinfoil hat is slipping...
Personally I'm waiting for those programs with recursive naming schemes "eg. "Pine Is Not Elm" to fall into this. That will be a very colourful explosion indeed...
If you call your distro "Swaziland Linux", you need to buy a license.
Wrong. You only need to buy a licence if you also want to register the trademark "Swaziland Linux". Of course, you could not licence it and not trademark your own name, but then there's nothing stopping someone else coming along and calling their product "Swaziland Linux"...
Back here in the Real World(TM) an unprotected trademark can be taken over by someone else. At the moment, Linus is protecting the trademark, still allowing anyone to use it (many people seem to miss this point), and giving preverence to those who officially licence it for a nominal fee. The alternative? The trademark goes unprotected and someone like SCO asserts that they own it instead... and any use of the word "Linux" anywhere suddenly requires a very hefty fee...
perhaps I've misinterpreted the meaning of your quote
Perhaps not, just read it selectively. The same quote later states:
freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate...the implication being, to communicate with each other.
unless there is something that allows the cell towers to give priority to the police phones over my phone they police may be unable to communicate in an emergency.
In fact, that very point was recently demonstrated in London. From this article:
In the immediate aftermath, a statement from the U.K.'s largest network operator, Vodafone, said that an excessive number of calls had caused outages. The operator consequently set aside capacity for phone calls to emergency services.
"Following the major incident in London today, Vodafone London switches are at capacity (which is very rare), so we're having to go into 'access overload' procedures, which means freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate," the company said.
Acting under the mistaken impression that Google's search engine was intended to help research public data
If it's public, it's public. Period. Live with it. If it wasn't supposed to be public, sue someone.
Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using them to illustrate areas of concern.
Journalists are supposed to consider all available facts before reporting on an issue - to do anything less would be unprofessional. And if it's not an "area of concern", well it's just not newsworthy now is it?
I can actually feel the </sarcasm> tag at the end of their "apology"!
The embedded version of XP is actually quite nice. I helped configure a version that runs some navigation equipment on airplanes.
They use XP for navigating on airplanes now? Wow - finally it gives real meaning to the term "Blue screen of death". Maybe this article belongs in the "whirrrrrrr-blub-blub-blub dept." instead. Given the (in)stability of my current XP boxen, I think I'll walk everywhere from now on...
This robot couldn't catch a moving hardball no matter how fast its actuators are, because the kinetic energy has to be disspated properly, and with a heavy ball this energy is very high.
A valid point... I'd say a baseball travelling at that speed would do a fair bit of damage to the sensitive photo-electronic equipment in the palm.
On the same note, I'd also point out the original post talks about it catching softballs (professional versions of which are actually quite hard) and not soft balls. I think that's an important distinction to make - they're not much closer to replacing real ballplayers...
And I can tell you for a fact, breaches of the outer fence have happened in the past and will no doubt happen again in the future. It's a long fence with an infrequent security patrol, after all...
Disclaimer: I used to work at ANSTO, within shouting distance of the fence.
(NB. My original review of this article was "It is fascinating how people can post the blindingly obvious to Slashdot and still somehow be considered newsworthy", but of course it was edited...)
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - it's all about marketing. You don't think McDonalds became the largest food outlet in the world because they make the best burgers, do you?
Microsoft copies the idea and bungles it in its own uniquely retarded way.
...Microsoft can still churn out vulnerable Windows releases...
Yep, that seems to be the trend.
Did anyone else mis-read the article summary at first glance, like I did?
I've become so used to seeing that lately anyway...
So did MIT do their background research before starting this patents application?
Those products appear to be using (a) an attachable "sticker" or (b) a spray. Neither of which I would call particularly permanent. Anti-fog coatings (in general) have been around for years. The concept of applying them at manufacturing time using the particular process detailed in TFA is presumably the novel basis on which they are applying for a patent. If not, one would hope the Patents office will deny them the patent.
From TFA:
"The team has developed a unique polymer coating - made of silica nanoparticles - that they say can create surfaces that never fog."
"Some stores carry special anti-fog sprays that help reduce fogging on the inside of car windows, but the sprays must be constantly reapplied to remain effective."
So yes, I'm guessing they did do their background research. Did you, before posting? For example, by reading TFA?
Or add "Do Not Resuscitate" to your patient record. Or replace all instances of "appendectomy" with "gender reassignment surgery". Or... hang on, my tinfoil hat is slipping...
I wonder what Andy Warhol would've done if the Campbell's Soup label was published under the same licence?
Correction - two functioning shredders. He used one as the actual shredder, and ripped the motor out of the second...
...and this "anti-printer" is not a bulk shredder either. It's a $15 Wal-Mart POC stuck inside a defunct printer.
My question is - why pay "$200-800" when you could just pay $15 for the same reliability?
Personally I'm waiting for those programs with recursive naming schemes "eg. "Pine Is Not Elm" to fall into this. That will be a very colourful explosion indeed...
If you call your distro "Swaziland Linux", you need to buy a license.
Wrong. You only need to buy a licence if you also want to register the trademark "Swaziland Linux". Of course, you could not licence it and not trademark your own name, but then there's nothing stopping someone else coming along and calling their product "Swaziland Linux"...
That's fine, if you live in some parallel utopia.
Back here in the Real World(TM) an unprotected trademark can be taken over by someone else. At the moment, Linus is protecting the trademark, still allowing anyone to use it (many people seem to miss this point), and giving preverence to those who officially licence it for a nominal fee. The alternative? The trademark goes unprotected and someone like SCO asserts that they own it instead... and any use of the word "Linux" anywhere suddenly requires a very hefty fee...
perhaps I've misinterpreted the meaning of your quote
...the implication being, to communicate with each other.
Perhaps not, just read it selectively. The same quote later states:
freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate
unless there is something that allows the cell towers to give priority to the police phones over my phone they police may be unable to communicate in an emergency.
In fact, that very point was recently demonstrated in London. From this article:
In the immediate aftermath, a statement from the U.K.'s largest network operator, Vodafone, said that an excessive number of calls had caused outages. The operator consequently set aside capacity for phone calls to emergency services.
"Following the major incident in London today, Vodafone London switches are at capacity (which is very rare), so we're having to go into 'access overload' procedures, which means freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate," the company said.
I'm surprised there wasn't something similar enough already
There was, and still is. An example. The only difference is that you don't need a separate cellphone.
This article is just another slashvertisement.
If any of the aforementioned 'hackers' are reading - how about doing everyone a favour and giving Clippy a rap sheet while you're in there?
erm... man-in-the-middle? You'd probably want to exchange keys before the session, preferably by some other (secure) means...
I must sat, when I read the headline "The NetBSD Toaster" I thought that someone had finally got around to cremating it...
*ducks
Amen, brother.
Acting under the mistaken impression that Google's search engine was intended to help research public data
If it's public, it's public. Period. Live with it. If it wasn't supposed to be public, sue someone.
Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using them to illustrate areas of concern.
Journalists are supposed to consider all available facts before reporting on an issue - to do anything less would be unprofessional. And if it's not an "area of concern", well it's just not newsworthy now is it?
I can actually feel the </sarcasm> tag at the end of their "apology"!
The embedded version of XP is actually quite nice. I helped configure a version that runs some navigation equipment on airplanes.
They use XP for navigating on airplanes now? Wow - finally it gives real meaning to the term "Blue screen of death". Maybe this article belongs in the "whirrrrrrr-blub-blub-blub dept." instead. Given the (in)stability of my current XP boxen, I think I'll walk everywhere from now on...
USPTO definition of "final": "Send us another cheque with your next version of this application and we'll reconsider it"...
In fact, I can see a whole TV series in this!
"Pimp my Linux Server"...
This robot couldn't catch a moving hardball no matter how fast its actuators are, because the kinetic energy has to be disspated properly, and with a heavy ball this energy is very high.
A valid point... I'd say a baseball travelling at that speed would do a fair bit of damage to the sensitive photo-electronic equipment in the palm.
On the same note, I'd also point out the original post talks about it catching softballs (professional versions of which are actually quite hard) and not soft balls. I think that's an important distinction to make - they're not much closer to replacing real ballplayers...
Yeah, that's it.
And I can tell you for a fact, breaches of the outer fence have happened in the past and will no doubt happen again in the future. It's a long fence with an infrequent security patrol, after all...
Disclaimer: I used to work at ANSTO, within shouting distance of the fence.
if Google chooses not to talk to CNet, so be it - go out and find information elsewhere
They did... they Googled for it! It's just like talking to Google, but without having to actually talk to Google...
This article is "fascinating and newsworthy".
(NB. My original review of this article was "It is fascinating how people can post the blindingly obvious to Slashdot and still somehow be considered newsworthy", but of course it was edited...)
Perhaps it's a fork...