Copyright laws and software patents make traditional closed source business models too lucrative. And while copyright and patent infringement may still occur, it is a better model to chase in the eyes of investors because a company like Microsoft will offer them reports on how much money is lost to such things and claim that as potential profit or unrealized profit or put it on the balance sheet to make investor's eyes light up. How much "theft" (don't jump on me for using it, that's what Microsoft calls it) do you think Red Hat suffers from? Not a whole lot, I'd imagine as I believe the bulk of their profit comes from support and that support is kinda hard to steal.
Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive. Because the business model would shift from protecting your source code through litigation to making it available for free since that would be the only way to effectively combat piracy. Right now, the system is so screwed up that even when the original Windows becomes public domain, no one is going to have the source code and if they do they're not going to release it. I almost wish the Library of Congress kept a proprietary source library if that didn't leave to government abuse and a multitude of problems with huge security concerns.
As a young idealist, I once thought that open source should be welcomed by all since there's an infinite amount of code that the populations will always need written. If they don't need an operating system, they need a web server. If they don't need web server software, they'll need the specific application on a per company basis. Ad infinitum. And therefore you shouldn't fight open source when you're generating revenue from such a general purpose and widely used tool. Unfortunately I came to understand copyright, marketing and how Microsoft keeps making bank on Windows despite it being -- in my opinion -- an inferior product. And so my logic was inherently flawed--especially in the eyes of stockholders and lawmakers. Such skewing of profits between open and closed source companies reveal this.
"Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk. One of the main reasons we and many others across the industry advocate for responsible disclosure is that the software vendor who wrote the code is in the best position to fully understand the root cause. While this was a good find by the Google researcher, it turns out that the analysis is incomplete and the actual workaround Google suggested is easily circumvented.
Zero-Day would mean that Microsoft had zero days to fix it or no time at all to patch the system that had the security vulnerability between the time they release the software to the time the bug goes public. By that definition this would be best described as a "five day exploit" or more in fact if they knew about it before Ormandy's notice.
Sales of Calvin Klein's Obsession have plummeted in neighboring towns and cities as have jaguar rape incidents involving young men on their way to discotecas.
I think most of the American public would be okay with labeling them "enemy combatants"
Is it wrong to hope that I someday see a black and white combat video on Wikileaks of an Apache gunship pointed at the blown out wall of some skyscraper with a wounded telemarketer or auto-dialer operator laying next to a headset and the gunners voice come over saying, "Just pick up the #%&$ing headset, just give me a reason, motha$%#@er!"
Seriously, if these are the jerks that harass my poor grandmother then I hope for nothing else for these people. I know it should be directed at the people running the operations but right now everyone involved should be held accountable because they know what they're doing. Why is it that you get in trouble for distributing marijuana for a bigger fish but you don't get in trouble for working as a call operator at some telemarketer who is making illegal telephone calls?
It's one of those days when you wish the headlines were literal in meaning. I mean, surely the FTC could pull some strings and a few cluster bombs could go "missing" en route to Iraq...
The entire point of a business is to provide goods and services for money. Otherwise you're running an NPO.
Logically defending Microsoft's profit motive!? You're not being a very good Linux Nutcase right now. Here, let me help you with that:
We agree the entire point of a business is to make money. Since that's the entire point then there is no fraction of a point for them to even make or support an operating system. Therefore Microsoft, being a business, has no point in making an operating system because all of its energies are concentrated on this nebulous "profit" or "prophet" if we're talking about Apple. Therefore Windows does not and cannot exist. It was just a bad nightmare that everyone had now let's all collectively wake up.
*picks up glass of cyanide flavored koolaid*
Who's ready to 'wake up' with me?
I think that demonstrates my qualifications. Please e-mail me the credentials to that account and I'll take good care of her.
Welp, firstly you said was complaining no I didn't complain I was saying "If I was Google I'd do it".
From the definition of Conflict of Interest: "A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other." I would assume that by titling your post as "Conflict of Interest" and also saying that there is no way to circumvent it, you were complaining of corruption between Google and the United States Patent Office. Was I incorrect in my assumption?
Second, your telling me that there is nothing confidential about USPTO? Right, okay.... Next please!
Although parts of the process remain confidential, I question why any of it needs to be confidential. The material patented is confidential as the entity submitting it sees fit until they apply for it. Once the application has been submitted, then it's public. Hence the phrase "patent pending" to remind everyone that their invention is in process to become their intellectual property. A patent examiner employed by the federal government then gets the patent and reviews it for errors. They do some undetermined amount of research for prior art or related patents. This is confidential only because it's too laborious to publicize. As revisions are made, those are public too. Really the only confidential part is what the hell is going on inside the examiner's mind. And sometimes (like the Amazon 1-click), everyone would benefit from any sort of logic outlined by the examiner. Once it's approved, you better believe it's public and nothing should be confidential. Especially if you're about to get your ass sued over a patent... how could anything related to that patent be held confidential and then be used against you in court?
You know, for a while the USPTO was seriously considering a wiki -- maybe even a community wiki -- where people could review new patents and discuss them with links to other patents and potential prior art. The problems with this idea is only that those making the comments would most likely not have the patent law expertise and it would amount to a landslide of opinions rather than real claims.
Transparency and publication of the entire patent process -- to the best of the USPTO's ability -- provides accountability and reliability to those of us who both benefit and suffer from patents. Trust me, you're barking up the wrong tree here and I'm at a loss for words to respond to your attitude of "next please!"
The data they'll be a privy too, whilst 'creating' the system would be invaluable.
Just out of curiosity, what "data" will they be privy to that isn't already supposed to be available to everyone? Google already serves up individual patents. That means they already have the patent information. I assume this would just mean that the USPTO would serve them up applications faster? Or more efficiently? (instead of Google's usual technology of go find it and index it) And then allow for bulk downloads. I've used the USPTO search "engine" many times to reference patents in Slashdot stories and it's horrid compared to Google.
Really to think that Google's getting anything out of this is kind of... well... funny. I mean, I think there are other private search sites like Thomsom West that charge you per hour to use their search engine to crawl their indexes of laws and court cases that should be public data in the first place. I wouldn't go complaining about Google making the patent process more transparent and searchable if I were you...
That Stemaid site is a veritable goldmine for humor. Did anyone else download and scan their brochure "Yes to Human Cloning"? No? Nobody. Well, I cannot resist reproducing the first two paragraphs from the section "About the Author" (Raël of the Raëlian Foundation):
In 1974, I released The Book Which Tells The Truth, which described my contact with the Elohim, the extra-terrestrials who created us scientifically in their laboratories, and who were mistaken for 'God' or 'gods' by our primitive ancestors, who were too ignorant to understand the truth. At the time, it was the public's enthusiasm for the 'UFO phenomenon' that made my books and the conferences I held around the world a success.
Nevertheless, when I explained that we would soon be able to do the same thing ourselves and live forever, thanks to cloning, many laughed. However, their laughter was tinged with the empty sound of those who have always been too shortsighted to see beyond their noses and foresee the fall of their own paradigms.
Which website will you pick to clone you? I think I'm going for the one that gave me some propaganda on a religion surrounding the Elohim. Sounds like they know what they're up to. Or maybe you've got advanced AIDS (one of the many treatable conditions which conveniently have no other cures) How does it work? Well, they just shoot you up with a bunch of stem cells. No, I'm serious:
Stem Cell Therapy, SCT, is a treatment that provides stem cells in the appropriate location to assist the body where it needs to heal and regenerate its existing cells.
Depending on the conditions, stem cells can be delivered through the blood stream or directly to the organ to treat. It isn’t understood yet how stem cell communicates with the body to determine and travel to sites of need but results have been observed showing stem cells located near the damage area and dividing there generating new differentiated healthy cells.
It's a process which many leading scientists suspect might be a miracle! And you know, if it doesn't work, you just didn't present the stem cells the right conditions and we just need you to pay for a trip back and more saline... er therapy injections. Maybe you have a supressive person in your life who has been telling you that we are a scam and that's why the stem cell therapy didn't work? Anyone else reminded of Professor Farnsworth's trip to GeneWorks S.K.G. from Three Hundred Big Boys?
Apple, for example, has been aggressively promoting HTML5 as a substitute for Adobe's Flash, which Apple has banned from its iPhone and iPad.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trumpeting the support for HTML5 it's baking into IE9, which has no firm release date and is now at a rough developer preview stage.
Google has been promoting HTML5 just as hard. Last month, for example, Google debuted a new royalty-free video codec that will compete with the H.264 codec that Apple's backing for HTML5.
Wow, everyone is in agreement then? You'd think that they would be dumping a lot of time and money into their respective rendering engines to get a leg up on the competition instead of just paying HTML5 lip service. What's the holdup on implementing some of these features? And if this is the next great thing for the internet why does it seem like everyone is dragging their feet? I understand you have to be security and performance minded and that there are some issues with codecs and containers but aside from that is rendering HTML5 standards really that complicated?
On a more serious note, why embed one browser into another? Why not just install the other browser?
I can think of a few reasons. Say you're on a corporate network that only allows IE as the system is entirely managed remotely. Maybe they allow plugins for IE in the profiles or maybe they want to switch to HTML5 but the people that manage their software are too unsure of doing a full browser like Chrome that might not have the same managing options for proxies and stuff that IE allows them to control over a network. Or maybe you're a user and you find out you can install Chrome Frame and it looks like you're still using IE so everyone's okay with it.
Another big thing is look and feel. I think that Chrome Frame keeps IE's look and feel. So if my mother is slow to learn new applications and she is so used to IE's look and feel but I want her to be more secure and enjoy HTML5 pages without having to worry about which browser she's using or try to learn Chrome than Chrome Frame might be an option for her.
High School Was the Worst Years for Me as Well
on
The Star Wars Kid Is Back
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't think he's alone when they say that the worst years of my life were, in fact, high school. Cliques full of assholes and status seeking social climbing butterflies pretty much achieved status by picking on people like me. I actually found the group of punks (smoking, piercings, tattoos, apathy, loud music, etc) to be the most welcoming group of people despite my lack of smoking, the fact that I listened to The Beatles and watched X-Files. The only people that seemed to really thrive in that crap were the popular kids and college was a welcomed change. I went from having four or five close friends in high school to entire crowds of people that I loved to talk to.
Having been made fun of for reading Star Wars books in grade school, I sympathize with this kid though my pain was not on a global level like his. Still, I bet if you asked him now if he could go back and do things differently it would probably be better not to sue and instead milk that fifteen minutes by going on SNL or Conan O'Brien or even trying for a cameo in one of the Wayans Brothers' parody comedy flicks. Jesus, I bet he could make good money if he charged $5,000 per video and set up a site where he recorded himself doing his spiel and saying "Happy Birthday <insert your name here>" or "I only twirl around like a moron when I'm eating my <insert your food product here>!" And then just kept rerecording himself doing that. You might as well milk it and have fun with it...
Anybody know how Daniel Tosh gets around these potential lawsuits when he displays videos on Comedy Central in his show Tosh.0? I mean, I'm sure he gets permission first or it comes from a country with lax copyright laws but what kind of logic do they pitch to the guys that do just outrageously stupid things? "You did something stupid by starting a gasoline can on fire but you have the chance to do something smart and let me show it?"
We could add the same common sense reasoning to other recreational drugs, like tobacco and marijuana, or to books, and on and on.
So I think the key difference with your analogy here is whether or not there is a victim. And by 'victim' I don't mean any of that protect-the-citizen-from-themselves-crap but instead someone who suffers a loss of life, liberty or pursuit of happiness without participating willingly in it. So let's start with an easy one: murder. Murder is banned pretty much all over the United States except in very special circumstances (capital punishment). The reason is obvious, someone's dying and they almost always don't want to.
Handguns are a bit trickier. When the case of handgun related murders or injuries rises to a high enough point then places like DC, NYC, Chicago, LA, etc do have to universally ban or heavily restrict handguns. Rifles and shotguns seem to be another issue as they're not exactly designed to be concealed and used at short distances but I know in DC you must have a permit for a handgun and you must store it field stripped. If you have a handgun stored assembled in DC, you're breaking the law.
Alcohol saw a similar situation during prohibition. Drinking to destroy your liver minimally harms society if you don't have good health insurance. Drinking and getting behind the wheel can very much injure members of society. Drinking and going home and beating your wife or child again very much so scars them and halts their pursuit of happiness. So what are the true frequency of these things? If it's too high, you need to look at universally banning or restricting alcohol. Or the populace will run fear campaigns and demonize them like they did and have done with absinthe.
Now on to violent video games. Okay, so I don't agree with this but it seems that in Australia the majority of the populace (or a few very fascist leaders) have the opinion that violent video games provide too much of a harm to society in too high of a frequency. I could claim my teddy bear collection told me to go on a shooting rampage but that's not going to get teddy bears banned because the frequency is one in four hundred million (and if you start counting historically the number of people exposed to teddy bears is much much larger). You know, in the United States this would never fly but your set of "you don't universally ban/restrict" axioms is a bit unresearched at least in the states. We have had those experiments and we continue to have those experiments with handguns in very high population areas. DC used to be the murder capital of the world... and it's gotten much better since the 1990s. You can't say that the handgun laws were the only factor in this but I think a lot of residents do believe this.
"It often comes down to money, as movie studios frequently choose to make films based on the franchises that sell the best, not those with the most cinematic potential," said Corey May, co-founder of Sekretagent Productions.
Yeah this, I think, is the heart of the issue. What's more is that they pick the most popular games and shell out the most money for licensing and royalties those franchises. Then you pile on that they rarely spend money on good actors (although some do and that's a sink for money). And that these these are video games so the required special effects are almost always through the roof costing more money. And it seems like when they're done spending on any of those things they'll stick Uwe Boll as director and phone in the rest of it. I mean, I would almost say that they think something stupid like "Man, if we could only license rights to make World of Warcraft into a movie, then we'd have a base viewership of twelve million world wide already!" Then it turns out that Blizzard knows they could milk that for tons of money and there goes all your funding. And after all is said and done it seems like the director has no freedom to deviate from anything. Why is that Mortal Kombat eight minute pitch bad? Because it's absolutely unrealistic. What is the motive to hold the tournament? Doesn't matter. Why are all these people fighting each other? Doesn't matter. We probably don't have time to develop any sort of meaningful relationship with the characters and as such every single character in Mortal Kombat will forever be laughable to a viewer. Mortal Kombat was known for being a great two player fighting game with just round after round. The thing that made it interesting was the moves and counter moves and inventiveness of special moves that players got a kick out of exploring. To take that away (inherent to movies) and to try to focus on the plot does not work. The plot's really kind of insane.
This, of course, is some weird Hollywood money magic that perpetuates the problem--because the movies are still seen as successes in the eyes of producers. But there is hope that someone could get this right. For example, Shadow of the Colossus was optioned for a movie... but of course they gave it to run of the mill action director Keven Misher and written by run of the mill action movie writer Justin Marks. Why? For what possible reason? You need to give a game like this to Darren Aronofsky or -- if you must go with an action film -- at least Quentin Tarantino. What's more you have to give them freedom to adapt the game into a movie. Not rely on what the game already has. I think that these games have other great things to offer like the artwork, feel and atmosphere but a stupid action director strips all that away down to stupid action.
Further, there are many laws here in Canada that limit speech, that don't have a corresponding law in China. Specifically, I'm thinking about race.
I would posit that the difference in your Canada vs China comparison is that the laws are better defined for you than they are a Chinese citizen. Like, what the hell does "non-harmonious" mean exactly? You don't know but you seem to have lost your job because of it.
Think for a minute about what the phrase "speech against the government" could mean in China. Is saying "The Yang-tse river is so polluted!" considered speech against the Chinese government? Is complaining about your working conditions okay? Is criticizing the United States' copyright laws okay when your government has pledged time and time again to combat piracy?
I think the biggest issue is that all of the above can be against the law on a case by case basis decided by the state. In Canada, are you afraid of the government disliking you for some reason and then reviewing your internet usage and history to find something to prosecute you under?
I didn't realize that the RIAA would let them off so easily. Oh well, LimeWire can always appeal and get it kicked up to a couple vigintillion a la Jammie Thomas.
But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation gets to the bottom of that.
The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
Look at their stock in the last month and then look down at related companies on that page and see how every single company in that industry has suffered stock prices plummeting in the last month. Not saying it's a bad thing or that these patents shouldn't be overturned but it was pretty obvious. Just to prepare everyone, you will see a short term drop in research devoted to identifying cancer genes unless it's government backed with your tax dollars.
Please don't call us that. I thought 'Generation X' and 'Generation Y' were stupid names but now I long for alphabetic naming. I still fail to see the connection between their "social networking skills" (whatever the hell that is) and the increase in effective military intelligence. It looks to me like good communication and a drastic increase in surveilance technology is what the military is tapping. Just because social networking is rising to ~95% popularity in the younger generations doesn't mean that it's the reason for everything that generation does right.
How is this any different from World War II where several analysts received reports and images from war zones, discussed the new information, got on the radio to send new intelligence to forces and gave feedback to the collection unit of that intelligence? It sounds like the same process to me with just the next logical step up in all of these actions. Now they're using hardware to look at live video feeds. Now they're discussing it over a computer with people around the world. Now they're piloting the drone in real time. It's the advancement of technology, not Facebook that is driving this. The only stipulation is that you are familiar with a computer and the software on the computer -- which I would buy the younger generation are more comfortable around. But again, not a whole lot to do with posting on your friends wall that you got so plastered last night. And I don't really feel like social networking increases communications skills.
For all I know this could be the equivalent of LeBron James having a Facebook page and the New York Times saying, "Look at how well the NBA utilizes the skills of the Facebook generation."
The single video card has twelve outputs. On a Crossfire capable motherboard, you could possibly install two of these (pending room on your motherboard and inside your case). This would bring your grand total output to 24 monitors. RTFA next time before attempting math.
Also, in the article, they call this behemoth "Powercolor innovation." I'd rather we called it "Powercolor scaling" unless they actually tackled the problem in some way other than slapping to cards together into one.
I gave them conversation logs that implicated Special Agent Manning. They were particularly interested in a code word for a major operation.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words. While you might be able to justify the videos, I don't know how you could justify bragging to people about it and discussing current military operations on the internet. That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright laws and software patents make traditional closed source business models too lucrative. And while copyright and patent infringement may still occur, it is a better model to chase in the eyes of investors because a company like Microsoft will offer them reports on how much money is lost to such things and claim that as potential profit or unrealized profit or put it on the balance sheet to make investor's eyes light up. How much "theft" (don't jump on me for using it, that's what Microsoft calls it) do you think Red Hat suffers from? Not a whole lot, I'd imagine as I believe the bulk of their profit comes from support and that support is kinda hard to steal.
Anyway, if copyright laws didn't exist for software? Well, you'd see companies like Microsoft fall apart and companies like Red Hat thrive. Because the business model would shift from protecting your source code through litigation to making it available for free since that would be the only way to effectively combat piracy. Right now, the system is so screwed up that even when the original Windows becomes public domain, no one is going to have the source code and if they do they're not going to release it. I almost wish the Library of Congress kept a proprietary source library if that didn't leave to government abuse and a multitude of problems with huge security concerns.
As a young idealist, I once thought that open source should be welcomed by all since there's an infinite amount of code that the populations will always need written. If they don't need an operating system, they need a web server. If they don't need web server software, they'll need the specific application on a per company basis. Ad infinitum. And therefore you shouldn't fight open source when you're generating revenue from such a general purpose and widely used tool. Unfortunately I came to understand copyright, marketing and how Microsoft keeps making bank on Windows despite it being -- in my opinion -- an inferior product. And so my logic was inherently flawed--especially in the eyes of stockholders and lawmakers. Such skewing of profits between open and closed source companies reveal this.
"Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk. One of the main reasons we and many others across the industry advocate for responsible disclosure is that the software vendor who wrote the code is in the best position to fully understand the root cause. While this was a good find by the Google researcher, it turns out that the analysis is incomplete and the actual workaround Google suggested is easily circumvented.
exploits a zero-day vulnerability
Zero-Day would mean that Microsoft had zero days to fix it or no time at all to patch the system that had the security vulnerability between the time they release the software to the time the bug goes public. By that definition this would be best described as a "five day exploit" or more in fact if they knew about it before Ormandy's notice.
Sales of Calvin Klein's Obsession have plummeted in neighboring towns and cities as have jaguar rape incidents involving young men on their way to discotecas.
I think most of the American public would be okay with labeling them "enemy combatants"
Is it wrong to hope that I someday see a black and white combat video on Wikileaks of an Apache gunship pointed at the blown out wall of some skyscraper with a wounded telemarketer or auto-dialer operator laying next to a headset and the gunners voice come over saying, "Just pick up the #%&$ing headset, just give me a reason, motha$%#@er!"
Seriously, if these are the jerks that harass my poor grandmother then I hope for nothing else for these people. I know it should be directed at the people running the operations but right now everyone involved should be held accountable because they know what they're doing. Why is it that you get in trouble for distributing marijuana for a bigger fish but you don't get in trouble for working as a call operator at some telemarketer who is making illegal telephone calls?
FTC Bombs Massive Robocall Operation
It's one of those days when you wish the headlines were literal in meaning. I mean, surely the FTC could pull some strings and a few cluster bombs could go "missing" en route to Iraq ...
The entire point of a business is to provide goods and services for money. Otherwise you're running an NPO.
Logically defending Microsoft's profit motive!? You're not being a very good Linux Nutcase right now. Here, let me help you with that:
We agree the entire point of a business is to make money. Since that's the entire point then there is no fraction of a point for them to even make or support an operating system. Therefore Microsoft, being a business, has no point in making an operating system because all of its energies are concentrated on this nebulous "profit" or "prophet" if we're talking about Apple. Therefore Windows does not and cannot exist. It was just a bad nightmare that everyone had now let's all collectively wake up.
*picks up glass of cyanide flavored koolaid*
Who's ready to 'wake up' with me?
I think that demonstrates my qualifications. Please e-mail me the credentials to that account and I'll take good care of her.
Welp, firstly you said was complaining no I didn't complain I was saying "If I was Google I'd do it".
From the definition of Conflict of Interest: "A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other." I would assume that by titling your post as "Conflict of Interest" and also saying that there is no way to circumvent it, you were complaining of corruption between Google and the United States Patent Office. Was I incorrect in my assumption?
Second, your telling me that there is nothing confidential about USPTO? Right, okay .... Next please!
Although parts of the process remain confidential, I question why any of it needs to be confidential. The material patented is confidential as the entity submitting it sees fit until they apply for it. Once the application has been submitted, then it's public. Hence the phrase "patent pending" to remind everyone that their invention is in process to become their intellectual property. A patent examiner employed by the federal government then gets the patent and reviews it for errors. They do some undetermined amount of research for prior art or related patents. This is confidential only because it's too laborious to publicize. As revisions are made, those are public too. Really the only confidential part is what the hell is going on inside the examiner's mind. And sometimes (like the Amazon 1-click), everyone would benefit from any sort of logic outlined by the examiner. Once it's approved, you better believe it's public and nothing should be confidential. Especially if you're about to get your ass sued over a patent ... how could anything related to that patent be held confidential and then be used against you in court?
You know, for a while the USPTO was seriously considering a wiki -- maybe even a community wiki -- where people could review new patents and discuss them with links to other patents and potential prior art. The problems with this idea is only that those making the comments would most likely not have the patent law expertise and it would amount to a landslide of opinions rather than real claims.
Transparency and publication of the entire patent process -- to the best of the USPTO's ability -- provides accountability and reliability to those of us who both benefit and suffer from patents. Trust me, you're barking up the wrong tree here and I'm at a loss for words to respond to your attitude of "next please!"
The data they'll be a privy too, whilst 'creating' the system would be invaluable.
Just out of curiosity, what "data" will they be privy to that isn't already supposed to be available to everyone? Google already serves up individual patents. That means they already have the patent information. I assume this would just mean that the USPTO would serve them up applications faster? Or more efficiently? (instead of Google's usual technology of go find it and index it) And then allow for bulk downloads. I've used the USPTO search "engine" many times to reference patents in Slashdot stories and it's horrid compared to Google.
... well ... funny. I mean, I think there are other private search sites like Thomsom West that charge you per hour to use their search engine to crawl their indexes of laws and court cases that should be public data in the first place. I wouldn't go complaining about Google making the patent process more transparent and searchable if I were you ...
Really to think that Google's getting anything out of this is kind of
In my opinion, this is a very good development.
In 1974, I released The Book Which Tells The Truth, which described my contact with the Elohim, the extra-terrestrials who created us scientifically in their laboratories, and who were mistaken for 'God' or 'gods' by our primitive ancestors, who were too ignorant to understand the truth. At the time, it was the public's enthusiasm for the 'UFO phenomenon' that made my books and the conferences I held around the world a success.
Nevertheless, when I explained that we would soon be able to do the same thing ourselves and live forever, thanks to cloning, many laughed. However, their laughter was tinged with the empty sound of those who have always been too shortsighted to see beyond their noses and foresee the fall of their own paradigms.
Which website will you pick to clone you? I think I'm going for the one that gave me some propaganda on a religion surrounding the Elohim. Sounds like they know what they're up to. Or maybe you've got advanced AIDS (one of the many treatable conditions which conveniently have no other cures) How does it work? Well, they just shoot you up with a bunch of stem cells. No, I'm serious:
Stem Cell Therapy, SCT, is a treatment that provides stem cells in the appropriate location to assist the body where it needs to heal and regenerate its existing cells.
Depending on the conditions, stem cells can be delivered through the blood stream or directly to the organ to treat. It isn’t understood yet how stem cell communicates with the body to determine and travel to sites of need but results have been observed showing stem cells located near the damage area and dividing there generating new differentiated healthy cells.
It's a process which many leading scientists suspect might be a miracle! And you know, if it doesn't work, you just didn't present the stem cells the right conditions and we just need you to pay for a trip back and more saline ... er therapy injections. Maybe you have a supressive person in your life who has been telling you that we are a scam and that's why the stem cell therapy didn't work? Anyone else reminded of Professor Farnsworth's trip to GeneWorks S.K.G. from Three Hundred Big Boys?
Apple, for example, has been aggressively promoting HTML5 as a substitute for Adobe's Flash, which Apple has banned from its iPhone and iPad.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trumpeting the support for HTML5 it's baking into IE9, which has no firm release date and is now at a rough developer preview stage.
Google has been promoting HTML5 just as hard. Last month, for example, Google debuted a new royalty-free video codec that will compete with the H.264 codec that Apple's backing for HTML5.
Wow, everyone is in agreement then? You'd think that they would be dumping a lot of time and money into their respective rendering engines to get a leg up on the competition instead of just paying HTML5 lip service. What's the holdup on implementing some of these features? And if this is the next great thing for the internet why does it seem like everyone is dragging their feet? I understand you have to be security and performance minded and that there are some issues with codecs and containers but aside from that is rendering HTML5 standards really that complicated?
On a more serious note, why embed one browser into another? Why not just install the other browser?
I can think of a few reasons. Say you're on a corporate network that only allows IE as the system is entirely managed remotely. Maybe they allow plugins for IE in the profiles or maybe they want to switch to HTML5 but the people that manage their software are too unsure of doing a full browser like Chrome that might not have the same managing options for proxies and stuff that IE allows them to control over a network. Or maybe you're a user and you find out you can install Chrome Frame and it looks like you're still using IE so everyone's okay with it.
Another big thing is look and feel. I think that Chrome Frame keeps IE's look and feel. So if my mother is slow to learn new applications and she is so used to IE's look and feel but I want her to be more secure and enjoy HTML5 pages without having to worry about which browser she's using or try to learn Chrome than Chrome Frame might be an option for her.
I don't think he's alone when they say that the worst years of my life were, in fact, high school. Cliques full of assholes and status seeking social climbing butterflies pretty much achieved status by picking on people like me. I actually found the group of punks (smoking, piercings, tattoos, apathy, loud music, etc) to be the most welcoming group of people despite my lack of smoking, the fact that I listened to The Beatles and watched X-Files. The only people that seemed to really thrive in that crap were the popular kids and college was a welcomed change. I went from having four or five close friends in high school to entire crowds of people that I loved to talk to.
...
Having been made fun of for reading Star Wars books in grade school, I sympathize with this kid though my pain was not on a global level like his. Still, I bet if you asked him now if he could go back and do things differently it would probably be better not to sue and instead milk that fifteen minutes by going on SNL or Conan O'Brien or even trying for a cameo in one of the Wayans Brothers' parody comedy flicks. Jesus, I bet he could make good money if he charged $5,000 per video and set up a site where he recorded himself doing his spiel and saying "Happy Birthday <insert your name here>" or "I only twirl around like a moron when I'm eating my <insert your food product here>!" And then just kept rerecording himself doing that. You might as well milk it and have fun with it
Anybody know how Daniel Tosh gets around these potential lawsuits when he displays videos on Comedy Central in his show Tosh.0? I mean, I'm sure he gets permission first or it comes from a country with lax copyright laws but what kind of logic do they pitch to the guys that do just outrageously stupid things? "You did something stupid by starting a gasoline can on fire but you have the chance to do something smart and let me show it?"
We could add the same common sense reasoning to other recreational drugs, like tobacco and marijuana, or to books, and on and on.
So I think the key difference with your analogy here is whether or not there is a victim. And by 'victim' I don't mean any of that protect-the-citizen-from-themselves-crap but instead someone who suffers a loss of life, liberty or pursuit of happiness without participating willingly in it. So let's start with an easy one: murder. Murder is banned pretty much all over the United States except in very special circumstances (capital punishment). The reason is obvious, someone's dying and they almost always don't want to.
... and it's gotten much better since the 1990s. You can't say that the handgun laws were the only factor in this but I think a lot of residents do believe this.
Handguns are a bit trickier. When the case of handgun related murders or injuries rises to a high enough point then places like DC, NYC, Chicago, LA, etc do have to universally ban or heavily restrict handguns. Rifles and shotguns seem to be another issue as they're not exactly designed to be concealed and used at short distances but I know in DC you must have a permit for a handgun and you must store it field stripped. If you have a handgun stored assembled in DC, you're breaking the law.
Alcohol saw a similar situation during prohibition. Drinking to destroy your liver minimally harms society if you don't have good health insurance. Drinking and getting behind the wheel can very much injure members of society. Drinking and going home and beating your wife or child again very much so scars them and halts their pursuit of happiness. So what are the true frequency of these things? If it's too high, you need to look at universally banning or restricting alcohol. Or the populace will run fear campaigns and demonize them like they did and have done with absinthe.
Now on to violent video games. Okay, so I don't agree with this but it seems that in Australia the majority of the populace (or a few very fascist leaders) have the opinion that violent video games provide too much of a harm to society in too high of a frequency. I could claim my teddy bear collection told me to go on a shooting rampage but that's not going to get teddy bears banned because the frequency is one in four hundred million (and if you start counting historically the number of people exposed to teddy bears is much much larger). You know, in the United States this would never fly but your set of "you don't universally ban/restrict" axioms is a bit unresearched at least in the states. We have had those experiments and we continue to have those experiments with handguns in very high population areas. DC used to be the murder capital of the world
"It often comes down to money, as movie studios frequently choose to make films based on the franchises that sell the best, not those with the most cinematic potential," said Corey May, co-founder of Sekretagent Productions.
Yeah this, I think, is the heart of the issue. What's more is that they pick the most popular games and shell out the most money for licensing and royalties those franchises. Then you pile on that they rarely spend money on good actors (although some do and that's a sink for money). And that these these are video games so the required special effects are almost always through the roof costing more money. And it seems like when they're done spending on any of those things they'll stick Uwe Boll as director and phone in the rest of it. I mean, I would almost say that they think something stupid like "Man, if we could only license rights to make World of Warcraft into a movie, then we'd have a base viewership of twelve million world wide already!" Then it turns out that Blizzard knows they could milk that for tons of money and there goes all your funding. And after all is said and done it seems like the director has no freedom to deviate from anything. Why is that Mortal Kombat eight minute pitch bad? Because it's absolutely unrealistic. What is the motive to hold the tournament? Doesn't matter. Why are all these people fighting each other? Doesn't matter. We probably don't have time to develop any sort of meaningful relationship with the characters and as such every single character in Mortal Kombat will forever be laughable to a viewer. Mortal Kombat was known for being a great two player fighting game with just round after round. The thing that made it interesting was the moves and counter moves and inventiveness of special moves that players got a kick out of exploring. To take that away (inherent to movies) and to try to focus on the plot does not work. The plot's really kind of insane.
... but of course they gave it to run of the mill action director Keven Misher and written by run of the mill action movie writer Justin Marks. Why? For what possible reason? You need to give a game like this to Darren Aronofsky or -- if you must go with an action film -- at least Quentin Tarantino. What's more you have to give them freedom to adapt the game into a movie. Not rely on what the game already has. I think that these games have other great things to offer like the artwork, feel and atmosphere but a stupid action director strips all that away down to stupid action.
This, of course, is some weird Hollywood money magic that perpetuates the problem--because the movies are still seen as successes in the eyes of producers. But there is hope that someone could get this right. For example, Shadow of the Colossus was optioned for a movie
Further, there are many laws here in Canada that limit speech, that don't have a corresponding law in China. Specifically, I'm thinking about race.
I would posit that the difference in your Canada vs China comparison is that the laws are better defined for you than they are a Chinese citizen. Like, what the hell does "non-harmonious" mean exactly? You don't know but you seem to have lost your job because of it.
Think for a minute about what the phrase "speech against the government" could mean in China. Is saying "The Yang-tse river is so polluted!" considered speech against the Chinese government? Is complaining about your working conditions okay? Is criticizing the United States' copyright laws okay when your government has pledged time and time again to combat piracy?
I think the biggest issue is that all of the above can be against the law on a case by case basis decided by the state. In Canada, are you afraid of the government disliking you for some reason and then reviewing your internet usage and history to find something to prosecute you under?
I didn't realize that the RIAA would let them off so easily. Oh well, LimeWire can always appeal and get it kicked up to a couple vigintillion a la Jammie Thomas.
But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
Science vessels? According to Newsweek, it's photographers and people looking to document the damage that BP is turning away. Now that's some unadulterated bullshit "damage control."
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation gets to the bottom of that.
The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
Look at their stock in the last month and then look down at related companies on that page and see how every single company in that industry has suffered stock prices plummeting in the last month. Not saying it's a bad thing or that these patents shouldn't be overturned but it was pretty obvious. Just to prepare everyone, you will see a short term drop in research devoted to identifying cancer genes unless it's government backed with your tax dollars.
So, in China, you can pay a private firm to kidnap, lock up and abuse an adult ...
Huh, you know, it's funny, until your post I have never associated this with Park Chan-Wook's OldBoy (South Korean film).
That's where they differ -- even the demented revenge plot of Oldboy couldn't dream that up.
Facebook generation
Please don't call us that. I thought 'Generation X' and 'Generation Y' were stupid names but now I long for alphabetic naming. I still fail to see the connection between their "social networking skills" (whatever the hell that is) and the increase in effective military intelligence. It looks to me like good communication and a drastic increase in surveilance technology is what the military is tapping. Just because social networking is rising to ~95% popularity in the younger generations doesn't mean that it's the reason for everything that generation does right.
How is this any different from World War II where several analysts received reports and images from war zones, discussed the new information, got on the radio to send new intelligence to forces and gave feedback to the collection unit of that intelligence? It sounds like the same process to me with just the next logical step up in all of these actions. Now they're using hardware to look at live video feeds. Now they're discussing it over a computer with people around the world. Now they're piloting the drone in real time. It's the advancement of technology, not Facebook that is driving this. The only stipulation is that you are familiar with a computer and the software on the computer -- which I would buy the younger generation are more comfortable around. But again, not a whole lot to do with posting on your friends wall that you got so plastered last night. And I don't really feel like social networking increases communications skills.
For all I know this could be the equivalent of LeBron James having a Facebook page and the New York Times saying, "Look at how well the NBA utilizes the skills of the Facebook generation."
From 12 to 2 is an increase of -10.
The single video card has twelve outputs. On a Crossfire capable motherboard, you could possibly install two of these (pending room on your motherboard and inside your case). This would bring your grand total output to 24 monitors. RTFA next time before attempting math.
I know that motherboards only support two but I seem to recall a story of someone who might be interested in that.
Also, in the article, they call this behemoth "Powercolor innovation." I'd rather we called it "Powercolor scaling" unless they actually tackled the problem in some way other than slapping to cards together into one.
He's putting US Citizen's lives in danger by exposing a cover up by the US Military? Now there's some Dubya bush logic!
From a BBC article with more details from the person who turned him in:
I gave them conversation logs that implicated Special Agent Manning. They were particularly interested in a code word for a major operation.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words. While you might be able to justify the videos, I don't know how you could justify bragging to people about it and discussing current military operations on the internet. That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.