How very very fortunate for everyone involved (unless the problem was the original Dalvik developer's sleep statements). The article is scant on details and the official press release is also very thin. My big question is whether or not we'll see this quickly adopted and rolled out by manufacturers who've already released Android. For me, assuming this is bug free, I'd like to see how my Motorolla Droid performs on Dalvik Turbo. Will it be as simple as swap image and reboot to switch between the two? Is anything lost in this transition?
At first glance I was certain that they had compiled and optimized the virtual machine to be specific to an architecture... allowing them to implement certain optimizations specific to each architecture. But I don't see any indication of that. Anyone know where the big speedup came from? Myriad's press release just sounds like Chuck Norris decided to dabble in software development... they just looked at Android and it became three times faster.
... seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services.
What?
From the expert quoted in that article:
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space."
Yeah, in the same way that McDonalds could be a major disruptor to grocery stores. Rampant, ridiculous speculation and little more. Remember when MySpace was supposed to be the greatest news source EVER? And tried to become a gaming platform? Unless I've missed some new development with Twitter and Facebook (I'm only a user of the latter), this is preposterous.
The only thing you'd see with Twitter or Facebook adding news is social networking bloat. That's it. One guy trying to do everything and be your one stop shop. It rarely works. Even some of Google's efforts to be your one stop shop die on the fine and fails encompass more of what you need from the web.
Not to toot my own horn or pat myself on the back too hard but the only reason I'm even in the standings on Slashdot submissions is Google and Google News. Let me know when Facebook or Twitter offer a simple RSS interface that I can log into from anywhere and share stories with my contacts. Also, they'll need to be able to search the news, turn that search into an RSS feed and let me view that with the feed reader... because that's exactly the kind of thing I do with Google Reader. And it allows me to dump very little time into searching for news and maximize my time spent reading the news.
While you are engaged in your social engineering, what exactly are you going to do about other genetic characteristics? You're going to mandate that x% of our representative government consists of genetically disabled people? Including morons (not a socially acceptable term, but accurate) psychos, and idiot savants? How about midgets? How about people like me, who are color blind? Is the world ready for a hemophiliac as president?
This is called a straw man logical fallacy. You offered up a bunch of easily struck down arguments in order to win an argument against me. What do any of these things have to do with the sexes? You still haven't given me any scientific references on sexual genders determining "genetic inferiority" in either behavior or physiological differences. Your argument is painfully flawed although you're doing the best you can with such a shaky foundation.
Honestly I'm not surprised you resorted to this but I hope your children take the time to learn more about how to correctly debate or discuss issues if you don't take the time to teach them these skills.
Aside from the veritable goldmine of easily disputed points you afforded me (and the complete lack of behavioral science references that your post begs for that matter), you do represent an popular and therefore essential viewpoint in this discussion.
You and I will have to agree to disagree and instead I'll address the people reading this thread: this person is who you and your children have to deal with. They're not always men and sometimes they're as innocuous as writers for sitcoms and television showing that women should play the subservient role in any relationship or else it will fall apart. Your wife might make more than you, deal with it.
If you have a daughter, she's going to interface with daughters of the above attitude and it's going to be very trying for your child not to strive to make the cheer leading squad. I'ts going to be hard if she wants to sit at a computer and code up her ideas with her peers expressing this gold standard of high school politics. It's going to be hard like it was hard for me to shirk off sports and instead embrace music and computers. My friends were few but they're still my friends and, hey, we're all lucratively employed. I don't know about the football team and frankly could care less. Sports are great and staying in shape is crucial to your health and well being but the second you step off that field the real parts that matter in your life begin. In the classroom. You're entertainment when you're on the field. It might get you laid in high school but it won't get you employed later in life.
Teach your children to poke holes through arguments that rely on name calling like "gayboys" and try to enforce alpha male hierarchy. These are values and ideals that are, in my humble opinion, vital to success and acceptance. It's your choice to instill them firmly in your children.
I'm a man, I don't have venture capital, so I don't care. If women want more venture capital, its not my issue.
You should care because the only way to make this work (without further using tax dollars and programs to forcibly put women in these positions) is to do one thing: should you successfully reproduce and should your progeny have the XX sex chromosomes then it is up to you to ensure that said progeny have equal support from you to pursue desires in sports and technology... and any other male dominated profession. As lame as this sounds, equality at home from birth produces equality everywhere.
Do not enforce Barbie Dolls upon them. Do no not let their friends enforce a stereotype on them. Support their true desires should it be technology, sports or hair dressing.
The problem here is not the VC funders or the companies. The root of the problem is society at large. It's been going on for quite sometime in some societies more than others. Only you as a parent can change it for your offspring. It's a huge societal change that takes at least one generation with a limitless maximum of generations to complete the transition. Politics seems to have made headway and technology can as well.
The other solution is that people are installed that might not be the most qualified person but present the equally valuable diverse viewpoint in decisions and products. Not everyone values this as highly as I do and I understand that it upsets people when companies and governments try to make equal opportunity employment quotas.
Remember: it's up to you to support this change. Don't rely on the government or your neighbors or whatever deity you may believe in. It's your job to change this if you want to see it changed.
So how is this developer's desire to port something from Android to the iPhone and advertise it different from Apple's desire to have Windows applications running on OSX and actively advertise it?
Oh, now I get it. You push the little guys around when you're the big man on campus. Certainly is interesting I can find literature about Symbian on your site. Tell me, if a very popular Symbian or Blackberry app was ported to the iPhone, would you allow the developer to advertise it? Because I'm betting you would.
The other day we discussed what sounds like similar research by a group of scientists at Tohoku University; that team did not produce transistors, however.
Surely that is some sort of joke. From the summary of the Tokyo University article:
A new paper entitled Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon toward Graphene-Silicon Fusion Electronics published by a group of physicists at Tohoku University in Japan has demonstrated that they can grow graphene on a silicon substrate and pair that technique with conventional lithography to create a graphene-on-silicon field effect transistor.
Not to mention that article is a myriad of highly moderated comments admonishing the staleness of graphene on silicon transistors.
Although they've long relied upon fair use protections for educational use, the Association for Information Media and Equipment has made claims that they're copyright infringers, even though the videos are only available on campus and the students are allowed to watch the videos in the Instructional Media Lab.
That may be the case now but according to the article, that was the specific problem. That they were using Video Furnace to post videos online so students could view the videos outside of the IML which has horrible hours like being closed on weekends. From one of the students:
"If we want students to write a paper on the film over the weekend, it’s more convenient for the student to rewatch the movie online over the weekend. (The ban) makes teaching cinema more difficult (because) Video Furnace was extremely useful," Gans said. "I very much hope (the university) will reach some kind of agreement."
It seems they licensed Video Furnace for use of its technology only on campus and only on campus machines. But the ease of use means that if you post a Video Furnace movie on your course website then students -- or maybe even anyone -- could access it using a browser from anywhere. The summary link says that this may work but is not recommended due to possible latency from the server.
The ACLU backed down because, well, the university is probably violating its licensing agreement with Video Furnace. The professors don't do licensing so they didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong. The solution is to threaten to leave Video Furnace unless they amend their licensing contract or give you a way to convert to an open format that the professors can post where ever they want -- once you have the raw video, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. It's been shown that free online courses don't hurt enrollment anyway.
The department continues to believe that a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits. The department stated that it is committed to continuing to work with the parties and other stakeholders to help develop solutions through which copyright holders could allow for digital use of their works by Google and others, whether through legislative or market-based activities.
The article touches on insurance but I fear this particular part more than the privacy concerns:
Since health insurance paid for Isabel's genetic screening, her positive test for a cystic fibrosis gene is now on the record with her insurance company, and the Browns are concerned this could hurt her in the future.
And if the disease is considered genetic by the medical community like Alzheimer's or even high cholesterol, is it going to affect her descendants through the ages forthcoming when they try to get insurance? Already you have people with pre-existing conditions finding it hard to get insurance but I fear of a future where health care crises are addressed by increasing fees passed on to people with genetic disorders and diseases that they not only have no control over but also don't even suffer from yet.
with out authorization it is credit card fraud among other things that a DA will throw at me. If a business gives my information to a third party and the third party charges my credit card then that's just sharing? I need to start up a couple of businesses.
In games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, YoVille and Vampires Live, you know, some of the major sources of all those garbage announcements cluttering up your Facebook, players compete to complete missions and level up. By leveling up, you can complete more difficult missions and fight off weaker opponents. You can wait for your various energies to regenerate naturally over time, or you can purchase with real money in-game boosts. Or, you can complete various lead generation offers, many of which are of the "answer page after page of questions and opt in and out of receiving various kinds of spam" variety. Some of them install malware and adware that is impossible to remove. And some of them secretly subscribe you to monthly recurring $9.99 credit card charges.
Hey, they can look at my data. It will bore them to death.
They'll find my four trillion digits of pi boring until they realize that every trillionth digit is the start of a datetime stamp followed by geographic coordinates indicating when and where I'm going to kill next. How many people have to die before they realize that it's GMT with no adjustments for daylight savings!?
... but unfortunately they granted a patent on that in 1987 and don't have the money for the absurd licensing fee the patent holder is asking. Unfortunately the "novel" method patented covers both clockwise and counterclockwise but they're currently looking into rotating them 179 degrees, making the document slightly slanted but avoiding royalties.
But it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are drawn to it.
So, what we have here is an article with no actual basis for conclusions. Nothing to see here, move along
Of course, these are the fields of psychology and human behavior. Even the best work done by Pavlov or Skinner aren't 100% proven. They are, however, very interesting observations and empirical data that assist us in beginning to understand the human psyche. You're never going to have a completely proven conclusion from studies and surveys like this. And the people working within these fields are therefore subjected to the very opposite of what a mathematician or physicist would get if they made similarly sized discoveries in their field.
The free variables are endless since humans can produce some of the most random and erratic behavior out there. And you'll never isolate and control all of these variables in your experiments and surveys. You can certainly hit the most obvious ones but humans are an odd lot. The hope is that a large enough sample size yields empirical data to make it 'good enough.' But everyone in the sample was British. Is there something about that culture or the internet service in that country that adds to depression? Are internet addicts more depressed in Iran and China because of the censorship? Less depressed in Scandinavian countries because the internet is cheaper and their culture embraces it? Who knows?
The really inconvenient thing these researchers have working against them is that their subjects are humans. We're not dealing with a poisonous snake that rarely bites but sporadically lashes out 1.2% of the time so they should always be handled with all sorts of protection... no, we're dealing with children and adults, real people. Similar to early twenties Arabs being constantly hassled at airports, British children might face their mum doling out a hundred quid a week to some shrink who convinced them that he plays video games and surfs online he's more likely to be depressed. Never mind that the money might have been better spent on food and clothing or even entertainment to fight the alleged depression. The other problem is that news of this report gives heavy internet usage a bad wrap and it comes to be seen as impurity or a liability or even a counterculture (this might already be happening in some countries).
I'm not a psychologist, I've read some books but never studied the field. My direction of thinking would be to have a follow on study where heavy internet users who were also depressed were given surveys before and after completing many hours of internet usage in which they rate their overall mood versus non-internet activities where the same survey is completed. I think you'll find that depressed people are drawn to it for various reasons and your results would generate random noise and not a trend for mood to drop while using the internet or gaming. Maybe they feel insecure of their looks or stature in real life and online they're eldavojohn and not the fat kid that gets picked on and beat up at school? Maybe it's just another escape like Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels were for me as a kid? Maybe home is a very painful place with separated parents or not enough money or not enough material things so they escape online where everything is virtual? The possibilities are endless and I hope the public and psychology as a whole learn to look for the root of the problem and not use heavy internet usage as a symptom of a disease.
It is kind of hard when you realize that you just saw seven people die in front of your eyes.
I would also like to point out that some people have more reverence for the dead than others. And that this individual could have decided out of respect of the families of those deceased to withhold the tape from the replay replay replay replay that major news networks would undoubtedly subject it to. Following the initial interest and showing of the footage, a release would simply be played again on the news, reminding those with lost loved ones and the nation of its failure.
Some people don't believe in making a spectacle of something like another individual's passing. It's entirely possible that this amateur film maker felt that way.
I can relate to it with a recent example. I was sitting in an airport over the holidays and a family was on TV grieving for their mother who was just killed in Haiti by a collapsed building. They chose to appear on that news network and they chose to open up all their emotions for the world to see. I was glad that the destruction and pain was effectively transmitted to me so I could understand their plight. I was not, however, glad to see the commercials for Jergan's Body Wash, the Latest Honda, Trojan Condoms, etc immediately following a young girl begging to have her mother's corpse returned to her.
I was only four when the Challenger disaster happened. But I can relate to that kind of pain through disasters of my time and respect this man's wishes to withhold this footage even despite the benefit it might have provided NASA or expedited the investigation.
No regrets? That's like asking Bill Gates if he regrets dropping out of Harvard and becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I'm sure he regrets it daily.
The regret in question would be the one where you regretted quitting early. Because Watterson quit early. It's a very short 'interview' but to all artists and people in general out there who start something very good, take note:
Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.
It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
I've never regretted stopping when I did.
As someone suffering to find anything even remotely watchable on American TV, I wish more people would adopt this kind of attitude.
For universities it's easy: as most of them benefit from public funds, they shouldn't be able to patent anything and release it all under the public domain for the public's benefit.
Well, you have to repeal/amend the Bayh-Dole Act that essentially gave universities the right to patent their findings. I think before that the patents went to the United States government if they funded the research. I know that our friends at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) have courted the government to keep funding them by offering Institutional Patent Agreements. Does WARF sound familiar to you? It should.
There's a lengthy blog post about this that has good quotes and points from both sides including:
Georgia Tech professor Mark Allen said "In a number of circumstances, the competitive advantage afforded through exclusivity [that is, patent monopoly] may be absolutely critical to justify the risk undertaken by a company in developing a product from a promising early-stage university technology, as it was in the case of Cardiomems." Professor Allen, also Chief Technology Officer at Cariomems, did not reveal his compensation from privately-held Cardiomems using the patented technology from his Georgia Tech research.
Susan B. Butts, Dow Chemical Company, had a different perspective: "Although the Bayh-Dole Act has enabled the transfer of technology developed with federal funds from US universities to industry it has also contributed to a contentious climate around the issue of intellectual property (IP) rights which discourages research collaborations between industry and US universities. Second, most foreign universities, which do not have the IP expectations created by Bayh-Dole, allow industry research sponsors to own or control inventions resulting from the research that they fund. This much more favorable treatment of IP is causing companies to do more of their sponsored research abroad [emphasis added]."
And, you know, with how much value we place on intellectual property elsewhere it would seem that the amount of funding and rewards universities are getting for this research is down right laughable. So the Bayh-Dole Act was a very simple solution: let both parties involved benefit from the research and allow the university to reap the benefits of licensing and royalties.
What's a better alternative method for appropriate rewards?
Is favorable to both sides. It's especially favorable to the defendant if a preliminary injunction is issued.
I'm not a lawyer but there's an article from Sunday about Dallas firms specializing in 'tricky, rocky terrain' of patent litigation to be hired out in the Eastern Texas District Court ('Rocket Docket') cases listed in the report.
Now, pay attention to this part of the article
'Rocket docket'
The Eastern District, which includes Collin County and much of eastern Texas, has won a reputation as extremely plaintiff-friendly and a preferred venue to get patent claims through quickly.
Just getting a case into the Eastern District – known by some as the "rocket docket" because its comparative lack of criminal cases lets judges move civil patent cases swiftly – has prompted some companies to settle quickly.
Nguyen says the district's reputation as friendly to patent plaintiffs is widespread; whenever it's mentioned at law conferences around the country, she hears the same reaction.
A case against you that you found out about last week has just gone to trial in Eastern Texas and you need to be there to represent yourself even though you're based out of New York City. The reputation of the court is a bias toward the plaintiff and on top of that they have the Dallas firm that specializes in winning patent cases... now, quickly, you need to decide to settle or fight this.
although if the neighbor's dog keeps getting out of his electric fence I might have no choice...
Buy a brick of velveeta cheese and a bottle of castor oil. Sprinkle some of the castor oil on the brick and feed it to the dog every time it gets out of the fence.
Trust me, the problem will solve itself one way or the other.
The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'
Huh. I had always thought that some international police force like "The International Fusion Gestapo" would be dispatched upon hearing this news and show up at your lab and start smashing mirrors and urinating on lasers until you revised your statement to be "15 to 20 years away" so that all their dues paying members would have time to reach tenure before you ruined the party.
I mean, there was no other logical explanation why so many seemingly brilliant scientists continually gave us incorrect estimates of achieving milestones in fusion research. Is this just being overly optimistic or was he carefully picking his words so that they will know if this method is viable (above break even energy production) or not within a year? And if so, where will he get his funding given the if not scenario?
Push the button on his back down to make him raise his hand to object! Push the same button up and he slides an affidavit full of unmarked bills across the judge's desk! Just like in real life!
It's scary to read all of the comments from people who have never lived under an actual oppressive government about how the US is just as bad as China...
It's not scary, it's the sign of a healthy system. If you have a population of over a million and no one is complaining about the leadership than something is terribly terribly wrong.
I will always have comments to criticize my government with and I will decide how loudly I voice them. You are correct in asserting that China is worse on censorship than the US but that won't stop people from drawing analogies to prevent the equivocation from being complete. The fact that a North Korean or Iranian or Chinese citizen cannot get up and loudly voice criticisms (no matter how true/untrue) of their respective governments is what should scare you.
I assure you that we know it's not as bad here but some of us feel that any mild form of censorship is horrible. And so you'll hear it from time to time and that's just a sign that the system that allows dissent is working. If I didn't have that to bitch about, trust me, I'd find something else. It was literally designed that way by our founding fathers and is the American Way*.
*Note: I'm not saying it was started by or is exclusive to Americans, just that it's how we expect it to be.
If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.
Er, Baidu had 1) been operating for seven years already when Google.cn was founded in China and 2) had the benefits of being a Chinese company that no doubt had leaders more in tune with Chinese culture.
Pick a country foreign to you. Now give your competitors a seven year head start. Now try to enter the market. Now tell me that 29% is "disappointing." Has anyone come even close to that against Google in the US?
I'd say 29% is pretty astonishing. What were you expecting?
This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.
Interesting, Sergey's father faced the problem of having to compromise by abandoning his faith and culture in order to get the job he wanted (astronomer) or stay Jewish and be reduced/stunted in a select set of careers. Now Sergey has a similar decision where he can choose either his principles or a chance at one sixth of the world's population as a market. Should be an interesting choice.
I hope he realizes that once he cashes in the choice will no longer be his and will be a painfully obvious one for the investors. Capitalistic greed, while much less worse than flaws of implemented Socialism, has its evils too, Sergey.
Slashdot Mirror
The power of open source.
... allowing them to implement certain optimizations specific to each architecture. But I don't see any indication of that. Anyone know where the big speedup came from? Myriad's press release just sounds like Chuck Norris decided to dabble in software development ... they just looked at Android and it became three times faster.
How very very fortunate for everyone involved (unless the problem was the original Dalvik developer's sleep statements). The article is scant on details and the official press release is also very thin. My big question is whether or not we'll see this quickly adopted and rolled out by manufacturers who've already released Android. For me, assuming this is bug free, I'd like to see how my Motorolla Droid performs on Dalvik Turbo. Will it be as simple as swap image and reboot to switch between the two? Is anything lost in this transition?
At first glance I was certain that they had compiled and optimized the virtual machine to be specific to an architecture
... seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services.
What?
From the expert quoted in that article:
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space."
Yeah, in the same way that McDonalds could be a major disruptor to grocery stores. Rampant, ridiculous speculation and little more. Remember when MySpace was supposed to be the greatest news source EVER? And tried to become a gaming platform? Unless I've missed some new development with Twitter and Facebook (I'm only a user of the latter), this is preposterous.
... because that's exactly the kind of thing I do with Google Reader. And it allows me to dump very little time into searching for news and maximize my time spent reading the news.
The only thing you'd see with Twitter or Facebook adding news is social networking bloat. That's it. One guy trying to do everything and be your one stop shop. It rarely works. Even some of Google's efforts to be your one stop shop die on the fine and fails encompass more of what you need from the web.
Not to toot my own horn or pat myself on the back too hard but the only reason I'm even in the standings on Slashdot submissions is Google and Google News. Let me know when Facebook or Twitter offer a simple RSS interface that I can log into from anywhere and share stories with my contacts. Also, they'll need to be able to search the news, turn that search into an RSS feed and let me view that with the feed reader
While you are engaged in your social engineering, what exactly are you going to do about other genetic characteristics? You're going to mandate that x% of our representative government consists of genetically disabled people? Including morons (not a socially acceptable term, but accurate) psychos, and idiot savants? How about midgets? How about people like me, who are color blind? Is the world ready for a hemophiliac as president?
This is called a straw man logical fallacy. You offered up a bunch of easily struck down arguments in order to win an argument against me. What do any of these things have to do with the sexes? You still haven't given me any scientific references on sexual genders determining "genetic inferiority" in either behavior or physiological differences. Your argument is painfully flawed although you're doing the best you can with such a shaky foundation.
Honestly I'm not surprised you resorted to this but I hope your children take the time to learn more about how to correctly debate or discuss issues if you don't take the time to teach them these skills.
Sorry to talk down to you but your methods are well known and exploited all the time.
Aside from the veritable goldmine of easily disputed points you afforded me (and the complete lack of behavioral science references that your post begs for that matter), you do represent an popular and therefore essential viewpoint in this discussion.
You and I will have to agree to disagree and instead I'll address the people reading this thread: this person is who you and your children have to deal with. They're not always men and sometimes they're as innocuous as writers for sitcoms and television showing that women should play the subservient role in any relationship or else it will fall apart. Your wife might make more than you, deal with it.
If you have a daughter, she's going to interface with daughters of the above attitude and it's going to be very trying for your child not to strive to make the cheer leading squad. I'ts going to be hard if she wants to sit at a computer and code up her ideas with her peers expressing this gold standard of high school politics. It's going to be hard like it was hard for me to shirk off sports and instead embrace music and computers. My friends were few but they're still my friends and, hey, we're all lucratively employed. I don't know about the football team and frankly could care less. Sports are great and staying in shape is crucial to your health and well being but the second you step off that field the real parts that matter in your life begin. In the classroom. You're entertainment when you're on the field. It might get you laid in high school but it won't get you employed later in life.
Teach your children to poke holes through arguments that rely on name calling like "gayboys" and try to enforce alpha male hierarchy. These are values and ideals that are, in my humble opinion, vital to success and acceptance. It's your choice to instill them firmly in your children.
I'm a man, I don't have venture capital, so I don't care. If women want more venture capital, its not my issue.
You should care because the only way to make this work (without further using tax dollars and programs to forcibly put women in these positions) is to do one thing: should you successfully reproduce and should your progeny have the XX sex chromosomes then it is up to you to ensure that said progeny have equal support from you to pursue desires in sports and technology ... and any other male dominated profession. As lame as this sounds, equality at home from birth produces equality everywhere.
Do not enforce Barbie Dolls upon them. Do no not let their friends enforce a stereotype on them. Support their true desires should it be technology, sports or hair dressing.
The problem here is not the VC funders or the companies. The root of the problem is society at large. It's been going on for quite sometime in some societies more than others. Only you as a parent can change it for your offspring. It's a huge societal change that takes at least one generation with a limitless maximum of generations to complete the transition. Politics seems to have made headway and technology can as well.
The other solution is that people are installed that might not be the most qualified person but present the equally valuable diverse viewpoint in decisions and products. Not everyone values this as highly as I do and I understand that it upsets people when companies and governments try to make equal opportunity employment quotas.
Remember: it's up to you to support this change. Don't rely on the government or your neighbors or whatever deity you may believe in. It's your job to change this if you want to see it changed.
So how is this developer's desire to port something from Android to the iPhone and advertise it different from Apple's desire to have Windows applications running on OSX and actively advertise it?
Oh, now I get it. You push the little guys around when you're the big man on campus. Certainly is interesting I can find literature about Symbian on your site. Tell me, if a very popular Symbian or Blackberry app was ported to the iPhone, would you allow the developer to advertise it? Because I'm betting you would.
The other day we discussed what sounds like similar research by a group of scientists at Tohoku University; that team did not produce transistors, however.
Surely that is some sort of joke. From the summary of the Tokyo University article:
A new paper entitled Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon toward Graphene-Silicon Fusion Electronics published by a group of physicists at Tohoku University in Japan has demonstrated that they can grow graphene on a silicon substrate and pair that technique with conventional lithography to create a graphene-on-silicon field effect transistor.
Not to mention that article is a myriad of highly moderated comments admonishing the staleness of graphene on silicon transistors.
Although they've long relied upon fair use protections for educational use, the Association for Information Media and Equipment has made claims that they're copyright infringers, even though the videos are only available on campus and the students are allowed to watch the videos in the Instructional Media Lab.
That may be the case now but according to the article, that was the specific problem. That they were using Video Furnace to post videos online so students could view the videos outside of the IML which has horrible hours like being closed on weekends. From one of the students:
"If we want students to write a paper on the film over the weekend, it’s more convenient for the student to rewatch the movie online over the weekend. (The ban) makes teaching cinema more difficult (because) Video Furnace was extremely useful," Gans said. "I very much hope (the university) will reach some kind of agreement."
It seems they licensed Video Furnace for use of its technology only on campus and only on campus machines. But the ease of use means that if you post a Video Furnace movie on your course website then students -- or maybe even anyone -- could access it using a browser from anywhere. The summary link says that this may work but is not recommended due to possible latency from the server.
The ACLU backed down because, well, the university is probably violating its licensing agreement with Video Furnace. The professors don't do licensing so they didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong. The solution is to threaten to leave Video Furnace unless they amend their licensing contract or give you a way to convert to an open format that the professors can post where ever they want -- once you have the raw video, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. It's been shown that free online courses don't hurt enrollment anyway.
The department continues to believe that a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits. The department stated that it is committed to continuing to work with the parties and other stakeholders to help develop solutions through which copyright holders could allow for digital use of their works by Google and others, whether through legislative or market-based activities.
Seemed to me they weren't happy with Google 'ownership' of orphaned works and the fact that it's "opt out" not "opt in" for authors. I guess you could see that as opposition but basically the amended contract failed to satisfy them. That's why they're having a hearing on Feb. 18, 2010.
A deal this big is bound to have lengthy negotiations and investigations as it's truly game changing for everyone involved and the world at large.
Since health insurance paid for Isabel's genetic screening, her positive test for a cystic fibrosis gene is now on the record with her insurance company, and the Browns are concerned this could hurt her in the future.
And if the disease is considered genetic by the medical community like Alzheimer's or even high cholesterol, is it going to affect her descendants through the ages forthcoming when they try to get insurance? Already you have people with pre-existing conditions finding it hard to get insurance but I fear of a future where health care crises are addressed by increasing fees passed on to people with genetic disorders and diseases that they not only have no control over but also don't even suffer from yet.
with out authorization it is credit card fraud among other things that a DA will throw at me. If a business gives my information to a third party and the third party charges my credit card then that's just sharing? I need to start up a couple of businesses.
Apparently social gaming is a great business model for this kind of crap. The mentioned retailers get you after you make your purchase but when you need more resources in Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook:
In games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, YoVille and Vampires Live, you know, some of the major sources of all those garbage announcements cluttering up your Facebook, players compete to complete missions and level up. By leveling up, you can complete more difficult missions and fight off weaker opponents. You can wait for your various energies to regenerate naturally over time, or you can purchase with real money in-game boosts. Or, you can complete various lead generation offers, many of which are of the "answer page after page of questions and opt in and out of receiving various kinds of spam" variety. Some of them install malware and adware that is impossible to remove. And some of them secretly subscribe you to monthly recurring $9.99 credit card charges.
Don't ever put your credit card information into Facebook or a Facebook app. Social Media is rife with crap like this. Right about now we should be asking when we'll get to see the findings in the the federal probe that set out to address shoddy "business practices" like this and what is being done about it now that we know about it?!
Hey, they can look at my data. It will bore them to death.
They'll find my four trillion digits of pi boring until they realize that every trillionth digit is the start of a datetime stamp followed by geographic coordinates indicating when and where I'm going to kill next. How many people have to die before they realize that it's GMT with no adjustments for daylight savings!?
Sincerely,
- Pi Killer
Aside from internal 1984 style abuse of this proposed system, the fundamental concept (and all existing implementations of it) introduces a new level of security risk and it is this exact interface that is said to be the weakness that was exploited in the Google China attack. From a computer security perspective, this is wrong on many different levels.
... but unfortunately they granted a patent on that in 1987 and don't have the money for the absurd licensing fee the patent holder is asking. Unfortunately the "novel" method patented covers both clockwise and counterclockwise but they're currently looking into rotating them 179 degrees, making the document slightly slanted but avoiding royalties.
But it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are drawn to it.
So, what we have here is an article with no actual basis for conclusions. Nothing to see here, move along
Of course, these are the fields of psychology and human behavior. Even the best work done by Pavlov or Skinner aren't 100% proven. They are, however, very interesting observations and empirical data that assist us in beginning to understand the human psyche. You're never going to have a completely proven conclusion from studies and surveys like this. And the people working within these fields are therefore subjected to the very opposite of what a mathematician or physicist would get if they made similarly sized discoveries in their field.
... no, we're dealing with children and adults, real people. Similar to early twenties Arabs being constantly hassled at airports, British children might face their mum doling out a hundred quid a week to some shrink who convinced them that he plays video games and surfs online he's more likely to be depressed. Never mind that the money might have been better spent on food and clothing or even entertainment to fight the alleged depression. The other problem is that news of this report gives heavy internet usage a bad wrap and it comes to be seen as impurity or a liability or even a counterculture (this might already be happening in some countries).
The free variables are endless since humans can produce some of the most random and erratic behavior out there. And you'll never isolate and control all of these variables in your experiments and surveys. You can certainly hit the most obvious ones but humans are an odd lot. The hope is that a large enough sample size yields empirical data to make it 'good enough.' But everyone in the sample was British. Is there something about that culture or the internet service in that country that adds to depression? Are internet addicts more depressed in Iran and China because of the censorship? Less depressed in Scandinavian countries because the internet is cheaper and their culture embraces it? Who knows?
The really inconvenient thing these researchers have working against them is that their subjects are humans. We're not dealing with a poisonous snake that rarely bites but sporadically lashes out 1.2% of the time so they should always be handled with all sorts of protection
I'm not a psychologist, I've read some books but never studied the field. My direction of thinking would be to have a follow on study where heavy internet users who were also depressed were given surveys before and after completing many hours of internet usage in which they rate their overall mood versus non-internet activities where the same survey is completed. I think you'll find that depressed people are drawn to it for various reasons and your results would generate random noise and not a trend for mood to drop while using the internet or gaming. Maybe they feel insecure of their looks or stature in real life and online they're eldavojohn and not the fat kid that gets picked on and beat up at school? Maybe it's just another escape like Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels were for me as a kid? Maybe home is a very painful place with separated parents or not enough money or not enough material things so they escape online where everything is virtual? The possibilities are endless and I hope the public and psychology as a whole learn to look for the root of the problem and not use heavy internet usage as a symptom of a disease.
It is kind of hard when you realize that you just saw seven people die in front of your eyes.
I would also like to point out that some people have more reverence for the dead than others. And that this individual could have decided out of respect of the families of those deceased to withhold the tape from the replay replay replay replay that major news networks would undoubtedly subject it to. Following the initial interest and showing of the footage, a release would simply be played again on the news, reminding those with lost loved ones and the nation of its failure.
Some people don't believe in making a spectacle of something like another individual's passing. It's entirely possible that this amateur film maker felt that way.
I can relate to it with a recent example. I was sitting in an airport over the holidays and a family was on TV grieving for their mother who was just killed in Haiti by a collapsed building. They chose to appear on that news network and they chose to open up all their emotions for the world to see. I was glad that the destruction and pain was effectively transmitted to me so I could understand their plight. I was not, however, glad to see the commercials for Jergan's Body Wash, the Latest Honda, Trojan Condoms, etc immediately following a young girl begging to have her mother's corpse returned to her.
I was only four when the Challenger disaster happened. But I can relate to that kind of pain through disasters of my time and respect this man's wishes to withhold this footage even despite the benefit it might have provided NASA or expedited the investigation.
No regrets? That's like asking Bill Gates if he regrets dropping out of Harvard and becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I'm sure he regrets it daily.
The regret in question would be the one where you regretted quitting early. Because Watterson quit early. It's a very short 'interview' but to all artists and people in general out there who start something very good, take note:
Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.
It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
I've never regretted stopping when I did.
As someone suffering to find anything even remotely watchable on American TV, I wish more people would adopt this kind of attitude.
For universities it's easy: as most of them benefit from public funds, they shouldn't be able to patent anything and release it all under the public domain for the public's benefit.
Well, you have to repeal/amend the Bayh-Dole Act that essentially gave universities the right to patent their findings. I think before that the patents went to the United States government if they funded the research. I know that our friends at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) have courted the government to keep funding them by offering Institutional Patent Agreements. Does WARF sound familiar to you? It should.
There's a lengthy blog post about this that has good quotes and points from both sides including:
Georgia Tech professor Mark Allen said "In a number of circumstances, the competitive advantage afforded through exclusivity [that is, patent monopoly] may be absolutely critical to justify the risk undertaken by a company in developing a product from a promising early-stage university technology, as it was in the case of Cardiomems." Professor Allen, also Chief Technology Officer at Cariomems, did not reveal his compensation from privately-held Cardiomems using the patented technology from his Georgia Tech research.
Susan B. Butts, Dow Chemical Company, had a different perspective: "Although the Bayh-Dole Act has enabled the transfer of technology developed with federal funds from US universities to industry it has also contributed to a contentious climate around the issue of intellectual property (IP) rights which discourages research collaborations between industry and US universities. Second, most foreign universities, which do not have the IP expectations created by Bayh-Dole, allow industry research sponsors to own or control inventions resulting from the research that they fund. This much more favorable treatment of IP is causing companies to do more of their sponsored research abroad [emphasis added]."
And, you know, with how much value we place on intellectual property elsewhere it would seem that the amount of funding and rewards universities are getting for this research is down right laughable. So the Bayh-Dole Act was a very simple solution: let both parties involved benefit from the research and allow the university to reap the benefits of licensing and royalties.
What's a better alternative method for appropriate rewards?
Is favorable to both sides. It's especially favorable to the defendant if a preliminary injunction is issued.
I'm not a lawyer but there's an article from Sunday about Dallas firms specializing in 'tricky, rocky terrain' of patent litigation to be hired out in the Eastern Texas District Court ('Rocket Docket') cases listed in the report.
Now, pay attention to this part of the article
'Rocket docket'
The Eastern District, which includes Collin County and much of eastern Texas, has won a reputation as extremely plaintiff-friendly and a preferred venue to get patent claims through quickly.
Just getting a case into the Eastern District – known by some as the "rocket docket" because its comparative lack of criminal cases lets judges move civil patent cases swiftly – has prompted some companies to settle quickly.
Nguyen says the district's reputation as friendly to patent plaintiffs is widespread; whenever it's mentioned at law conferences around the country, she hears the same reaction.
A case against you that you found out about last week has just gone to trial in Eastern Texas and you need to be there to represent yourself even though you're based out of New York City. The reputation of the court is a bias toward the plaintiff and on top of that they have the Dallas firm that specializes in winning patent cases ... now, quickly, you need to decide to settle or fight this.
Sound fair to you?
although if the neighbor's dog keeps getting out of his electric fence I might have no choice...
Buy a brick of velveeta cheese and a bottle of castor oil. Sprinkle some of the castor oil on the brick and feed it to the dog every time it gets out of the fence.
Trust me, the problem will solve itself one way or the other.
The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'
Huh. I had always thought that some international police force like "The International Fusion Gestapo" would be dispatched upon hearing this news and show up at your lab and start smashing mirrors and urinating on lasers until you revised your statement to be "15 to 20 years away" so that all their dues paying members would have time to reach tenure before you ruined the party.
I mean, there was no other logical explanation why so many seemingly brilliant scientists continually gave us incorrect estimates of achieving milestones in fusion research. Is this just being overly optimistic or was he carefully picking his words so that they will know if this method is viable (above break even energy production) or not within a year? And if so, where will he get his funding given the if not scenario?
"Lawyering is hard!"
Push the button on his back down to make him raise his hand to object! Push the same button up and he slides an affidavit full of unmarked bills across the judge's desk! Just like in real life!
Judge'sDeskAndNewYorkCountryLawyerVillainSoldSeparately. RIAADollVoidOutsideOfDesignatedUseAreasAndMayCausePermanentInjuryOr BankruptcyUponMissedPaymentInstallments.
It's scary to read all of the comments from people who have never lived under an actual oppressive government about how the US is just as bad as China ...
It's not scary, it's the sign of a healthy system. If you have a population of over a million and no one is complaining about the leadership than something is terribly terribly wrong.
I will always have comments to criticize my government with and I will decide how loudly I voice them. You are correct in asserting that China is worse on censorship than the US but that won't stop people from drawing analogies to prevent the equivocation from being complete. The fact that a North Korean or Iranian or Chinese citizen cannot get up and loudly voice criticisms (no matter how true/untrue) of their respective governments is what should scare you.
I assure you that we know it's not as bad here but some of us feel that any mild form of censorship is horrible. And so you'll hear it from time to time and that's just a sign that the system that allows dissent is working. If I didn't have that to bitch about, trust me, I'd find something else. It was literally designed that way by our founding fathers and is the American Way*.
*Note: I'm not saying it was started by or is exclusive to Americans, just that it's how we expect it to be.
If only they would have stood up for free speech at the beginning, and not only after they found themselves with a disappointing 29% market share.
Er, Baidu had 1) been operating for seven years already when Google.cn was founded in China and 2) had the benefits of being a Chinese company that no doubt had leaders more in tune with Chinese culture.
Pick a country foreign to you. Now give your competitors a seven year head start. Now try to enter the market. Now tell me that 29% is "disappointing." Has anyone come even close to that against Google in the US?
I'd say 29% is pretty astonishing. What were you expecting?
This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.
Interesting, Sergey's father faced the problem of having to compromise by abandoning his faith and culture in order to get the job he wanted (astronomer) or stay Jewish and be reduced/stunted in a select set of careers. Now Sergey has a similar decision where he can choose either his principles or a chance at one sixth of the world's population as a market. Should be an interesting choice.
I hope he realizes that once he cashes in the choice will no longer be his and will be a painfully obvious one for the investors. Capitalistic greed, while much less worse than flaws of implemented Socialism, has its evils too, Sergey.