The big thing is how much it costs to defend these BS patents. My work got sued for infringement because we sell CPU heatsinks with HEATPIPES!!! They didn't go after the manufacturers of the heatsinks, not the distributors, but the end user sellers. Defending these things cost around $100,000 against some asshat working on commission IF they win. Not to mention, even if you ask for court costs you'll get nothing because the owner of the company likely has 10 other companies with other patents with each one having no real value.
Did you read what I typed? I said people are more likely to rip a DVD which has been fully open for ages, and recompress it. Plus seriously, 60-80 movies per 2TB HD is a complete waste of space, not to mention the shoddy workmanship and crazy prone to failure conditions those garbage $100 2TB consumer drives are subject to. Hell, and even if people resorted to ripping from the HDCP with BR it would be: a real time rip (hope you don't drop any frames!), real time encode, and likely would want to reencode again just to get it to something a little more friendly. It was practical with VHS tapes, not anymore. Especially when I can fit 200-250 DVD rips on a 500GB RAID1 drive, and thats being MAJORLY conservative. Not to mention when your files usually average about 1GB that makes them super portable, and shareable. Lets not even get me started on the processor time, heat, power cost, and wear on a system to just play those massive BR files on demand.
All of this is quickly becoming moot though with the advent of Netflix, and other on demand video sites. YOU may give a flip if your movie is in super duper 1080p with obnoxious bit-rates (3D will go the way or blue/red 3D back in the day if were lucky), but the market that moves technology just wants to have cheap entertainment because it's just that, cheap, entertainment. Adding more cost to entertainment will just make people do other things, like god forbid: go outside, and fly a kite. I knew BR was going to win the war with HDDVD, but that wasn't even the real format fight. Even Sony is admitting in steps that Netflix's model is the way by allowing it on the PS3. I almost shat myself when I heard it was going to be released for it.
No hacker is going to give a crap about this. It's so much easier to just rip the data directly from the disk. Plus, anyone in their right minds is usually going to just get the DVD anyways if they are going rip it. Likely going to downsample it anyways since the full resolution file is obnoxiously large. All this realistically would allow for is for people to make an HDMI to Component conversion box which is one of those DMCA grey zones. The underlying technologies of DVD & Blue Ray encryptions were compromised ages ago.
You obviously didn't bother to read what the parent said at all. Doubt you'll read what I say, but here I go feeding the troll.
It is very difficult to use embryonic stem cells in direct treatments. At best, it could only have half of your genetic makeup, and likely still suffer rejection issues. The point the parents however was making is that embryonic stem cells take almost 1/10th or some other extremely lower amount of time to "proof of concept" a treatment that can then move onto a real treatment where they extract your own adult cells, and work them into the treatment. The difference here is between embryonic vs adult is the blindingly fast speed the discoveries can be made.
It's the kind of thing that can make the ability to have the therapy on the market, and cleared by the FDA in your lifetime within reason. Whereas if they keep having to play with old cells that are not in their closest to most pristine condition it makes things so much harder. It's like drawing on a fresh piece of paper vs a piece of paper thats been used, abused, and erased more times than you can count. Theres going to be issues, and setbacks.
This all is really just another case of religion trying to stop an amazing set of discoveries from happening. Worked great during the dark ages where we as a culture were set so far back it's not funny, and the cycle continues to repeat itself. It's great how short human life, and memory is. These kind of remarks were the same kind that were used when invitro-fertilization was going on, which is where a very large chunk of these embryos are being sourced from. Doc makes a whole crapton of embryos, picks his choice that he thinks has the best chance of becoming a human being, and otherwise would send the rest off for destruction. It's not even that they are being created with this purpose, they were created without any intent for this use but something else, and are now the leftover scraps that would be discarded anyways. It's foolish to waste a few cells that are already there, at least with stem cell research they have some semblance of usefulness.
Oh, and one more thing, this kind of crap is whats going to get America, and a few other countries left in the dust. Doctors in countries with more concern for people alive, and kicking let this kind of thing go on because they see the purpose. They have the research, they have the people proficient in it, and they bring money to the country (like Thailand) because people can't get these amazing treatments in their homeland because of shortsightedness, and being blinded by the holy light. Plus something even worse happens because of this, these countries that do it, usually don't have allot of accountability so verifying the treatment is legitimate, or not something that should still be tested in chimps still can, and has caused many people great health problems.
These kind of arguments are like the head of PETA bitching that animal testing is horrible, but he sure as hell won't go without his diabetic medication which has it's history rooted in animal testing. You know if there was some life threatening ailment you or your child had, you would go for it. Wether it had it's roots in embryonic research or not. America will not decide for the world on this, the world will likely end up having to decide for America. That or religion will have to be expunged from politics forcibly.
We all know they are different, but they both are a virus. Both of which most people fight off without too much issue. All the medications in the world won't help you fight either though. All they do is mask they symptoms, and let people get on with things easier till your body does it's thing.
Huh? Are you stupid? Do you have ANY idea how immunizations work? They typically give you a dead or almost dead version of the virus, your body munches on it, rips it apart, and learns how to fight it from then on very easily. Which is great for viruses that don't mutate much like Polio. IF you catch a fully functional version of the virus before this however, theres not a damn thing any doctor can do for you. Immunization is already occurring. If you survive? Great, your now immune to the virus (like the yearly cold of flu for the layman). If not, or you end up with detrimental side effects? Well, then you piss & moan how the government should have gotten you the immunization, and how your going to sue damnit!!!
The thing I find hilarious about all of these people is that they themselves have had the immunizations. I think you should only be able to sue if you never had the immunization your suing over, and your kid did. There would be almost zero because people would be living the life as someone who had the full blown virus, usually worse off for it, and APPRECIATE that their kid could get it, these morons would have never had kids because they'd already be dead. Hell, if you want to debate immunizations just look at Roosevelt & how he hid how badly Polio hurt his body. Problem is none of these nutters have any experience with how terrible & debilitating these viruses are. People in 3rd world countries would jump for joy for the small chance it might cause autism instead of the virus just killing them or their children.
Well China is a fairly easy target to beatup. Seeing as how government officials have repeatedly been showing willingness to screw over one party, or a foreign business group for the benefit of someone they know. There, the government is just a partner of your business. If they aren't? You can bet your ass they'll be helping your competitor because you wern't in lock step with them.
OMG there needs to be a toggle to filter paid services companies like experts-exchange. Their BS is so gaw damn annoying it's not funny. It's bad when I have to create a string of "-experts-exchange -driverskit -driverszone -etc." because Google keeps listing these garbage results.
Good people give from the goodness of their hearts, give from their excess. It's great he's doing some of these charities, but it's pretty obvious which category he falls into...
It was this year. Def-Con 18. Annnnd...oops! Guess it was Mike Metzger that gave the talk. Showed up as another name on my phone. Look for the talk for "Letting the Air Out of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems". Dunno how helpful this will be though since your AC *groans*
Or ya know...just treat your IT staff with some dignity & respect and it'll go so far to not leaving bad blood. Plus, giving them two weeks notice so they can get things in order for your company with a 3-6 month severance is always a way to make sure you don't run into problems. Oh, and don't ransack their office going happy go lucky trying to figure out what is & isn't their property unless they have been stealing from the company. Experienced plenty of good ways, and bad ways to be let go. Always a sign as to if your former managers will be able to handle it. Whats really funny though is when they end up having to bring back the person they just laid off at 5x their original hourly rate when things go south because they think they can bring someone else in at half the original cost who doesn't have a clue. It certainly is sweet sweet karmic justice when those events occur, and they almost always do with regularity./rant
Actually it's fairly hard to get onto XBLA and PSN. Even big publishers play hell getting things onto the PS3. It's why as of late, if something shows up on the 360, and PS3, almost every time theres something exclusive to the PS3 version, and rarely the other way around with the 360. Look at Batman Arkham Asylum for a good example (Joker exclusive levels). Now if big dev's have to go through that BS JUST so they can release on either system, imagine what the small indie devs have to do. Heck, I've even got a prime example for you: Machinarium. Turned down purely from XBLA because it wasn't "exclusive" to XBLA. Which is hilarious because it's not like it was a shovleware game so many big devs have taken to. It was proven on the PC that it's a good game, and people dig it.
I'm kina sure they can. If the company wants to do business in the United States, they end up being bound by US law. If the US government says you can't sell something to a specific country, or group, you end up having to play by their rules. Look at China & Google for a good example. Just in that case China had so many political, and backroom reasons to make life hell for Google.
Actually this is all old hat at this point. This guy is just stealing from a Def Con talk which needs attribution to Mike Hertzfeld. I was at the talk that first brought this about. It was a little jaw dropping. He came up with ways to track people around cities using the information from the systems. That in itself isn't so bad since almost everyone has Bluetooth and/or active wireless scanning enabled on their phones, but I digress (the police use this method already since it requires no court order). The really meat & potatoes was where if he flooded the system with garbage data over the wireless something interesting happened, the car shut off. Thats the real crazy part to me, that the system is that vulnerable.
I thought this was called disable cookies, and delete all browsing data upon exit? This isn't even an issue. Do that, and they can track you about as well as what phone prompts you chose when you call support.
All of successful China is corrupt. Not saying the US isn't too, but there it's more blatant. This is the country you have to pay around $30,000 to graduate your university on top of what you just payed for 4 years of school payable to some random person who will "make it happen". Not to mention you end up paying someone for the privilege of working for them (certainly keeps turnover down!). Not a single bit of what goes on over there is shocking or surprising. It's just par the course. Corruption is built into their culture. This sadly coming from someone who actually likes China, and thinks it's a nice place to go, and would live there if not for the insane amount of corruption.
Oh, and one more thing, patents like that one are shakey that they are even being infringed on since it's so drastically different from how coolers are built today. Either way though, payout is still almost always more favorable. I so got into the wrong field.
Actually Laches doesn't stop the suit from coming forward. It costs something like a minimum of $20,000 a month to fight a small patent dispute. The real issue with these trolls is they usually hit up the smaller guys first to build their warchest. They know better than to pursue the big players at least until they have a big warchest (and thats even if they ever bother with those with deep pockets). Their goal is a quick settlement. My work got hit by some asshat claiming BS about EVERY modern cooler that uses heatpipes (which is awesome since the research for heatpipes came from NASA). Options are fight the joker until bankruptcy, or pay them some minuscule percentage that will likely never equal one month's fight. Either way the patent troll won't lose any money, his lawyer is almost always running on contingency. Not to mention, anyone who fights the lawsuit will likely just get dropped midway through since that puts their patent in peril, and move onto the next guy. I'm a little disgusted/. doesn't post anything about these shenanigans until it hits the big players.
Aaaaactually...With Windows Vista you can disable driver signatures permanently. With 7 you have to disable the requirement EVERY booth with F8, or the device gets put into a stopped state. It's REALLY nice for this kind of issue (which could have saved the rootkits of XP), but sucks balls for drivers that just fell short of getting updated. I'm looking at you Intel 910/915 graphics drivers! They work awesome until you reboot. *grumble grumble*
Plus really there hasn't been enough precedent yet. It'll be interesting to see what happens when someone just owns up to pirating around 24 songs instead of trying to lie about it in court. So far I think the extreme damages have come allot from people flat out lieing in court, or other shenanigans.
I'm honestly with the GP. I had all the same info for the police here (LogMeIn FTW!), and the cops never did dick. Having my MBP I just got 2 weeks back paid for however sure softens the blow to personal security about someone entering my home when I wasn't here (security film & cameras help too now!).
Actually it's not so much about local v federal. That's mostly to do with corruption, and not wanting to give up proffi...err control. They honestly could give two flips about autonomy unless you live in HK. The real issue that seems brewing to me is Western China military v Eastern China Government. What most know is the somewhat safe Eastern China where we get most of our shiny crap from. The Western China however seems to have more in common still with fudle lords of days long gone by. Just no one really talks about it much. The quality of life in that area is markedly lower (what middle class?), technology of course hasn't made much impact there, and if your foreign, your pretty insane to even think of going near the Western areas.
I'm still wondering how that is going to play out especially with the coming water shortages China is getting itself into.
Slashdot Mirror
The big thing is how much it costs to defend these BS patents. My work got sued for infringement because we sell CPU heatsinks with HEATPIPES!!! They didn't go after the manufacturers of the heatsinks, not the distributors, but the end user sellers. Defending these things cost around $100,000 against some asshat working on commission IF they win. Not to mention, even if you ask for court costs you'll get nothing because the owner of the company likely has 10 other companies with other patents with each one having no real value.
Did you read what I typed? I said people are more likely to rip a DVD which has been fully open for ages, and recompress it. Plus seriously, 60-80 movies per 2TB HD is a complete waste of space, not to mention the shoddy workmanship and crazy prone to failure conditions those garbage $100 2TB consumer drives are subject to. Hell, and even if people resorted to ripping from the HDCP with BR it would be: a real time rip (hope you don't drop any frames!), real time encode, and likely would want to reencode again just to get it to something a little more friendly. It was practical with VHS tapes, not anymore. Especially when I can fit 200-250 DVD rips on a 500GB RAID1 drive, and thats being MAJORLY conservative. Not to mention when your files usually average about 1GB that makes them super portable, and shareable. Lets not even get me started on the processor time, heat, power cost, and wear on a system to just play those massive BR files on demand.
All of this is quickly becoming moot though with the advent of Netflix, and other on demand video sites. YOU may give a flip if your movie is in super duper 1080p with obnoxious bit-rates (3D will go the way or blue/red 3D back in the day if were lucky), but the market that moves technology just wants to have cheap entertainment because it's just that, cheap, entertainment. Adding more cost to entertainment will just make people do other things, like god forbid: go outside, and fly a kite. I knew BR was going to win the war with HDDVD, but that wasn't even the real format fight. Even Sony is admitting in steps that Netflix's model is the way by allowing it on the PS3. I almost shat myself when I heard it was going to be released for it.
No hacker is going to give a crap about this. It's so much easier to just rip the data directly from the disk. Plus, anyone in their right minds is usually going to just get the DVD anyways if they are going rip it. Likely going to downsample it anyways since the full resolution file is obnoxiously large. All this realistically would allow for is for people to make an HDMI to Component conversion box which is one of those DMCA grey zones. The underlying technologies of DVD & Blue Ray encryptions were compromised ages ago.
You obviously didn't bother to read what the parent said at all. Doubt you'll read what I say, but here I go feeding the troll.
It is very difficult to use embryonic stem cells in direct treatments. At best, it could only have half of your genetic makeup, and likely still suffer rejection issues. The point the parents however was making is that embryonic stem cells take almost 1/10th or some other extremely lower amount of time to "proof of concept" a treatment that can then move onto a real treatment where they extract your own adult cells, and work them into the treatment. The difference here is between embryonic vs adult is the blindingly fast speed the discoveries can be made.
It's the kind of thing that can make the ability to have the therapy on the market, and cleared by the FDA in your lifetime within reason. Whereas if they keep having to play with old cells that are not in their closest to most pristine condition it makes things so much harder. It's like drawing on a fresh piece of paper vs a piece of paper thats been used, abused, and erased more times than you can count. Theres going to be issues, and setbacks.
This all is really just another case of religion trying to stop an amazing set of discoveries from happening. Worked great during the dark ages where we as a culture were set so far back it's not funny, and the cycle continues to repeat itself. It's great how short human life, and memory is. These kind of remarks were the same kind that were used when invitro-fertilization was going on, which is where a very large chunk of these embryos are being sourced from. Doc makes a whole crapton of embryos, picks his choice that he thinks has the best chance of becoming a human being, and otherwise would send the rest off for destruction. It's not even that they are being created with this purpose, they were created without any intent for this use but something else, and are now the leftover scraps that would be discarded anyways. It's foolish to waste a few cells that are already there, at least with stem cell research they have some semblance of usefulness.
Oh, and one more thing, this kind of crap is whats going to get America, and a few other countries left in the dust. Doctors in countries with more concern for people alive, and kicking let this kind of thing go on because they see the purpose. They have the research, they have the people proficient in it, and they bring money to the country (like Thailand) because people can't get these amazing treatments in their homeland because of shortsightedness, and being blinded by the holy light. Plus something even worse happens because of this, these countries that do it, usually don't have allot of accountability so verifying the treatment is legitimate, or not something that should still be tested in chimps still can, and has caused many people great health problems.
These kind of arguments are like the head of PETA bitching that animal testing is horrible, but he sure as hell won't go without his diabetic medication which has it's history rooted in animal testing. You know if there was some life threatening ailment you or your child had, you would go for it. Wether it had it's roots in embryonic research or not. America will not decide for the world on this, the world will likely end up having to decide for America. That or religion will have to be expunged from politics forcibly.
We all know they are different, but they both are a virus. Both of which most people fight off without too much issue. All the medications in the world won't help you fight either though. All they do is mask they symptoms, and let people get on with things easier till your body does it's thing.
Fuckin MAGNETS!!! How do they work??? Miracles!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs
Huh? Are you stupid? Do you have ANY idea how immunizations work? They typically give you a dead or almost dead version of the virus, your body munches on it, rips it apart, and learns how to fight it from then on very easily. Which is great for viruses that don't mutate much like Polio. IF you catch a fully functional version of the virus before this however, theres not a damn thing any doctor can do for you. Immunization is already occurring. If you survive? Great, your now immune to the virus (like the yearly cold of flu for the layman). If not, or you end up with detrimental side effects? Well, then you piss & moan how the government should have gotten you the immunization, and how your going to sue damnit!!!
The thing I find hilarious about all of these people is that they themselves have had the immunizations. I think you should only be able to sue if you never had the immunization your suing over, and your kid did. There would be almost zero because people would be living the life as someone who had the full blown virus, usually worse off for it, and APPRECIATE that their kid could get it, these morons would have never had kids because they'd already be dead. Hell, if you want to debate immunizations just look at Roosevelt & how he hid how badly Polio hurt his body. Problem is none of these nutters have any experience with how terrible & debilitating these viruses are. People in 3rd world countries would jump for joy for the small chance it might cause autism instead of the virus just killing them or their children.
You mean kind of like the special right to drive?
It always is slighly funny when a little bit of /b/ steps onto another site without trying to destroy it XD
Well China is a fairly easy target to beatup. Seeing as how government officials have repeatedly been showing willingness to screw over one party, or a foreign business group for the benefit of someone they know. There, the government is just a partner of your business. If they aren't? You can bet your ass they'll be helping your competitor because you wern't in lock step with them.
OMG there needs to be a toggle to filter paid services companies like experts-exchange. Their BS is so gaw damn annoying it's not funny. It's bad when I have to create a string of "-experts-exchange -driverskit -driverszone -etc." because Google keeps listing these garbage results.
Good people give from the goodness of their hearts, give from their excess. It's great he's doing some of these charities, but it's pretty obvious which category he falls into...
It was this year. Def-Con 18. Annnnd...oops! Guess it was Mike Metzger that gave the talk. Showed up as another name on my phone. Look for the talk for "Letting the Air Out of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems". Dunno how helpful this will be though since your AC *groans*
Or ya know...just treat your IT staff with some dignity & respect and it'll go so far to not leaving bad blood. Plus, giving them two weeks notice so they can get things in order for your company with a 3-6 month severance is always a way to make sure you don't run into problems. Oh, and don't ransack their office going happy go lucky trying to figure out what is & isn't their property unless they have been stealing from the company. Experienced plenty of good ways, and bad ways to be let go. Always a sign as to if your former managers will be able to handle it. Whats really funny though is when they end up having to bring back the person they just laid off at 5x their original hourly rate when things go south because they think they can bring someone else in at half the original cost who doesn't have a clue. It certainly is sweet sweet karmic justice when those events occur, and they almost always do with regularity. /rant
Actually it's fairly hard to get onto XBLA and PSN. Even big publishers play hell getting things onto the PS3. It's why as of late, if something shows up on the 360, and PS3, almost every time theres something exclusive to the PS3 version, and rarely the other way around with the 360. Look at Batman Arkham Asylum for a good example (Joker exclusive levels). Now if big dev's have to go through that BS JUST so they can release on either system, imagine what the small indie devs have to do. Heck, I've even got a prime example for you: Machinarium. Turned down purely from XBLA because it wasn't "exclusive" to XBLA. Which is hilarious because it's not like it was a shovleware game so many big devs have taken to. It was proven on the PC that it's a good game, and people dig it.
I'm kina sure they can. If the company wants to do business in the United States, they end up being bound by US law. If the US government says you can't sell something to a specific country, or group, you end up having to play by their rules. Look at China & Google for a good example. Just in that case China had so many political, and backroom reasons to make life hell for Google.
Actually this is all old hat at this point. This guy is just stealing from a Def Con talk which needs attribution to Mike Hertzfeld. I was at the talk that first brought this about. It was a little jaw dropping. He came up with ways to track people around cities using the information from the systems. That in itself isn't so bad since almost everyone has Bluetooth and/or active wireless scanning enabled on their phones, but I digress (the police use this method already since it requires no court order). The really meat & potatoes was where if he flooded the system with garbage data over the wireless something interesting happened, the car shut off. Thats the real crazy part to me, that the system is that vulnerable.
I thought this was called disable cookies, and delete all browsing data upon exit? This isn't even an issue. Do that, and they can track you about as well as what phone prompts you chose when you call support.
All of successful China is corrupt. Not saying the US isn't too, but there it's more blatant. This is the country you have to pay around $30,000 to graduate your university on top of what you just payed for 4 years of school payable to some random person who will "make it happen". Not to mention you end up paying someone for the privilege of working for them (certainly keeps turnover down!). Not a single bit of what goes on over there is shocking or surprising. It's just par the course. Corruption is built into their culture. This sadly coming from someone who actually likes China, and thinks it's a nice place to go, and would live there if not for the insane amount of corruption.
Oh, and one more thing, patents like that one are shakey that they are even being infringed on since it's so drastically different from how coolers are built today. Either way though, payout is still almost always more favorable. I so got into the wrong field.
Actually Laches doesn't stop the suit from coming forward. It costs something like a minimum of $20,000 a month to fight a small patent dispute. The real issue with these trolls is they usually hit up the smaller guys first to build their warchest. They know better than to pursue the big players at least until they have a big warchest (and thats even if they ever bother with those with deep pockets). Their goal is a quick settlement. My work got hit by some asshat claiming BS about EVERY modern cooler that uses heatpipes (which is awesome since the research for heatpipes came from NASA). Options are fight the joker until bankruptcy, or pay them some minuscule percentage that will likely never equal one month's fight. Either way the patent troll won't lose any money, his lawyer is almost always running on contingency. Not to mention, anyone who fights the lawsuit will likely just get dropped midway through since that puts their patent in peril, and move onto the next guy. I'm a little disgusted /. doesn't post anything about these shenanigans until it hits the big players.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/04/09/us_based_companies_sued_for_heat_pipe_cpu_coolers
Aaaaactually...With Windows Vista you can disable driver signatures permanently. With 7 you have to disable the requirement EVERY booth with F8, or the device gets put into a stopped state. It's REALLY nice for this kind of issue (which could have saved the rootkits of XP), but sucks balls for drivers that just fell short of getting updated. I'm looking at you Intel 910/915 graphics drivers! They work awesome until you reboot. *grumble grumble*
Plus really there hasn't been enough precedent yet. It'll be interesting to see what happens when someone just owns up to pirating around 24 songs instead of trying to lie about it in court. So far I think the extreme damages have come allot from people flat out lieing in court, or other shenanigans.
I'm honestly with the GP. I had all the same info for the police here (LogMeIn FTW!), and the cops never did dick. Having my MBP I just got 2 weeks back paid for however sure softens the blow to personal security about someone entering my home when I wasn't here (security film & cameras help too now!).
Actually it's not so much about local v federal. That's mostly to do with corruption, and not wanting to give up proffi...err control. They honestly could give two flips about autonomy unless you live in HK. The real issue that seems brewing to me is Western China military v Eastern China Government. What most know is the somewhat safe Eastern China where we get most of our shiny crap from. The Western China however seems to have more in common still with fudle lords of days long gone by. Just no one really talks about it much. The quality of life in that area is markedly lower (what middle class?), technology of course hasn't made much impact there, and if your foreign, your pretty insane to even think of going near the Western areas.
I'm still wondering how that is going to play out especially with the coming water shortages China is getting itself into.