AC mentioned that the first 50 patents held would be exempt from the $50k fee. So I don't know, but I guess a company holding more than 50 would not be a small company.
A nice tool to get a hint of if a certain website is down/inaccessibel for everyone or just you is This Tool!
This service attempts to make a connection to a website of your choice so you can see if it is just your ISP that can't access it.
Of course, since that is a known site it could easily be redirected to a locally hosted copy that said "Yes, that site is down for everybody! Its not just you!" for sites that were being blocked..
Are you telling me that this is gonna kill Facebook and Twitter? Really? REALLY?
In previous years, usenet was a social gathering ground on the internet.. being unmoderated was its strength, but also its weakness and Canter & Siegel started a movement that killed it eventually. This has the capability to kill off twitter and facebook sure, but since they both have a controlling entity who could institute moderation then perhaps they can stave off demise by some quick thinking..
And in fact I'd prefer to see a method where you can say "No permission for that" and yet still install the app because the app does not get to know what permissions you gave.. eg for reading email contacts, then it would think they read ok but find none. In fact, if you could approve contacts individually or by group, then you could have a set of fake friends that you might allow a suspicious app to see (and make it so that your inbuilt contacts app can't see them, so they don't clutter up your contacts list:)
No, if you read the claims of that patent, the stage lands on the barge neatly and does not bounce.. essentially, its a one click transaction, just NOT on the internet.
There are plenty of extremely slow mechanical operations (combine harvesting, for example)
I'm just going to point out that any mechanical operation involving an internal combustion engine has abundant power available for the use of a microprocessor based controller, which is significantly zero compared to the power required to move a couple of tons of machinery around, light the area and run the air conditioning and/or filtration in the cab.
hell, if I was going to hire a science teacher, I'd like to know if they're a creationist.
So you ask them questions about the curriculum they will be teaching. If they cannot display adequate knowledge about it, then don't hire them. If, after you hire them, they refuse to teach the set curriculum to your satisfaction, let them go. You should definitely monitor the classroom way before the examinations, since a bad teacher who is unable to teach the subject is just as bad as one who refuses to teach it. If the students do not pass their exams, you have failed them and they go out into the world with your failures holding them back.
After all, if you are a citizen (naturalized or otherwise), you will have a ssn
That may be true to a certain extent, but the reverse is certainly not true. I am not from the USA but I have met two people who had US Social Security Numbers without citizenship. The first was a Canadian, I'm not sure how he got it but he used to live very close to the border and worked both sides (dating back to the 70s). The second was a South African, he told me he was working as a 'white water rafting' instructor one summer (in the late 90s) and they asked for his SSN - when he said he didn't have one, they pointed him at the correct office. Apparently the department responsible for issuing such things never checked for citizenship, they were just concerned about being able to collect taxes..
Of course the obvious counter is that only the Muslim's WANT to show their faces, so, even if the law applies to everyone, it only actually affects one group.
I guess you meant that the Muslims were the only ones who wanted to HIDE their faces.. but here is a thing, it doesn't say in the Koran that they should hide their faces, and it is not traditional for Muslim women to do so either. The Burka was invented by religious extremists to consolidate their grip on the population, not for any religious reasons. It is well known that if you force people to do things that they know are wrong, they tend to then become very defensive about those things and will become more radical as a result (See: cognitive dissonance)
The Koran does apparently say
"They shall not reveal any parts of their bodies, except that which is necessary."
but that just means to me, that if the law says it is necessary for their face to be uncovered, then they should have no problems leaving it so..
And for my area, how well will they withstand hail?
Most of the solar PV panels I see installed on roofs around here, do not have the silicon exposed directly to the hail, there is a clear sheet (glass, polycarbonate, acrylic?) covering the cells..
Google is being billed as a for profit corporation, not as a charity or a non-profit. Investors should have the right to choose to invest to make profits. They should also be able to choose to donate to charities or research projects.
Are they really?
I'm sure I recall when they floated originally that they specifically stated they would not be paying dividends.. and their own FAQ says:
Does Google pay a cash dividend?
No, we have never declared or paid a cash dividend nor do we expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future.
So I would suggest that any investors hoping to make a profit in this way would be rather foolish to invest in Google..
When some child (or adult, for that matter) goes off the rails and pulls a Columbine, and we are sure they are the party that did the deed, we should hang them high and give them zero publicity.
Hanging them high is publicity.
That kind of acting out is the province of the subhuman.
I'd say, that relegating people you don't like to subhuman status, was likely part of the problem there. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (of Columbine High School) were "bullied for years" and you seem to be suggesting that the fault was all theirs for not having a "healthy sense of self".
Look at it from an engineering perspective, when you overload a bridge such that it is guaranteed to fail, you don't blame the weakest point, you blame the overloading. There is no way to engineer a bridge such that it can never fail.
I heard of this before; the chain restaurant doesn't want to take the hit when rounding down, so they just add the fractions to the next bill and hope nobody notices or cares. The US method of listing raw price then adding sales tax after (do they do this in fast food places?) means that this is difficult for customers to detect..
The reasoning the police give for having privacy is a lot more realistic: to deny criminals the ability to track police actions.
Except, that reasoning may seem sound, but the people they want to block are not criminals until they have been charged and convicted by a court of law. What they actually want: to deny all people the ability to track police actions.
Its up to you if you accept that this is proper, but history shows that some amount of oversight is desireable, even necessary.
I don't see the difficulty. If the copyright owner wants copyright protection in a given jurisdiction, it's up to them to submit the tax. If they don't, after some small number of years the IP goes into the public domain.
The complexity here is first that there must be a government organisation for each jurisdiction set up and maintained which keeps track of IP registration (vs "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights). Further complexity is that as a potential distributor of a potentially out of copyright work, I must contact this government organisation to check the status of every work (vs "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights), and how often should I contact them regarding a certain work that needs tax paid regularly? (of course, "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights) They could of course just make the data available for free on the internet, but see below..
Government organisations cost money to setup and maintain and yes, you could make them self-funding but then they start to become motivated differently. Why would they let you look something up for nothing? They could be forced to, but then you are talking about another law for that.. why do you want so many laws on the books? Its complicated when that happens..
Shortening copyright to 10 years won't change anything about the economics of pirating.
I think it would. With a short copyright term, there would be vast amounts of IP that is still culturally relevant available to distribute. There would be money to be made distributing that legally, and the organisations that would be making money distributing that would not be interested in illegally distributing protected IP.
Yes, piracy would still be possible and would still exist, much as counterfeit goods are available today.. but really, is it a problem when the real thing is available legally and cheaply? The vast majority of consumers are not going to bother seeking out the illegal suppliers, which really marginalizes them.
Problem for me with your suggestion is that this is complex to administer and requires work to find if IP is in public domain or not. A work may be under copyright or in the public domain in different jurisdictions and it will be very difficult to determine which. Why should I need to apply to a government department in order to find out if what I am going to do is lawful or not?
I wouldn't necessarily oppose an IP tax, but that is separate.. You don't pay property tax to keep your land from becoming part of the commons, you own the property and you pay tax based on the value of it because the government wants a cut. If you don't pay the tax, they might take it away from you and sell it to somebody else but it remains property and it is still valuable, it does not become free for all to use. If you want to try to implement an IP tax that is based on the value of the IP because you want a cut of the money then please, feel free to go ahead. The government has a massive department dedicated to collecting tax revenues already and they would no doubt be able to accomodate that just fine.
Re:Your right to what?
on
BTJunkie No More?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
At the very least some sanity is needed in maximum copyright. Not more than a year beyond the lifetime of the creator, and no amount of rights transfers should change that. This could still be abused in a Mickey Mouse-like case, with constant spin-off products being created. Somebody smart finish this train of thought. I'm getting off at this station.
Problem for me with your suggestion, is that anything depending on "lifetime of creator" is vague and open to twisted interpretations. If I have a work that I wish to copy, it would be better to have all the information available in that work as to when its copyright is expired, not have to research if the person is dead or not (which is not always clear, especially if facts have been obscured). Also, it requires a separate law for "works for hire" where an corporate entity who cannot die owns the copyright. It is far better to have a single rule that applies to all copyright than it is to try and cover works depending on who owns the copyright. That way lies confusion and when it is unclear when anybody owns a copyright (cf. "Happy Birthday") then people can be harassed endlessly.
Re:Your right to what?
on
BTJunkie No More?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Perhaps if copyright length was judged by promotion and sales figures.
No, because that is vague and open to interpretation. For simplicity, copyright should be a fixed term. Then, when you buy something, and see it says right on the package that "This item is Copyright 2006" and you know that after X years you are free to copy it and distribute all you like. You can keep that original work as reference and if somebody comes to you with a lawsuit saying that you are copying their derivative work (with a later copyright) then you show it in court and the judge tells them to leave you alone.
Vague laws with loopholes are bad
(I favour 10 years, its a nice round number and most people can count that much on their fingers)
That's easily addressed, if the persons name you are tagging on a photo doesn't have a facebook account, you can't add that name. Simples.
Facebook have pretty effective facial recognition software, which, although the results are not enabled for general use, they presumably run photos through it anyway? If your face appears in one or more pictures or your name is mentioned, no matter if you are tagged or have an account, they can start to build a profile about you. Every time you are mentioned, or tagged, they can tie more disparate facts together..
If all this is distasteful for EU citizens, well Facebook is a US company and they can just export the data to the US and do whatever they like, right? Except now they are told that they cannot export data. Seems fair to me
Slashdot Mirror
AC mentioned that the first 50 patents held would be exempt from the $50k fee. So I don't know, but I guess a company holding more than 50 would not be a small company.
But what has this to do with anything?
But what was the time for the first circumnavigation by a sailboat? Joshua Slocum was the first solo circumnavigator, and he took three years..
And your comment reminds me that apples and oranges are both fruits, but oh so different..
Of course, since that is a known site it could easily be redirected to a locally hosted copy that said "Yes, that site is down for everybody! Its not just you!" for sites that were being blocked..
In previous years, usenet was a social gathering ground on the internet.. being unmoderated was its strength, but also its weakness and Canter & Siegel started a movement that killed it eventually. This has the capability to kill off twitter and facebook sure, but since they both have a controlling entity who could institute moderation then perhaps they can stave off demise by some quick thinking..
And in fact I'd prefer to see a method where you can say "No permission for that" and yet still install the app because the app does not get to know what permissions you gave.. eg for reading email contacts, then it would think they read ok but find none. In fact, if you could approve contacts individually or by group, then you could have a set of fake friends that you might allow a suspicious app to see (and make it so that your inbuilt contacts app can't see them, so they don't clutter up your contacts list :)
No, if you read the claims of that patent, the stage lands on the barge neatly and does not bounce.. essentially, its a one click transaction, just NOT on the internet.
I'm just going to point out that any mechanical operation involving an internal combustion engine has abundant power available for the use of a microprocessor based controller, which is significantly zero compared to the power required to move a couple of tons of machinery around, light the area and run the air conditioning and/or filtration in the cab.
So you ask them questions about the curriculum they will be teaching. If they cannot display adequate knowledge about it, then don't hire them. If, after you hire them, they refuse to teach the set curriculum to your satisfaction, let them go. You should definitely monitor the classroom way before the examinations, since a bad teacher who is unable to teach the subject is just as bad as one who refuses to teach it. If the students do not pass their exams, you have failed them and they go out into the world with your failures holding them back.
That may be true to a certain extent, but the reverse is certainly not true. I am not from the USA but I have met two people who had US Social Security Numbers without citizenship. The first was a Canadian, I'm not sure how he got it but he used to live very close to the border and worked both sides (dating back to the 70s). The second was a South African, he told me he was working as a 'white water rafting' instructor one summer (in the late 90s) and they asked for his SSN - when he said he didn't have one, they pointed him at the correct office. Apparently the department responsible for issuing such things never checked for citizenship, they were just concerned about being able to collect taxes..
Listen, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. Its not going to happen.
I guess you meant that the Muslims were the only ones who wanted to HIDE their faces.. but here is a thing, it doesn't say in the Koran that they should hide their faces, and it is not traditional for Muslim women to do so either. The Burka was invented by religious extremists to consolidate their grip on the population, not for any religious reasons. It is well known that if you force people to do things that they know are wrong, they tend to then become very defensive about those things and will become more radical as a result (See: cognitive dissonance)
The Koran does apparently say
but that just means to me, that if the law says it is necessary for their face to be uncovered, then they should have no problems leaving it so..
Most of the solar PV panels I see installed on roofs around here, do not have the silicon exposed directly to the hail, there is a clear sheet (glass, polycarbonate, acrylic?) covering the cells..
Are they really?
I'm sure I recall when they floated originally that they specifically stated they would not be paying dividends.. and their own FAQ says:
So I would suggest that any investors hoping to make a profit in this way would be rather foolish to invest in Google..
Slashdot never has up to date news!
Hanging them high is publicity.
I'd say, that relegating people you don't like to subhuman status, was likely part of the problem there. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (of Columbine High School) were "bullied for years" and you seem to be suggesting that the fault was all theirs for not having a "healthy sense of self".
Look at it from an engineering perspective, when you overload a bridge such that it is guaranteed to fail, you don't blame the weakest point, you blame the overloading. There is no way to engineer a bridge such that it can never fail.
Reminds me of Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss, one of my all time favourites..
I heard of this before; the chain restaurant doesn't want to take the hit when rounding down, so they just add the fractions to the next bill and hope nobody notices or cares. The US method of listing raw price then adding sales tax after (do they do this in fast food places?) means that this is difficult for customers to detect..
Or teenage girls singing Mettalica -> Nothing Else Matters.
Except, that reasoning may seem sound, but the people they want to block are not criminals until they have been charged and convicted by a court of law. What they actually want: to deny all people the ability to track police actions.
Its up to you if you accept that this is proper, but history shows that some amount of oversight is desireable, even necessary.
The complexity here is first that there must be a government organisation for each jurisdiction set up and maintained which keeps track of IP registration (vs "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights). Further complexity is that as a potential distributor of a potentially out of copyright work, I must contact this government organisation to check the status of every work (vs "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights), and how often should I contact them regarding a certain work that needs tax paid regularly? (of course, "its obvious" for fixed term copyrights) They could of course just make the data available for free on the internet, but see below..
Government organisations cost money to setup and maintain and yes, you could make them self-funding but then they start to become motivated differently. Why would they let you look something up for nothing? They could be forced to, but then you are talking about another law for that.. why do you want so many laws on the books? Its complicated when that happens..
I think it would. With a short copyright term, there would be vast amounts of IP that is still culturally relevant available to distribute. There would be money to be made distributing that legally, and the organisations that would be making money distributing that would not be interested in illegally distributing protected IP.
Yes, piracy would still be possible and would still exist, much as counterfeit goods are available today.. but really, is it a problem when the real thing is available legally and cheaply? The vast majority of consumers are not going to bother seeking out the illegal suppliers, which really marginalizes them.
Problem for me with your suggestion is that this is complex to administer and requires work to find if IP is in public domain or not. A work may be under copyright or in the public domain in different jurisdictions and it will be very difficult to determine which. Why should I need to apply to a government department in order to find out if what I am going to do is lawful or not?
I wouldn't necessarily oppose an IP tax, but that is separate.. You don't pay property tax to keep your land from becoming part of the commons, you own the property and you pay tax based on the value of it because the government wants a cut. If you don't pay the tax, they might take it away from you and sell it to somebody else but it remains property and it is still valuable, it does not become free for all to use. If you want to try to implement an IP tax that is based on the value of the IP because you want a cut of the money then please, feel free to go ahead. The government has a massive department dedicated to collecting tax revenues already and they would no doubt be able to accomodate that just fine.
Problem for me with your suggestion, is that anything depending on "lifetime of creator" is vague and open to twisted interpretations. If I have a work that I wish to copy, it would be better to have all the information available in that work as to when its copyright is expired, not have to research if the person is dead or not (which is not always clear, especially if facts have been obscured). Also, it requires a separate law for "works for hire" where an corporate entity who cannot die owns the copyright. It is far better to have a single rule that applies to all copyright than it is to try and cover works depending on who owns the copyright. That way lies confusion and when it is unclear when anybody owns a copyright (cf. "Happy Birthday") then people can be harassed endlessly.
No, because that is vague and open to interpretation. For simplicity, copyright should be a fixed term. Then, when you buy something, and see it says right on the package that "This item is Copyright 2006" and you know that after X years you are free to copy it and distribute all you like. You can keep that original work as reference and if somebody comes to you with a lawsuit saying that you are copying their derivative work (with a later copyright) then you show it in court and the judge tells them to leave you alone.
Vague laws with loopholes are bad
(I favour 10 years, its a nice round number and most people can count that much on their fingers)
Facebook have pretty effective facial recognition software, which, although the results are not enabled for general use, they presumably run photos through it anyway? If your face appears in one or more pictures or your name is mentioned, no matter if you are tagged or have an account, they can start to build a profile about you. Every time you are mentioned, or tagged, they can tie more disparate facts together..
If all this is distasteful for EU citizens, well Facebook is a US company and they can just export the data to the US and do whatever they like, right? Except now they are told that they cannot export data. Seems fair to me