John Graham-Cumming wrote an article today complaining about how a computer system he was working with described his last name as having invalid characters. It of course does not, because anything someone tells you is their name is--by definition--an appropriate identifier for them. John was understandably vexed about this situation, and he has every right to be, because names are central to our identities, virtually by definition.
The article writer confuses two different concepts: names as identities and names as identifiers.
The software shouldn't care if your "real" name is {love symbol #2}, it only needs to deal with a limited subset of monikers. Government sites/databases should accept anything that you can legally put on a passport, driver's licence, etc. of that country and nothing more. Financial ones should accept names and addresses that can appear on your bank account or credit card. Private sites can set their own rules.
I suggest that, at the minimum, accept whatever is required to accurately deliver send a letter to persons in all countries you need to support. I would expect that most post offices can deal with names/addresses rendered in Latin alphabets; if not - either don't support the corresponding countries or be more flexible.
I actually knew a girl in HS who came from a very traditional Mexican family, as a result, she had 7 middle names.
Here's the thing, in California, in order to be issued a driver's license, your full name had to appear on the card, and there was insufficient space for all of her middle names, as a result, in order to get a driver's license, she had to have her name legally changed.
Good thing that Pablo Picasso" never had to get a Californian driver's license.
As far as asses go, I do believe you have us beat.
I wrote to my MP (both letters and emails), and spoke to his staff on the phone. I was very polite but firm in pointing out the flaws in bill C-32 and suggesting how they could be fixed to make it balanced. I may be an ass but at least I am not a lazy one.
- The date to beat is Nov. 2, 1997, not the 2008 filing date. That is, art after Nov. 2, 1997 is not prior art. From the patent: This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul. 7, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,714,916), which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/962,997, filed Nov. 2, 1997 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,369).
- The abstract of the patent, quoted above, is not the critical part. The claims are what determine infringement. Here, the claims are pretty broad and do seem to cover facebook.
-- Patent Attorney
Dear Patent Attorney,
Please explain to us what is the reason behind allowing a company to modify a patent years after it was filed and have the modifications effectively backdated.
I believe the GP is arguing about the lost opportunity of that $10 billion. There is a finite pool of cash, and many other projects that are asking for funding. Something else got the axe so the super collider could get built... given the light of the debt crises in the western nations, maybe that cash would have been better spent later rather than right now.
Fair enough, let's address those claims.
The construction of LHC was approved in 1995, way before there was a crisis in Europe. The total project cost (about half of the $10B figure according to this) is therefore spread across more than 15 years (assuming not all experiments have been run) and 20 countries. CERN's budget for last year was about $1B (see previous link) and a similar figure in 2008 and I fully expect them to spend that money on nuclear research, as per their charter; there are other organizations that concern themselves with world hunger, bank bailouts, etc.
Now, let's put the numbers into perspective. There are *individuals* that can finance the LHC 5 times over. Speaking about countries, in 2009 Germany was the largest contributor to CERN with ~$200M, which was roughly 0.006% of their GDP.
Oh, and by the way, the discovery was made at Fermilab's Tevatron, which is both older and significantly cheaper than the LHC.
The flaw with this reasoning is that we have all sorts of interesting possible research. It isn't expensive super collider vs no research it is 10 billion dollars used for building a super collider vs 10 billion spent on other research.
I guess that Gauss et al. should not have wasted their time on pure mathematics fields (such as number theory) that had absolutely no practical applications at the time.
I did not set out to prove anything, merely to demonstrate that "statistics" are meaningless at best (and misleading at worst) without carefully defining the terms and supplying context.
Your first link is to a government report, but if you ask the government to see it they "won't be able to find it". Did it ever exist or was it just invented by the NMA?
Try http://www.google.com/search?q=FHWA-RD-92-084+site%3Adot.gov Google finds 25 citations of the report on various DOT sites, proving it is legit. If the US government declines to provide the full text on a publicly accessible web site, I cannot force them to.
It then refers to 13 other studies showing the opposite effect and 3 studies showing no changes. You earlier spoke of lies, damn lies and statistics. You might also like to add selective quoting to that list.
I did not set out to prove that raising speed limits reduces accidents in all cases, merely that the issue is not as clear cut as some would like you to believe. To that effect I quoted supporting studies, being careful to select the sources that should not be biased toward this conclusion.
Speed limits are set not only to prevent accidents, but also to reduce the severity of the accidents that occur in an attempt to reduce serious injuries and deaths. By countering research showing a reduction in fatalities with other research showing an increase in accidents, you have ignored the main aim of having speed limits: saving lives.
In an ideal world, where the speed limits are based on scientific data, you would be correct. Unfortunately, while studies overwhelmingly show that the safest speed is near the 85th percentile of traffic speed (look it up), most speed limits are set way below that figure, even taking variable conditions into effect. You choose to ignore several other reasons for setting speed limits, namely: political and revenue generating.
Lastly, I'd like to offer a personal anecdote. In the winter, I take the kids skiing on weekends. We drive north on Hwy 400, which has 3 to 4 lanes in each direction and the posted speed limit is 100Km/h. The police here usually don't bother enforcing speeding less than 15Km/h over (probably because the fines are small) so I usually drive about 110-115Km/h in the rightmost lane because, at this speed, I am SLOWER than >80% of the cars on the road while still technically "speeding" (mind you, that's Canadian winter, not optimal road conditions). My point is that a law that >90% of the population routinely breaks is a bad law.
And of course, there is research [nsw.gov.au] showing that about 40% of road deaths were caused by speeding, which would account for 16,644 deaths if we go by my original numbers of 41,611 deaths in car accidents.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Quoting from the page you linked to: > In NSW speeding is a factor in about 40 per cent of road deaths.
They fail to disclose how it is a factor, correlation not being causation and all that. Also, is "speeding" defined as going over the posted speed limit or driving faster than is safe according to current conditions?
In particular, consider the following hypothetical situation: Take a road with a posted speed limit of 100Km/h. Assume everybody obeys the limit and drives at 95Km/h. Let's say there are 50 fatal accidents per year. Now, the municipality improves the road but leaves the speed limit in place. Due to the better road conditions, the number of fatal accidents drops to 30 per year, however, at the same time people begin to drive faster. Let's say 50% go over the posted limit. So now the fatal accidents "in which speeding is a factor" grew from 0 to 15 (or more, due to accidents between "speeders" and "non-speeders"). Did you see what I did here?
Now, you could say that I pulled this example from my back orifice. So let's look at actual reports where speed limits were changed and how it affected the accident rates.
Report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 by the U.S. Department of Transportation. From the summary: Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.
http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/publications/eng_publications/speed_review taken from the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation site. From the summary: Based on the analysis, it appears that raising the limit from 90 km/h to 100 km/h resulted in a 12.9 percent reduction in crashes at the sites where speed limits were raised. The Phase II sites experienced an 8.6 percent reduction in total crashes. Both reductions are statistically significant.
When I went through the process, I found quite a number of relevant cases. Obviously, I concentrated more on those that were appealed to a higher court and thus set a legal precedent, but even those that did not, I was told that the Justices of the Peace would pay more attention if you said "in a similar case [citation], the JP decided that..." instead of just presenting the evidence.
My point is that you want to minimize the human factor in all cases which can be decided against you.
Disclosure: 1. Personal experience relevant to Ontario, Canada. 2. Didn't have the chance to actually test it in court since the policeman did not show.
Do you feel at all guilty about the increased chances of killing someone when you have accident? Do you think that we should just do away with speed limits entirely and let everyone drive as fast as they please?
Surely speed limits are there to keep as all safer. I understand why people speed on highways, but on some residential roads in built up areas the speed limit is essential to keep people safe.
That would be correct if the speed limits were based on actual "safe" speeds, which is not the case.
I invite you to read report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Some interesting conclusions below:
# Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. # Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. # Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.
So watch these and try and tell me I'm guilty of hyperbole. The scary thing is that none of these cops were held accountable for their actions. cops can do anything they want to you.
Slashdot Mirror
The article writer confuses two different concepts: names as identities and names as identifiers.
The software shouldn't care if your "real" name is {love symbol #2}, it only needs to deal with a limited subset of monikers. Government sites/databases should accept anything that you can legally put on a passport, driver's licence, etc. of that country and nothing more. Financial ones should accept names and addresses that can appear on your bank account or credit card. Private sites can set their own rules.
I suggest that, at the minimum, accept whatever is required to accurately deliver send a letter to persons in all countries you need to support. I would expect that most post offices can deal with names/addresses rendered in Latin alphabets; if not - either don't support the corresponding countries or be more flexible.
99% of married women have that complaint.
Good thing that Pablo Picasso" never had to get a Californian driver's license.
I don't remember posting pictures online
I wrote to my MP (both letters and emails), and spoke to his staff on the phone. I was very polite but firm in pointing out the flaws in bill C-32 and suggesting how they could be fixed to make it balanced. I may be an ass but at least I am not a lazy one.
Now tell me, what did you do to?
It's not a law yet, it is only a bill (C-31) but unless you (Canadians) get off your collective fat asses and start making noise about it, it will be.
Dear Patent Attorney,
Please explain to us what is the reason behind allowing a company to modify a patent years after it was filed and have the modifications effectively backdated.
Or am I missing something?
Good one. Thanks.
Any recommendations for good and inexpensive home lasers? (B/W or color)
Thanks.
No can do. TSA told me to take them off.
Fair enough, let's address those claims.
The construction of LHC was approved in 1995, way before there was a crisis in Europe. The total project cost (about half of the $10B figure according to this) is therefore spread across more than 15 years (assuming not all experiments have been run) and 20 countries. CERN's budget for last year was about $1B (see previous link) and a similar figure in 2008 and I fully expect them to spend that money on nuclear research, as per their charter; there are other organizations that concern themselves with world hunger, bank bailouts, etc.
Now, let's put the numbers into perspective.
There are *individuals* that can finance the LHC 5 times over. Speaking about countries, in 2009 Germany was the largest contributor to CERN with ~$200M, which was roughly 0.006% of their GDP.
Oh, and by the way, the discovery was made at Fermilab's Tevatron, which is both older and significantly cheaper than the LHC.
I guess that Gauss et al. should not have wasted their time on pure mathematics fields (such as number theory) that had absolutely no practical applications at the time.
How many individuals have dropped nuclear bombs on cities?
Who did they play against?
So is telling a joke.
Which is exactly what the publishers want to prevent.
> Yep, they're all evil until YOU need one to help you navigate the law
They perpetuate a system in which justice costs $250/hour.
I did not set out to prove anything, merely to demonstrate that "statistics" are meaningless at best (and misleading at worst) without carefully defining the terms and supplying context.
Try http://www.google.com/search?q=FHWA-RD-92-084+site%3Adot.gov
Google finds 25 citations of the report on various DOT sites, proving it is legit. If the US government declines to provide the full text on a publicly accessible web site, I cannot force them to.
I did not set out to prove that raising speed limits reduces accidents in all cases, merely that the issue is not as clear cut as some would like you to believe. To that effect I quoted supporting studies, being careful to select the sources that should not be biased toward this conclusion.
In an ideal world, where the speed limits are based on scientific data, you would be correct. Unfortunately, while studies overwhelmingly show that the safest speed is near the 85th percentile of traffic speed (look it up), most speed limits are set way below that figure, even taking variable conditions into effect. You choose to ignore several other reasons for setting speed limits, namely: political and revenue generating.
Lastly, I'd like to offer a personal anecdote. In the winter, I take the kids skiing on weekends. We drive north on Hwy 400, which has 3 to 4 lanes in each direction and the posted speed limit is 100Km/h. The police here usually don't bother enforcing speeding less than 15Km/h over (probably because the fines are small) so I usually drive about 110-115Km/h in the rightmost lane because, at this speed, I am SLOWER than >80% of the cars on the road while still technically "speeding" (mind you, that's Canadian winter, not optimal road conditions). My point is that a law that >90% of the population routinely breaks is a bad law.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Quoting from the page you linked to:
> In NSW speeding is a factor in about 40 per cent of road deaths.
They fail to disclose how it is a factor, correlation not being causation and all that.
Also, is "speeding" defined as going over the posted speed limit or driving faster than is safe according to current conditions?
In particular, consider the following hypothetical situation:
Take a road with a posted speed limit of 100Km/h. Assume everybody obeys the limit and drives at 95Km/h. Let's say there are 50 fatal accidents per year. Now, the municipality improves the road but leaves the speed limit in place. Due to the better road conditions, the number of fatal accidents drops to 30 per year, however, at the same time people begin to drive faster. Let's say 50% go over the posted limit. So now the fatal accidents "in which speeding is a factor" grew from 0 to 15 (or more, due to accidents between "speeders" and "non-speeders"). Did you see what I did here?
Now, you could say that I pulled this example from my back orifice. So let's look at actual reports where speed limits were changed and how it affected the accident rates.
Report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 by the U.S. Department of Transportation. From the summary:
Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent.
Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.
http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/publications/eng_publications/speed_review taken from the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation site. From the summary:
Based on the analysis, it appears that raising the limit from 90 km/h to 100 km/h resulted in a 12.9 percent reduction in crashes at the sites where speed limits were raised. The Phase II sites experienced an 8.6 percent reduction in total crashes. Both reductions are statistically significant.
For another interesting read see http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/a-facdec.html
Allegedly.
When I went through the process, I found quite a number of relevant cases. Obviously, I concentrated more on those that were appealed to a higher court and thus set a legal precedent, but even those that did not, I was told that the Justices of the Peace would pay more attention if you said "in a similar case [citation], the JP decided that..." instead of just presenting the evidence.
My point is that you want to minimize the human factor in all cases which can be decided against you.
Disclosure:
1. Personal experience relevant to Ontario, Canada.
2. Didn't have the chance to actually test it in court since the policeman did not show.
Re: iPhone4
Am I wrong to want "something like it" but with a physical sliding QWERTY keyboard?
Here you go:
Report No. FHWA-RD-92-084.
You are welcome.
That would be correct if the speed limits were based on actual "safe" speeds, which is not the case.
I invite you to read report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Some interesting conclusions below:
# Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent.
# Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
# Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.
You may also find this interesting.
So true.