I agree that these two items look novel, with one exception:
"and no late fees on returns"
You shouldn't be allowed to patent not charging for something. How you structure a pricing scheme influences your ability to attract and maintain customers. There is nothing novel about charging for a service or not charging for a service.
Microsoft's refusal to come closer to... compliance with the latest accepted CSS standard...
Have you tried using IE7? (I'm not trying to suggest that you have not, this is an honest query.) Being a bit of a standards-geek, I run all of the pages I develop through the W3C validator until there are no errors (apart from no explicit character-encoding). Whereas there have been big differences between IE6 and Firefox, the differences between IE7 and Firefox are small (and the deviations seem, to my inexpert eye, to cut both ways).
Whats the motivation to download IE7 for features I already have with Firefox?
I can't speak for people in general; I can only describe why I switched to IE7. I primarily switched to Firefox for tabbed browsing. I endured Firefox frustrations that manifest on an XP machine, which include unreliable cut/paste and a frequent inability to scroll using arrow keys. I haven't seen this behavior on Linux, but it's much more convenient to run XP at work. So, when IE7 came out, I switched back because I got tabs and cut/paste. I still bring up Firefox when doing web development because of the web-developer extension, but for/.ing, it's IE7 for me.
FWIW, I find that IE7 and Firefox usually render identically. To date I've only seen one exception, but then I only do comparisons when I'm designing websites, which isn't too often. (In other words, IANA web-expert.)
In fact, 1 is not prime, by definition. A prime number is divisible by exactly two numbers, 1 and itself. It is important that 1 not be prime so that every number has a unique prime-factorization. If 1 were to be prime, then every number would have an infinite number of prime-factorizations.
Articles about science (-fiction?) need to be covered by journalists that understand the meaning of various words. Take, for example, the following quote from TFA:
"Darpa believes scientists can take advantage of the evolution of insects, such as dragonflies and moths, in the pupa stage."
Methinks the author has conflated evolution with development.
Re:Posession of a controlled substance
on
Cocaine Biosensor
·
· Score: 1
Or, for more information: Snopes chooses 80% as a reasonable upper bound.
Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
At the risk of sounding abrasive, that statement is a simplification. It is true that there is more genetic variability within a 'race' than between 'races', and that one cannot determine 'race' using a DNA test. However, there are very real medical conditions that are exhibited more frequently in specific 'races' because those conditions have a genetic basis. These differences are of interest genetically.
I spent the last five years in Seattle. After a handful of border crossings by car and plane trips, I can safely say that flying beats driving any day of the week. The hassle at the border is absolutely ridiculous.
That's a guess based on adult rape statistics, where most attackers know their victim.
Good guess: Based on the US Dept of Justice figures, roughly one out of seven cases involves a stranger. Whereas this frequency is greater than I would have expected, bear in mind that many (most?) crimes are crimes of opportunity.
Aside: I'm raising a little girl. I've perused the list of 'registered offenders' in my area. These lists are nigh useless; they don't indicate who is a threat to strangers and who is a threat to his children. I've decided that I have more important things to worry about than my family being attacked by a stranger.
As I noted above, there was nothing attached to the bill. The governor either a) came to his senses or b) flip-flopped. I originally thought it was flip-flopping, but I've since realized that option a) is more likely.:-)
Well then this bill was the outlier (the exception to prove the rule?). The complete text of the bill is only 3 pages long. It does one thing:
"The State Administrator of Elections shall study, review, and evaluate independent verification systems, including at least one system that includes a voter-verified paper audit trail, for the voting system currently used in the State."
The bill then goes on to describe how the systems will be evaluated and by whom. The complete text is here.
The ease with which a watermark can be obliterated will depend on the watermarking algorithm. For example, if I understand correctly, image watermarks based on wavelets are reasonably robust even after JPG compression. Moreover, if you have a good idea what transformations were performed, you can replay those transformations on the original (watermarked) file and demonstrate that the result is identical to the file found on the P2P network.
That said, I don't think that placing a music file on your hard-drive in a location visible to others is a copyright violation. You've made a copy for your own (fair) use. A violation occurs when someone copies the file from your hard-drive. However, there are legitimate reasons for copying somebody else's files. Perhaps you purchased a CD (or audio tape), but lack the means to copy the music to your computer (unlikely with a CD, but very relevant for an audio tape). Copying somebody else's copy of the song is no different than ripping your own.
Interesting use of statistics pulled from the ether. According to the US census bureau, 15.7% of the nation's population have no health insurance. Thus, the proportion of people with emergency coverage is necessarily greater than 15%.
(Although, I'm not sure how health insurance is related to TV taxes...)
Assume we are looking at n time intervals numbered 1, 2,..., n. If the maximum observed temperature was in interval n, we can assert that this interval was the warmest of the last n intervals.
Now consider interval 0. If this interval is warmer than n, the strongest assertion we can make is that the recent interval is the warmest of the last n. If the recent interval is warmer than 0, we could make a stronger assertion. However, the validity of 'warmest of the last n remains.
In effect, you are assuming that the researchers made the strongest possible assertion. Another alternative is that they were only able to measure a certain number of intervals.
I don't think of it as a problem at all, but in many cases, all you can do is keep accumulating data. You cannot introduce a test that tries to disprove the hypothesis. Thus, Darwin and Mendel were engaging in science even though they were not trying to create conditions that would falsify their hypotheses.
In short, I guess it boils down to the extent to which one believes the scientific method demands actively trying to discredit one's hypothesis. The definition I'm familiar with requires experimentation, which I view as more than passive observation.
So, it's been something like 20 years since I memorized this list. If I recall correctly, what I learned as static equilibrium is what I've seen others refer to as kinesthetic.
I certainly do not think that the old way was better. I enjoy the benefits gained by rigorous testing, and I enjoy engaging in science.
However, according to the scientific method we must 1) form a hypothesis, 2) collect data and 3) use that data to refute the hypothesis. In many cases, though, we need to accumulate data so that we can identify patterns (formulate hypotheses). These retrospective studies still (IMHO) qualify as scientific even though the scientific method was violated.
This approach is not ideal, and the results generated by such a study cannot as easily be generalized. But, retrospective and longitudinal studies are (or rather, can be) scientific.
As an aside, I don't think we should pay any heed to ID when thinking about what is (or is not!) science. We can simply reject as unscientific, any conjencture based on unobservable phenomena. Science is based on data, regardless of where we insert hypothesis-generation.
By this argument, no science was practiced until the invention of the scientific method (during the Renaissance). This definition is overly narrow. Perhaps it would be better to refer to the scientific method as the experimentally falsifiable method (of acquiring scientific knowledge) to help disentangle science from the methodology.
Let's see, humans have: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, pressure, deep pain, surface pain, referred pain, hot, cold, static equilibrium, and dynamic equilibrium. Some might even throw in thirst and hunger.
I disagree that science is restricted to that which can be demonstrated using the scientific method. Humans have been engaging in scientific inquiries for millenia, yet the scientific method is a recent invention. The scientific method facilitates the acquisition of scientific knowledge, but it is not the only possibility. There are times when performing a scientific experiment is impossible or immoral. In these cases, we can still make observations and construct models, even though we cannot directly test those models.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that these two items look novel, with one exception:
"and no late fees on returns"
You shouldn't be allowed to patent not charging for something. How you structure a pricing scheme influences your ability to attract and maintain customers. There is nothing novel about charging for a service or not charging for a service.
Microsoft's refusal to come closer to ... compliance with the latest accepted CSS standard ...
Have you tried using IE7? (I'm not trying to suggest that you have not, this is an honest query.) Being a bit of a standards-geek, I run all of the pages I develop through the W3C validator until there are no errors (apart from no explicit character-encoding). Whereas there have been big differences between IE6 and Firefox, the differences between IE7 and Firefox are small (and the deviations seem, to my inexpert eye, to cut both ways).
Whats the motivation to download IE7 for features I already have with Firefox?
I can't speak for people in general; I can only describe why I switched to IE7. I primarily switched to Firefox for tabbed browsing. I endured Firefox frustrations that manifest on an XP machine, which include unreliable cut/paste and a frequent inability to scroll using arrow keys. I haven't seen this behavior on Linux, but it's much more convenient to run XP at work. So, when IE7 came out, I switched back because I got tabs and cut/paste. I still bring up Firefox when doing web development because of the web-developer extension, but for /.ing, it's IE7 for me.
FWIW, I find that IE7 and Firefox usually render identically. To date I've only seen one exception, but then I only do comparisons when I'm designing websites, which isn't too often. (In other words, IANA web-expert.)
But you don't pay to receive calls
I certainly pay to receive calls. I get a certain number of 'minutes' every month. These minutes are spent by sending or receiving calls.
It is known that there are an infinite number of primes.
1 is prime *by definition*
In fact, 1 is not prime, by definition. A prime number is divisible by exactly two numbers, 1 and itself. It is important that 1 not be prime so that every number has a unique prime-factorization. If 1 were to be prime, then every number would have an infinite number of prime-factorizations.
I before e except afer c or when sounded as 'ay' as in neighbour and weigh, or in weird words like weird and science .
Articles about science (-fiction?) need to be covered by journalists that understand the meaning of various words. Take, for example, the following quote from TFA:
"Darpa believes scientists can take advantage of the evolution of insects, such as dragonflies and moths, in the pupa stage."
Methinks the author has conflated evolution with development.
Or, for more information: Snopes chooses 80% as a reasonable upper bound.
No, you say degrees Celsius. In this case, kelvins is correct; it's analagous to meters or grams.
Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
At the risk of sounding abrasive, that statement is a simplification. It is true that there is more genetic variability within a 'race' than between 'races', and that one cannot determine 'race' using a DNA test. However, there are very real medical conditions that are exhibited more frequently in specific 'races' because those conditions have a genetic basis. These differences are of interest genetically.
I spent the last five years in Seattle. After a handful of border crossings by car and plane trips, I can safely say that flying beats driving any day of the week. The hassle at the border is absolutely ridiculous.
That's a guess based on adult rape statistics, where most attackers know their victim.
Good guess: Based on the US Dept of Justice figures, roughly one out of seven cases involves a stranger. Whereas this frequency is greater than I would have expected, bear in mind that many (most?) crimes are crimes of opportunity.
Aside: I'm raising a little girl. I've perused the list of 'registered offenders' in my area. These lists are nigh useless; they don't indicate who is a threat to strangers and who is a threat to his children. I've decided that I have more important things to worry about than my family being attacked by a stranger.
As I noted above, there was nothing attached to the bill. The governor either a) came to his senses or b) flip-flopped. I originally thought it was flip-flopping, but I've since realized that option a) is more likely. :-)
Well then this bill was the outlier (the exception to prove the rule?). The complete text of the bill is only 3 pages long. It does one thing:
"The State Administrator of Elections shall study, review, and evaluate independent verification systems, including at least one system that includes a voter-verified paper audit trail, for the voting system currently used in the State."
The bill then goes on to describe how the systems will be evaluated and by whom. The complete text is here.
The ease with which a watermark can be obliterated will depend on the watermarking algorithm. For example, if I understand correctly, image watermarks based on wavelets are reasonably robust even after JPG compression. Moreover, if you have a good idea what transformations were performed, you can replay those transformations on the original (watermarked) file and demonstrate that the result is identical to the file found on the P2P network.
That said, I don't think that placing a music file on your hard-drive in a location visible to others is a copyright violation. You've made a copy for your own (fair) use. A violation occurs when someone copies the file from your hard-drive. However, there are legitimate reasons for copying somebody else's files. Perhaps you purchased a CD (or audio tape), but lack the means to copy the music to your computer (unlikely with a CD, but very relevant for an audio tape). Copying somebody else's copy of the song is no different than ripping your own.
Interesting use of statistics pulled from the ether. According to the US census bureau, 15.7% of the nation's population have no health insurance. Thus, the proportion of people with emergency coverage is necessarily greater than 15%.
(Although, I'm not sure how health insurance is related to TV taxes...)
Not necessarily:
Assume we are looking at n time intervals numbered 1, 2, ..., n. If the maximum observed temperature was in interval n, we can assert that this interval was the warmest of the last n intervals.
Now consider interval 0. If this interval is warmer than n, the strongest assertion we can make is that the recent interval is the warmest of the last n. If the recent interval is warmer than 0, we could make a stronger assertion. However, the validity of 'warmest of the last n remains.
In effect, you are assuming that the researchers made the strongest possible assertion. Another alternative is that they were only able to measure a certain number of intervals.
I don't think of it as a problem at all, but in many cases, all you can do is keep accumulating data. You cannot introduce a test that tries to disprove the hypothesis. Thus, Darwin and Mendel were engaging in science even though they were not trying to create conditions that would falsify their hypotheses.
In short, I guess it boils down to the extent to which one believes the scientific method demands actively trying to discredit one's hypothesis. The definition I'm familiar with requires experimentation, which I view as more than passive observation.
So, it's been something like 20 years since I memorized this list. If I recall correctly, what I learned as static equilibrium is what I've seen others refer to as kinesthetic.
I certainly do not think that the old way was better. I enjoy the benefits gained by rigorous testing, and I enjoy engaging in science.
However, according to the scientific method we must 1) form a hypothesis, 2) collect data and 3) use that data to refute the hypothesis. In many cases, though, we need to accumulate data so that we can identify patterns (formulate hypotheses). These retrospective studies still (IMHO) qualify as scientific even though the scientific method was violated.
This approach is not ideal, and the results generated by such a study cannot as easily be generalized. But, retrospective and longitudinal studies are (or rather, can be) scientific.
As an aside, I don't think we should pay any heed to ID when thinking about what is (or is not!) science. We can simply reject as unscientific, any conjencture based on unobservable phenomena. Science is based on data, regardless of where we insert hypothesis-generation.
By this argument, no science was practiced until the invention of the scientific method (during the Renaissance). This definition is overly narrow. Perhaps it would be better to refer to the scientific method as the experimentally falsifiable method (of acquiring scientific knowledge) to help disentangle science from the methodology.
Let's see, humans have: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, pressure, deep pain, surface pain, referred pain, hot, cold, static equilibrium, and dynamic equilibrium. Some might even throw in thirst and hunger.
I disagree that science is restricted to that which can be demonstrated using the scientific method. Humans have been engaging in scientific inquiries for millenia, yet the scientific method is a recent invention. The scientific method facilitates the acquisition of scientific knowledge, but it is not the only possibility. There are times when performing a scientific experiment is impossible or immoral. In these cases, we can still make observations and construct models, even though we cannot directly test those models.