Having humans dedicated to watching for crime posted everywhere is very expensive. Having lots of cameras posted places that flag suspicious activity to a human monitor can probably cover a lot more territory a lot more cost effectively, and still leaves the ultimate decision on action to human judgement.
Now, I suppose, if they were going to mount machine guns with the cameras, and have an automated system to identify and respond to "hostile" activity, with no human intervention, that would justify the kind of comment you make...
To say that ipod has succeeded for any reason other than the marketing is absurd. It's over-priced, feature-lacking, and the interface (yes fanboys, the interface) is pretty clunky.
I dunno, I've had several portable digital music players, and actually only just recently started using iPod; the interface seems better by far than any other I've seen for the same type of product As for price, iPods aren't significantly more expensive than major competitors with similar feature sets (minus seemless iTunes integration) like Zen. But when iPod came out, IIRC, it was far more expensive than most players with few others anywhere close to its neighborhood, but also far fewer even roughly feature competitive. Sure, the marketing campaign played a role, but if it hadn't pleased people, there would have been a massive bad word-of-mouth backlash. Instead, lots of people bought, loved it, and evangelized it to more people.
And success bred success, because the wide variety of available 3rd party accessories, stationary systems that iPod's can dock with, etc., are all fed by the existing success, and push further success.
While limitations on advertising by lawyers have been around for a long time, they seem to have their roots in in pre-democratic times, when [...] the very practice of law was considered a somewhat questionable activity that had to be strictly regulated in order to be kept respectable.
The practice of law is still widely considered a somewhat questionable activity (hence the regard many people have for lawyers), and it is still one that needs to be strictly regulated (both in the view of nonlawyers and that of lawyers) to be kept respectable.
Lawyers would still be deterred from false advertising and libel by the existing laws of general application.
No one knows better than lawyers that those laws are incredibly flimsy, even at what they are supposed to do, but the rules against advertising aren't there merely to prevent false advertising but to discourage lawyers promoting lawsuits rather than serving in response to clients interests.
Ummm, didn't Sun sue Microsoft because they wanted to keep full control over java?
No, Sun sued Microsoft because Microsoft was violating the terms of their licensing agreement with Sun. (Now, Sun might have drafted the terms of that licensing agreement because, at the time, it wanted to maintain full control of Java, but that's a different question altogether.)
Of course, when you "download" over a P2P network, you are always distributing them to other people (that's what makes the network tick).
Um, no, that's not true. On P2P networks, its often quite possible to download something without distributing it. Doing this exclusively, of course, is considered bad form.
Then why are they so clearly considering violating the First Amendment rights of other lawyers in New York?
The bar association can condition the practice of law on adherence to regulations that, were they laws rather than conditions attached to the practice of law, would be Constitutionally barred, because practicing law isn't a right.
Content based regulation is generally not allowed by the first ammendment.
Content based regulation of commercial speech is allowed, within bounds, by the first amendment (and commercial speech is what is at issue with advertising regulations), and, anyway, there is no right to practice law, and states (through bar associations) can condition the practice of law on adherence to regulations that would not be valid as laws governing the general populace (which is why bar associations can prohibit advertising, which is farther than the regulation of commercial speech permitted by the First Amendment would probably stretch, otherwise.)
But if Sun Java is released under the GPL, I expect to see several more versions of Java, most of them incompatible with each other, coming out soon.
So? There already are several more versions of Java. What keeps the ones that succeed largely compatible isn't licensing (as the non-Sun, non-Microsoft ones are reverse-engineered, not licensed) but the fact that there is no interest in incompatible "Java". Releasing Sun's implementation under the GPL (or the CCDL, or, heck, into the public domain) isn't going to change that.
Enforcement usually would probably be in response to a complaint of violation; state bar associations tend to have broad powers to discipline their members, and that discipline can be pretty effective given that bar association membership is legally required to practice law.
The question to ask is, "What would happen if Sony attempted to file a suit against Lik-Sang in every state of the USA?"
Well, in the US, which is one country, it would be a federal violation and it would only be one claim; international trade is not generally a state law issue.
If there were legitimate issues of violations of the laws of different states, then Sony could pursue them in separate cases in each of the 50 states, even if the action involved was similar in each state. Lik-Sang might have been able to consolidate the cases, especially if, despite being state law claims, there was federal jurisdiction for some other reasons, but not necessarily.
Sony sued in every nation-state to make sure that their victory was assured, no matter if they had a case or not.
If EU law is such that one case in one member-state will settle a matter of this type for the entire EU without requiring action in other member states, it ought to have efficient procedures for consolidating cases filed in separate jurisdictions to prevent inefficiency, injustice, or contradictory results both binding in other jurisdictions produced by redundant filings. If it doesn't, one can hardly blame Sony's lawyers for pursuing the legal strategy that, within the law, provided the best prospects for a swift and favorable outcome.
I was slightly mistating, the SIXAXIS gives translational acceleration (not position, though I suppose if you calibrate it in a stationary position, you can deduce one by tracking the other) in three axes, and orientation in three axes. But, other than that, yeah.
...is certainly akin to advertising, but some is more akin to writing op-ed pieces for a newspaper and doing commentary in other media, or just writing a book (but that it is published incrementally.)
Seems to me it makes more sense to regulate based on the content than the medium, in this case, but then, I'm not a member of the NY Bar.
You are engaging in equivocation. There are six logically orthogonal dimensions or axes in the SIXAXIS system. The state it returns cannot be fully specified in three dimensions. Yes, it exists in a space with three spatial dimensions, so what? Its state is more than a position in those dimensions.
What do you think Pitch, Roll, and Yaw refer to? Those would be vertical, horizontal, and fore/aft respectively.
No, wrong. Pitch refers to rotation around the horizontal axis, roll to rotation around fore/aft axis, and yaw to rotation around the vertical axis, respectively. They are not equivalent to displacement/transaltion on those three axes, nor do you associate the right axis with the right rotation, in the first place.
A location is fully specified by three dimensions, and the orientation of the controller by three more; as the controller reports both position and orientation, it has six independent axes or dimensions.
...Google-bombing has been a campaign tactic attempted by activists on blogs in the past, including the notorious Bush "Miserable Failure" google bombing. It might be novel if it was coordinated by the formal campaign, other than that, nothing new at all.
So, Verisign realizest that their practices are insecure and broken, but instead of fixing their practices and being a good CA, they are instead creating a new kind of "we actually did our job" certificate that requires new code for browsers to recognize?
I mean, wouldn't it make more sense for Verisign to do the same thing (if they wanted to get some money for insecure certs but still have a more secure cert) to create a new Certification Authority name also run by Verisign that actually does their job, and not require any browser code changes? Or are they just afraid that if they did that, browser vendors might delist Verisign's main CA from their default list of trusted CA's, since that would be admitting that, well, basic Verisign certificates can't be trusted.
Seems to me this is an unnecessary technical change to a business practices problem at Verisign.
Actually if he didn't notice and got the gist of the sentence then it can't be 'important' for understanding.
Wrong: if he got the gist and didn't notice the omissions, its wasn't important to his understanding in that particular case, it doesn't mean that it is more generally unimportant. Of course, people naturally fill in missing words in sentences, and make "corrections" to fit expectations, quite easily (that's well known), but different people don't always plug the same holes, or plug them in the same way, which is why clear and standard use of language is a major aid to effective and reliable communication.
What I hate most is when Americans say things like "I could give a rat's ass" or "I could care less", when they should really be saying "I COULDN'T give a rat's ass".
Really, in the latter case, "could" or "couldn't" can make sense and convey the same basic meaning, the implied rest of the sentence that is omitted, of course, is different:
"I could (abstractly, though no actual example exists) care less." vs. "I couldn't (even theoretically) care less (than I do about the topic under discussion)."
In the former case, the same applies with even less difference: "I could (not) give X" is simply a way of saying "this whole subject is (not) worth X". The difference between saying "This whole matter is worth a rat's ass (and nothing more)" and "This whole matter is not worth a rat's ass" is trivial.
Its true that in either case the "not" form that you prefer is slightly more emphatic, but there's not really a whole lot of difference worth getting upset at someone using the one instead of the other.
Translation: This will not protect you from the terrorists.
And really, isn't that
A) the big goal of all these changes?
No, the big goal is handouts of public money to corporate supporters of the political leadership, which is why this report didn't put an end to the whole idea.
B) how everyone is justifying their budget?
Yeah, which is why they are now taking more time to figure out a way to reconcile their justifications so they can go ahead with the handouts.
But seriously, this kind of automated thing baffles me. Even though I'm a machinima director, I'm not sure I would want to watch an animated talking head deliver my news.
Can't see how it could possibly be any worse than the talking heads that deliver news on the teevee now.
No, the summary description doesn't define the scope of the patent, it describes what the thing patented is. They patented an implementation of a hardware graphic adapter, and are claiming ATI infringed by using that particular implementation, or at least elements of it that are substantial enough to infringe on what is protected by the patent.
No, they don't run OS X, but they run something better: Linux.
Really, I'm not interested in operating system flamewars; Yes, Linux meets some people's needs better than OS X, but the reverse is also true (same with Windows XP in place of either of those choices.) None of the three are equivalent: they aren't interchangeable, and there are reasons why you might need any one of them in particular and substituting any of the others isn't a viable alternative.
Same UNIX foundation as OX X, but a more modern and more efficient window system, better user interface, thousands of built-in applications, and a better software development environment.
Whether the windows system is, in practice, more efficient and whether the UI is "better" is something that will vary from user-to-user (and depend, largely, on the users past computing experience.) If the built-in applications aren't the ones you need they are irrelevant, and only a small minority of users care about a software development environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Having humans dedicated to watching for crime posted everywhere is very expensive. Having lots of cameras posted places that flag suspicious activity to a human monitor can probably cover a lot more territory a lot more cost effectively, and still leaves the ultimate decision on action to human judgement.
Now, I suppose, if they were going to mount machine guns with the cameras, and have an automated system to identify and respond to "hostile" activity, with no human intervention, that would justify the kind of comment you make...
I dunno, I've had several portable digital music players, and actually only just recently started using iPod; the interface seems better by far than any other I've seen for the same type of product As for price, iPods aren't significantly more expensive than major competitors with similar feature sets (minus seemless iTunes integration) like Zen. But when iPod came out, IIRC, it was far more expensive than most players with few others anywhere close to its neighborhood, but also far fewer even roughly feature competitive. Sure, the marketing campaign played a role, but if it hadn't pleased people, there would have been a massive bad word-of-mouth backlash. Instead, lots of people bought, loved it, and evangelized it to more people.
And success bred success, because the wide variety of available 3rd party accessories, stationary systems that iPod's can dock with, etc., are all fed by the existing success, and push further success.
Support (either better quality, better price for quality, or otherwise) is added value.
Support is a product. Indeed, with commercialized Linux, support is essentially the product.
The bar association can condition the practice of law on adherence to regulations that, were they laws rather than conditions attached to the practice of law, would be Constitutionally barred, because practicing law isn't a right.
Content based regulation of commercial speech is allowed, within bounds, by the first amendment (and commercial speech is what is at issue with advertising regulations), and, anyway, there is no right to practice law, and states (through bar associations) can condition the practice of law on adherence to regulations that would not be valid as laws governing the general populace (which is why bar associations can prohibit advertising, which is farther than the regulation of commercial speech permitted by the First Amendment would probably stretch, otherwise.)
So? There already are several more versions of Java. What keeps the ones that succeed largely compatible isn't licensing (as the non-Sun, non-Microsoft ones are reverse-engineered, not licensed) but the fact that there is no interest in incompatible "Java". Releasing Sun's implementation under the GPL (or the CCDL, or, heck, into the public domain) isn't going to change that.
Enforcement usually would probably be in response to a complaint of violation; state bar associations tend to have broad powers to discipline their members, and that discipline can be pretty effective given that bar association membership is legally required to practice law.
Well, in the US, which is one country, it would be a federal violation and it would only be one claim; international trade is not generally a state law issue.
If there were legitimate issues of violations of the laws of different states, then Sony could pursue them in separate cases in each of the 50 states, even if the action involved was similar in each state. Lik-Sang might have been able to consolidate the cases, especially if, despite being state law claims, there was federal jurisdiction for some other reasons, but not necessarily.
If EU law is such that one case in one member-state will settle a matter of this type for the entire EU without requiring action in other member states, it ought to have efficient procedures for consolidating cases filed in separate jurisdictions to prevent inefficiency, injustice, or contradictory results both binding in other jurisdictions produced by redundant filings. If it doesn't, one can hardly blame Sony's lawyers for pursuing the legal strategy that, within the law, provided the best prospects for a swift and favorable outcome.
I was slightly mistating, the SIXAXIS gives translational acceleration (not position, though I suppose if you calibrate it in a stationary position, you can deduce one by tracking the other) in three axes, and orientation in three axes. But, other than that, yeah.
...is certainly akin to advertising, but some is more akin to writing op-ed pieces for a newspaper and doing commentary in other media, or just writing a book (but that it is published incrementally.)
Seems to me it makes more sense to regulate based on the content than the medium, in this case, but then, I'm not a member of the NY Bar.
You are engaging in equivocation. There are six logically orthogonal dimensions or axes in the SIXAXIS system. The state it returns cannot be fully specified in three dimensions. Yes, it exists in a space with three spatial dimensions, so what? Its state is more than a position in those dimensions.
No, wrong. Pitch refers to rotation around the horizontal axis, roll to rotation around fore/aft axis, and yaw to rotation around the vertical axis, respectively. They are not equivalent to displacement/transaltion on those three axes, nor do you associate the right axis with the right rotation, in the first place.
A location is fully specified by three dimensions, and the orientation of the controller by three more; as the controller reports both position and orientation, it has six independent axes or dimensions.
...Google-bombing has been a campaign tactic attempted by activists on blogs in the past, including the notorious Bush "Miserable Failure" google bombing. It might be novel if it was coordinated by the formal campaign, other than that, nothing new at all.
So, Verisign realizest that their practices are insecure and broken, but instead of fixing their practices and being a good CA, they are instead creating a new kind of "we actually did our job" certificate that requires new code for browsers to recognize?
I mean, wouldn't it make more sense for Verisign to do the same thing (if they wanted to get some money for insecure certs but still have a more secure cert) to create a new Certification Authority name also run by Verisign that actually does their job, and not require any browser code changes? Or are they just afraid that if they did that, browser vendors might delist Verisign's main CA from their default list of trusted CA's, since that would be admitting that, well, basic Verisign certificates can't be trusted.
Seems to me this is an unnecessary technical change to a business practices problem at Verisign.
The fetishization of the carefully crafted artificial media image of celebrities is not, in any meaningful way, relating to a human being.
Wrong: if he got the gist and didn't notice the omissions, its wasn't important to his understanding in that particular case, it doesn't mean that it is more generally unimportant. Of course, people naturally fill in missing words in sentences, and make "corrections" to fit expectations, quite easily (that's well known), but different people don't always plug the same holes, or plug them in the same way, which is why clear and standard use of language is a major aid to effective and reliable communication.
Really, in the latter case, "could" or "couldn't" can make sense and convey the same basic meaning, the implied rest of the sentence that is omitted, of course, is different:
"I could (abstractly, though no actual example exists) care less." vs. "I couldn't (even theoretically) care less (than I do about the topic under discussion)."
In the former case, the same applies with even less difference: "I could (not) give X" is simply a way of saying "this whole subject is (not) worth X". The difference between saying "This whole matter is worth a rat's ass (and nothing more)" and "This whole matter is not worth a rat's ass" is trivial.
Its true that in either case the "not" form that you prefer is slightly more emphatic, but there's not really a whole lot of difference worth getting upset at someone using the one instead of the other.
Can't see how it could possibly be any worse than the talking heads that deliver news on the teevee now.
No, the summary description doesn't define the scope of the patent, it describes what the thing patented is. They patented an implementation of a hardware graphic adapter, and are claiming ATI infringed by using that particular implementation, or at least elements of it that are substantial enough to infringe on what is protected by the patent.
Really, I'm not interested in operating system flamewars; Yes, Linux meets some people's needs better than OS X, but the reverse is also true (same with Windows XP in place of either of those choices.) None of the three are equivalent: they aren't interchangeable, and there are reasons why you might need any one of them in particular and substituting any of the others isn't a viable alternative.
Whether the windows system is, in practice, more efficient and whether the UI is "better" is something that will vary from user-to-user (and depend, largely, on the users past computing experience.) If the built-in applications aren't the ones you need they are irrelevant, and only a small minority of users care about a software development environment.