Slashback: Transparency, USB, Europatents 327
Now even less than a week ... mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, although I am still looking for further confirmation, it seems like the EU vote on software patentability has been moved from the late fall to June 30, 2003. Yes, that is in one (1) week. If you have more information and another source - please comment on this news item."
Mikael writes: "Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing from a democracy perspective that this proposal seems to be fast-tracked in the middle of the summer, when most Europeans want to focus on whether they should have strawberry or vanilla ice cream. In Sweden, we also got our Swedish version of the DMCA this week. I guess the ice cream will have to wait."
DoSthAboutIt points out that "A 'Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents' has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.' The whole article can be found here, including some statistics like signatories by country"
The story of Peng. mantispraying writes "Looks like the college student who settled with the the RIAA for $12,000, his entire life savings, has recouped all of his money thanks to a very generous file sharing community. Also, the search engine he created that got him in trouble is back online, for demonstration purposes only, of course."
Reader T points out that while one of the students who lost his life savings to RIAA has made it back through PayPal donations, "the other, Dan Peng, is still short about $12,000. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
I'd prefer the garrote and the stick, but hey. Mark Ferguson writes: "I attended the FTC spam forum. It seems I was on their call list :-) I parlayed that into getting several others on the panels as well. While there I spoke with bulk emailers and other industry folks. Some people defined Confirmed OPT-IN to mean you sending a confirmation that the email address was subscribed so they were doing double, confirmed OPT-IN.
My heads spins.
What I figured from what I learned was these folks truly refused to accept real definitions the Service Providers have been using for years so I decided to do a site for just this. ... Anyway, reboot, aka Andrew Cockrell myself and another built The Carrot and the Stick to explain email, define the best practices and to get people to abide by them.
Thoughts, comments and/or suggestions?"
Sooner or later, that DeLorean's going to land someone in jail. hackwrench writes "According to channel WSMV news, Alternate Energy Inventor Carl Tilley's compound was raided. Tilley was previously mentioned on Slashdot here."
Tilley had announced the then-upcoming demonstration of his perpetual-motion DeLorean.
My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots! Rocky Rawstern writes "I recently had the distinct pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Wil McCarthy. Upon completing three of his latest books - two sci-fi and one work of non-fiction - I realized that others would probably enjoy his ponderings as much as I. The questions for this interview stem from my own interest in programmable matter, and the awe-inspiring possibilities raised by Wil in his book Hacking Matter."
How to succeed (not necessarily) in business. jameshowison writes "A few months ago Ask Slashdot published Kevin Crowston's question on what makes open source software successful ... well the results are in and the paper typed. We ran the responses through a funky content analyser (called Grad Students). The metrics that academics and the industry have used for years simply don't work for OSS.
More and more it seems that we'll need to survey the number of job offers developers get and the size of the community to get at this one ..."
You sound very familiar to me. Interested Observer writes "Thanks to a slashdot article discussing false positives using Soundex I thought if Soundex can be used for something as important as "no-fly" lists then certainly we should be able to get some entertainment value out of it! See if your Soundex last name-counterparts show up in a Google News search."
A member of the USB-IF Administration writes to dispel the confusion raised by the seeming conflict between many USB products' labels and their actual data-transfer speeds:
"The source of confusion derives from the fact that USB specification revision numbers and data-transfer rates are often being used in place of the logo on consumer packaging, a purpose for which they were not originally intended. The USB-IF's recommended nomenclature for consumers is 'USB' for slower speed products (1.5 Mb/s and 12Mb/s) and "Hi-Speed USB" for high-speed products (480Mb/s), as signified in the USB logos that were introduced in late 2000. In short, consumers wishing to be certain they are getting the performance they paid for in their USB products can use the logo for clarification.
The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed USB products, as listed at the website http://www.usb.org/developers/packaging, state that such products can carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states "Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and posted on the website in August 2002.
The USB-IF is a nonprofit industry organization. We do not and cannot control how manufacturers label their products. We do work continuously with system and peripheral manufacturers, striving to provide consistency in the use of this nomenclature and the logos. The logo indicates that a product's performance against and conformance with the standard have been tested, and that the product has passed the USB compliance program.
Anyone having questions about the performance of a product should contact the manufacturer for clarification.
For a brief Q & A on this topic, please visit our website at http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature."
Software patent report postponed (Score:5, Informative)
If you are an EU citizen and care about this don't wait for other people to take action - contact your MEP and make sure they are familiar with the issues! You can read my email to my MEP in my /. Journal [slashdot.org] and you are welcome to borrow ideas from it if you like.
Open Source (Score:0, Informative)
Time to look at the people that support the OSS movement, guys. They are all very much left-wing, and are all acting under the orders of foreign governments. They are seeking to undermine our American way.
I used to run Linux, but never again. A chill wind blows through this country, and its name is 'open-source'.
Think about it.
Re:A perpetual motion car? (Score:2, Informative)
Assuming that this guy isn't a crackpot, what makes you think that the perpetual motion would have anything to do with the movement of the vehicle? I'd guess his perpetual motion engine would be used as any other engine, except this one you wouldn't turn off. In other words, when you need to stop, you'd simply disengage the driveshaft. The perpetual motion machine would continue moving perpetually, you just wouldn't be translating that into rotation of the car's wheels.
(Yes, I know the parent was supposed to be funny. I thought it was funny, too. Just thought I'd mention that, in case others took him seriously. Like that could happen.)
USB Mess (Score:2, Informative)
I admit I was upset to hear the news about the Pseudo USB 2.0, but looking at the logos that manufacturers are supposed to use, it looks like everything should make perfect sense.
Glad to see its been all straightened out.
The Tilley story (Score:5, Informative)
For the rest of the site, uh, well, no comments. ;-)
Donate a dollar to Peng (Score:3, Informative)
If many of us just sent $1.00 to Peng's fund we could make a big difference and help fight the RIAA instead of just complaining about them.
I just sent a dollar. I realize it isn't much but I am unemployed.
Donate a dollar right here [arbornet.org].
Thanks,
Loomis
Re:More Tilley Info (Score:2, Informative)
Slashcode automatically inserts a space after a certain number of characters. This is to keep long URLs (and trolls) from messing up the layout. You get used to it and remove the space after copying the address. If you want to make things convenient for others you could just use standard HTML linking:
<a href="insert URL here">Descriptive Text</a >
This way you get Those fancy links. [greaterthings.com]
Re:A perpetual motion car? (Score:5, Informative)
motion has not been and never will be _PROVEN_
impossible. That's not how science works. You
cannot prove a negative. The most you can say is
that we have yet to devise an experiment which
would violate energy conservation law. Scientists
never prove anything, they only disprove things,
and concrete things at that (it is easy to show
that this or that device conserves energy but it
is impossible to generalize that without some
sort of qualifiers).
Re:They must have thought he was crazy.. (Score:5, Informative)
His little demonstration at the Nashville track last year...the car didn't even make it to theoretical distance available from just the plain car batteries. It had a "problem with the wheel bearing." It was going pretty slow before it stopped, too. Also they'd drive it, stop it to "check on it" and attach a voltmeter so the audience could see that the voltage wasn't going down. In fact, while they had the "voltmeter" terminals connected, the voltage was going up. Proof of an amazing breakthrough I say.
His "explanation" of the "physics" behind his invention is the same "battery-popper" tripe that "alternative energy" scamsters have been pushing all along. They all involve big capacitors periodically pulsing high voltage into the battery at a certain frequency, which taps into some hitherto unknown energy in the atomic forces. Or some such crap. And it works with cheap, available car batteries! Convenient, because then they can keep the car batteries in plain sight.
I'd rather buy a Sundance generator. At least those look kind of cool.
Patents are law like everything else (Score:5, Informative)
Governments drew a line in the sand at what can and can't be patented. Discoveries can't (ie you can't patent Newtons laws) and algorithms can't either (which is why up until recently it was required to discribe software as an invention comprising of a computer with said computer having of display unit, random access memory, etc etc and then start talking about your software as part of this computer invention).
The reason to not allow software patents follows in the same theme. Is it or is it not in the best interest of the public to allow patenting of software? Most software people would probably say no but unfortunately what's in the public interest and what makes money generally don't coincide.
Re:Soundex and drivers license numbers (Score:3, Informative)
I couldn't get it to match my state license, but you might have better luck...
Re:Mr. Tilley... (Score:2, Informative)
The only experiment I know of that seems to defy this law is called the cassimir effect where two charged plates in a vaccuum tend to move towards each other even though the charges should repel them. I believe it was explained as some sort of quantum effect of particles and antiparticles appearing within the vaccuum and bouncing around putting pressure on the plates. (I believe its based on an antiparticle and particle emerging at once, bouncing around, then anhialating each other out of existence over and over). I don't put much faith in quantum theories, though.
If there is an exception to the law, I bet it's such as mall effect as to be nearly unmeasurable -- certainly not enough to allow for enough energy to propel an automobile indefinitely. Unless this guy is reabsorbing heat, using some form of alternator, and using braking power to recharge the batteries, I can't imagine how he'd get even a fraction of the power back into the system he's using for motion.
It'll be interesting to see what the feds turn up. I think if the guy was legit, he'd have patented his idea and showed it off to the public by now if it is a perpetual motion machine.
One of my engineering professors said that thousands of people have applied for patents on supposed perpetual motion machines & even more had created businesses that suckered people into investing in such ideas, but there's always a flaw in the design b/c you just can't beat the laws of conservation of matter & energy (other than converting one to the other). If there's motion, there must be energy powering it somehow & if you're powering a motor with electricity, then that electrical potential will be converted to mechanical motion and heat. There's no way to convert 100% of that mechanical motion and heat back into electricity, so I see no way for his magic box to recover the energy the vehicle used. The only alternatives I can imagine that are practical are... he's cheating and recharging the vehicle somehow, or he has another power source.
I admit there's a one in a trillion chance the wacko tapped into the power of a black hole in another universe to recharge his electric car, but... I doubt it ;-) Even then, it wouldn't be perpetual. It'd just have an emensely powerful power supply... Hey, who needs batteries when ya got that kinda power? lol.
Re: plurals of compound terms (Score:2, Informative)
You just have to love the Internet:
When a noun is hyphenated with an adverb or preposition, the plural is formed on the noun.
When neither word is a noun, the plural is formed on the last word.
In forming the plurals of compound terms, the significant word takes the plural form.
Significant word first:
Significant word in middle:
Significant word last:
Both words equally significant:
No word significant in itself:
Tilley hype - Flash animation (Score:3, Informative)
This guy only made $500K off his scheme, over more than a decade. This was a low-rent scam. Makes me wonder if he believed his own hype. There are easier ways to make $50K/year.
Re:A perpetual motion car? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. A perpetual motion machine is impossible only if the laws of thermodynamics are correct. Unfortunately the laws of thermodynamics are based on human observation and humans make mistakes.
Of course, there's plenty of supporting evidence for the current laws. So it's not very likely that they're wrong and subsequently it's not very likely that perpetual motion machines exist, but a good scientist never says never.
A more correct statement would have been "a perpetual motion machine would destroy the laws of thermodynamics, cast doubt on thousands of experiments, and undermine physics as we know it, though that doesn't mean it's impossible".
PS: I took tertiary level thermodynamics courses.
Re:Software patent report postponed (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, things are looking actually quite good currently. Have a look at this press release [ffii.org], most MEPS are finally seeing that the proposal is completely wrong. I'm in direct contact with several people working with the MEPS and these people are really eager to learn as much as possible about the dangers of software patents.
Re:Software patent report postponed (Score:3, Informative)
I can verify this, I also got a mail today from a Swedish MEP (Olle Schmidt) that said:
Notes on Tilley (Score:3, Informative)
the photos of the various parts and signage for his 'building power system' are here. [keelynet.com] I think it's the book 'Voodoo Science' that includes a chapter on it, also? (i think. Have to go home and check.) But this guy's a treat. I'm not surprised to find out about the heist. I AM alarmed that this guy has any credibility at all, but i guess there's always someone willing to believe...
Compound nouns (Score:2, Informative)
You may be driving around, past a series of culs-de-sac, looking on at the passersby. You might be on your way to visiting sons-, brothers-, or even mothers-in-law.
Then, in the evening, you munch on a couple of crepes suzette, chased down by a few gins and tonic. Finally, you turn on the TV to catch a pastiche starring all living Doctors Who.
-Tez
Re:Soundex and drivers license numbers (Score:2, Informative)
I don't remember it exactly (got it written down around here someplace...) but this is created from the first and middle names.
ddd = (month of birth - 1) * 31 + day of birth
I seem to recall that ddd is altered for females.
Add 600 if female.
Here's a GWBASIC tool [aol.com] I wrote that calculates Illinois Driver's license numbers. Be kind; remember it's GWBASIC and note the date
There is no serialization in the number. Everything is calcualted from the name, gender, and birthdate of the individual. If I ever have twins, I plan to choose names that work out to the same driver's license number, just to see what happens (evil grin).