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Comment Re:Key Point Missing (Score 2) 34

The summary misses a key point. Yes they scan and store the entire book, but they are _NOT_ making the entire book available to everyone. For the most part they are just making it searchable.

Agreed that it's not in the summary, but as you correctly note, it's just a "summary". Anyone who reads the underlying blog post will read this among the facts on which the court based its opinion: "The public was allowed to search by keyword. The search results showed only the page numbers for the search term and the number of times it appeared; none of the text was visible."

So those readers who RTFA will be in the know.

Submission + - Appeals Court finds scanning to be fair use in Authors Guild v Hathitrust

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In Authors Guild v Hathitrust, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that scanning whole books and making them searchable for research use is a fair use. In reaching its conclusion, the 3-judge panel reasoned, in its 34-page opinion (PDF), that the creation of a searchable, full text database is a "quintessentially transformative use", that it was "reasonably necessary" to make use of the entire works, that maintaining maintain 4 copies of the database was reasonably necessary as well, and that the research library did not impair the market for the originals. Needless to say, this ruling augurs well for Google in Authors Guild v. Google, which likewise involves full text scanning of whole books for research.

Comment Re:Republicans can do it. Can Democrats? (Score 1) 932

Why would they want to? Even after the purge of the so-called "Blue Dogs" in recent years, Democrats haven't drunken the Kool-Aid in anywhere near the same way that the Tea Party folks have.

Most of the die-hard "radicals" of the left find Obama to be milquetoast at best and are more impassioned by the likes of Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren. But they still voted for Obama in '12 because the Tea Party was the alternative.

It's gotten to the point that the only real definition of a Democrat is "not a Teabagger." So why go after "Washington insiders" for its own sake when said insiders are doing things like keeping the Civil Rights Act on the books and not defaulting on federal debts?

Comment Re:He continues to show himself to be ... (Score 1) 230

How is this a dumb move? By making charging stations ubiquitous, Elon is paving the way for even more sales of their already popular electric cars.

Sometimes, it's really important to know what your *core competence* is, and what is not. With this move, it would seem that Tesla motors sees that it is in the business of selling cars, not fueling stations.

Comment Reads like a typical spambot (Score 1) 432

“I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original,” said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.

I get the feeling this is less about improvements in AI and more about Eastern European spammers lowering our expectations.

Comment Re:Gimmick (Score 4, Informative) 243

Think. Cars naturally lean THE WRONG WAY on curves. They tilt over toward the outside.

There's no "right way" or "wrong way" for a car to lean on a level surface with all four wheels on the ground. The motorcycle metaphor doesn't work well here because part of turning a two-wheeler involves moving the center of mass off the centerline and letting gravity pull you through the turn. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, turning a two-wheeler involves throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

This magnifies the centrifugal force you feel by adding a gravity component to it.

On the contrary: being thrown towards the outside of the turn means the turn radius increases, which results in a decrease in centrifugal force.

They tilt toward the inside, like a banking airplane.

Another poor comparison. Airplanes roll while turning because their wings are their largest working surface areas and need to be tilted off of horizontal to get the lift vector pointing "that way." The comparison here would be in banking the road surface itself (the working surface for a ground vehicle) rather than any shifting done by the suspension on a level road surface.

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