You should use hard drive platters as mirrors, much better visual quality.

What amazes me is that we can look at a poverty stricken country, like India, and watch them outpace the US in education but still have people claiming that the problem with education is the amount we spend per student.

The problems in America's education is a social problem, not a funding problem.

Coolio's a bitch. Straight up!

Touched a nerve? No. Lacked vision? Yes. Skirted my questions? Yes.

I would suggest things like phones (and or phone trees), email mailing lists, SMS text messages, ICQ etc all organized so that professionals who want to be notified of certain events get notified in the most timely and secure (as in reliable and as in no practical joking) way possible...

Why shouldn't Twitter be allowed? Email, SMS and ICQ can't be hacked like Twitter? Tell me why these channels are considered legitimate but Twitter isn't?

I know Tom Reiland as we are fellow members of the same astronomy club and he's the director of the observatory I go to. I was there the night he noticed this but had left early. I was back the next night and got a chance to observe the SN. To the best of my knowledge he didn't use Twitter at any point with this discovery but I will have to ask him and see what he has to say.

Seem like they should be a bit embarrassed to have to have found out about it by Twitter.

Why? I think it's fantastic that there is still a community in a science like this. Isn't the idea behind all of these machines and networks suppose to be exactly what happened here? If not why are we doing it? What would you have us be doing with this technology? Twitter is a great platform for exactly this kind of communication. In the area of supernova, waiting for the IAU to come out with a release would be a waste of time. It is important to get as many eyes and CCDs on this kind of thing as quickly as possible. Damn the whole "I'm a professional, thus I only do things one way" culture.

Instead of belittling professionals for using the tools of the public maybe we'd better spend out time helping these cultures come together. Obviously we have something to gain from both sides. Why shit on one for taking advantage?

Since Facebook users volunteer up the information that pretty much makes it public information.

Seriously, I don't care if you know that I'm at the book store buying a coffee. If I don't want this information to be public I don't post it. Problem solved.

Again, I'd like to go that way too regardless of the old timers bitching up a storm but I think you're fooling yourself by assuming that any great number of 'grandkids' under the age of 30 know the metric system well enough to be able to function with it. I bet you good money that over 90% of kids who learned the metric system in school couldn't tell you a close approximation of liters to a gallon more than 6 months after 'learning' metric. I'd accept any answer between 3.5 and 4 as being close enough.

And yes, I know the idea of them learning metric and abandoning the English system is so they won't have to convert but what I am saying is that most of them know little about the metric system as far as practical application. They might be able to do the math, base 10 is easy, but they have no idea what the measures look like in real life. I bet you fewer could estimate a distance in kilometers with any precision either.

How so? Seriously, I'm interested why Imperial is better for carpentry only.

Too many old timers who will rail against it and too many idiots who will have a hard time with the concept.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for getting away from two systems and dropping the one that makes the least amount of sense but there will be hard resistance from a majority of people. Like anything else that is hard, Americans don't want to cut the cord but hope the future generations find a better way to deal with the problems it presents. It will be disruptive to society and that's just too hard a nut to crack for Joe Sixpack.

True but beating up on the entire western world isn't as popular around here as beating on Americans. So, even of the rest of the western or even the entire world does what someone is bitching it's just fashionable to act like only Americans do it. It's kind of like a racist claiming that only certain races take advantage of welfare and such.

Zero predates Islam and Christianity.

The fact that I have used a system that does essentially the *exact* same thing in 1990, 7 years prior to Kodak filing for a patent, invalidates the claim Kodak is making.

Yeah, and the Wright brothers flew a plane who's basic design is based on the same aeronautic principals that are still used to this day. I guess Boeing and AirBus should just hang it up and realize that their patents are bunk.

Whether or not it should can be set aside in this instance

No, it can't be set aside because by your standards a patent on a hybrid vehicle would be invalidated by prior art ala Karl Benz since both vehicles use internal combustion at some point and they both take a passenger to a destination on four wheels. Or the ENIAC would make just about any electrical calculating device unpatentable since they all calculate, fundamentally.

It's not the end product of what it does that matters, it's the process and the hardware supporting that process. Without the ability to patent innovations that spur on more efficient ways of coming to a similar end result, R&D in the private sector would come to a halt.

Actually, you couldn't in Apple's case given both the software and the doubtless proprietary hardware. You're not seeing my statement as inclusive where it fits your needs but otherwise you do. This is the kind of Slashdot bickering that muddies the water.

And I thought that software was covered as copyright while the processes were covered as patents.

Odd. I always thought that a specific process done by specific hardware qualified as a patent. But since you obviously have no interest in expounding on your claims I guess there isn't much to discuss.

So you're claiming that any system caught a still image on any device and could preview said picture while viewing a video feed should automatically invalidate the Kodak claim? I just want to back this up with asking if you looked over the specifics of the patent... They're not really the same thing. Kodak's system does what your system does, yes. But Kodak's system takes it further with specifics that were doubtlessly lacking in your video production unit of 1990. Note language like "single integrated circuit" and you should understand what I'm talking about.