Posts by Tom 13

Re: IOC

The statement that :no company in the world owns the right to a particular well-known word (English or otherwise)" is empirically true.

Now that doesn't stop organizations like the IOC from using heavy-handed lawyer intimidation tactics to make the world think they do. And most small businesses, even a BBQ house that's been open for 20+ years, when confronted with the costs of defending a trademark lawsuit ($20,000+ for one org I was involved in and ours was settled OUT of court, literally minutes before our lawyers were set to file the complaint), will fold pretty quickly unless the name is critical to their business success (in our case our name was our business, and yes the defendants were in the EXACT same market we were).

Re: Good. That's none of Washington's bussiness

I don't necessarily think Congress shouldn't pass a law to protect the privacy*. But contrary to the claims of the author, this amendment didn't even do that. What it did was transfer law-making authority away from Congress and to unelected twits, plus refer the bill back to committee where it could rot for a few more weeks while Dems blamed Reps for failure to take action on a critical issue.

*The devil is in the details, and I would want to see the details before giving my personal approval, but I can conceive that it could be written and receive my approval.

While that is true,

I'm not with CitiBank on the "we caught him" spin.

They ran a similar report of Fox News last night (yeah, the Murdock channel, get over it). The guy was running around with the card for a couple of weeks before they wised up and arrested him. Which would make either Paul Allen or CitiBank customer service, or both, even dumber than him.

@Annihilator: If he's a 'Merkin like me

it has nothing to do with the phone or SIM and everything to do with our spotty network. The phone I have is an Android advertised for 4G. On my daily train commute there are multiple places where I lose all phone signal and I've never seen a working 4G on that ride*. And I live in a major metropolitan area, not out in the boonies. In fact you might have heard of it:: the Washington DC beltway area.

*I have seen one once at a hotel where I was attending a conference, so presumably it works. Or at least I thought it indicated I was connected to one.

Re: meandering in this unusual way

More important question:

Given the short time for which we have known about, and therefore been able to study the jet stream and its affect on the weather, IS this unusual?

@moiety: Stop with the lies.

TBP are NOT just linking to things. They are PREFERENTIALLY linking to things which are legally protected by IP rights. You can argue that IP shouldn't be protected to the extent that it is*, but until the law changes, that's the way things are.

That your government is improperly taxing you on something that IP holders aren't necessarily getting paid for doesn't change the fact that TPB's business plan depends on Piracy (which is why they put it in their name).

*I fully concur with that point and would like an overhaul of IP rights. Copyright for things which use to be printed on dead trees and sold as books should be no more than 75 years for corps, lifetime for living people, with 25 years after time of death for heirs. Trademarks times and defenses are probably ok, but they need to throw out trademarks in any form for words which appear in the dictionary (yes this will make slogan marks illegal, tough fecal waste). Patents need to be for provably non-obvious inventions mechanical, electrical, and chemical. I'm willing to consider industrial processes, but not business processes, and no software patents. Software should be protected by copyright, but only for 7 years regardless of whether corp or person (hence the dead tree rule above for book-like things). Copyrights can be issued for upgraded software, but when the copyright on the original software expires it is public.

Re: Statutory rights are for bleeding heart pinkos

Nope, they're the first one to throw them out the door if they don't agree with them. See BO and the GM Bailout where Vendors and Bond holders, who are statutorily next after Banks got short shrift over stock holders and unions.

@David D. Hagood

Given the requirement for snailmail, I'd quibble with the specific time interval. Even in Western nations I think I'd want 3, though nor more than 4 weeks. For third world areas it would probably take significantly more in order to allow time to actually contact them and for them to have time to clean the machine.

But the overall algorithm looks good, and even with longer lead times would still get to the desired result.

If little Shmuckie Schumer is involved,

it ISN'T in your best interests, no matter how good it may sound on the surface.

Re: But... but... but...

Down-voted because you used the troll icon and scare quotes. If you had fat-fingered it and moved right a mere one icon you'd have gotten an up-vote, because it IS their fault, despite the down votes I got the other day when noting that from a Network Admin perspective, Chrome IS malware in the sense that you can't prevent your users from installing it.

Re: Taping without the other party's consent is illegal

Protecting yourself there is simple: At the start of the interview you explain you are taping to protect your legal interests, and if they object you walk out of the interview.

Re: A neat demonstration of reality versus "common sense"

Quite a lot of astronomical stuff is always about to change. Of all the stuff in astrophysics, the only things we think we've really got nailed down pretty solid are Gravity and Light (speed and spectra). After that you start piling inferences on top of assumptions on top of hypothesis. Any time you add one new piece of hard data, all those pieces are subject to change. One of the most amazing things about astronomy is that it holds together so well with how little we actually know, because for the most part we can't actually perform experiments to test theories, we can only observe natural occurrences.

Re: @Chad H.

If either of the parties is damn fool enough to not make sure the arbiter is competent, I'd really rather their money was taken from them and given to someone who won't make the same mistake. I know, I know; it's ironically Darwinian of me given that I don't actually believe in Evolution.

Re: Poor logic

You contradict yourself on the very first line. The AGW warmmongers are precisely the people who for the last 20 years have been claiming the science is settled and we skeptics need to stuff a sock in it.

On the second line you misrepresent our claim. Our claim isn't that they were wrong, it's that if they lied about item #1 in order to advance a specific non-scientific agenda, you can't trust any of the rest of their statements either.

On line 3 you again seek to misdirect. I've checked on a few papers and they ALL start with an assumption I KNOW to be wrong: Solar activity does not constitute the major component of warming on Earth. Run the thought experiment where you turn off the sun and see how warm the CO2 keeps it.

Line 4 is pure BS. You expend scarce resource only in proportion to the combine damage*risk danger factor when compared to cose. When there are serious questions about both damage and risk, and the cost is 10 orders of magnitude higher than either, it goes to the bottom of the pile. I present as an objective example the danger that near-Earth object of sufficient size to cause a Tanguskan event. We know such objects exist and they have a far more immediate and serious affect than the change the warmmongers pound their drums about. Yet no one is seriously expending money on identifying such objects, let alone work out a reasonable plan to mitigate their impact.

Re: Any of you ACTUALLY gone back and watched any of the old Doctor Who stories?

Yes I have. Two nights ago as a matter of fact: The Three Doctors downloaded from Netflix.

I'd buy DVDs of the old shows if the Beeb would just have the decency to repackage them in season sets and sell them at the same price as they sell the current ones. Right now I only have them on aging VHS tapes from when they use to run on PBS.

Re: @Tim Parker : "Chrome catching IE slowly"?

You can whine about stat all you want to, but according to the security folks at my not so small government agency, Chrome is technically malware because it bypasses administrative installation restrictions. Those of us working the help desk aren't authorized to install it, but we can't stop users from installing it either, even when they don't have the proper privileges.

Re: Cost Analysis

Speaking as someone who isn't an academic and did some of that work for a publisher once upon a time in my life, your description does not accurately describe the process. There's no way they are requiring you to submit it in "publication ready format" because that would require everyone in academia to own a copy of PageMaker, Ventura, Quark, and maybe one or two other programs. What they are requiring is something formatted to look like what will eventually be published so when they're done reworking it, they have something to match it against.

Next, some journals may only do cursory editing others do extensive, particularly for non-native speakers. In our case in addition to the reviewers we usually had 3 or 4 editor/proofreaders (hourly part time) who were assigned articles, they came back to us were reviewed either by the senior or assistant editor (both full time employees at the publisher), and finally went to either me or my assistant for correction and formatting in the publication program. While my salary didn't make me rich, I wasn't exactly cheap either. I expect most of the rest of the staff made more than me.

Finally, we need to deal with your throw-away greed line: they bundle it with less popular journals to hide the price. No, they've adapted to the socialist model academics prefer: they subsidize the cost of equally critical journals that don't have sufficient circulation to break even, or support other work the organization was doing [in my case we were a 501(c)3 corporation supporting scientific research in testing methodology assurance].

Now maybe Elsevier deserve a boycott because they are making obscene amounts of money, I haven't looked at their last quarterly report. But I given my experience, I doubt it. Probably just keeping their heads above water wondering how they are going to still be a going concern 3 years from now, and that was before the boycott. Chances are you'll only find out how truly critical they were after they go bankrupt and things that use to be easily available to you cease to be.

@John Naismith: Ah, finally the light goes on.

You're just being European bigots instead of American bigots. Our pols have passed a law and it must be moral.

Price fixing is not the same as anti-competitive. You can fix to a low price, but it tends to be consumers who want that, not producers. Apple just approved an agreement that said

1. We need to make a fair margin, we think it's 30%

2. We don't care what the actual price is, so we'll sell at whatever you say MSRP is.

3. To protect ourselves and because you are setting the MSRP, you can't set the MSRP lower for anybody else than you do for us*

With that agreement in hand the publishers went to everyone else and offered them the Apple deal. Everybody else agreed the Apple deal was better than what they were getting.

Now, maybe you can argue the PUBLISHERS collaborated to create an anti-competitive environment, but Apple as first movers certainly aren't the guilty party.

* which is not to say they can't lower the MSRP, just that if they lower it for someone else, Apple gets it too. Seems fair to me.

Re: To the haters

You forgot the /sarc tag, so you've confused people.

...

...

It this part that gives it away:

...soon Windows Phone 7 (sorry 7.5 actually no I mean Windows Phone 8) will emerge...

Re: catholic.xxx

While it is true that the word "catholic" technically means "universal" it is hardly ever used in that context any more. When it is used, it is Catholic, as in Catholic Church over which The Pope presides here on Earth.

The meaning of words changes over time, and it is probably time to update the definition to note that "universal" is an archaic definition.

Note: I'm not Catholic myself, I'm more from the Protestant realm although of no official affiliation.