Posts by Charles 9

Re: Copyright, Patents all screwed.

"(The real answer is that his publisher wouldn't entertain a work that might be a free-for-all in a few month's time.)"

But would he entertain a work AND THEN the author is suddenly killed in an automobile accident or dies unexpectedly of a heart attack?

Re: Next act will be titled: "To infinity - and beyond!"

"Copyright will be extended to infinity minus one day."

STILL illegal. As any math fool know, Infinity + anything still = infinity. And a minus is simply the adding of a negative number, so it still applies here. No, to make it limited, the value must be discrete and bound (infinity is UNbounded).

Re: Monopolies and Oligopolies

"And the "run yourself for office then and fix things" crowd is delusional to a disturbing degree if they truly believe people get to just decide to get into politics and do it..."

Hmm, then explain Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Re: I'll just leave this here...

And for some industries, like utilities, there only IS room for one provider (thus utilities are often termed natural monopolies. Otherwise, you end up with a multitude of unsightly utility conduits everywhere, raising NIMBY issues--and because of the physics of how utilities work, you can't just have state control of the conduits--there's no way to separate customers in a single network.

Re: Um....

Did you mean Compaq and the clean-roomed PC clone BIOS?

Re: sky had a monopoly on premiership football

That could STILL have a knock-on effect. With the attraction of being the ONLY outlet with coverage, a network could feel covering the game isn't worth it anymore and decide not to buy. The only thing worse than ONE network hogging the coverage is NO networks covering it (10% of something vs. 100% of nothing). It's like with rural Internet in America. The main reason there's only one ISP most of the time is because the alternative would be NO ISP in the area. Without the sweetheart deals, ISPs wouldn't be willing to plunk down, and it's too expensive otherwise.

Re: Monopolies and Oligopolies

No, it's the residents who elect the local officials. It's obvious they want to preserve their gated communities and have the money and/or connections to keep it that way. They can always threaten to move and take their tax dollars with them.

Re: Monopoly

The ultimate goal of any capitalistic venture is a captive market: one where the customer MUST come to you regularly because you've cornered the market on one or more essentials.

Re: Trading your data

Just counter with Cardinal Richlieu's "Give me six lines..."

Re: Monopoly

And that's how the big boys can rope you. They'll ONLY offer their services if you submit specifically to them.

Re: Screw the people this will put out of work then.

"One that comes to mind is Asimov's foundation, where machines became so reliable that they would last multiple lifetimes, but when they finally broke there weren't any humans alive who knew how they worked"

Didn't they have machines to take care of that, including each other if necessary?

Re: That's odd

I think you'll find that teaching someone to catch a ball is tricky if they've never seen a ball before. That's about where the robots are at this point, as unlike kids they're not exposed in their formative years to witnessing the action of catching a ball and learning from it.

Re: Screw the people this will put out of work then.

"If you want to replace a human by a robot, and still do the job the same way the human did it, then that is true for many jobs. However often, you want to do the job a different way in the process of automating it, a way more suited to automation."

But sometimes there is no alternative but the meatbag way, usually for reasons of ergonomics. The most prominent example being harvesting of delicate fruits for direct sale to market (instead of processing). Since consumers can be finicky about the textural qualities of the product, for-sale produce usually can't be toughened for machine handling, and they usually don't grow in easy-for-machines-to-reach locations. Plus getting them off safely usually requires a dextrous touch at the same time, giving a double-whammy to the machine (as arbitrary--as opposed to fixed--fine motor control is one of the tougher challenges of machines).

Re: Never mind picking things up...

Not necessarily. How many times does the five-year-old MISS because they lack the capacity to take certain factors into consideration? Hell, even grown-ups don't always get it right. Isn't that the beauty of a top-quality cricket bowler or baseball pitcher?

Re: Hmmm

But doesn't that work BOTH ways, and that's why say zebras have stripes--to throw off the pattern recognition of predators like lions?

Re: Buttons

But aren't you looking at the phone anyway, because Send and End aren't actual buttons anymore, either, so you can't call or hang up by touch?

I can see the point, and my Note 4 uses touch buttons on the sides, but the main button is physical because that button is like a cobblestone: sometimes, it helps to FEEL rather than see the button.

Then no sale for me. Inability to remove bulging batteries constitutes planned obsolescence (not to mention a fire risk). That's why I stubbornly stick to Note 4's.

Re: Massive Denial

"When I've brought up very real scenarios where, for example, a rogue fleet manager of connected big rigs decides to redirect a few of his 80,000 pound trailers at high speed into the middle of a city, the blank stares are chilling."

Then you need to put it in starker terms. Let's see if they ignore that you've just described possibly the scariest terrorist scenario since 9/11. If THAT doesn't get their attention, then they've lost their survival instinct, meaning they're basically not human anymore...

Re: ahum, dumb fucks ?

The WebTV at least had a web browser (MSN might have as well). That for most people is the Internet right there.

Re: Now you have two problems

"I'm guessing that in maybe a couple of decades folks will figure out that traveling the road to digital nirvana requires DRAMATICALLY reducing attack surfaces then exhaustively testing what few attack surfaces you decide to retain."

Trouble is, what about HIDDEN surfaces? Or the necessary surfaces being impossible to harden due to their use case? Sort of like a wall with a gate in it; the mere existence of the gate makes it vulnerable under the wrong conditions.

Re: One day, ...

Say a computer glitch starts World War III and people actually survive it. As for fiction, read up on the Dune universe and the Butlerian Jihad.

Re: ahum, dumb fucks ?

"Any idiot knows - or hopes - their coffee is hot."

That's your problem. You're hoping. Some people really ARE idiotic enough to not realize that coffee can be HOT. Remember, the lawyers wouldn't be suing and companies wouldn't be doing CYA moves if it hadn't actually happened in the past. I once read the story of a woman so absent-minded that she took off her (thick, as she was extremely near-sighted) glasses whenever she started to drive, oblivious to the fact one needs decent vision in order to drive.

Re: ahum, dumb fucks ?

"The fact that to be on the Internet one needed a computer has kept the price of computers down for all of us, hobbyists like me and professionals like many of you. I think if a company creates such a beast the cost of computers will increase dramatically."

The 90's called. They want their dial-up Internet appliance back. Remember the Mail Station? The original WebTV and Microsoft Network, which hooked up to the TV?

Re: We'll probably get populist politicians who want to ban computers long before that.

By telegeaph, of course. If it worked before the Civil War, it can work now.

Re: How long chips remain cheap remains to be seen

"Such groups don't last long in a country where the penalty for causing a fuss (also known as state sabotage or disagreeing with the Dear Leader) is execution..."

Depends. If the group is large enough and/or has enough support, they could end up starting a popular uprising, when it's Dear Leader whose head ends up on the chopping block...

Re: Data format parsing

"And address text boxes that insist that a county be part of the address that will go on the label when whatever it is is posted."

Which could be tough for a state like Virginia. See, since 1871, under the Constitution of Virginia, there is an explicit urban/rural divide. You're EITHER in a city OR a county: never both. So it's hard to put a county if you live in the City of Richmond, as Richmond officially does not belong to any county (and good luck picking a nearby county: there are 13 of them in the Richmond Metropolitan Area...AND three lesser cities).

Re: Data format parsing

Until you come across someone who doesn't understand the name of September or anything remotely close. Murphy strikes again...

Re: Get it right!!!

Because it would probably cost more than they would take in.

Re: When will we learn? It's all about the money again.

But some things CAN'T be simulated or anticipated: like Murphy. Why do you think the final phases of drug trials involve real people? Because, as they say, "Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby."

Re: In America, the driver is ALWAYS responsible

No amount of warning is gonna help if people are in such a state as to zombie through it. That's why there's such a thing as "click fatigue".

People NEED to drive to make ends meet; for many, there are no alternatives (no mass transit, taxis cost more than they make, and no coworkers nearby). If they lose the ability to drive, you're essentially telling them FOAD, which can adversely affect crime rates and so on. It's a complicated but very real problem, which is why the increased push for end-to-end automated transportation; there's a significant use case for them.

Re: After the last childish outburst...

To Joe Stupid, autopilot = autonomous vehicle, and they're too dumb to know otherwise, so if you can't fix Stupid, you'll have to fix the perception.

Re: OlaM

You want my opinion on why people have misconceptions about auto-pilots? Blame the Abrams Brothers...and "Otto".

And then they just use "12345" due to poor memory and we're back to square one. And there are no alternatives that can work with things like smartphones that wouldn't themselves be targets for hacks or theft.

IOW, if the user demands unicorns or else, how do you win?