Posts by Ru

Re: Although it wasn't aimed at Earth...

No crispiness would ensue, at least not of the biosphere. The Sun isn't really the right sort of star to do that; the Earth is a pretty long way away, and the ejected plasma is pretty diffuse by the time it reaches us. Big flares can play havoc with sattelites and land-based power grids. I'm too lazy to find out how powerful this flare was in relation to other big 'uns that have actually had bad effects on Earth, however.

Have a read up on the Carrington Event or the 1989 geomagnetic storm for what happens when a really big CME hits the Earth.

Re: Software Patents = Retardedness in the Extreme

LTE is a radio networking technology. LTE patents are therefore likely to encompass an awful lot of radio hardware. They probably also cover signal encoding techniques and network management, at a guess.

I'm not totally sure where software patents ended up in this argument, but none of the above are purely software based.

Re: He is right that more can done by machines, but...

"Doctors that aren't personable won't be good GP's"

The sort of thing I was envisaging here would be more like a medical professional who was an actual human being capable of interacting with other human beings but not as highly trained or qualified as a GP. They'd use the diagnostic system to assist them in their work, which might ultimately boil down to a sophisticated triage and limited prescription issuing service. The 'real' doctor level might well still exist, but needn't be as large as it is now, nor need it necessarily deal with things that aren't particularly serious.

People seem to imagine some sort of impersonal and automated diagnost-i-tron device in an empty booth, but not only would that not do a good job for exactly the reasons you cited, but it would also be a) vastly more expensive and complex than a human-guided system and also b) not necessarily as good.

Re: Sun it hot and grass is green...

"If any human cancers ever became contagious, we'd be screwed as a species"

Uh, that doesn't actually make any sense. Why is a transmissible cancer any worse than HIV or antibiotic resistant tuberculosis, to name a couple of unpleasant diseases du jour? Hell, what makes it any worse than historic transmissable diseases like the black death?

This particular cancer spreads when infected animals bite the face of uninfected ones. It isn't trivially spreadable by other means, and doesn't appear to do much metastasis when in place. Cancer treatments for people would seem to be sophisticated enough to deal with anything similar that happened to affect humans.

"Aren't all cancerous cells immortal?"

They don't 'age' like conventional animal cell lines (or at least those with telomeres) but they're also genetically damaged. Not all cancerous mutations are necessarily viable in the long run, though many obviously are.

Re: I don't blame Oracle

Viri

...is a plural form* of Vir, and hence translates as "men", not "more than one virus".

* There's some other grammatical glop I'm not going to get into.

Re: Skin of flesh and nanowires

If you've got time travelling shape shifting killing machines and the best way you can think of to kill people is to stab them like it is 1412 then you've got some serious issues of imagination.

Also, the T-1000 was just a robot. No meatbag cybernetics there.

Re: "thank some deity I don't live in the US"

Not living under US jurisdiction will not protect you from the idiocy of its patenting regime. Selling consumer products is an international business these days, and if you want to ship your product around the world you must comply with the set union of all IP laws around the world.

This means that not only do you get to buy stuff that's been crippledto comply with US patent law, and not only will some of the money you pay for stuff go to US patent licensing fees, but it also means that you have to rely on the US electorate and the legislature they vote in to ultimately deal with the issue because you have no right to do so. Yay!

Re: patents = profits

if you are a "man/woman in a garage" type inventor who wants to build a business from a good idea then the patent system is the way to protect your idea. If you don't protect it then a huge company will just copy you and you'll end up bust before you've even started

If you are a man/woman in a garage (and I'm more of a shed fan, myself) and you patent something of interest to a big, powerful and rapacious company, you're not in a strong situation. Your best bet is to sell up to that company or its competitors, and hope you get a decent amount of money out of the transaction. The alternatives are either a) company steals your idea because they know they can use their legal team to reduce you to a smoking crater in the ground, or b) patent a whole bunch of things which are very closely related to your own idea, and which prevent any practical realisations of your idea ever being made. They can then offer you a pittance for your own patent, which has now been almost totally devalued.

Oh yeah, c) a Chinese company blatantly copies your idea because they know you haven't got any means to stop them. But that would imply that your idea has mass market appeal, which is pretty unusual. Of course, it is quite possible that your idea is not valuable enough to steal or license, in which case you're probably okay, but down a few thousand in patent application and attorney fees. Awesome.

Re: FBI sends request

"you're up to no good"

Well, there are jurisdictions in the world where having something like nmap installed is considered use of hacking tools for nefarious purposes, and criminal proceedings can be brought against you. Fun times!

Re: "Yet the company can remain anonymous!"

Because to do otherwise invokes the Streisand Effect, doesn't it?

Publically complaining about being defamed on the internet is quite clearly a Bloody Stupid Thing To Do, especially if you're not entirely pure, virtuous and innocent all the way through.

Re: "Tell that to the Brasilians"

Half their cars, eh? That's super. How about all their heavy freight vehicles? How about their trains? Hell, how about their aircraft, whilst I'm at it? I'll bet they don't have a whole load of ethanol driven cargo ships either. I stated that running an industrial nation on ethanol was impractical. Don't cherrypick, please.

There are also some issues involved with scaling Brazil's solution to the rest of the world. How much ethanol-brewing feedstock might one grow in the UK, for example? Now contrast with how much hydrogen cracking you could get out of a brace of modern nuclear reactors.

Again, my point was that this is not next-gen technology, it could be done now if needs be, with existing nuclear and solar tech. Converting all of the world's arable land into biofuel generation would work too, but there may be issues with that, like being able to eat...

Re: Florian

I always though that Florian was a Troll rather than a Shill. That'll teach me to make assumptions; never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to a paycheque.

Re: "Even the Guardian have been getting stuff wrong"

Say it ain't so!

Re: Dear USA

I'd actually assume that many (perhaps most, if not all) patents here may actually be physical things or hardware implementations of more general techniques.

But its okay, because the US patent system does not restrict obviousness and frivolity to software patents alone.

"I really cant understand"

Quite.

How many times have you, or indeed anyone, written extremely complex software that was not only totally perfect from the get go, but in fact could not be improved upon in any way at all, being the embodiment of computer science perfection?

Next, how many times have you had to do sysadmin work on a computer that will never be physically accessible by anyone within its operating lifespan? Now, how many times do you suppose NASA have done just that?