I'd want the drive to have the option of having to depress the green button on power up to avoid the drive wipe, and have it as a firmware option that you can update using a utility. That way you can only change it while it's powered up.
Even better would be if you had to provide a key string within a certain time period or it self destructed, and it has enough capacitors on board to do it even if the power is subsequently removed.
Did you read the first rebuttal to that blog post?
Here i'll quote it for you.
"Do you have any response to the lecture given Richard Lindzen on Wednesday 22nd Feb 2012?
Can you comment of the IEA forecast of production rates for fossil fuels which is pure fantasy. The prediction for CO2 levels is based on a mythical rise in fossil fuel usage.
Have you not studied British History and the key role CHEAP energy played in the UKs prosperity. And that expensive energy will reduce economic output. Funny you should mention the Arab Spring. That all started because of the RISE in energy costs and Egypt.
Did you not notice the banking crash a few short years ago. Remember what started it. Yes expensive energy (oil). The high energy costs effectively removed a large chunk from the money supply. The shortfall caused a cascade failure in the banking system. The crash was caused by high energy costs, the result was a failure in the banking system.
Why do you ignore cutting edge research into (hot) nuclear fusion. ITER is never going to work. DPF/Polywell (pB11) designs are accelerating past ITER with a tiny fraction of the budget. Even Iran (yes Iran) is running a fusion R&D program that is years ahead of the UK/EU.
Why is it almost every oil producing nation is fast tracking nuclear power? when in most cases they have more sun than they know what todo with? Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar (and others) have all started civilian nuclear programs. (Clue – its not about reducing CO2 emissions)
You make a major assumption that future transport will be electrical based. Transport could just as easily be Hydrogen based. And the most efficient method to generate H2 is the high temperature sulphur/iodine reaction (using a nuclear reactor). But what if battery/h2 technology cannot improve enough for mainstream use? Then its a radical switch to rail.
The DECC has made sweeping assumptions about advances in technology. Its identical to betting on a horse to win a race before the horse has even been born.
How is the military going to operate in 2050? How is the Navy going to power its ships? The air-force? The army? Every time the army sets up an FOB are they going to install a wind turbine to power the base and recharge the jeeps, bradleys, tanks overnight? Military equipment is inefficient by design (weight for armour). A Challenger tank getting 80MPG is never going to happen.
Based on the DECC vision of the future the MoD cannot operate. Which brings up another problem, container shipping.
Your not going to power a container ship using wind turbines and batteries. The ONLY non carbon tech for container shipping is nuclear. Fission reactors in a civilian ship is unacceptable, a Polywell/DPF fusion reactor is the only plausible technology. An ITER/NEF fusion reactor is bigger than a container ship. If container ships cannot be powered in 2050, then we might as well give up and become Amish.
The problem is not CO2. The problem is expensive energy, or rather supply vs demand.
The current DECC polices will cause significant harm to the UK economy.
The solution is easy.
1. Build gas turbines to cover any electrical shortfall.
2. While doing (1) start building nukes.
3. While doing (1+2) major R&D investment in Thorium/Fusion/Transport"
The big problem with your argument is that it predicates on the wind always blowing somewhere within the grid that the wind turbines occupy and that that there is a turbine in the area that the wind is blowing.
Which is fine if you're looking at the entire planet, or your turbines can produce useful electricity at < 1 mph winds and > 30 mph winds. However we are on a small island, wind turbines aren't that good yet, and we regularly get periods where either the winds across the whole nation are to low or too high for the turbines to work.
I think the problem people have is the pursuit of profitability over everything else (thus leading to what people consider to be excessive profits). It's also things like the ever increasing wage gap between the top earners in a company and the bottom earners in a company (which is then driving up prices due to the previous issue)
Are you referring to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force) centrifugal force, which is very real, and can refer to 2 separate things. 1 where your frame of reference is in the rotation of the object, and the other as the reactive force against centripetal force.
Would it be feasible to have some sort of mobile weight attached to a 2 way mercury switch such that when one side of the truss goes up the weight will travel up a rail of some description to the end that has the most lift, thus counteracting the lift (assuming it gets far enough before the weight is vertical)
What they're actually doing is another MITM attack to change your contact number from the one you supplied to one of theirs. They then phone you from their phone with the altered details
it's only more predictable if you know where it was launched from. You then have to consider that the 10KG projectile has a volume (if it's tungsten) of 519.5cc, that's less than 1 litre (or will fit in a 10*10*10cm cube. Traveling at 5709MPH, and 24 miles from visual range, that's 15.13 seconds reaction time.
The ESSM will be traveling at around 3044MPH and to cover the same distance that would be 28.38 (assuming it was already at max speed). Simple maths says that they will meet each other after 9.8 seconds, at which point the ESSM will have travelled 8.35 miles. More research says that the response time for ESSM is around 6 seconds, which leaves the projectile at around 2.8 miles from it's target at point of contact. And this is assuming that they've picked it up at the maximum 24 mile range for the horizon on earth. If it takes them more than 3 seconds to detect a projectile that is smaller than your average sea gull, and due to aero dynamics will have substantially less radar profile than the gull, the ESSM won't have time to be launched before the ship has been hit.
Just as aside, the time it would take a missile traveling at mach 2.5 to travel the same distance would be around 45 seconds, so that 6 second response time wouldn't matter that much.
While I was browsing the net looking for more info I came across this quote
"Ellis told FoxNews.com that the big guns on the deck of a warship are measured by their muzzle energy in megajoules. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph. Multiple that by 33 and you get a picture of what would happen when such a weapon hits a target." here - http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/10/navy-railgun-shoots-bullets-electromagnet/
Could this be what's meant by the following?
(equivalent, the ONR says, to a one-imperial-ton vehicle travelling at 100 mph, or a London bus going bloody fast).
I'm not sure that's true, as there's not going to be any explosive charges in the projectile, and it's probably got enough kinetic force behind it to plow through any explosion. Additionally as it's a solid slug of metal it's going to have a much smaller profile than standard missiles.
Also unless I'm completely uninformed, there isn't currently a defence against solid slugs except not being there. Another point would be that the ship that has this gun will be able to have a lot more ammunition than the opposing ship will have missiles due to the fact that it's smaller...
(The opinions below are mine, and purely conjecture)
I believe that the reason that copyright infringement and theft are deliberately conflated by interested parties is that the word steal can be used for both ideas and physical items in a tense that means that you have taken them from their rightful owner. (Dictionaries back me up on that one)
In academic circles this is called plagiarism, in the physical world it's called theft, in the artistic world it's copyright infringement, and in the engineering (and bleeding over to artistic/business) world it's called patent infringement.
They all describe a situation where someone has obtained something that is legally yours without your permission (which may include a fee), and either profited (not necessarily in a monetary fashion) from it, or kept it for themselves. So the act of taking the copy is directly comparable in the English language to taking a CD from a shop, it's the consequences that differ (as many people have pointed out, stealing a physical item results in the original owner being down 1 item, while stealing a copy results in the original owner still having their own copy)
If I remember my history lessons correctly, most of the knowledge of the era actually died with the author because there was no protection for IP, and so inventors used to go round to various wealthy benefactors and ask them if they wanted to pay the inventor to make one of their inventions for them. At no point would they share that information with anyone else (although the finished invention could be considered sharing) as if they did then someone else could then earn money off of their hard work.
Also the reason for the IP laws introduction was to reduce the crowns ability to abuse monopolies on common items and thus making it illegal to make soap for example unless you were so appointed (even though it was a commonly known recipe at the time), not to protect new inventions. And lots of people got prosecuted for infringing crown appointed monopolies, and often ended up destitute because of it.
Erm, there were 2 parts to the OP, the part that I was reponding to was about intrinsic value, and recooping money spent
"If some "IP" troll thinks he's "lost" something, then he's more than welcome to try to explain to the Beaks exactly what it is he thinks he's "lost", but until the establishment of that fact, no actual loss can be assumed."
So my post was to explain the value of the copyright, why it has value, and thus what the loss is. As it is something that appears to pass by many people when they start on the copyright infringement isn't theft crusade, and also on the copyright infringement doesn't cost the originator anything.
If you were able to make atomically accurate copies (including software) of the latest car that Ford were trying to sell and for less money than they could sell it for and maintain R&D, then you would lower the value of that model of ford down to the cost of copying it after a while, as you'd probably be selling them for around the production cost of about £2-3K rather than the 20-30K they currently charge (and that's for a fully specced model). However you wouldn't have deprived Ford of any stock at all. It could also be argued that most of the people that bought your copy wouldn't have bought an original Ford anyway due to the cost. However in real terms, the value of Ford's new car would in fact plummet to match the cost that you could produce it for.
In digital media the same is true, as almost everyone agrees that the people that do the work of producing the music deserve to be paid (song writer, musicians, sound crew, editors, venue owners (where it was recorded), etc.). Some of these people will be paid up front (sound crew, and venue), which means that these costs have to be recouped before the song writer, musicians and editors start making any money. If they had to take out a bank loan, then this needs to be paid every month.
Now standard business logic says that your break even point is the point where money coming in from the items you've sold matches your costs to produce and sell those items (whether it's cars, cokes, buttons, or music) (google break even chart for an explaination).
If our mythical 4 person band is selling through Apple, then they've got a fixed price point of around 99p/song and apple take about 30% of that (let's call it £1 and 30p for easy maths) so the song produces 60p towards covering expenses. If a sound crew of 5 people costs £35/hour/person and a song takes 1 hour to get right, then that means that the cost of the crew is £175, which means that JUST to pay their wages you need to sell 292 copies of your song on apple. Doing a quick google, a recording studio in London charges between £30 and £90/hour so if we go for the mid point that's £60 which is another 100 copies (bring our total up to 392). And this is just for the fixed costs of producing the initial recording. From the same website that I got the cost of the recording studio, they also charge £130 for mastering (which I assume is the production of a master copy that is a high enough resolution to create any feasible subsequent copies from). And £130/hour for post production. So let's assume our band doesn't have someone that can so the post production, and they don't own their own mastering software/hardware, that's another £260 minimum added on which is another 434 sales (bringing our total up to 826). Once they've sold those they then start making money to pay the people they didn't have to pay up front. So if the band needed to practice the song for 30 hours before it was ready to be played and they "pay" themselves £10/hour then that's £40/hour for the band which comes to £1,240 (1 hour to produce the song) that needs to be covered by the music, which is another 2067 copies (bring our total up to 2893). The editor/manager probably charges around £20/hour (plucked from thin air with no research what so ever) and spent 4 hours arranging thing and making sure the recording happened properly. This is another £80 that needs to be covered which is another 134 sales needed (current total 3027). And finally the song writer also likes to be paid £10/hour and spent 6 hours (being nice) writing the song which is another 100 sales (current total 3127).
So Just to cover the cost of selling their song on apple, our band needs to have sold 3127 copies of that song. If that song doesn't do very well and they only sell 1500 copies then they need to sell an additional 1627 of other songs after covering the costs of producing those songs to break even.
So, no copyright infringement isn't theft, however it is still depriving someone of the income to for the work they've done.
I suppose we could always go back to the days pre recording, where if you wanted to hear music you had to actually hire the musicians and pay them up front for their work, but then how many people would be willing to sacrifice their music libraries for that?
And how do you think these companies cover the cost of laying and providing all of this stuff? Don't you think that this should be added to the nominal "Cost/MB" on their lines?
Looking at that table the sums seem to work out as
Monthly contract cost - ( (price of phone - not refundable deposit) / length of contract ) = amount you pay.
And as someone else pointed out above you have to pay for the entire phone up front and then they refund the difference over the contract term rather than the way we do it in the UK where they give us the phone and bump up the contract price.
However in the article/attached documentation, didn't they refer to the act of exciting said caesium 133 atoms using microwaves until they get the requisite number of wobbles/second? This would infer that if you put more or less energy in they will wobble at a different frequency...
I'm fairly sure that Hz is defined as cycles per second, and as these atomic clocks are "more accurate" than any other clock, they don't have a "known accurate time source" to measure against, thus the comment about them having a circular reference. IMO this will become increasingly true if they ditch UTC, as they won't even have the 24/60/60 breakdown of the solar day.
Wouldn't it be better for them to define a second as x number of y event that occurs when z quantity of material has been heated up to temperature t?
Erm, is it me, or does the theory behind atomic time have a circular reference in it. Namely that to measure a second they have to excite atoms until they do something so many times a second?
I believe in europe, paypal is actually incorperated as a bank, so this sort of thing MAY be covered by the various banking laws. If not there's always the small claims court.
I had that problem a few years ago, and when I requested my pac code so that I could move it to a pre-pay for a couple of weeks then back to my new phone. Suddenly not only could they move my number to the new contract, the could also process the new contract as an upgrade for the same price...
Can I suggest that you change banks, as my bank (HSBC) does all of that, and also shows any pending DD/SO's that are due to come out of your account in the next business day...
When you're budget is squeezed then you look to save money where you can, so if you can buy stuff significantly cheaper elsewhere then you do (look at the number of people that shop at tesco vs sainsbury, waitrose, etc.) or you buy cheaper quality components. While you're view is quite valid given a holistic view of the country, the benefits that those people are claiming wouldn't be given directly to the companies that didn't shop overseas for the cheaper goods, so they'd be losing money hand over fist just to keep brits employed.
Doesn't sound much like a business plan to me... The best way out of this is to lower manufacturing costs in this country so that it's cheaper to buy from us than elsewhere...
The fact that Google is successful and has a monopoly in the search arena isn't the problem. The problem is that they are then using that position to leverage their own new products to the detriment of other companies (e.g. BT back in the 80's was going to roll out cable television across the country and use their position as the only telephone operator in town to promote their services, thus destroying the fledgling bskyb (before it was bskyb) and the other cable operators that were just starting to come into being.
This is what google has been doing with it's maps, financial services, news, and other new services, and this is what people are complaining about. After all, people are lazy, and will go for the easiest good enough solution.
A usb key that also includes an rfid chip, they could then build the pairing into the hardware, so that when a master key (owned by the company and sold to them for $$$) is plugged in and the laptop is started it will register with that master key and ask for a slave key to be inserted, which will then be registered too.
And to ensure that the users don't lose it, the rfid chip can be configured to open all the doors (that they're allowed to access).
"ISPs cannot block or otherwise prejudice the exchange of IP packets between their subscribers and other Internet users for the commercial benefit of the ISP or third parties."
Erm, you do realise that what you've just written would preclude traffic shaping due to the key word Prejudice.
Something better would be to restrict traffic shaping to types of traffic regardless of source/destination - so they can improve VOIP but not just their own VOIP, or they can slow down bit-torrent but not all bit-torrent except their own bittorrent.
Given that the police are not allowed to follow you into your own home, or another private premises (including private clubs, land, etc) and that the cell tower information doesn't know what land boundaries are. This sort of activity should be illegal.
Given that by law you are protected from incriminating youself, and (as the judge said) if you want to participate in society, you need to have certain things like a mobile phone. The fact that the police can then look back at the last 6 months records and say - This person fits our pattern therefore he's probably (ok is) guilty, without you even knowing, and then using that information to get a warrant. This should be protected as self incrimination.
And given that this is impersonal, and only proves that your mobile phone went to these locations, the information should be protected.
If the police want to follow someone and get probable cause enough to get a warrant, then this information will become available to them. But first it means that they have to invest some man hours establishing that you frequent these locations, or that you were - in the balance of probability - in this location at this time.
"(1) Oracle agrees to a ludicrous contract whereby it is required to give the government any discounts it gives to anyone else. WTF? I'm not a multi-billionaire, but if someone walked in to my shop and said, "Hey, I'll pay $100 for that TV, but if you ever sell that same make and model for under $100, you have to give me the discount," I'd throw them out of my store, sans TV."
your analogy would work better if you said I'm going to lease this TV from you for £100/month and if you ever lease that same make and model for less that £100/month I want the same discount.
Do you mean like the google adwords that are all over the place, with their tracking cookies, page readers, and such like? or the double click ads that are... erm... also all over the place (2 maybe now 1 largest online ad agrigators in the world). I would guess that around 60 to 70% of web sites have an ad from one of those 2 companies on them. And those companies then know what web page you're on and who you're unique id is.
There's also been enough studies that have been able to take the annoimised data from ad agencies and put them together to present and actual person (name, address, credit card number, which porn sites they visit, etc. and with the advent of face book and co, what they look like).
The ad companies don't like the idea of been regulated like that because the more personal information increases the chances of a sale, and so increases the value of their advertising.
As for billboard and public advertising, If they started putting a bill board advert up outside my house, and at the entrance to the shops I visit trying to sell my wife tampax at the right time of the month, or power tools when I've recently been researching them, then yes you'd have a leg to stand on, but while they are doing more generic adverts that appeal to a specific type of person and putting it in an area where they think that sort of person is more likely to live (i.e. BMW have recently sold 20 cars in this area, so it's a fair bet that people in this area are likely to want a BMW).
And FYI I do understand more than a little about selling advertising as I program booking systems for companies that sell advertising, so I've had to research it, and more than that, understand it.
wouldn't this fail the non-obvious test as light tubes are already widely used in building works, and as mentioned above, there are many other applications that use reflected light instead of generated light.
As database 3 links the biometrics to who you are, wouldn't this be the most important and vulnerable of the 3 to hacking attempts. After all, if you can get into that database with write access, then identity theft takes on a whole new meaning.
Have a criminal record you want to get rid of? Just point your biometrics to someone else. Loaded with debt, just become someone else.
Ah well, I guess hollywood needed a new version of "the net" to broadcast, so why not persuade some smuck to implement it in real life.
I've heard that the other side of this coin is that Mcmillian wanted to be able to change the prices based on popularity from £15.99 down to £5.99 for less popular/older books
This would be because in the UK this much snow is not a usual occurrence and neither are the temperatures. As such most drivers don't have the necessary equipment to enable their cars to handle the snowy weather (such as snow chains, shovels, and emergency supplies). Also our councils don't keep a large amount of snow plows available to clear the worst roads, and we keep fairly low stocks of grit and salt.
If this trend in weather continues for a few years, the problem will become less and less each year as more drivers get the requisite equipment.
Another article I saw on this said that the banks would be given access to peoples tax records instead of self cert, so that they could see the sort of income that the prior self certs are getting.
Even if there is an alternitive to fuel for the moon, if a lunar base is supposed to expand and be sustainable without outside help, being able to produce oxygen is going to be useful. Esp. while the CO2 levels are getting up to the point where plants can reliably recycle the air for human consumption, and also to replace any oxygen that is lost due to accidents. Then there's the whole thing of being able to produce water without having to mine it.
@Fraser Posted Tuesday 29th September 2009 12:45 GMT
"No it doesn't mean your children can't have their friends round."
Unless they are round for more than 2 hours at a time, and more than 14 times a year (52 weeks in a year last time I checked)
"It doesn't mean that they can't sleep over."
unless the sleep overs happen more than 14 times a year, and your kids have sleep overs at the other families house. - say to give each family a night off every couple of weeks?
"It doesn't mean you can't look after your friends/neighbour's kids as a favour."
See having friend round, esp. if they "recpricate" by looking after yours occasionally
"It doesn't mean that you can't give kids a lift to school, etc. etc."
Depends on how far it is to school, and whether you do it on the way back too.
"It does mean that you can't look after other people's kids, regularly and recieve some sort of payment/other reward for it."
If being able to work is considered a reward, then so is being able to go to the cinema, have a lie in, having a romantic evening, being able to go to the pub, etc.
However those 2 crack addicted prostitutes would probably live in the same house, and so it would all be legal. Hell if the to ladies had swapped door keys, and did the baby sitting at each others house, it would be legal.
It's only because they were baby sitting at their own homes that they're in trouble.
Register
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Page:
I'd want the drive to have the option of having to depress the green button on power up to avoid the drive wipe, and have it as a firmware option that you can update using a utility. That way you can only change it while it's powered up.
Even better would be if you had to provide a key string within a certain time period or it self destructed, and it has enough capacitors on board to do it even if the power is subsequently removed.
Re: when I was a nipper...
I remember that story :) I always wondered about the physics of it though.
Did you read the first rebuttal to that blog post?
Here i'll quote it for you.
"Do you have any response to the lecture given Richard Lindzen on Wednesday 22nd Feb 2012?
Can you comment of the IEA forecast of production rates for fossil fuels which is pure fantasy. The prediction for CO2 levels is based on a mythical rise in fossil fuel usage.
Have you not studied British History and the key role CHEAP energy played in the UKs prosperity. And that expensive energy will reduce economic output. Funny you should mention the Arab Spring. That all started because of the RISE in energy costs and Egypt.
Did you not notice the banking crash a few short years ago. Remember what started it. Yes expensive energy (oil). The high energy costs effectively removed a large chunk from the money supply. The shortfall caused a cascade failure in the banking system. The crash was caused by high energy costs, the result was a failure in the banking system.
Why do you ignore cutting edge research into (hot) nuclear fusion. ITER is never going to work. DPF/Polywell (pB11) designs are accelerating past ITER with a tiny fraction of the budget. Even Iran (yes Iran) is running a fusion R&D program that is years ahead of the UK/EU.
Why is it almost every oil producing nation is fast tracking nuclear power? when in most cases they have more sun than they know what todo with? Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar (and others) have all started civilian nuclear programs. (Clue – its not about reducing CO2 emissions)
You make a major assumption that future transport will be electrical based. Transport could just as easily be Hydrogen based. And the most efficient method to generate H2 is the high temperature sulphur/iodine reaction (using a nuclear reactor). But what if battery/h2 technology cannot improve enough for mainstream use? Then its a radical switch to rail.
The DECC has made sweeping assumptions about advances in technology. Its identical to betting on a horse to win a race before the horse has even been born.
How is the military going to operate in 2050? How is the Navy going to power its ships? The air-force? The army? Every time the army sets up an FOB are they going to install a wind turbine to power the base and recharge the jeeps, bradleys, tanks overnight? Military equipment is inefficient by design (weight for armour). A Challenger tank getting 80MPG is never going to happen.
Based on the DECC vision of the future the MoD cannot operate. Which brings up another problem, container shipping.
Your not going to power a container ship using wind turbines and batteries. The ONLY non carbon tech for container shipping is nuclear. Fission reactors in a civilian ship is unacceptable, a Polywell/DPF fusion reactor is the only plausible technology. An ITER/NEF fusion reactor is bigger than a container ship. If container ships cannot be powered in 2050, then we might as well give up and become Amish.
The problem is not CO2. The problem is expensive energy, or rather supply vs demand.
The current DECC polices will cause significant harm to the UK economy.
The solution is easy.
1. Build gas turbines to cover any electrical shortfall.
2. While doing (1) start building nukes.
3. While doing (1+2) major R&D investment in Thorium/Fusion/Transport"
By alan
Re: Omissions
The big problem with your argument is that it predicates on the wind always blowing somewhere within the grid that the wind turbines occupy and that that there is a turbine in the area that the wind is blowing.
Which is fine if you're looking at the entire planet, or your turbines can produce useful electricity at < 1 mph winds and > 30 mph winds. However we are on a small island, wind turbines aren't that good yet, and we regularly get periods where either the winds across the whole nation are to low or too high for the turbines to work.
Re: Not madness - criminality
I think the problem people have is the pursuit of profitability over everything else (thus leading to what people consider to be excessive profits). It's also things like the ever increasing wage gap between the top earners in a company and the bottom earners in a company (which is then driving up prices due to the previous issue)
You can also get into threads with no descernable title by clicking the date/time in the right hand column
Optional
Are you referring to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force) centrifugal force, which is very real, and can refer to 2 separate things. 1 where your frame of reference is in the rotation of the object, and the other as the reactive force against centripetal force.
Optional
what about provacy = privacy?
Would it be feasible to have some sort of mobile weight attached to a 2 way mercury switch such that when one side of the truss goes up the weight will travel up a rail of some description to the end that has the most lift, thus counteracting the lift (assuming it gets far enough before the weight is vertical)
The ruling dose not cover
should be "does"
Optional
What they're actually doing is another MITM attack to change your contact number from the one you supplied to one of theirs. They then phone you from their phone with the altered details
it's only more predictable if you know where it was launched from. You then have to consider that the 10KG projectile has a volume (if it's tungsten) of 519.5cc, that's less than 1 litre (or will fit in a 10*10*10cm cube. Traveling at 5709MPH, and 24 miles from visual range, that's 15.13 seconds reaction time.
The ESSM will be traveling at around 3044MPH and to cover the same distance that would be 28.38 (assuming it was already at max speed). Simple maths says that they will meet each other after 9.8 seconds, at which point the ESSM will have travelled 8.35 miles. More research says that the response time for ESSM is around 6 seconds, which leaves the projectile at around 2.8 miles from it's target at point of contact. And this is assuming that they've picked it up at the maximum 24 mile range for the horizon on earth. If it takes them more than 3 seconds to detect a projectile that is smaller than your average sea gull, and due to aero dynamics will have substantially less radar profile than the gull, the ESSM won't have time to be launched before the ship has been hit.
Just as aside, the time it would take a missile traveling at mach 2.5 to travel the same distance would be around 45 seconds, so that 6 second response time wouldn't matter that much.
While I was browsing the net looking for more info I came across this quote
"Ellis told FoxNews.com that the big guns on the deck of a warship are measured by their muzzle energy in megajoules. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph. Multiple that by 33 and you get a picture of what would happen when such a weapon hits a target." here - http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/10/navy-railgun-shoots-bullets-electromagnet/
Could this be what's meant by the following?
(equivalent, the ONR says, to a one-imperial-ton vehicle travelling at 100 mph, or a London bus going bloody fast).
I'm not sure that's true, as there's not going to be any explosive charges in the projectile, and it's probably got enough kinetic force behind it to plow through any explosion. Additionally as it's a solid slug of metal it's going to have a much smaller profile than standard missiles.
Also unless I'm completely uninformed, there isn't currently a defence against solid slugs except not being there. Another point would be that the ship that has this gun will be able to have a lot more ammunition than the opposing ship will have missiles due to the fact that it's smaller...
However (as I mentioned in another reply) the word steal is used in both contexts as well as a few others.
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1285350
After they've covered their basic living expenses - it's amazing how not having enough money focuses the mind :P
(The opinions below are mine, and purely conjecture)
I believe that the reason that copyright infringement and theft are deliberately conflated by interested parties is that the word steal can be used for both ideas and physical items in a tense that means that you have taken them from their rightful owner. (Dictionaries back me up on that one)
In academic circles this is called plagiarism, in the physical world it's called theft, in the artistic world it's copyright infringement, and in the engineering (and bleeding over to artistic/business) world it's called patent infringement.
They all describe a situation where someone has obtained something that is legally yours without your permission (which may include a fee), and either profited (not necessarily in a monetary fashion) from it, or kept it for themselves. So the act of taking the copy is directly comparable in the English language to taking a CD from a shop, it's the consequences that differ (as many people have pointed out, stealing a physical item results in the original owner being down 1 item, while stealing a copy results in the original owner still having their own copy)
If I remember my history lessons correctly, most of the knowledge of the era actually died with the author because there was no protection for IP, and so inventors used to go round to various wealthy benefactors and ask them if they wanted to pay the inventor to make one of their inventions for them. At no point would they share that information with anyone else (although the finished invention could be considered sharing) as if they did then someone else could then earn money off of their hard work.
Also the reason for the IP laws introduction was to reduce the crowns ability to abuse monopolies on common items and thus making it illegal to make soap for example unless you were so appointed (even though it was a commonly known recipe at the time), not to protect new inventions. And lots of people got prosecuted for infringing crown appointed monopolies, and often ended up destitute because of it.
Erm, there were 2 parts to the OP, the part that I was reponding to was about intrinsic value, and recooping money spent
"If some "IP" troll thinks he's "lost" something, then he's more than welcome to try to explain to the Beaks exactly what it is he thinks he's "lost", but until the establishment of that fact, no actual loss can be assumed."
So my post was to explain the value of the copyright, why it has value, and thus what the loss is. As it is something that appears to pass by many people when they start on the copyright infringement isn't theft crusade, and also on the copyright infringement doesn't cost the originator anything.
If you were able to make atomically accurate copies (including software) of the latest car that Ford were trying to sell and for less money than they could sell it for and maintain R&D, then you would lower the value of that model of ford down to the cost of copying it after a while, as you'd probably be selling them for around the production cost of about £2-3K rather than the 20-30K they currently charge (and that's for a fully specced model). However you wouldn't have deprived Ford of any stock at all. It could also be argued that most of the people that bought your copy wouldn't have bought an original Ford anyway due to the cost. However in real terms, the value of Ford's new car would in fact plummet to match the cost that you could produce it for.
In digital media the same is true, as almost everyone agrees that the people that do the work of producing the music deserve to be paid (song writer, musicians, sound crew, editors, venue owners (where it was recorded), etc.). Some of these people will be paid up front (sound crew, and venue), which means that these costs have to be recouped before the song writer, musicians and editors start making any money. If they had to take out a bank loan, then this needs to be paid every month.
Now standard business logic says that your break even point is the point where money coming in from the items you've sold matches your costs to produce and sell those items (whether it's cars, cokes, buttons, or music) (google break even chart for an explaination).
If our mythical 4 person band is selling through Apple, then they've got a fixed price point of around 99p/song and apple take about 30% of that (let's call it £1 and 30p for easy maths) so the song produces 60p towards covering expenses. If a sound crew of 5 people costs £35/hour/person and a song takes 1 hour to get right, then that means that the cost of the crew is £175, which means that JUST to pay their wages you need to sell 292 copies of your song on apple. Doing a quick google, a recording studio in London charges between £30 and £90/hour so if we go for the mid point that's £60 which is another 100 copies (bring our total up to 392). And this is just for the fixed costs of producing the initial recording. From the same website that I got the cost of the recording studio, they also charge £130 for mastering (which I assume is the production of a master copy that is a high enough resolution to create any feasible subsequent copies from). And £130/hour for post production. So let's assume our band doesn't have someone that can so the post production, and they don't own their own mastering software/hardware, that's another £260 minimum added on which is another 434 sales (bringing our total up to 826). Once they've sold those they then start making money to pay the people they didn't have to pay up front. So if the band needed to practice the song for 30 hours before it was ready to be played and they "pay" themselves £10/hour then that's £40/hour for the band which comes to £1,240 (1 hour to produce the song) that needs to be covered by the music, which is another 2067 copies (bring our total up to 2893). The editor/manager probably charges around £20/hour (plucked from thin air with no research what so ever) and spent 4 hours arranging thing and making sure the recording happened properly. This is another £80 that needs to be covered which is another 134 sales needed (current total 3027). And finally the song writer also likes to be paid £10/hour and spent 6 hours (being nice) writing the song which is another 100 sales (current total 3127).
So Just to cover the cost of selling their song on apple, our band needs to have sold 3127 copies of that song. If that song doesn't do very well and they only sell 1500 copies then they need to sell an additional 1627 of other songs after covering the costs of producing those songs to break even.
So, no copyright infringement isn't theft, however it is still depriving someone of the income to for the work they've done.
I suppose we could always go back to the days pre recording, where if you wanted to hear music you had to actually hire the musicians and pay them up front for their work, but then how many people would be willing to sacrifice their music libraries for that?
And how do you think these companies cover the cost of laying and providing all of this stuff? Don't you think that this should be added to the nominal "Cost/MB" on their lines?
Sums
Looking at that table the sums seem to work out as
Monthly contract cost - ( (price of phone - not refundable deposit) / length of contract ) = amount you pay.
And as someone else pointed out above you have to pay for the entire phone up front and then they refund the difference over the contract term rather than the way we do it in the UK where they give us the phone and bump up the contract price.
However in the article/attached documentation, didn't they refer to the act of exciting said caesium 133 atoms using microwaves until they get the requisite number of wobbles/second? This would infer that if you put more or less energy in they will wobble at a different frequency...
I'm fairly sure that Hz is defined as cycles per second, and as these atomic clocks are "more accurate" than any other clock, they don't have a "known accurate time source" to measure against, thus the comment about them having a circular reference. IMO this will become increasingly true if they ditch UTC, as they won't even have the 24/60/60 breakdown of the solar day.
Wouldn't it be better for them to define a second as x number of y event that occurs when z quantity of material has been heated up to temperature t?
Did you actually read the report?
Or just look at the short and the blurb. There wasn't that much text in the pdf after all.
Circular reference
Erm, is it me, or does the theory behind atomic time have a circular reference in it. Namely that to measure a second they have to excite atoms until they do something so many times a second?
I believe in europe, paypal is actually incorperated as a bank, so this sort of thing MAY be covered by the various banking laws. If not there's always the small claims court.
move numbers
I had that problem a few years ago, and when I requested my pac code so that I could move it to a pre-pay for a couple of weeks then back to my new phone. Suddenly not only could they move my number to the new contract, the could also process the new contract as an upgrade for the same price...
New Bank?
Can I suggest that you change banks, as my bank (HSBC) does all of that, and also shows any pending DD/SO's that are due to come out of your account in the next business day...
Minor point
When you're budget is squeezed then you look to save money where you can, so if you can buy stuff significantly cheaper elsewhere then you do (look at the number of people that shop at tesco vs sainsbury, waitrose, etc.) or you buy cheaper quality components. While you're view is quite valid given a holistic view of the country, the benefits that those people are claiming wouldn't be given directly to the companies that didn't shop overseas for the cheaper goods, so they'd be losing money hand over fist just to keep brits employed.
Doesn't sound much like a business plan to me... The best way out of this is to lower manufacturing costs in this country so that it's cheaper to buy from us than elsewhere...
Good luck
And I'm sure the place will be less bright without you :)
Anti competitive behaviour and monopolies
The fact that Google is successful and has a monopoly in the search arena isn't the problem. The problem is that they are then using that position to leverage their own new products to the detriment of other companies (e.g. BT back in the 80's was going to roll out cable television across the country and use their position as the only telephone operator in town to promote their services, thus destroying the fledgling bskyb (before it was bskyb) and the other cable operators that were just starting to come into being.
This is what google has been doing with it's maps, financial services, news, and other new services, and this is what people are complaining about. After all, people are lazy, and will go for the easiest good enough solution.
quick bit of research
shows that the book title given in the article doesn't exist on amazon.co.uk
That we know of
nuf said
How about donglisation
A usb key that also includes an rfid chip, they could then build the pairing into the hardware, so that when a master key (owned by the company and sold to them for $$$) is plugged in and the laptop is started it will register with that master key and ask for a slave key to be inserted, which will then be registered too.
And to ensure that the users don't lose it, the rfid chip can be configured to open all the doors (that they're allowed to access).
Logical errors
"ISPs cannot block or otherwise prejudice the exchange of IP packets between their subscribers and other Internet users for the commercial benefit of the ISP or third parties."
Erm, you do realise that what you've just written would preclude traffic shaping due to the key word Prejudice.
Something better would be to restrict traffic shaping to types of traffic regardless of source/destination - so they can improve VOIP but not just their own VOIP, or they can slow down bit-torrent but not all bit-torrent except their own bittorrent.
Why shouldn't it require a warrent?
Given that the police are not allowed to follow you into your own home, or another private premises (including private clubs, land, etc) and that the cell tower information doesn't know what land boundaries are. This sort of activity should be illegal.
Given that by law you are protected from incriminating youself, and (as the judge said) if you want to participate in society, you need to have certain things like a mobile phone. The fact that the police can then look back at the last 6 months records and say - This person fits our pattern therefore he's probably (ok is) guilty, without you even knowing, and then using that information to get a warrant. This should be protected as self incrimination.
And given that this is impersonal, and only proves that your mobile phone went to these locations, the information should be protected.
If the police want to follow someone and get probable cause enough to get a warrant, then this information will become available to them. But first it means that they have to invest some man hours establishing that you frequent these locations, or that you were - in the balance of probability - in this location at this time.
Analogy
"(1) Oracle agrees to a ludicrous contract whereby it is required to give the government any discounts it gives to anyone else. WTF? I'm not a multi-billionaire, but if someone walked in to my shop and said, "Hey, I'll pay $100 for that TV, but if you ever sell that same make and model for under $100, you have to give me the discount," I'd throw them out of my store, sans TV."
your analogy would work better if you said I'm going to lease this TV from you for £100/month and if you ever lease that same make and model for less that £100/month I want the same discount.
erm
Have you ever even looked at true crypt?
True crypt is a program that creates a virtual drive of a specified size on your hard drive, and that drive is encrypted.
The hidden partition is part of the virtual drive and so appears as random data on the outer drive.
They are NOT talking about file encryption.
Re: Retargeting isn't the devil incarnate
Do you mean like the google adwords that are all over the place, with their tracking cookies, page readers, and such like? or the double click ads that are... erm... also all over the place (2 maybe now 1 largest online ad agrigators in the world). I would guess that around 60 to 70% of web sites have an ad from one of those 2 companies on them. And those companies then know what web page you're on and who you're unique id is.
There's also been enough studies that have been able to take the annoimised data from ad agencies and put them together to present and actual person (name, address, credit card number, which porn sites they visit, etc. and with the advent of face book and co, what they look like).
The ad companies don't like the idea of been regulated like that because the more personal information increases the chances of a sale, and so increases the value of their advertising.
As for billboard and public advertising, If they started putting a bill board advert up outside my house, and at the entrance to the shops I visit trying to sell my wife tampax at the right time of the month, or power tools when I've recently been researching them, then yes you'd have a leg to stand on, but while they are doing more generic adverts that appeal to a specific type of person and putting it in an area where they think that sort of person is more likely to live (i.e. BMW have recently sold 20 cars in this area, so it's a fair bet that people in this area are likely to want a BMW).
And FYI I do understand more than a little about selling advertising as I program booking systems for companies that sell advertising, so I've had to research it, and more than that, understand it.
Obvious?
wouldn't this fail the non-obvious test as light tubes are already widely used in building works, and as mentioned above, there are many other applications that use reflected light instead of generated light.
Problems with database 3
As database 3 links the biometrics to who you are, wouldn't this be the most important and vulnerable of the 3 to hacking attempts. After all, if you can get into that database with write access, then identity theft takes on a whole new meaning.
Have a criminal record you want to get rid of? Just point your biometrics to someone else. Loaded with debt, just become someone else.
Ah well, I guess hollywood needed a new version of "the net" to broadcast, so why not persuade some smuck to implement it in real life.
2 sides to every coin
I've heard that the other side of this coin is that Mcmillian wanted to be able to change the prices based on popularity from £15.99 down to £5.99 for less popular/older books
I'm sure there are some
I mean, what are the chances that at least 1 person has choked to death on a cannabis leaf, or had a whole plant rammed somewhere unpleasant?
Re: dot dot dot...
This would be because in the UK this much snow is not a usual occurrence and neither are the temperatures. As such most drivers don't have the necessary equipment to enable their cars to handle the snowy weather (such as snow chains, shovels, and emergency supplies). Also our councils don't keep a large amount of snow plows available to clear the worst roads, and we keep fairly low stocks of grit and salt.
If this trend in weather continues for a few years, the problem will become less and less each year as more drivers get the requisite equipment.
RPG Gamers got there first
And here we are at the dawn of cyber punk
Tax records
Another article I saw on this said that the banks would be given access to peoples tax records instead of self cert, so that they could see the sort of income that the prior self certs are getting.
Living on the Moon
Even if there is an alternitive to fuel for the moon, if a lunar base is supposed to expand and be sustainable without outside help, being able to produce oxygen is going to be useful. Esp. while the CO2 levels are getting up to the point where plants can reliably recycle the air for human consumption, and also to replace any oxygen that is lost due to accidents. Then there's the whole thing of being able to produce water without having to mine it.
@Fraser Posted Tuesday 29th September 2009 12:45 GMT
"No it doesn't mean your children can't have their friends round."
Unless they are round for more than 2 hours at a time, and more than 14 times a year (52 weeks in a year last time I checked)
"It doesn't mean that they can't sleep over."
unless the sleep overs happen more than 14 times a year, and your kids have sleep overs at the other families house. - say to give each family a night off every couple of weeks?
"It doesn't mean you can't look after your friends/neighbour's kids as a favour."
See having friend round, esp. if they "recpricate" by looking after yours occasionally
"It doesn't mean that you can't give kids a lift to school, etc. etc."
Depends on how far it is to school, and whether you do it on the way back too.
"It does mean that you can't look after other people's kids, regularly and recieve some sort of payment/other reward for it."
If being able to work is considered a reward, then so is being able to go to the cinema, have a lie in, having a romantic evening, being able to go to the pub, etc.
@Fraiser
However those 2 crack addicted prostitutes would probably live in the same house, and so it would all be legal. Hell if the to ladies had swapped door keys, and did the baby sitting at each others house, it would be legal.
It's only because they were baby sitting at their own homes that they're in trouble.
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