btw... if you actually read the link, the patent is for an actual mouse wheel, not the shuttle on an iPod.
What I don't understand is that this patent was filed on February 7, 2002. I've been using a Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel since 1999 I believe, so how is that not prior art?
Here's the catch, the original still dies. Meaning you still die, but a backup lives on.
Orson Scott Card wrote a short story called "Fat Farm" (from his excellent Maps in a Mirror collection) with this exact idea in mind.
Basically the protaganist was an insanely rich glutton. He would eat for a year or two until he could no longer walk, head over to the cloning place, have a new body made, and have his memories transfered into the new body. Process then repeats.
The story is about the old fat body (which still has the mind of the man) who is sent to a "Fat Farm" where he's forced into hard manual labor and inhuman punishment. Since he has no rights (as he is no longer the official version of himself) he is basically a slave.
Sadly, it isn't very fair. With my luck, I'll probably end up making less than just about everyone else in my graduating class and I'm probably the most capable out of all of them. Why does it always work out that way?
I'm betting you're wrong about that. What will most likely happen is that in a few years time you'll be doing well at your job, and your friend will have been laid off when his web-developing job goes under. You have no idea how many of my friends are in that boat... me I'm happy to be doing writing C code at a strong company that isn't in any danger of having layoffs.
[IANAL] I'm about 90% positive that you have very little to worry about on the delay of Warrants. Unless they are interpreting this in a completely different way than ever before here is how it will work:
1) Police suspect you of something illegal
2) Police request a warrant
3) Warrant is granted but it is NOT shown to the public, for fear that evidence may be destroyed or suspect my flee
4) Warrant becomes public record after the fact
This is currently done a lot of the time in important cases where they suspect that the person in question will be watching to see if a warrant is issued (think Mafia or terrorists, etc.). Really I don't see that this is a big deal. And it's really nothing new.
"The most interesting bit is they claim to be making money"
They may be making money now (current quater) but are still losing money off their previous debts, which is why they're going Chapter 11. Still I'm kinda surprised that they've even broke even.
Dissemination of information (and teaching materials) is the real purpose of the web and the ability to conduct real research through a site such as MITs will only serve to make things better.
Personally I'm extremely excited about the prospects of this. Obviously, not everyone can afford an MIT education (and no amount of reading off the web could actually sub for an MIT course I'd assume) but it still gives underpriviledged and even "not so highly priviledged" individuals the chance to learn outside their normal means. Hopefully other Universities will eventually follow suit, because this can only be the beginning.
While I suppose I don't really qualify as a User Interface expert i do agree with you completely on this. I took a Human-Computer Interaction course in college and was surprised at the relative obviousness of it all... and how so few of my colleagues REALLY got it. My work is mainly involved with User Interfaces in programming environments so I put this kind of stuff to use everyday, and am constantly amazed at the bad interfaces engineers come up with. Ugly is one thing, but many of them seem to get bad design down to an artform.
Macintosh has understood the principles of ease-of-use well, although they're lacking considerably in the power department. Microsoft actually does reasonably well in both categories, whereas Linux and it's ilk seem to ignore usability all together. Once people realize that the interface is just as important as the nifty features hidden underneath, software will be much friendlier for all involved.
There has been tons of amazing innovation in the past 9 years, but you've got the total wrong idea. You seem to want an invention that will revolutionize the world... and you want one every 12 months. Doesn't that seem a little overly optomistic?
"I consider innovations to be things such as the wheel, fire, airplanes, mechanized warfare, the radio, television, PC, and the Internet."
First off, I'd argue with your definition of innovation a little, but I understand what you mean. Now, lets look at the timetable of the innovations you deem worthy enough to mention. Doesn't that stretch through the whole course of human history?
Lets narrow it down to the last 115 years or so. Major "innovations" according to your definition would be: the Automobile, airplanes, radio, TV, Nuclear Power, Computer, PC, Internet.... can you think of anything else? No, and neither can I. Lets assume for the sake of argument there's two other world changing "innovations" I've forgotten. That gives us 10 innovations in 115 years. Wow. That's slightly slower than 1 every 10 years.
Are you expecting these to come about overnight? The vast majority of things are just improvements and refinements of other ideas, and many of them do revolutionize the way we do things. You just can't set an alarm clock and expect a new one every other year. That's grossly optimistic at best and utterly naive at worst.
and I've been sad to see oldmanmurray.com run into hard times, but I still think its the answer.
Actually I don't think they've fallen on hard times have they? That's a site I check daily (despite their recent month long period between posts) and haven't noticed any problems they've had. The pop-up banner thing was a momentary thing to raise legal defense funds (which never needed defending) and served as its own hilarious object lesson in and of itself.
Chet and the gang, are comedic genuii if you ask me and I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.
"That having been said, I disagree with the idea that there is an increasing corporatization of news. I refuse to be seduced by this comfortingly alarmist view, because I am old enough to know better. "
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I've been shouting this from the rooftops for a long time, but nobody seems to listen. Everybody just wants to believe that the world is ending and that we'll all be controlled by the vast conglomerates who tell else exactly what to think and how to vote. Obviously I wasn't saying it as succinctly as Clay does, but I couldn't agree with him more.
This is the exact reason why the "horrific" Time-Warner/AOL merger doesn't bother me much at all. I'll leave the discussions of whether it's really a monopoly or not alone, but I don't see how this merger can negatively impact people. AOL users will now have exposure to more media outlets and news sources. Sure there may be a noticeable TW bent to things, but people will hold them accountable if they get out of line. Everybody's watching and waiting for them to screw up and show horrific bias against other companies but if they do they'll be called on it.
Anyone who thinks this conglomerate will start trying to limit where a user can get to is out of their minds. If they ever started to do this, people would jump ship just as fast as they came on board. As Clay mentioned elsewhere in the article people don't like limitations and "grass hedges" set up.
As for positive benefits I can only think this will force more (news)media companies to jump into the internet with even more gusto to create some kind of competition to the TW/AOL juggernaut. Nobody wants to be left behind, and they will be if they don't start putting MORE content out there. And at the end of the day, if the consumer has access to MORE content that's a good thing.
I always thought that if you GPL'd your stuff, ESR or Linus or CmdrTaco or somebody would come and financially support you for the rest of your life. Why wouldn't anyone want to do this?
I don't think non-compete could hold up in court...isn't it a violation of your right to the pursuit of happiness?
Non-competition clauses can and do hold up in court if your previous company decides to hold you to one.
In regards to non-competition clauses there's a very good reason for a company having them. Say you work at a real-estate company (X) handling several large corporate accounts. You decide to leave company X. Since you are the prime contact for Company's A & B, you can call them up and say "Hey, I've left X, but I'm moving to Y and would love to work with you there." Thus A&B leave X and they lose millions of dollars. Now a lot of times a company will lease restrictive clause that says "for a period of 18 months after leaving our firm you can't talk to any of your old clients". This is actually reasonable and quite fair.
Another good example of a no-compete clause was the one Ross Perot signed when EDS removed him from the board. He was given something like an $8 million severance package and told he could not compete for a period of 2 years (I think). After those two years were up, he started Perot Systems and now vies with EDS for many of the same clients.
When technology comes into play it gets a little more tricky. If you work at company X & then move to Y you can actually use knowledge of the product from company X to build a competing product at Y. This can't really be covered by normal patent protection which is why the no-compete clauses have come into play. A broad no-compete clause is ridiculous, especially one that covers the entire IT industry. One that says you can't work at a streaming media player company for 12 months after leaving is not. Courts will uphold these although I'm not sure who would get sued if you violate it. It's possible the new company would pay damages but I'm not sure.
I could have done with a lot less information, for instance, about the role of est at once-promising computer maker IMSAI. While it's certainly an interesting influence (hey, this was California in the 70s, what do you expect? Puritanism?)
What is est? I'm assuming that's only part of the word, but what word? I'd assume incest but that'd make for interesting reading and the author of this review didn't enjoy it.
Molest?
Forest?
Digest?
Pot-Fest?
Maybe he meant EST (Eastern Standard Time)?
What does it all mean??!
Well we've had some problem with viruses going around here at work, but they haven't cost us any actual business. I'm willing to bet they're more of an annoyance for most places rather than something which does serious damage.
Still I'm not going to dispute that $17.1 Billion figure. However I think a majority of that money is somehow being deposited into MacAfee, Norton, et al's pockets. That's the real cost of virii.
I have no problem with coming up with a super nifty way to patch software incrementally (is there such a thing?) which the news.com article sounds like what Symantec has. So they applied for the patent, big deal.
Sure this sounds like a whole lot of evil corporate mechinations in the slashdot blurb, but it doesn't sound like their sueing anybody. They supposedly have their own special method, which may or may not stand up in court, but what's so wrong about that?
Nobody else seems particularly worried about this thing so why should we care?
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. These works - intellectual property - are expanding the bounds of science and technology and enriching the world of the arts. Through its work, WIPO plays an important role in enhancing the quality and enjoyment of life, as well as creating real wealth for nations.
With headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO is one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations system of organizations. It administers 21 international treaties dealing with different aspects of intellectual property protection. The Organization counts 175 nations as member states.
My understanding is that basically it's a UN deal and works like the UN. Members are appointed to a panel who votes. I'm assuming the Super-7 or whatever they're called control the majority of what goes on in WIPO.
Mordred
Doesn't sound like a limitation
on
Code Breaking
·
· Score: 3
I haven't read the book, but this description makes it sound interesting and I think I'll check it out. Personally I don't think the majority of the book focusing on WWII is any kind of limitation at all. After all that was when most of the major advancements in the field started to take place. I suppose that some might prefer earlier historical examples, but to me they don't sound all that interesting. Sure people have been using substitution cyphers for over a thousand years, but once you've read about one, you've read about them all.
As this was originally a German book I'm wondering if it might not shed a different light on the Nazi code breaking techniques used during WWII. Seems to me that the perspective shown here might be somewhat different than those that crop up in American texts.
Yes, but that's just by default. The OS currently provides consistency, but that doesn't mean consistency has to disappear with the OS crutch gone. Developers just have to get organized. Besides, you can still have a platform owners settings. Their ability to do that is not determined by whether they create a file system manager app or not.
Have you seen how developers work together with simple things like protocols or file formats? Everybody wants their own for different things. Everybody wants to be proprietary. And these are areas where software vendors are FORCED to work together (you don't want to have your AppleIP only talk with Apple computers). Asking people to conform for aesthetic or usability reasons? It'd never happen.
Actually I don't think it's hot-keys he wants. He wants your computer to be a word-processor period. Obviously you'd never hit a key on the keyboard unless you were typing something. What, that's NOT all you use a PC for? Hmmm....
I think the poor man's gone senile in recent years. This is a stupid backwards philosophy and would be pretty detrimental to consumers if ever adopted.
Slashdot Mirror
The "mm" notation is used in traditional accounting and banking to signify 1 million. Therefore $100mm is $100,000,000. $100m would be $100,000.
I think it's more common for Europeans to use this notation day to day as most Americans seem to be unaware of it.
btw... if you actually read the link, the patent is for an actual mouse wheel, not the shuttle on an iPod.
What I don't understand is that this patent was filed on February 7, 2002. I've been using a Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel since 1999 I believe, so how is that not prior art?
Image Link
Mordred
Here's the catch, the original still dies. Meaning you still die, but a backup lives on.
Orson Scott Card wrote a short story called "Fat Farm" (from his excellent Maps in a Mirror collection) with this exact idea in mind.
Basically the protaganist was an insanely rich glutton. He would eat for a year or two until he could no longer walk, head over to the cloning place, have a new body made, and have his memories transfered into the new body. Process then repeats.
The story is about the old fat body (which still has the mind of the man) who is sent to a "Fat Farm" where he's forced into hard manual labor and inhuman punishment. Since he has no rights (as he is no longer the official version of himself) he is basically a slave.
I highly recommend it.
Mordred
I'm betting you're wrong about that. What will most likely happen is that in a few years time you'll be doing well at your job, and your friend will have been laid off when his web-developing job goes under. You have no idea how many of my friends are in that boat... me I'm happy to be doing writing C code at a strong company that isn't in any danger of having layoffs.
Mordred
[IANAL] I'm about 90% positive that you have very little to worry about on the delay of Warrants. Unless they are interpreting this in a completely different way than ever before here is how it will work:
1) Police suspect you of something illegal
2) Police request a warrant
3) Warrant is granted but it is NOT shown to the public, for fear that evidence may be destroyed or suspect my flee
4) Warrant becomes public record after the fact
This is currently done a lot of the time in important cases where they suspect that the person in question will be watching to see if a warrant is issued (think Mafia or terrorists, etc.). Really I don't see that this is a big deal. And it's really nothing new.
Mordred
Good luck to 'em.
Mordred
Read the subject!
Good thing they're building this in California. I wonder how long it'll take to brown out one of these babies!
Mordred
Dissemination of information (and teaching materials) is the real purpose of the web and the ability to conduct real research through a site such as MITs will only serve to make things better.
Personally I'm extremely excited about the prospects of this. Obviously, not everyone can afford an MIT education (and no amount of reading off the web could actually sub for an MIT course I'd assume) but it still gives underpriviledged and even "not so highly priviledged" individuals the chance to learn outside their normal means. Hopefully other Universities will eventually follow suit, because this can only be the beginning.
Thank you MIT.
Mordred
While I suppose I don't really qualify as a User Interface expert i do agree with you completely on this. I took a Human-Computer Interaction course in college and was surprised at the relative obviousness of it all... and how so few of my colleagues REALLY got it. My work is mainly involved with User Interfaces in programming environments so I put this kind of stuff to use everyday, and am constantly amazed at the bad interfaces engineers come up with. Ugly is one thing, but many of them seem to get bad design down to an artform.
Macintosh has understood the principles of ease-of-use well, although they're lacking considerably in the power department. Microsoft actually does reasonably well in both categories, whereas Linux and it's ilk seem to ignore usability all together. Once people realize that the interface is just as important as the nifty features hidden underneath, software will be much friendlier for all involved.
Mordred
First off, I'd argue with your definition of innovation a little, but I understand what you mean. Now, lets look at the timetable of the innovations you deem worthy enough to mention. Doesn't that stretch through the whole course of human history?
Lets narrow it down to the last 115 years or so. Major "innovations" according to your definition would be: the Automobile, airplanes, radio, TV, Nuclear Power, Computer, PC, Internet.... can you think of anything else? No, and neither can I. Lets assume for the sake of argument there's two other world changing "innovations" I've forgotten. That gives us 10 innovations in 115 years. Wow. That's slightly slower than 1 every 10 years.
Are you expecting these to come about overnight? The vast majority of things are just improvements and refinements of other ideas, and many of them do revolutionize the way we do things. You just can't set an alarm clock and expect a new one every other year. That's grossly optimistic at best and utterly naive at worst.
Mordred
Mordred
Chet and the gang, are comedic genuii if you ask me and I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.
Mordred
I've been shouting this from the rooftops for a long time, but nobody seems to listen. Everybody just wants to believe that the world is ending and that we'll all be controlled by the vast conglomerates who tell else exactly what to think and how to vote. Obviously I wasn't saying it as succinctly as Clay does, but I couldn't agree with him more.
This is the exact reason why the "horrific" Time-Warner/AOL merger doesn't bother me much at all. I'll leave the discussions of whether it's really a monopoly or not alone, but I don't see how this merger can negatively impact people. AOL users will now have exposure to more media outlets and news sources. Sure there may be a noticeable TW bent to things, but people will hold them accountable if they get out of line. Everybody's watching and waiting for them to screw up and show horrific bias against other companies but if they do they'll be called on it.
Anyone who thinks this conglomerate will start trying to limit where a user can get to is out of their minds. If they ever started to do this, people would jump ship just as fast as they came on board. As Clay mentioned elsewhere in the article people don't like limitations and "grass hedges" set up.
As for positive benefits I can only think this will force more (news)media companies to jump into the internet with even more gusto to create some kind of competition to the TW/AOL juggernaut. Nobody wants to be left behind, and they will be if they don't start putting MORE content out there. And at the end of the day, if the consumer has access to MORE content that's a good thing.
Mordred
I always thought that if you GPL'd your stuff, ESR or Linus or CmdrTaco or somebody would come and financially support you for the rest of your life. Why wouldn't anyone want to do this?
Oh wait... that was just a dream I had.
Mordred
In regards to non-competition clauses there's a very good reason for a company having them. Say you work at a real-estate company (X) handling several large corporate accounts. You decide to leave company X. Since you are the prime contact for Company's A & B, you can call them up and say "Hey, I've left X, but I'm moving to Y and would love to work with you there." Thus A&B leave X and they lose millions of dollars. Now a lot of times a company will lease restrictive clause that says "for a period of 18 months after leaving our firm you can't talk to any of your old clients". This is actually reasonable and quite fair.
Another good example of a no-compete clause was the one Ross Perot signed when EDS removed him from the board. He was given something like an $8 million severance package and told he could not compete for a period of 2 years (I think). After those two years were up, he started Perot Systems and now vies with EDS for many of the same clients.
When technology comes into play it gets a little more tricky. If you work at company X & then move to Y you can actually use knowledge of the product from company X to build a competing product at Y. This can't really be covered by normal patent protection which is why the no-compete clauses have come into play. A broad no-compete clause is ridiculous, especially one that covers the entire IT industry. One that says you can't work at a streaming media player company for 12 months after leaving is not. Courts will uphold these although I'm not sure who would get sued if you violate it. It's possible the new company would pay damages but I'm not sure.
Mordred
Molest?
Forest?
Digest?
Pot-Fest?
Maybe he meant EST (Eastern Standard Time)?
What does it all mean??!
Mordred
Still I'm not going to dispute that $17.1 Billion figure. However I think a majority of that money is somehow being deposited into MacAfee, Norton, et al's pockets. That's the real cost of virii.
Mordred
Mordred
Sure this sounds like a whole lot of evil corporate mechinations in the slashdot blurb, but it doesn't sound like their sueing anybody. They supposedly have their own special method, which may or may not stand up in court, but what's so wrong about that?
Nobody else seems particularly worried about this thing so why should we care?
Mordred
My understanding is that basically it's a UN deal and works like the UN. Members are appointed to a panel who votes. I'm assuming the Super-7 or whatever they're called control the majority of what goes on in WIPO.
Mordred
As this was originally a German book I'm wondering if it might not shed a different light on the Nazi code breaking techniques used during WWII. Seems to me that the perspective shown here might be somewhat different than those that crop up in American texts.
Mordred
Have you seen how developers work together with simple things like protocols or file formats? Everybody wants their own for different things. Everybody wants to be proprietary. And these are areas where software vendors are FORCED to work together (you don't want to have your AppleIP only talk with Apple computers). Asking people to conform for aesthetic or usability reasons? It'd never happen.
Mordred
I think the poor man's gone senile in recent years. This is a stupid backwards philosophy and would be pretty detrimental to consumers if ever adopted.
Mordred