Although I work for a subsidiary of Verizon, I am no particular friend -- but I feel I should say this.
Give Verizon a friggin' break here! They've rebuilt an entire telecommunications network in lower Manhattan from scratch -- on the order of 100k+ lines! Photos have been circulated internally of the West St. switching station -- this being the one that had the antenna mast from the WTC pierce it when it fell -- and the equipment is more or less completely replaced now. And they had the NYSE up and running so they could open a week after the attacks. And all of this is in addition to all the emergency communications needs.
That's a pretty formidible task. Even if they are your bitterest enemy, this is an amazing performance.
First, we should all keep in mind that this is Australian law, so YMMV.
However, it is not axiomatic that you have a (trademark) right to your own name. Ever heard of "Taylor Wine", a fairly large upstate-NY winery that markets inexpensive table wine? It was a family-owned business. In the late 70s, two brothers that ran the business had a falling out. One brother decided to run his own business, and incorporated "Taylor" into the name.
Much sueing occurred -- and the court ruled that the original Taylor could prevent the new Taylor from using the FAMILY NAME in his business (and, presumably, anyone else who wanted to use "Taylor" in relationship to a winery). The fact that it was his name didn't carry any weight. I believe there have been several other similar cases, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
FYI, if you want to know the outcome -- Taylor #2 renamed his winery "Bully Hill" (I believe the original winery was on a hill...), and continued to do business. I left upstate NY in '90, so I don't know how much success they've achieved. Neither wines were particularly good:-)
Now, I believe Linus holds the trademark for "Linux". Could you open a company called "Linus Torvalds Operating Systems, Inc" ? Maybe.
What do you mean "loss entirely on paper"? Based on that, ALL losses are on paper. Nortel is admitting that (x) bazillion bucks of the shareholder's equity is now worthless. That isn't a paper loss.
Imagine you buy a diamond from me for $1,000,000. You put it on your "books" as a $1m asset. The next day you find out you have a worthless piece of glass. Is your $1m "loss" just on paper? I think not.
God save me from governments that decide what benefits "society as a whole." Of course, that means "god save me from most governments." Why would Canada be wasting perfectly good loonies on a project like this, instead of trying to salvage what's left of their healthcare system?
For about 3 years, I TA-ed an intro-level CS class that tought some rudimentary Pascal programming. It was a computer literacy course, so the bar wasn't high, and it wasn't for majors.
In sections of 50+ kids, I regularly found people who had copped each other's (sometimes non-working!!!!) programs, right down to variable names, etc. How lazy could you get! And this, despite the fact that if they had cheated with someone in one of the other 4 TA's sections they would never have been caught. I never had to diff anything -- you could just tell.
When I found someone doing this, I would hand the printouts back with the following written on them:
See for your grade (on Foo's program)
See for your grade (on Bar's program)
So much for the expert -- Aircraft Carriers, Destroyers, etc., are most certainly considered sovreign territory. I have heard a US Navy Admiral describe them as "the largest mobile piece of the United States in the world".
Your analogy isn't even REMOTELY close. You are the sysadmin for those machines, at a company you work for! With ReplayTV, you are their customer, paying your valuable dollars for a product YOU NOW OWN that they are coming in and changing without your permission. I just don't see the comparison.
First of all, in choice (a), why would you lose your vested stock options? In all the options agreements I've ever read, you will only lose them if you're terminated for cause. They can't take them from you otherwise.
Next, think of things this way: If you can't go with option (c) you're probably not going to get very far. You've pretty much said that you are not in a position to capitalize on what you've been developing, due to the risk involved (family, etc). So what are you losing? If the company starts working in your area, as long as they aren't STEALING what you did, you can certainly influence what they do and probably contribute to it. And, be happy that you're working on something you're interested in. It's not the end of the world! They are just in a better position to capitalize on it than you are.
Surely you jest, right? He's one of the most prolific authors of speculative fiction there is. He's won Nebula awards, Emmys -- ever see "The City on the Edge of Forever" -- in the original Star Trek series? He's written commentary on media ("The Glass Teat"/"The Other Glass Teat"). He's written television and movie screenplays. And don't EVER call him a science fiction author, if you thought that article had a lot of venom in it!
The quality of the shows has little to do with it, my friend -- remember that AOLTW doesn't produce all the shows, other people have to pay them to get them to carry them. Also, broadband is a significant issue here.
The problem is -- coulda, woulda, shoulda -- yes, that was the ORIGINAL intent. *7* YEARS AGO. And it would have been fine if they had stuck to it.
The horse is too far gone outta the barn for ICANN to come in and start rewriting the rules like this. Are individuals only going to be able to have geographic domains? Are individuals not going to be able to have domains at all?
The problem is that domains are not considered property (there is legal precidence for this, unfortunately). So how often are people going to have to change? I can move all my stuff over to some ".us" domain, but I have no assurance that a year down the road someone isn't going to do a land grab and I have to move again. The postal service has been talking about taking over.us!
I wouldn't say that's the way they "usually" work. If you are a university or a non-profit, maybe. If not, you work under contract to them. If you are a small business or individual, you can get an SBIR contract.
It's a lot easier if you affiliate yourself with a business or academic institution that already does business w/DARPA.
In fact, I *DO* have choices of power providers. I live in Mass. There is the "standard" (N-Star or whoever), a green one, and another one. The only thing I don't have choices in are the power CONVEYERS (i.e. there is only one wire going into my home).
But in my reply to the other guy -- the only way to GET to that point is by deregulating. Power isn't magically different from any of the other substances in that regard.
The companies that are reselling their discount electricity are aluminum smelters in Oregon. Making aluminium is a hugely electricity-intensive process, so these guys either buy vast quantities of elec or make it themselves.
But it's interesting to note -- they have given their employees vacation WITH PAY. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
So, obviously, this is why we regulate the price of food, the price of clothing, the price of automobiles, and the price of gasoline, right?
Once you start finding "one special" area, you might as well extend it to any area you choose. But we don't: for especially poor people, we give them food stamps. For those of us who don't like spending $ on gas, we take public transport. But we don't set market rates.
I'm sorry to say you can't lay it all at the feet of the politicians this time!
The utility companies in Cali helped craft the terms of their own deregulation themselves. Because they wanted to be able to recover "stranded costs" (i.e. uneconomical white-elephant projects) over time rather than writing them down immediately, they opted for fixed, regulated consumer pricing. Bad bet -- when demand and the market went up, they got squeezed.
This is why some areas like San Diego are in relatively better shape. They had nothing to write off, so they could let the rates float with price and demand. Although consumers there are paying multi-hundred dollar electric bills, they aren't at risk to blackouts.
The problem THIS WINTER isn't a shortage of power -- but the problem LAST SUMMER was. Right now the problem is the price of power, because of the inefficiencies of the market. No one has an incentive to turn off a friggin' lightbulb!
The comment about not enough deregulation may be annoying, but it is true. Either end of the spectrum would be preferable to the situation that California is in now.
The problem is that the distribution plants made a stupid deal: in an effort to be allowed to pay off their debt for bad investments over time, they agreed to fixed rates for consumers. Stupid, stupid (well, as it turned out).
Now, in Massachusetts, we have deregulated electricity, and bills have gone up 50%+ since summer (for those of us who have moved since 1998), and 20%+ since December alone. Gee, what to do? Now I turn off my computer when I leave for the day and make sure more lights are off!
This is the right idea, but it doesn't require a neural network to do it for you. It just requires a computer that can tell when you are awake or asleep!
The thing about neural networks is that they are good for making fuzzy judgements about patterns based on trained input. But I KNOW the way I like my lights to be, what temperature I want and when, and there aren't too many possibilities! Once I program everything into the thermostat or X10, I'm likely to be fine -- I'm not sure what a neural network would DO in this case.
For the media lab idea, you COULD use an NN whose inputs are things like the room you are in and some notion of the amount of movement you have made in the past few minutes, but you need to be careful here -- you don't want it turning the lights off when you are sitting on the couch quietly reading.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I work for a subsidiary of Verizon, I am no particular friend -- but I feel I should say this.
Give Verizon a friggin' break here! They've rebuilt an entire telecommunications network in lower Manhattan from scratch -- on the order of 100k+ lines! Photos have been circulated internally of the West St. switching station -- this being the one that had the antenna mast from the WTC pierce it when it fell -- and the equipment is more or less completely replaced now. And they had the NYSE up and running so they could open a week after the attacks. And all of this is in addition to all the emergency communications needs.
That's a pretty formidible task. Even if they are your bitterest enemy, this is an amazing performance.
First, we should all keep in mind that this is Australian law, so YMMV.
:-)
However, it is not axiomatic that you have a (trademark) right to your own name. Ever heard of "Taylor Wine", a fairly large upstate-NY winery that markets inexpensive table wine? It was a family-owned business. In the late 70s, two brothers that ran the business had a falling out. One brother decided to run his own business, and incorporated "Taylor" into the name.
Much sueing occurred -- and the court ruled that the original Taylor could prevent the new Taylor from using the FAMILY NAME in his business (and, presumably, anyone else who wanted to use "Taylor" in relationship to a winery). The fact that it was his name didn't carry any weight. I believe there have been several other similar cases, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
FYI, if you want to know the outcome -- Taylor #2 renamed his winery "Bully Hill" (I believe the original winery was on a hill...), and continued to do business. I left upstate NY in '90, so I don't know how much success they've achieved. Neither wines were particularly good
Now, I believe Linus holds the trademark for "Linux". Could you open a company called "Linus Torvalds Operating Systems, Inc" ? Maybe.
First of all, this is Australia, which has, if it can be believed, even more draconian IT-related laws than the US.
:-)
Second of all, WHOMEVER@HOME is going to be out of business in about a week, so no worries, right?
What do you mean "loss entirely on paper"? Based on that, ALL losses are on paper. Nortel is admitting that (x) bazillion bucks of the shareholder's equity is now worthless. That isn't a paper loss.
Imagine you buy a diamond from me for $1,000,000. You put it on your "books" as a $1m asset. The next day you find out you have a worthless piece of glass. Is your $1m "loss" just on paper? I think not.
God save me from governments that decide what benefits "society as a whole." Of course, that means "god save me from most governments." Why would Canada be wasting perfectly good loonies on a project like this, instead of trying to salvage what's left of their healthcare system?
...or has noone else noticed the TiVO ad banners shouting "buy us -- we run Linux" being run in heavy rotation?
Whoops, despite "plain text" on my last submission, Slashdot removed the words I put in angle-brackets as unknown tags. What I meant to say was:
See BAR for your grade (on Foo's program)
See FOO for your grade (on Bar's program)
He had to write a program to do this?
:-)
For about 3 years, I TA-ed an intro-level CS class that tought some rudimentary Pascal programming. It was a computer literacy course, so the bar wasn't high, and it wasn't for majors.
In sections of 50+ kids, I regularly found people who had copped each other's (sometimes non-working!!!!) programs, right down to variable names, etc. How lazy could you get! And this, despite the fact that if they had cheated with someone in one of the other 4 TA's sections they would never have been caught. I never had to diff anything -- you could just tell.
When I found someone doing this, I would hand the printouts back with the following written on them:
See for your grade (on Foo's program)
See for your grade (on Bar's program)
They got the point.
Also, aeons ago, AutoCad used to be Lisp-based. I have no idea if it still is.
You seem to be using an older dialect of Lisp. I think you meant
(lisp (taught (me (to (count (parenthesis))))))
or maybe
(taught
(me)
(lisp)
(to
(count parenthesis)))
So much for the expert -- Aircraft Carriers, Destroyers, etc., are most certainly considered sovreign territory. I have heard a US Navy Admiral describe them as "the largest mobile piece of the United States in the world".
Your analogy isn't even REMOTELY close. You are the sysadmin for those machines, at a company you work for! With ReplayTV, you are their customer, paying your valuable dollars for a product YOU NOW OWN that they are coming in and changing without your permission. I just don't see the comparison.
First of all, in choice (a), why would you lose your vested stock options? In all the options agreements I've ever read, you will only lose them if you're terminated for cause. They can't take them from you otherwise.
Next, think of things this way: If you can't go with option (c) you're probably not going to get very far. You've pretty much said that you are not in a position to capitalize on what you've been developing, due to the risk involved (family, etc). So what are you losing? If the company starts working in your area, as long as they aren't STEALING what you did, you can certainly influence what they do and probably contribute to it. And, be happy that you're working on something you're interested in. It's not the end of the world! They are just in a better position to capitalize on it than you are.
Surely you jest, right? He's one of the most prolific authors of speculative fiction there is. He's won Nebula awards, Emmys -- ever see "The City on the Edge of Forever" -- in the original Star Trek series? He's written commentary on media ("The Glass Teat"/"The Other Glass Teat"). He's written television and movie screenplays. And don't EVER call him a science fiction author, if you thought that article had a lot of venom in it!
The quality of the shows has little to do with it, my friend -- remember that AOLTW doesn't produce all the shows, other people have to pay them to get them to carry them. Also, broadband is a significant issue here.
The problem is -- coulda, woulda, shoulda -- yes, that was the ORIGINAL intent. *7* YEARS AGO. And it would have been fine if they had stuck to it.
.us!
The horse is too far gone outta the barn for ICANN to come in and start rewriting the rules like this. Are individuals only going to be able to have geographic domains? Are individuals not going to be able to have domains at all?
The problem is that domains are not considered property (there is legal precidence for this, unfortunately). So how often are people going to have to change? I can move all my stuff over to some ".us" domain, but I have no assurance that a year down the road someone isn't going to do a land grab and I have to move again. The postal service has been talking about taking over
I wouldn't say that's the way they "usually" work. If you are a university or a non-profit, maybe. If not, you work under contract to them. If you are a small business or individual, you can get an SBIR contract.
It's a lot easier if you affiliate yourself with a business or academic institution that already does business w/DARPA.
Not to mention if you read the farkin' BAA, you'd realize they were talking about something a little more sophisticated than TCP wrappers...!
OBTW, DARPA funded the development of BSD as well.
...it is a thing of beauty... Not because of who won or lost, but because of the elegance with which it was done!
[someone should forward this article to the "Beautiful code" guy!]
In fact, I *DO* have choices of power providers. I live in Mass. There is the "standard" (N-Star or whoever), a green one, and another one. The only thing I don't have choices in are the power CONVEYERS (i.e. there is only one wire going into my home).
But in my reply to the other guy -- the only way to GET to that point is by deregulating. Power isn't magically different from any of the other substances in that regard.
The companies that are reselling their discount electricity are aluminum smelters in Oregon. Making aluminium is a hugely electricity-intensive process, so these guys either buy vast quantities of elec or make it themselves.
But it's interesting to note -- they have given their employees vacation WITH PAY. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
So, obviously, this is why we regulate the price of food, the price of clothing, the price of automobiles, and the price of gasoline, right?
Once you start finding "one special" area, you might as well extend it to any area you choose. But we don't: for especially poor people, we give them food stamps. For those of us who don't like spending $ on gas, we take public transport. But we don't set market rates.
I'm sorry to say you can't lay it all at the feet of the politicians this time!
The utility companies in Cali helped craft the terms of their own deregulation themselves. Because they wanted to be able to recover "stranded costs" (i.e. uneconomical white-elephant projects) over time rather than writing them down immediately, they opted for fixed, regulated consumer pricing. Bad bet -- when demand and the market went up, they got squeezed.
This is why some areas like San Diego are in relatively better shape. They had nothing to write off, so they could let the rates float with price and demand. Although consumers there are paying multi-hundred dollar electric bills, they aren't at risk to blackouts.
The problem THIS WINTER isn't a shortage of power -- but the problem LAST SUMMER was. Right now the problem is the price of power, because of the inefficiencies of the market. No one has an incentive to turn off a friggin' lightbulb!
The comment about not enough deregulation may be annoying, but it is true. Either end of the spectrum would be preferable to the situation that California is in now.
The problem is that the distribution plants made a stupid deal: in an effort to be allowed to pay off their debt for bad investments over time, they agreed to fixed rates for consumers. Stupid, stupid (well, as it turned out).
Now, in Massachusetts, we have deregulated electricity, and bills have gone up 50%+ since summer (for those of us who have moved since 1998), and 20%+ since December alone. Gee, what to do? Now I turn off my computer when I leave for the day and make sure more lights are off!
This is the right idea, but it doesn't require a neural network to do it for you. It just requires a computer that can tell when you are awake or asleep!
The thing about neural networks is that they are good for making fuzzy judgements about patterns based on trained input. But I KNOW the way I like my lights to be, what temperature I want and when, and there aren't too many possibilities! Once I program everything into the thermostat or X10, I'm likely to be fine -- I'm not sure what a neural network would DO in this case.
For the media lab idea, you COULD use an NN whose inputs are things like the room you are in and some notion of the amount of movement you have made in the past few minutes, but you need to be careful here -- you don't want it turning the lights off when you are sitting on the couch quietly reading.