"The common hillbilly reply to this situation is "well if you don't like it then make your own software!" Really? A company whose entire population is less than an average sized US city should be producing AAA software titles as well as taking care of all other sectors? Actually, NZ (and Aus) does produce software - they just don't charge Americans more to use it.;)"
Under the terms of the 'free trade agreement' with America, we are not allowed to.
Or a mac mini US$599 in the good old US of America Au$699 (US$721:91) in Australia Does it really cost THAT much more to bring a container load of these into Australia than it does into America ?????
Another source of spam, I mean political advertising , I mean public education campaigns.
And the problem is you will have to trawl through it all to find the little things that you need to know, I mean if this is for ALL government communications, then that will include things like parking fines, speeding fines, rates notices, all notices to and from the tax office, and you will have no excuse for not knowing about it.
"....... I am sick of the comparison between the car and desktop-computer industries."
This is/. How dare you sir.
for such a sacrilegious statement you should go to the front counter and hand in your slashdot number and name/. without Car analogies would be like.... like....., like a car without seats.
Good thought,but also what about the other three cops who stood by and watched their colleague beat the crap out of someone ? are they not , by their inaction, aiding and abetting the carriage of an offence ? so why do they get to walk away scot free ?
but, If the tables were turned and some one video taped a gang beating up a cop....... the videographer in question would be considered heroic, lauded by the police and generally there would be no mention of wiretapping and many statements made about how this state (county,country, etc.) needs more civic minded people like this......
This needs action. When you think of the multiple ways copyright is used, this can be seen as a wedge action. If they can get away with this then they will push for the same for books, simultaneously arguing that authors are the intellectual property holders and merely paid labour who merely wrote the book. Because if they can push this through, it also gives them a further basis for not paying royalties to the songwriters,authors, comic producers, and in fact any and all content producers within their realm. Time Warner et al will love this if they can get it through.
Just Imagine for a moment that you run a large computer company that produces several different types of devices, some of these devices are static, like say a few different desktop devices, and (I know there are arguments about the validity of this claim) a server or 2, and several of differing styles of mobile devices. All of which can be used for accessing, moving, and even creating or altering data in one form or another. Sooner or later, your customers, due to the fact that they have to deal with non - customers and even due to the fact that they are human and thus not enlightened enough to be able to totally live without printing, will need to print some of this data (photos, emails, maps whatever). And what is more they may even want to print data in different places with different printers,their home, their office, their girlfriends house, great-aunt Maudes nursing home, their mothers house (and god forbid but one of these may be one of the unenlightened who does not own one of your companies products). Now there is a problem. All of these different printers have different drivers and some of them, will not be worth the hassle of installing the driver, with all of its extra functionality, just to print a picture of little billy falling off the swing. So you think about a universal driver, basic, able to be used by any device even (grudgingly) your oppositions devices (if they pay a suitable licensing fee, instant extra source of revenue, that will keep the accounting department happy). But a true universal driver is not practical because every printer has different functions and capabilities and really, all most people want to do is access the most basic of these,e.g. Print text and Print pictures, good quality or "I don't care" quality, without having to load drivers for every printer everywhere. The person in charge of each of these printers still needs or wants access to these higher functions, and for their home printer (and maybe their office one too) accessed from their desktop or your laptop, but they won't necessarily want all of that functionality from their phone, tablet, or ultralight netbook. So lets look at what you can sell to your customers 1. Full function printing from a desktop/laptop or other device, needs full printer driver 2. Some way of linking your portable device to your desktop/laptop or whatever to get a remote link to the full printer driver, lets call it "via the cloud", thats vague enough for a patent filing 3. Some way of universally accessing any printer from any device, like say a basic universal printer driver, yes we know its been done before, but we might be able to rephrase it well enough to get it past the United States Patent Trolls Office.
or as the summary put it
"If the company has its way, there will be three ways to access a printer in the future: The first will be via a conventional software driver. The second will be via a cloud service and the third will be via a driverless access method that supports 'universal' printing from any type device."
When you think of it in basic functionality like this, it is really very obvious and self evident, so now, there are only a couple more steps
step one. Patent the concept step two. Licence the patent (very cheap or even free to the printer companies, so that it becomes ubiquitous) step three. Increase sales because of universal printer access - profit set four. Wait until it becomes so commonplace and the competition start to use this function, or want to use it step five. ???? step six. PROFIT !!!!!
"Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors which are smaller, cheaper, much more reliable, much more capable of integration and for most applications have superior performance characteristics. Valves don't give you anything extra."
Except of course for sine wave distortion (as compared to the square wave 'clipping', that is a feature of an overdriven transistor). This is why valves are never going to go away.
Most guitarists and many bass players are in love with their valve amplifiers (not too mention the audio purists, some times referred to as the golden ears brigade) purely because of the way they distort ! A roland JC120 is a great transistor amplifier, but they don't make them anymore because there is not enough demand for them, But Jim Marshall is still making a fortune building re-issues and variations on the same old valve amplifier that he built in the 60's. Yes, he is also making transistorised amplifiers too, and they sell in much smaller numbers (mainly to people who can't afford a valve one).
Yes, there are a number of emulator amplifiers and pre amplifiers (digidesign/avid eleven rack, and Line 6 spider come to mind), but at this stage the ones that are half decent are very expensive, pre amp only (and thus still need an amplifier) and come with a fairly steep learning curve and the rest are mostly used as a cheap alternative until the owner can afford a 'real' amp.
And don't even get me onto recording where the valve has seen a huge resurgence to the extent that now, even cheap home recording gear is starting to utilise valves once again.
And now also domestic Hi-Fi is starting to see more and more mid range equipment utilising valves. sure the cheap gear from K-mart/Wal-mart and other discount stores will always be transistor based but more and more we are seeing valves becoming sold as the 'new' way to a better sound.
So I think it is still a little early to say the valve is dead
Theoretically a good idea One problem Efficiency, or lack thereof. When you charge a battery (DC) from the mains (AC) there is a power loss. Efficiency of charging a battery is not 100%, this being slashdot I am sure someone can give a more accurate figure, but I believe it is less than 80%. Now, there is a small, (but still measurable) storage loss, leakage if you like, from battery systems. And finally, converting this stored DC power from your (Very Expensive) Battery back ups through your (very expensive) True sine wave invertors, back to AC, also has an inherent inefficiency, once again , I am sure someone could give a more accurate figure than I can at this moment, but I believe the efficiencies are below 60%. In order to improve efficiencies, some places that install solar power are starting to discuss with their clients the installation of 12 and 24 V DC LED lighting so that all lighting in the building is powered from the batteries regardless of the peak or off peak status of the external supply. This reduces the loss of power as the electricity is converted from low Voltage DC to Higher voltage AC. So the end result is, yes it probably could work for you in the long term, but only if you modified as much as possible of your house to run at 12 or 24 Volt DC in order to avoid the inefficiencies of inverting the stored power back up to AC. Or you could go with it and charge the batteries from solar panels and amortise the cost of the panels over a period of time, this will work out cheaper than buying power from your local power company. the more panels you have, the less electricity you have to buy, do it right and you can actually make more power than you use. There are documented cases of people doing this and selling power back to the grid (many power companies, in order to be seen as 'green' are keen to do this), one case i heard of recently involved a couple in england who make about 1,800 pounds a year selling their excess solar and wind generated power 'Back to the grid'.
Australia, enforcing US Patents and copyrights harder than the U.S. since 1994.
Fixed it for you.
Since an earlier Australian Government signed a 'free trade agreement' Australia has been in the interesting position of having to enforce US Patents and Copyright Laws above and beyond our own.
Plus the 'free trade agreement' between our 2 countries means that US companies (and individuals) are free to pretty much do as they wish here, but we are still considered to be foreigners and subject to all the various tariffs and import restrictions as any other country in the US.
And if the hefty fine administered was then paid to the USPTO (United States Patent Trolling Office ?) then it could help solve the 'underfunded' excuse that they are giving out at the moment, and give them the resources to do their job properly
Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from ALL THEIR SITES (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- ? per day of delay
so where is the distinction between google news search and google web search, All their sites, means ALL their sites. All articles photographs and graphic representations pretty much covers everything in a newspaper, with 10 days given to do it , somebody could have been paid to work out a really neat algorithm to display only content they are allowed to from those websites, after of course a lot of money and time is expended with the lawyers to work out exactly what is left over that you are allowed to link to. Or you could just ignore the whole domain for no cost.............
" all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers"
I dont think that really leaves much to link to........
what did they expect ?, that every link in googles search results would be replaced with a neat little tag saying "our apologies, due to court action we cannot display a link here but if you wish to see this content which we really really assure you is relevant to your search go to the website of a certain newspaper......."
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work.
No, they made the desktop cheap. Windows 3.1 was a joke compared to Unix workstations or even Macs of that era, but a PC with Windows cost less than a Mac and far less than a Sun workstation.
No, they made the desktop (relatively) cheap, if you bought it bundled. They made windows ubiquitous. and with an ecology that made installing and running programs a relatively brainless affair (click on "install.exe") that anybody could do. Yes windows 3.1 was a joke compared to other stuff around at the time, but you didn't have to worry about "apt get" routines or broken dependencies If a program didn't work it was a rare thing and most people stuck with commonly available programs and just lived with BSOD. This is just how computers were. And while we all dreamed (and still do) of Linux on the desktop becoming more common, the reality is that as long as we don't have a simple unified ecology for installing ALL programs across ALL flavours of linux that we wish to see deployed in the common operating space, then Linux will continue to be seen as "too geeky" and our dream of Linux as an option for all is doomed to always being one step away. This is another area where the mac way of doing things (sorry to bring religion into this) works. a single unified system, Installing programs is a breeze, anyone can do it, even those who have trouble tying their own shoelaces. Linux is seen as the third contender, but unfortunately we are taking the same route as the music industry. Instead of unifying under a common banner, we are dividing and deviating under multiple different banners and ways of doing things. over the last 12 months i have heard of at least 20 different (and according to the fans) incompatible forms of heavy metal. the differences are subtle and the bands encourage it because it differentiates them from the others, but in the long run it hurts them all by dividing an already limited market into smaller and smaller subsets. KDE, Gnome and Unity all introduce their own incompatibilities, some minor, some that are irrelevant and some that restrict which version of a program you can run. Then there is the question of which distribution you are running, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, the list goes on, and now we are talking different install methods for different distributions. So to create a program that "just works" for Linux, you need to make sure it works for all the different GUI's (not just your personal favourite), and has install systems for All of the different Linux sects, i mean flavours. For anyone wanting to earn money for software, it is enough of a hassle to get a program up and running with equivalent functionality for both windows and Mac, and some companies don't bother with both. to then expect them to spend more time creating a Linux version and create all the extras needed to make it work (and easy to install) across all flavours of distributions and GUI's for a miniscule section of the market,plus the testing time to make sure it works, even just across the common variations...... I am not saying we are losing the battle for the desktop, we are slowly gaining ground, but only with those who are open minded enough (and tech minded enough) to accept what we can provide, and the more we fork and deviate (no matter how valid the arguments), the more the management of Microsoft and Apple enjoy it. A small amount of FUD can then amplify the fear of the unknown in the generally technology fearing population. and they do not need to divide us to conquer the marketplace, We are doing that for them. And yes, I know of all the stories of "I installed (insert favourite Linux Distribution here) on my ageing mother/father/uncle/aunt/cousins computer and they have never looked back", but that is the point, you installed it for them, overcame their fears and helped them through the process, and are available to guide them when they try to in
Slashdot Mirror
"The common hillbilly reply to this situation is "well if you don't like it then make your own software!" Really? A company whose entire population is less than an average sized US city should be producing AAA software titles as well as taking care of all other sectors? Actually, NZ (and Aus) does produce software - they just don't charge Americans more to use it. ;)"
Under the terms of the 'free trade agreement' with America, we are not allowed to.
Or a mac mini US$599 in the good old US of America
Au$699 (US$721:91) in Australia
Does it really cost THAT much more to bring a container load of these into Australia than it does into America ?????
Another source of spam, I mean political advertising , I mean public education campaigns.
And the problem is you will have to trawl through it all to find the little things that you need to know, I mean if this is for ALL government communications, then that will include things like parking fines, speeding fines, rates notices, all notices to and from the tax office, and you will have no excuse for not knowing about it.
"........... versus the government where eventually they will listen to the people."
Citation needed
The only people that governments listen too are the ones who line the politicians pockets, or help pay for the next election campaign
There are three types of lies
1, Lies
2, Damned Lies
3, Statistics
"....... I am sick of the comparison between the car and desktop-computer industries."
This is /. How dare you sir.
for such a sacrilegious statement you should go to the front counter and hand in your slashdot number and name /. without Car analogies would be like.... like....., like a car without seats.
Good thought,but also what about the other three cops who stood by and watched their colleague beat the crap out of someone ?
are they not , by their inaction, aiding and abetting the carriage of an offence ?
so why do they get to walk away scot free ?
but, If the tables were turned and some one video taped a gang beating up a cop.......
the videographer in question would be considered heroic, lauded by the police and generally there would be no mention of wiretapping and many statements made about how this state (county,country, etc.) needs more civic minded people like this......
just saying
This needs action.
When you think of the multiple ways copyright is used, this can be seen as a wedge action.
If they can get away with this then they will push for the same for books, simultaneously arguing that authors are the intellectual property holders and merely paid labour who merely wrote the book.
Because if they can push this through, it also gives them a further basis for not paying royalties to the songwriters,authors, comic producers, and in fact any and all content producers within their realm.
Time Warner et al will love this if they can get it through.
imagine a beowulf cluster of those.......
Just Imagine for a moment that you run a large computer company that produces several different types of devices, some of these devices are static, like say a few different desktop devices, and (I know there are arguments about the validity of this claim) a server or 2, and several of differing styles of mobile devices. All of which can be used for accessing, moving, and even creating or altering data in one form or another. Sooner or later, your customers, due to the fact that they have to deal with non - customers and even due to the fact that they are human and thus not enlightened enough to be able to totally live without printing, will need to print some of this data (photos, emails, maps whatever).
And what is more they may even want to print data in different places with different printers,their home, their office, their girlfriends house, great-aunt Maudes nursing home, their mothers house (and god forbid but one of these may be one of the unenlightened who does not own one of your companies products).
Now there is a problem.
All of these different printers have different drivers and some of them, will not be worth the hassle of installing the driver, with all of its extra functionality, just to print a picture of little billy falling off the swing.
So you think about a universal driver, basic, able to be used by any device even (grudgingly) your oppositions devices (if they pay a suitable licensing fee, instant extra source of revenue, that will keep the accounting department happy).
But a true universal driver is not practical because every printer has different functions and capabilities and really, all most people want to do is access the most basic of these,e.g. Print text and Print pictures, good quality or "I don't care" quality, without having to load drivers for every printer everywhere.
The person in charge of each of these printers still needs or wants access to these higher functions, and for their home printer (and maybe their office one too) accessed from their desktop or your laptop, but they won't necessarily want all of that functionality from their phone, tablet, or ultralight netbook.
So lets look at what you can sell to your customers
1. Full function printing from a desktop/laptop or other device, needs full printer driver
2. Some way of linking your portable device to your desktop/laptop or whatever to get a remote link to the full printer driver, lets call it "via the cloud", thats vague enough for a patent filing
3. Some way of universally accessing any printer from any device, like say a basic universal printer driver, yes we know its been done before, but we might be able to rephrase it well enough to get it past the United States Patent Trolls Office.
or as the summary put it
"If the company has its way, there will be three ways to access a printer in the future: The first will be via a conventional software driver. The second will be via a cloud service and the third will be via a driverless access method that supports 'universal' printing from any type device."
When you think of it in basic functionality like this, it is really very obvious and self evident, so now, there are only a couple more steps
step one. Patent the concept
step two. Licence the patent (very cheap or even free to the printer companies, so that it becomes ubiquitous)
step three. Increase sales because of universal printer access - profit
set four. Wait until it becomes so commonplace and the competition start to use this function, or want to use it
step five. ????
step six. PROFIT !!!!!
"Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors which are smaller, cheaper, much more reliable, much more capable of integration and for most applications have superior performance characteristics. Valves don't give you anything extra."
Except of course for sine wave distortion (as compared to the square wave 'clipping', that is a feature of an overdriven transistor).
This is why valves are never going to go away.
Most guitarists and many bass players are in love with their valve amplifiers (not too mention the audio purists, some times referred to as the golden ears brigade) purely because of the way they distort ! A roland JC120 is a great transistor amplifier, but they don't make them anymore because there is not enough demand for them, But Jim Marshall is still making a fortune building re-issues and variations on the same old valve amplifier that he built in the 60's. Yes, he is also making transistorised amplifiers too, and they sell in much smaller numbers (mainly to people who can't afford a valve one).
Yes, there are a number of emulator amplifiers and pre amplifiers (digidesign/avid eleven rack, and Line 6 spider come to mind), but at this stage the ones that are half decent are very expensive, pre amp only (and thus still need an amplifier) and come with a fairly steep learning curve and the rest are mostly used as a cheap alternative until the owner can afford a 'real' amp.
And don't even get me onto recording where the valve has seen a huge resurgence to the extent that now, even cheap home recording gear is starting to utilise valves once again.
And now also domestic Hi-Fi is starting to see more and more mid range equipment utilising valves. sure the cheap gear from K-mart/Wal-mart and other discount stores will always be transistor based but more and more we are seeing valves becoming sold as the 'new' way to a better sound.
So I think it is still a little early to say the valve is dead
Now if only I could patent that ...........
Someone to wave their hand and say ....
"these are not the patents you are looking for"
There is a famous old joke
A Camel is a horse designed by a committee
Theoretically a good idea
One problem
Efficiency, or lack thereof.
When you charge a battery (DC) from the mains (AC) there is a power loss. Efficiency of charging a battery is not 100%, this being slashdot I am sure someone can give a more accurate figure, but I believe it is less than 80%.
Now, there is a small, (but still measurable) storage loss, leakage if you like, from battery systems.
And finally, converting this stored DC power from your (Very Expensive) Battery back ups through your (very expensive) True sine wave invertors, back to AC, also has an inherent inefficiency, once again , I am sure someone could give a more accurate figure than I can at this moment, but I believe the efficiencies are below 60%.
In order to improve efficiencies, some places that install solar power are starting to discuss with their clients the installation of 12 and 24 V DC LED lighting so that all lighting in the building is powered from the batteries regardless of the peak or off peak status of the external supply. This reduces the loss of power as the electricity is converted from low Voltage DC to Higher voltage AC.
So the end result is, yes it probably could work for you in the long term, but only if you modified as much as possible of your house to run at 12 or 24 Volt DC in order to avoid the inefficiencies of inverting the stored power back up to AC.
Or you could go with it and charge the batteries from solar panels and amortise the cost of the panels over a period of time, this will work out cheaper than buying power from your local power company. the more panels you have, the less electricity you have to buy, do it right and you can actually make more power than you use.
There are documented cases of people doing this and selling power back to the grid (many power companies, in order to be seen as 'green' are keen to do this), one case i heard of recently involved a couple in england who make about 1,800 pounds a year selling their excess solar and wind generated power 'Back to the grid'.
Do you have a dark spot on your past
Leave it to my friend he'll fix it fast
Lefties got a scar from ear to ear
He will make your mugshots disappear
With thanks to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (Steely Dan)
Earn extra money in your spare time
Blackmail your friends
and in this case, any one else you can.
Australia, enforcing US Patents and copyrights harder than the U.S. since 1994.
Fixed it for you.
Since an earlier Australian Government signed a 'free trade agreement' Australia has been in the interesting position of having to enforce US Patents and Copyright Laws above and beyond our own.
Plus the 'free trade agreement' between our 2 countries means that US companies (and individuals) are free to pretty much do as they wish here, but we are still considered to be foreigners and subject to all the various tariffs and import restrictions as any other country in the US.
I thought the legal system in America had changed some time ago from the ideal of "innocent until proven guilty" to "innocent until proven broke".
And if the hefty fine administered was then paid to the USPTO (United States Patent Trolling Office ?) then it could help solve the 'underfunded' excuse that they are giving out at the moment, and give them the resources to do their job properly
Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from ALL THEIR SITES (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- ? per day of delay
so where is the distinction between google news search and google web search, All their sites, means ALL their sites. All articles photographs and graphic representations pretty much covers everything in a newspaper, with 10 days given to do it , somebody could have been paid to work out a really neat algorithm to display only content they are allowed to from those websites, after of course a lot of money and time is expended with the lawyers to work out exactly what is left over that you are allowed to link to. Or you could just ignore the whole domain for no cost.............
" all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers"
I dont think that really leaves much to link to........
what did they expect ?, that every link in googles search results would be replaced with a neat little tag saying "our apologies, due to court action we cannot display a link here but if you wish to see this content which we really really assure you is relevant to your search go to the website of a certain newspaper......."
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work.
No, they made the desktop cheap. Windows 3.1 was a joke compared to Unix workstations or even Macs of that era, but a PC with Windows cost less than a Mac and far less than a Sun workstation.
No, they made the desktop (relatively) cheap, if you bought it bundled.
They made windows ubiquitous.
and with an ecology that made installing and running programs a relatively brainless affair (click on "install.exe") that anybody could do.
Yes windows 3.1 was a joke compared to other stuff around at the time, but you didn't have to worry about "apt get" routines or broken dependencies
If a program didn't work it was a rare thing and most people stuck with commonly available programs and just lived with BSOD. This is just how computers were.
And while we all dreamed (and still do) of Linux on the desktop becoming more common, the reality is that as long as we don't have a simple unified ecology for installing ALL programs across ALL flavours of linux that we wish to see deployed in the common operating space, then Linux will continue to be seen as "too geeky" and our dream of Linux as an option for all is doomed to always being one step away.
This is another area where the mac way of doing things (sorry to bring religion into this) works.
a single unified system, Installing programs is a breeze, anyone can do it, even those who have trouble tying their own shoelaces.
Linux is seen as the third contender, but unfortunately we are taking the same route as the music industry. Instead of unifying under a common banner, we are dividing and deviating under multiple different banners and ways of doing things.
over the last 12 months i have heard of at least 20 different (and according to the fans) incompatible forms of heavy metal. the differences are subtle and the bands encourage it because it differentiates them from the others, but in the long run it hurts them all by dividing an already limited market into smaller and smaller subsets.
KDE, Gnome and Unity all introduce their own incompatibilities, some minor, some that are irrelevant and some that restrict which version of a program you can run. Then there is the question of which distribution you are running, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, the list goes on, and now we are talking different install methods for different distributions.
So to create a program that "just works" for Linux, you need to make sure it works for all the different GUI's (not just your personal favourite), and has install systems for All of the different Linux sects, i mean flavours.
For anyone wanting to earn money for software, it is enough of a hassle to get a program up and running with equivalent functionality for both windows and Mac, and some companies don't bother with both.
to then expect them to spend more time creating a Linux version and create all the extras needed to make it work (and easy to install) across all flavours of distributions and GUI's for a miniscule section of the market,plus the testing time to make sure it works, even just across the common variations......
I am not saying we are losing the battle for the desktop, we are slowly gaining ground, but only with those who are open minded enough (and tech minded enough) to accept what we can provide, and the more we fork and deviate (no matter how valid the arguments), the more the management of Microsoft and Apple enjoy it. A small amount of FUD can then amplify the fear of the unknown in the generally technology fearing population. and they do not need to divide us to conquer the marketplace, We are doing that for them.
And yes, I know of all the stories of "I installed (insert favourite Linux Distribution here) on my ageing mother/father/uncle/aunt/cousins computer and they have never looked back", but that is the point, you installed it for them, overcame their fears and helped them through the process, and are available to guide them when they try to in
he probably thought that accounts cant be cancelled , like facebook..............