But by all means, let's stop spending money on aid programs in Africa, South America, and Asia.
Many of which wouldn't be needed in the first place, if the Catholics weren't threatening the superstitious natives with eternal damnation for failing to out-breed the local rabbit population.
Fixing a problem you created does not count as an act of "good."
So, what would you have them spend the money on instead?
Like Michael Dell once said, they should wind down operations and give the cash back to the stockholders. Of course, he was referring to a different cult.
However, the required public disclosure advances the useful arts because it takes away the incentives to have trade secrets.
Fine, I think we're close to a meeting of minds on the subject. Can we agree that the patent system is a useful thing when, and only when, it gives inventors an alternative to hoarding valuable trade secrets? Without the "valuable" part, we don't need to incentivize the creation of new IP... and without the "trade secret" part, we don't need to reward the creation of an official public record of said IP. From my perspective, these two elements seem to be necessary in any rational defense of the patent system.
So: in your opinion, is that a reasonable rephrasing of the founders' intention for the patent system, as expressed in the Constitution, or are there elements that still need to be accounted for?
Because my whole point was, and is, that something like slide-to-unlock, or whatever is described in either Apple's or Neonode's patent, is not something that would ever be the subject of a trade secret. Any competent engineer will instantly see exactly how to practice the invention once they see it in action. So IMO, such claims are unnecessary under any conceivable circumstances. They serve only to give engineers a list of obvious things they aren't allowed to do.
My position is that granting "ownership" of such inventions does not help anyone but a very few patent trolls and a great many attorneys.
Actually, the only mistake I appear to have made was in crediting Apple with the swipe-to-unlock patent. It seems the truth is more complicated.
Read that article and the associated claims, and tell me how, in your professional opinion as a patent attorney, the "progress of science and the useful arts" was advanced when the USPTO granted a 20-year monopoly on all likely implementations of the slide-to-unlock gesture.
If you care about CPU performance and you aren't already running a Sandy Bridge CPU, then yes, you should get an Ivy Bridge system.
Sandy Bridge is a very fast architecture, so if you already have one, then it makes more sense to wait for Haswell. Even users who care about speed are unlikely to appreciate the improvement made by Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge.
Meanwhile, nobody who cares about graphics on the desktop is going to want an on-die GPU, regardless of the CPU it's attached to. Ivy Bridge is really only needed on laptops that need to run high-end games.
There is already a mechanism in place for the "banning" of such businesses. It's called a "market." In the absence of either massive externalities or regulatory capture, markets usually work quite well.
Ignoring whether the patent is valid or not (seems quite trivial to me) how is this "something we already know how to do, but on a computer"?
Because it's obvious to the first engineer who actually encounters the problem in the course of day-to-day work. Consider the Apple swipe-to-unlock patent, or Amazon's patnet on one-click purchasing. The only "innovation" in either case was the original idea... and you're not supposed to be able to claim ideas. The actual teachings of those patents are obvious to any undergraduate compsci student or interested amateur, much less someone skilled in the art.
I haven't read the claims, but this patent sounds very similar. If the summary is accurate, then it is a typical USPTO rubber-stamp job... a patent on an idea, written to cover all practical implementations of said idea. Nobody wins but the lawyers when such patents are issued... and gee whiz, look who runs the country.
IMHO successful patent prosecutions should be based on the plaintiff's ability to show willful infringement. Otherwise, patents are literally a (civil) instance of thoughtcrime.
Mainly because unions are simply attempting to even the balance of power between corporations and employees.
Yeah, by inserting a parasitic layer of unproductive bureaucracy between them.
Unions can make sense when hiring temporary skilled workers from craft guilds and the like, but on a day-to-day basis, a typical "closed shop" only increases costs and decreases opportunities.
They were expensive. In the EEvBlog teardown video, David Jones says they were north of $1400 USD, depending on options. That was about the same price as a 48K Apple II+ with floppy drive and monitor, so the Model 100 customers obviously paid a real premium for the form factor.
This thing is more like the ancestor of the iPad than the ancestor of a general-purpose Windows or Mac laptop, IMO.
This is exactly the same problem that was faced in Ultima Online when it became obvious that some people enjoyed whacking new and otherwise defenseless players. They introduced PvP flags and zones to get around it, and I don't see why a similar approach wouldn't work here.
Each player could start out with their "Protection from assholes" flag set by default. If they either behave abusively (according to whatever flawed metric Valve uses to make that call) or turn the flag off intentionally, they will lose the ability to communicate with people who still have the flag set.
Offering monetary discounts for playing nice is just going to create a metagame, which will be exploited. Valve should instead apply a policy of "strict scrutiny," where only the smallest, least invasive steps necessary are taken to solve the problem.
Infact, I think the only reason they bought sun was for the IP to bludgeon google over the head with. I'm not quite clear why though.
Walter Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs sheds some light on it. Jobs and Larry Ellison were BFFs. Together, they had a long history of conspiring to advance each others' agendas.
Ellison, for instance, was prepared to launch a "hostile" takeover of Apple if they didn't bring Jobs back on board. Even after Jobs's death, rolling boulders downhill at Google just for the lulz would be precisely Ellison's style. He has nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain.
My knowledge of thermodynamics - especially the concept of entropy - tells me the Universe, left to its own, should run down.
By the way, this is in fact what our best available understanding of physics predicts as the Universe's ultimate fate. Sorry, but nobody who knew what he was talking about ever said it would last forever.
On the other hand, thermodynamics as an argument against evolution is just the silliest thing imaginable, for reasons I'm sure you're aware of. If you shine a hundred watts/m^2 of energy onto a quadrillion square feet of nutrient-rich land, and leave the light on for a billion years, it will take a God to stop life from evolving.
In short, everything I see seems to demand a creator.
I don't think this is an indefensible belief on your part, necessarily... although you should read some Dawkins, perhaps, to balance the Behe.
Collins is an interesting case, as a prominent scientist who doesn't feel compelled to hide his religion the way most of the rest of us non-scientists have to hide our atheism. He's told the story of his own epiphany... but what he's never explained is why it led him to the specific god of Abraham, rather than to simple Deism. He encountered a frozen tripartite waterfall, and he somehow instantly connected enough dots to draw the Holy Trinity. Is this the act of a rational human being, much less a scientist responsible for helping us understand the way life works? It seems that Francis Collins trusts his own perceptions far more than any scientist should.
Maybe I worship the God of truth through study of his work ( scientifically ) and they worship Him by throwing parties in his name at someone else's expense
It's one thing to carry a Deist's admiration for the architect of all creation, even if that architect can be described as a God of the Gaps. The Universe does not owe us an accounting of itself, and it's safe to say that there are weirder things out there than our observations will ever reveal to us. One could potentially consider the existence of the Universe to be the result of a conscious act of creation, and apply the term "god" to the creator. At no point will science ever be able to contradict such an outlook.
But buying into the specifics of the Judeo-Christian faith? Buying into hundreds of pages of demonstrable bullshit written by a Bronze Age tribe of nomadic goat-herders? Buying into the idea that the god of creation, omniscient and infinite, who dwells outside all space and time, was disappointed because somebody once rejected him in favor of a talking snake, and wants me to vote Republican?
I can't see that as anything other than wishful thinking at best, and psychosis at worst. Religion as we know it today is arguably a mental illness that threatens all of civilization. It seems clear that a lot of smart people are going to have to waste a lot of valuable time figuring out how to stop it. Ultimately, what side of the line do you want to stand on?
It depends on the nature of the failure, but IMHO the ultimate answer is always going to involve standing behind your product.
If a rare or previously-unknown failure occurs 5 days after the end of the warranty period, then a case can be made for enforcing the letter of the warranty. But since it's "rare," the company can fix the problem and make the customer happy at little cost. Even if you jack up prices to make up for all of this generosity, your customers will still thank you.
OTOH, if a widespread failure condition frequently occurs shortly after the end of the warranty period, then strict enforcement of the warranty terms amounts to sticking the customer with a known quality problem. Over the last few decades, the more respected car manufacturers have learned not to behave this way. It's reasonable to hold consumer electronics companies to the same standard.
Either way, every manufacturer's products are going to break occasionally. If you're a dick about warranty deadlines, you will leave a trail of annoyed customers in your wake. Further, if being flexible with warranty terms is costing your company a lot of money, you obviously have a quality problem, not a warranty problem. Taking it out on the customers is not going to pay off in the long run.
In Sony's case, they can sell blowjobs in the alley behind the bankruptcy courthouse for all I care. Karma's a bitch.
Warranty deadlines should be used to defend the company against obvious abuse, and to delight customers by throwing them a bone once in a while. From a psychological standpoint, standing behind the product for an extra 5 lousy days would have acted as a form of intermittent reinforcement, one of the most effective conditioning techniques known.
You don't need to be B. F. Skinner or Steve Jobs to grasp these concepts, you just need to not be a complete moron.
Of course, I'm neither a psychologist experienced in behavioral training nor a CEO experienced at losing billions of dollars, so my advice probably shouldn't be considered authoritative.
(Shrug) You seem to have your own little argument going with someone only you can hear. All I'm saying is, when government sets up needless and costly bureaucratic roadblocks, the less choice we all have as consumers, and the more we pay. I don't recall any widespread consumer demand for ESD immunity standards, do you?
Here's an idea. How about if the government worries less about ESD immunity of consumer products, and more about fraud prosecution and banking oversight? Because it seems that they cannot, in fact, do all of these things at once.
Yeah, because once the nanny state gives up and lets the free market handle aspects of product quality that don't impact anyone other than the purchaser, we might as well all pack up and move to Somalia.
Gee, if only there were a way for consumers to make quality- and fitness-for-purpose decisions on their own. We could call it... oh, wait, I know -- a market!
Basically some useless bureaucratic hoops that the EU, but almost no one else in the world, sees fit to make manufacturers large and small jump through.
I don't understand why this board needed certification at all, frankly. Since it's sold as a PC board, why don't they just market and sell it as a component, rather than a system? Then it would only be subject to RoHS and WEEE legislation, not EMC.
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But by all means, let's stop spending money on aid programs in Africa, South America, and Asia.
Many of which wouldn't be needed in the first place, if the Catholics weren't threatening the superstitious natives with eternal damnation for failing to out-breed the local rabbit population.
Fixing a problem you created does not count as an act of "good."
So, what would you have them spend the money on instead?
Like Michael Dell once said, they should wind down operations and give the cash back to the stockholders. Of course, he was referring to a different cult.
However, the required public disclosure advances the useful arts because it takes away the incentives to have trade secrets.
Fine, I think we're close to a meeting of minds on the subject. Can we agree that the patent system is a useful thing when, and only when, it gives inventors an alternative to hoarding valuable trade secrets? Without the "valuable" part, we don't need to incentivize the creation of new IP... and without the "trade secret" part, we don't need to reward the creation of an official public record of said IP. From my perspective, these two elements seem to be necessary in any rational defense of the patent system.
So: in your opinion, is that a reasonable rephrasing of the founders' intention for the patent system, as expressed in the Constitution, or are there elements that still need to be accounted for?
Because my whole point was, and is, that something like slide-to-unlock, or whatever is described in either Apple's or Neonode's patent, is not something that would ever be the subject of a trade secret. Any competent engineer will instantly see exactly how to practice the invention once they see it in action. So IMO, such claims are unnecessary under any conceivable circumstances. They serve only to give engineers a list of obvious things they aren't allowed to do.
My position is that granting "ownership" of such inventions does not help anyone but a very few patent trolls and a great many attorneys.
Actually, the only mistake I appear to have made was in crediting Apple with the swipe-to-unlock patent. It seems the truth is more complicated.
Read that article and the associated claims, and tell me how, in your professional opinion as a patent attorney, the "progress of science and the useful arts" was advanced when the USPTO granted a 20-year monopoly on all likely implementations of the slide-to-unlock gesture.
This oughtta be good.
If you care about CPU performance and you aren't already running a Sandy Bridge CPU, then yes, you should get an Ivy Bridge system.
Sandy Bridge is a very fast architecture, so if you already have one, then it makes more sense to wait for Haswell. Even users who care about speed are unlikely to appreciate the improvement made by Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge.
Meanwhile, nobody who cares about graphics on the desktop is going to want an on-die GPU, regardless of the CPU it's attached to. Ivy Bridge is really only needed on laptops that need to run high-end games.
There is already a mechanism in place for the "banning" of such businesses. It's called a "market." In the absence of either massive externalities or regulatory capture, markets usually work quite well.
Ignoring whether the patent is valid or not (seems quite trivial to me) how is this "something we already know how to do, but on a computer"?
Because it's obvious to the first engineer who actually encounters the problem in the course of day-to-day work. Consider the Apple swipe-to-unlock patent, or Amazon's patnet on one-click purchasing. The only "innovation" in either case was the original idea... and you're not supposed to be able to claim ideas. The actual teachings of those patents are obvious to any undergraduate compsci student or interested amateur, much less someone skilled in the art.
I haven't read the claims, but this patent sounds very similar. If the summary is accurate, then it is a typical USPTO rubber-stamp job... a patent on an idea, written to cover all practical implementations of said idea. Nobody wins but the lawyers when such patents are issued... and gee whiz, look who runs the country.
IMHO successful patent prosecutions should be based on the plaintiff's ability to show willful infringement. Otherwise, patents are literally a (civil) instance of thoughtcrime.
When the larger companies realize that they have far more to lose from patents than they have to gain.
I hope this guy takes them for $20 billion.
Mainly because unions are simply attempting to even the balance of power between corporations and employees.
Yeah, by inserting a parasitic layer of unproductive bureaucracy between them.
Unions can make sense when hiring temporary skilled workers from craft guilds and the like, but on a day-to-day basis, a typical "closed shop" only increases costs and decreases opportunities.
They were expensive. In the EEvBlog teardown video, David Jones says they were north of $1400 USD, depending on options. That was about the same price as a 48K Apple II+ with floppy drive and monitor, so the Model 100 customers obviously paid a real premium for the form factor.
This thing is more like the ancestor of the iPad than the ancestor of a general-purpose Windows or Mac laptop, IMO.
Apple ][, then ZX-81 here.
Ouch. What happened?
This is exactly the same problem that was faced in Ultima Online when it became obvious that some people enjoyed whacking new and otherwise defenseless players. They introduced PvP flags and zones to get around it, and I don't see why a similar approach wouldn't work here.
Each player could start out with their "Protection from assholes" flag set by default. If they either behave abusively (according to whatever flawed metric Valve uses to make that call) or turn the flag off intentionally, they will lose the ability to communicate with people who still have the flag set.
Offering monetary discounts for playing nice is just going to create a metagame, which will be exploited. Valve should instead apply a policy of "strict scrutiny," where only the smallest, least invasive steps necessary are taken to solve the problem.
... not something I could cook up in two hours with a small electromagnet and a bit of ferrous metal embedded in the leaf stem?
I take PayPal if anyone wants to pay $3000 for detailed plans, sketched on the back of a used bar napkin.
People are DESPERATE for an iOS alternative
They are?
Infact, I think the only reason they bought sun was for the IP to bludgeon google over the head with. I'm not quite clear why though.
Walter Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs sheds some light on it. Jobs and Larry Ellison were BFFs. Together, they had a long history of conspiring to advance each others' agendas.
Ellison, for instance, was prepared to launch a "hostile" takeover of Apple if they didn't bring Jobs back on board. Even after Jobs's death, rolling boulders downhill at Google just for the lulz would be precisely Ellison's style. He has nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain.
My knowledge of thermodynamics - especially the concept of entropy - tells me the Universe, left to its own, should run down.
By the way, this is in fact what our best available understanding of physics predicts as the Universe's ultimate fate. Sorry, but nobody who knew what he was talking about ever said it would last forever.
On the other hand, thermodynamics as an argument against evolution is just the silliest thing imaginable, for reasons I'm sure you're aware of. If you shine a hundred watts/m^2 of energy onto a quadrillion square feet of nutrient-rich land, and leave the light on for a billion years, it will take a God to stop life from evolving.
In short, everything I see seems to demand a creator.
I don't think this is an indefensible belief on your part, necessarily... although you should read some Dawkins, perhaps, to balance the Behe.
Collins is an interesting case, as a prominent scientist who doesn't feel compelled to hide his religion the way most of the rest of us non-scientists have to hide our atheism. He's told the story of his own epiphany... but what he's never explained is why it led him to the specific god of Abraham, rather than to simple Deism. He encountered a frozen tripartite waterfall, and he somehow instantly connected enough dots to draw the Holy Trinity. Is this the act of a rational human being, much less a scientist responsible for helping us understand the way life works? It seems that Francis Collins trusts his own perceptions far more than any scientist should.
Maybe I worship the God of truth through study of his work ( scientifically ) and they worship Him by throwing parties in his name at someone else's expense
It's one thing to carry a Deist's admiration for the architect of all creation, even if that architect can be described as a God of the Gaps. The Universe does not owe us an accounting of itself, and it's safe to say that there are weirder things out there than our observations will ever reveal to us. One could potentially consider the existence of the Universe to be the result of a conscious act of creation, and apply the term "god" to the creator. At no point will science ever be able to contradict such an outlook.
But buying into the specifics of the Judeo-Christian faith? Buying into hundreds of pages of demonstrable bullshit written by a Bronze Age tribe of nomadic goat-herders? Buying into the idea that the god of creation, omniscient and infinite, who dwells outside all space and time, was disappointed because somebody once rejected him in favor of a talking snake, and wants me to vote Republican?
I can't see that as anything other than wishful thinking at best, and psychosis at worst. Religion as we know it today is arguably a mental illness that threatens all of civilization. It seems clear that a lot of smart people are going to have to waste a lot of valuable time figuring out how to stop it. Ultimately, what side of the line do you want to stand on?
There was plenty of time for the cop to call 911 and whine about his lack of training, common sense, and general IQ, though.
It depends on the nature of the failure, but IMHO the ultimate answer is always going to involve standing behind your product.
If a rare or previously-unknown failure occurs 5 days after the end of the warranty period, then a case can be made for enforcing the letter of the warranty. But since it's "rare," the company can fix the problem and make the customer happy at little cost. Even if you jack up prices to make up for all of this generosity, your customers will still thank you.
OTOH, if a widespread failure condition frequently occurs shortly after the end of the warranty period, then strict enforcement of the warranty terms amounts to sticking the customer with a known quality problem. Over the last few decades, the more respected car manufacturers have learned not to behave this way. It's reasonable to hold consumer electronics companies to the same standard.
Either way, every manufacturer's products are going to break occasionally. If you're a dick about warranty deadlines, you will leave a trail of annoyed customers in your wake. Further, if being flexible with warranty terms is costing your company a lot of money, you obviously have a quality problem, not a warranty problem. Taking it out on the customers is not going to pay off in the long run.
In Sony's case, they can sell blowjobs in the alley behind the bankruptcy courthouse for all I care. Karma's a bitch.
Warranty deadlines should be used to defend the company against obvious abuse, and to delight customers by throwing them a bone once in a while. From a psychological standpoint, standing behind the product for an extra 5 lousy days would have acted as a form of intermittent reinforcement, one of the most effective conditioning techniques known.
You don't need to be B. F. Skinner or Steve Jobs to grasp these concepts, you just need to not be a complete moron.
Of course, I'm neither a psychologist experienced in behavioral training nor a CEO experienced at losing billions of dollars, so my advice probably shouldn't be considered authoritative.
In other news, the Universe still doesn't owe you an accounting of itself. Ric has more at 11.
Really? Try selling an electronic product in the USA without complying with FCC regs about EM interference.
The topic is ESD immunity, not EMI; do try to keep up.
(Shrug) You seem to have your own little argument going with someone only you can hear. All I'm saying is, when government sets up needless and costly bureaucratic roadblocks, the less choice we all have as consumers, and the more we pay. I don't recall any widespread consumer demand for ESD immunity standards, do you?
Here's an idea. How about if the government worries less about ESD immunity of consumer products, and more about fraud prosecution and banking oversight? Because it seems that they cannot, in fact, do all of these things at once.
Yeah, because once the nanny state gives up and lets the free market handle aspects of product quality that don't impact anyone other than the purchaser, we might as well all pack up and move to Somalia.
Seriously. Were you people shaken as infants?
Gee, if only there were a way for consumers to make quality- and fitness-for-purpose decisions on their own. We could call it... oh, wait, I know -- a market!
Basically some useless bureaucratic hoops that the EU, but almost no one else in the world, sees fit to make manufacturers large and small jump through.
I don't understand why this board needed certification at all, frankly. Since it's sold as a PC board, why don't they just market and sell it as a component, rather than a system? Then it would only be subject to RoHS and WEEE legislation, not EMC.