I just read Rep Waxman's preliminary report. They believe that Mr Rove received more than 200 emails/day, and sent out over 100 emails/day. I agree with the previous poster who said that maybe all this email is in fact what passes for governance, and that is what the scandal is all about - the politicization of just about everything.
By the way, does anyone here believe that all of those "erased" emails are actually gone? If the email volume is so high because everyone on the list copied the world, than it should be possible to go to the recipients and reconstruct things.
Yes, I have worked in an office, supervising about 25 people, both locally and in the field. I generally found face to face conversations and phone calls to be better at resolving operational issues than email. I wonder how many of the 141K emails were to people just down the hall.
Finally, does anyone know what a presidential political advisor with a job inside the White House actually does? Is this a new position? It's not clear to me what a political advisor should be doing on the public payroll. In that sense, this whole official government vs RNC records scandal was almost inevitable.
"The RNC has preserved e-mails from some of the heaviest users, including 140,216 messages sent or received by Bush's top political adviser in the White House, Karl Rove."
140K emails? Even over six years, that's over 20k messages per year, or about 400/week. Say 80 emails/day. Assuming a 16 hour work day, that's 5 emails/hour, every hour, forever. Basically an email every 12 minutes. I don't see where Mr Rove has any time to do anything other than receive and answer emails. Maybe these guys are so busy sending emails to each other that they have no time left over to actually try their hand at competent governance. An email every 12 minutes implies that there is absolutely no thinking time here. It sounds like it's all reaction, presumably just giving orders. Amazing.
I went to the USPTO web site, entered "Microsoft" as assignee, and got 6744 hits.
Their latest patent is 7,222,341 "Method and system for processing software dependencies in management of software packages".
Part of the description in that patent reads, "However, current methods of software distribution over a network do not fully exploit the benefits. Existing distribution of platform-specific, or "native code," software relies on installation file formats that are hard to create, not extensible, and specific to a particular operating system. Although most current software is written in modules, there is no current mechanism that handles the situation where one component in a software program requires the presence of another to operate. If a user downloads software from a Web page, the user may discover that the program requires an external library which necessitates another network session to download, assuming the user can find the right location, and then the user must manually install the library before installing the software. "
I am far from an expert, but isn't this what Red Carpet, urpmi, Red Hat's updater, FreeBSD's various ports and packages schemes and other such package and provisioning software all do? At least part of the patent appears to be aimed against Java and its write once run anywhere claims.
By the way, the patent contains material that is copyrighted, so it is not clear to me how much of this public document can even be quoted.
Finally, the patent appears to be based on an application originally filed in 1996, probably by a business entity other than Microsoft...
Is there some deep aspect of this patent that I am missing? Of the 6744 patents granted to Microsoft so far, where do the 235 or so possibly infringing patents fit? Is this patent one of them?
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I just read Rep Waxman's preliminary report. They believe that Mr Rove received more than 200 emails/day, and sent out over 100 emails/day. I agree with the previous poster who said that maybe all this email is in fact what passes for governance, and that is what the scandal is all about - the politicization of just about everything.
By the way, does anyone here believe that all of those "erased" emails are actually gone? If the email volume is so high because everyone on the list copied the world, than it should be possible to go to the recipients and reconstruct things.
Yes, I have worked in an office, supervising about 25 people, both locally and in the field. I generally found face to face conversations and phone calls to be better at resolving operational issues than email. I wonder how many of the 141K emails were to people just down the hall.
Finally, does anyone know what a presidential political advisor with a job inside the White House actually does? Is this a new position? It's not clear to me what a political advisor should be doing on the public payroll. In that sense, this whole official government vs RNC records scandal was almost inevitable.
I'm shocked but not surprised.
What is surprising is the quote:
"The RNC has preserved e-mails from some of the heaviest users, including 140,216 messages sent or received by Bush's top political adviser in the White House, Karl Rove."
140K emails? Even over six years, that's over 20k messages per year, or about 400/week. Say 80 emails/day. Assuming a 16 hour work day, that's 5 emails/hour, every hour, forever. Basically an email every 12 minutes. I don't see where Mr Rove has any time to do anything other than receive and answer emails. Maybe these guys are so busy sending emails to each other that they have no time left over to actually try their hand at competent governance. An email every 12 minutes implies that there is absolutely no thinking time here. It sounds like it's all reaction, presumably just giving orders. Amazing.
I went to the USPTO web site, entered "Microsoft" as assignee, and got 6744 hits.
Their latest patent is 7,222,341 "Method and system for processing software dependencies in management of software packages".
Part of the description in that patent reads, "However, current methods of software distribution over a network do not fully exploit the benefits. Existing distribution of platform-specific, or "native code," software relies on installation file formats that are hard to create, not extensible, and specific to a particular operating system. Although most current software is written in modules, there is no current mechanism that handles the situation where one component in a software program requires the presence of another to operate. If a user downloads software from a Web page, the user may discover that the program requires an external library which necessitates another network session to download, assuming the user can find the right location, and then the user must manually install the library before installing the software. "
I am far from an expert, but isn't this what Red Carpet, urpmi, Red Hat's updater, FreeBSD's various ports and packages schemes and other such package and provisioning software all do? At least part of the patent appears to be aimed against Java and its write once run anywhere claims.
By the way, the patent contains material that is copyrighted, so it is not clear to me how much of this public document can even be quoted.
Finally, the patent appears to be based on an application originally filed in 1996, probably by a business entity other than Microsoft...
Is there some deep aspect of this patent that I am missing? Of the 6744 patents granted to Microsoft so far, where do the 235 or so possibly infringing patents fit? Is this patent one of them?