And that's one more question I'll need to ask prospective hardware suppliers: Is any proprietary software required in order to use your hardware and, if so, is it only available and usable if we keep up an annual support contract? (Related question: Is a dongle required? There is? Well... just look at the time! Have a nice day.)
I could see this for large software packages (think RDBMS and other "enterprise"-level software) where one might need to keep a support contract in place in order to gain access to the latest patches---especially the security-related ones). (Not that I've seen a piece of software like that require a hardware dongle to enforce that. It's usually just something in the vendor's database referred to when you place the support call.) But any hardware that requires a piece of special software in order to access the device and have that software expire at the end of a support contract is, IMNSHO, wa-a-ay over the line. I'd never buy from a vendor that tried to foist that on their customers. I suppose they think it's just fine to sell a product that is easily supported by the customer but then force them to pay for the vendor to provide that support. The customer will see this as a kind of extortion. Too bad for this vendor that their business practice is now widely publicized. It's not like there aren't other UPS vendors to turn to.
are people. And, since this ruling was from a Federal appeals court, the next appeal would be to the Supreme Court. Anyone want to place a bet on which side of this argument Roberts, Scalia, and Alito will take?
So while our life expectancies have jumped into the seventies and beyond, employers now want to view us as though we have the same useful life as someone living hundreds of years ago.
Seeing as how wage stagnation over the past 20-30 years has hit a lot of peoples' ability to save -- not to mention what the recent banking disaster did to most peoples' retirement funds -- one has to wonder what corporations expect those folks over 40 that they laid off to do with the rest of their years. Sure, the corporations don't have any legal obligation to keep people on the payroll. On the other hand, if everyone over 40 winds up unemployed, there's going to be an awful lot of people who are not buying the products and services sold by the corporations.
Want to make a ton of money for your cellular provider? There's an app for that!
Next time you see that Sprint CEO say something like "not very people use their cellphones to only talk" in their TV commercials, folks may want to tell him that more and more people -- especially AT&T customers -- are doing just that. Since most corporations have never seen a bandwagon they could resist jumping onto, I predict Sprint customers will be joining them.
And people wonder why I chose a pay-as-you-go cellphone. I could see this pick pocketing coming a mile away.
First the President has to declare a "cyber emergency". Then the plan for dealing with the emergency is supposed to be developed? And how long does that plan development take? Jeebus! If this thing even gets to floor for a vote, the last shred of confidence anyone may still have for the Government being able to do anything right will be lost.
On a positive note: This ridiculous bill was co-authored by Joe Leiberman. That alone should be enough to laugh it out of committee; I don't think he does anything that isn't, first and foremost, designed to enhance the glory of Joe Leiberman. And to think he might have actually been a heartbeat away from the Presidency. If if weren't for all the damage that was done as a result, one could almost thank the Supreme Court for tossing out the election results of 2000 and appointing the Wonder Chimp instead of allowing Leiberman to get anywhere near the Oval Office.
"For starters, Microsoft has to get out of its well-established cultural mindset that it's OK to ship crap that it might fix later on."
Considering how well the company-wide effort to improve security went, I would expect any similar effort to improve the overall quality of MS's software will end up with the same result. MS will release press release after press release touting how much work they're putting into improving their products but not much will really happen. To really get things to change, they'd likely have to fire so many people that are ingrained in their current development mindset that it would frighten a lot of other employees who'd then leave. Either that or they'd have to fire a few select managers and hire some real bastards to shake things up. The effect of that could be just as demoralizing and the talent exodus just as bad.
Something's got to change at MS if they want to get the company back on track. Crappy software doesn't cut it any more. (Like I care what happens to the company. I've been Microsoft-free for years now.)
Maybe when nobody gets any hits when they search for this twerp's name and he becomes invisible to the Web -- along with the rest of his enterprises -- he'll rethink his little hissy fit. The guy's deliberately shutting out the free advertising that the Web provides. If all I'm going to see is his newspapers' home pages and no content, what is going to entice me to pay for a subscription? Rupert's good name? Do his papers ever break any major stories and provide exclusive coverage? I surely can't recall ever hearing of one. Heck, even if they do, I guess I won't know about that now what with Rupert walling off his content from the people who might be willing to subscribe to it. The rest of the online newspapers will easily pick up the slack.
Murdoch is such a dolt. Who's he going to blame his next loss in revenues on?
``the fight over Net neutrality will shift a few blocks down Independence Avenue from the FCC to Capitol Hill. (In an editorial Monday, The Washington Post called for just that.)''
Of course, the fight for the public's rights belongs in Congress where it can be carefully watched and modified by legislators bought and paid for by the telecommunications industry. It doesn't surprise me that the Post would get on anti-net-neutrality (i.e. the telecommunications industry's) side of this.
The good part is that this is just a letter. The claim that what the FCC may be thinking of doing being illegal may be just the opinion of the senators signing the letter. It would be most interesting to see what corporations dumped money into their most recent re-election coffers. If we learned one thing from the Nixon administration it's: Follow the money.
I was somewhat disappointed in the finale
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
At the end of the fifth season and the beginning of the sixth I got the impression that the series would wind up with some science fictiony parallel universe conclusion where the island would turn out to be some sort of portal through which everyone would get off. But when last night's finale finished I felt like I'd spent six seasons watching something akin to a very, very long version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" with a little "Poltergeist" thrown in for good measure. I found myself saying "Go into the Light..." at the finish.
And those insipid "Final Communications" (or whatever they were called in the pre-finale rehash) could have been left out altogether. Along with the "Lost" ads from Target. I expect there will soon be "Lost" action figures available at a store near you. (Note: If these are going to be available or already are, please, please don't tell me.) The series was interesting at best once every few episodes but ABC was playing this up like something of historic importance was leaving the airwaves. The worst part of "Lost" ending is that another so-called reality show will probably take its place. You just cannot have too many of those, you know.
Perhaps it's just me but I think the real problem facing the USPTO is the quality of the patent applications they're receiving and, apparently, mostly rubber-stamping. Leave it to these guys to misidentify the real problem within their organization. On the other hand, their situation isn't much different than a group of programmers face when they're told that their performance will be evaluated based on the number of lines of code they produce.
The USPTO's solution is somewhat analgous to what happened back when I was in grad school back in the '80s/'90s. The state (which will remain nameless though there may be some who recall this incident and will figure it out) legislature decided that it had to do something about the large number of applicants to the state schools. Their entrance requirements were such that they pretty much had to accept anybody (or should I say "and warm body"?) that applied and the percentage that actually completed the four years was dropping like a stone. Low graduation rates do not look very good in the recruiting brochures so schools were looking for incoming students with better academic credentials. What they wanted to do was make it easier to find higher quality students that had a better chance of completing their degrees. The legislature, decided that, rather than raise the standards for ACT or SAT scores, the solution to this problem was to move the deadline for application earlier. Now high school guidance counselors aren't stupid. They just told all of their students to submit earlier; not just the ones that had the best chances of completing a bachelor's degree. In the end, that "solution" had no effect on the percentage of incoming students that actually made it through all four years and got their degree. That worked just about as well as I am expecting the USPTO's new plan will wind up increasing the quality of patents. (Of course, everyone here knows that's probably not high on their list of desired outcomes.)
All the new USPTO plan will really do is increase the revenues generated by patents. Large corporations will still submit as many patent applications as they are now and the USPTO will rake in even more cash than they do now. (Large corporations are addicted to the power they get from patents and I'd submit that a lot of people in those corporations receive bonuses from the number of patent submissions they create.) The drop-off in submissions by small businesses -- and the loss of application fee revenue -- will hardly be noticed. But... Congress will see the increase in revenues and conclude that the plan was a raging success.
Who was it that said that for every complicated problem there is a simple solution that is wrong? I'm thinking that the USPTO has just identified another one of those kinds of solutions.
> for things they bought it is even more worthless.
Ah... Reminds me of how CA deals with the product lines of the companies they buy. Price those products -- and their support -- to death. Apparently, they hope that enough saps will continue to pay and deal with the devil they know. Those customers who don't pay the higher costs and who want to migrate to someone else's product weren't worth keeping around as a customer anyway. Besides, their new vendor will eventually get bought out and we'll get 'em in the end.
It appears that Tesla thought of everything. So let's just toss out all those silly mobile patents and let the real innovation -- and competition -- begin.
What did he have to say about audio and video encoding?
... to call the number that come from the RIAA or the MPAA statistics. "Assertions" is what comes to mind when I hear or read the stories from these folks.
Is there a magical counter somewhere that counts the number of allegedly pirated versus the legally purchased songs or movies? No. So what we get are nothing more than assertions from these people that do nothing more than to serve their crazy claims of having lost umptyump millions or billions of dollars in supposedly lost revenue.
Nobody, other than a few gullible politicians, believes these numbers. Unfortunately, these few can do so much damage. I'm encouraged that governments are finally getting around to saying "Uh... wait just a second."
I can honestly say that it's possible to pull 80 hour weeks during a coding binge. Now that includes meal breaks (that usually included dragging along listings that let you do some debugging, rearranging, etc. while eating; they double as a placemat, too) and sessions standing in front of a blackboard (sort of tells ya how long ago it was that I did this) working out the flow and logic of the code. Luckily I only did that for 3-4 four weeks while I was in grad school working over the summer. Most other weeks were only 50-60 hours.:-D
My dream device would be one built into every radio that automatically changes the station to one playing a song that's not using Autotune. That way "artists" that are so bad that they have to resort to Autotune to sound passable would sell so few CDs/MPs that they'd find other ways to spend their time instead of making awful music.
"Why would you be posting while you are supposed to be working anyway? If you are stupid enough to do this at work then you deserve what you get."
Is there an actual legitimate business use for Facebook now? Does HP, or example, have a Facebook page that I'm suposed to use for technical support matters? If not, why wouldn't most, if not all, companies merely block Facebook access using something like Websense if they didn't want employees using it during business hours?
I truly feel sorry for anyone working for a company whose management has nothing better to than to go out onto the web trolling for comments that their employees might have posted. One, they're anal little jerks that have no business even being in management and two, what makes them think that their employees are going to post something on their Facebook page like "Boy, my boss at MajorCorp is the biggest @#$#$@ you'll ever meet!" There are plenty of more appropriate places to make posts like that where you're more than likely not (unless you're a total moron) going to use your real name.
... "We don't expect to make any more money on CDs than we did before they became affordable because we've slashed the floor space devoted to CDs to the bone and nobody goes into that part of the store anymore. At least those that're even able to find where we've hidden it. Besides, we already make a lot more on crappy over-priced, replacement earpods that break in a couple of months than we expect to make on CDs. So we'll be devoting a lot more space to those products than we will for CDs."
It's not that I hate seeing the ads. I block ads when viewing some sites when they detract from the content that I'm trying to read. Modern web site "designs" are shrinking the area devoted to content more and more. It wasn't so bad when the advertisements were limited to banner ads at the top and, sometimes, bottom of the web page. Some sites are displaying as much, if not more, advertising on the page as there is content, breaking stories up into paragraph-sized chunks to maximize the number of ads displays, and failing to include "printable format" buttons to allow one to view the content without all the ads. And it's more and more all animated advertisements. I block ads because, with all that the dancing bologna surrounding the main content, I find that I cannot concentrate on the reason why I visited the page in the first place. (Plus there are the sites that only seem to display the content after all the advertisements have been loaded. This is an especially ugly practice for those with low-bandwidth connections.)
Imagine if, instead of showing ads serially in groups periodically throughout the show as they do now, all TV shows limited the programming to the middle 50% of the screen and had advertisements blinking around the edges all during the program. People would be turning off their TVs in droves. (Even more than they probably have already in response to the increase in so-called "reality" shows. But that's another story.)
That's only if their web crawler even looks at robots.txt. It's not required, only a courtesy. I'm sure they'll not be so courteous and claim that they need to do this because the violators they're looking for would block them anyway.
The sure fire way to keep them out would be to find out what is IP address Attributor is using and block that at your firewall. The trouble with that is they could easily change their IP address or even employ something akin to a botnet to do their web crawling so that their probes appear to be coming from a large number of different addresses on different networks. Try keeping up with that moving target.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's one more question I'll need to ask prospective hardware suppliers: Is any proprietary software required in order to use your hardware and, if so, is it only available and usable if we keep up an annual support contract? (Related question: Is a dongle required? There is? Well... just look at the time! Have a nice day.)
I could see this for large software packages (think RDBMS and other "enterprise"-level software) where one might need to keep a support contract in place in order to gain access to the latest patches---especially the security-related ones). (Not that I've seen a piece of software like that require a hardware dongle to enforce that. It's usually just something in the vendor's database referred to when you place the support call.) But any hardware that requires a piece of special software in order to access the device and have that software expire at the end of a support contract is, IMNSHO, wa-a-ay over the line. I'd never buy from a vendor that tried to foist that on their customers. I suppose they think it's just fine to sell a product that is easily supported by the customer but then force them to pay for the vendor to provide that support. The customer will see this as a kind of extortion. Too bad for this vendor that their business practice is now widely publicized. It's not like there aren't other UPS vendors to turn to.
... in the almost innumerable reasons to avoid using Microsoft products.
Shouldn't something like this have been reviewed and approved by U.S. security agencies? And if it was, you gotta wonder whose side they're on.
are people. And, since this ruling was from a Federal appeals court, the next appeal would be to the Supreme Court. Anyone want to place a bet on which side of this argument Roberts, Scalia, and Alito will take?
So while our life expectancies have jumped into the seventies and beyond, employers now want to view us as though we have the same useful life as someone living hundreds of years ago.
Seeing as how wage stagnation over the past 20-30 years has hit a lot of peoples' ability to save -- not to mention what the recent banking disaster did to most peoples' retirement funds -- one has to wonder what corporations expect those folks over 40 that they laid off to do with the rest of their years. Sure, the corporations don't have any legal obligation to keep people on the payroll. On the other hand, if everyone over 40 winds up unemployed, there's going to be an awful lot of people who are not buying the products and services sold by the corporations.
Want to make a ton of money for your cellular provider? There's an app for that!
Next time you see that Sprint CEO say something like "not very people use their cellphones to only talk" in their TV commercials, folks may want to tell him that more and more people -- especially AT&T customers -- are doing just that. Since most corporations have never seen a bandwagon they could resist jumping onto, I predict Sprint customers will be joining them.
And people wonder why I chose a pay-as-you-go cellphone. I could see this pick pocketing coming a mile away.
First the President has to declare a "cyber emergency". Then the plan for dealing with the emergency is supposed to be developed? And how long does that plan development take? Jeebus! If this thing even gets to floor for a vote, the last shred of confidence anyone may still have for the Government being able to do anything right will be lost.
On a positive note: This ridiculous bill was co-authored by Joe Leiberman. That alone should be enough to laugh it out of committee; I don't think he does anything that isn't, first and foremost, designed to enhance the glory of Joe Leiberman. And to think he might have actually been a heartbeat away from the Presidency. If if weren't for all the damage that was done as a result, one could almost thank the Supreme Court for tossing out the election results of 2000 and appointing the Wonder Chimp instead of allowing Leiberman to get anywhere near the Oval Office.
Considering how well the company-wide effort to improve security went, I would expect any similar effort to improve the overall quality of MS's software will end up with the same result. MS will release press release after press release touting how much work they're putting into improving their products but not much will really happen. To really get things to change, they'd likely have to fire so many people that are ingrained in their current development mindset that it would frighten a lot of other employees who'd then leave. Either that or they'd have to fire a few select managers and hire some real bastards to shake things up. The effect of that could be just as demoralizing and the talent exodus just as bad.
Something's got to change at MS if they want to get the company back on track. Crappy software doesn't cut it any more. (Like I care what happens to the company. I've been Microsoft-free for years now.)
"Murdoch"
Maybe when nobody gets any hits when they search for this twerp's name and he becomes invisible to the Web -- along with the rest of his enterprises -- he'll rethink his little hissy fit. The guy's deliberately shutting out the free advertising that the Web provides. If all I'm going to see is his newspapers' home pages and no content, what is going to entice me to pay for a subscription? Rupert's good name? Do his papers ever break any major stories and provide exclusive coverage? I surely can't recall ever hearing of one. Heck, even if they do, I guess I won't know about that now what with Rupert walling off his content from the people who might be willing to subscribe to it. The rest of the online newspapers will easily pick up the slack.
Murdoch is such a dolt. Who's he going to blame his next loss in revenues on?
Of course, the fight for the public's rights belongs in Congress where it can be carefully watched and modified by legislators bought and paid for by the telecommunications industry. It doesn't surprise me that the Post would get on anti-net-neutrality (i.e. the telecommunications industry's) side of this.
The good part is that this is just a letter. The claim that what the FCC may be thinking of doing being illegal may be just the opinion of the senators signing the letter. It would be most interesting to see what corporations dumped money into their most recent re-election coffers. If we learned one thing from the Nixon administration it's: Follow the money.
At the end of the fifth season and the beginning of the sixth I got the impression that the series would wind up with some science fictiony parallel universe conclusion where the island would turn out to be some sort of portal through which everyone would get off. But when last night's finale finished I felt like I'd spent six seasons watching something akin to a very, very long version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" with a little "Poltergeist" thrown in for good measure. I found myself saying "Go into the Light..." at the finish.
And those insipid "Final Communications" (or whatever they were called in the pre-finale rehash) could have been left out altogether. Along with the "Lost" ads from Target. I expect there will soon be "Lost" action figures available at a store near you. (Note: If these are going to be available or already are, please, please don't tell me.) The series was interesting at best once every few episodes but ABC was playing this up like something of historic importance was leaving the airwaves. The worst part of "Lost" ending is that another so-called reality show will probably take its place. You just cannot have too many of those, you know.
... just how convenient is the driver/user going to find this steering wheel mount when the airbag propels the iPad into their face at 800 MPH?
Perhaps it's just me but I think the real problem facing the USPTO is the quality of the patent applications they're receiving and, apparently, mostly rubber-stamping. Leave it to these guys to misidentify the real problem within their organization. On the other hand, their situation isn't much different than a group of programmers face when they're told that their performance will be evaluated based on the number of lines of code they produce.
The USPTO's solution is somewhat analgous to what happened back when I was in grad school back in the '80s/'90s. The state (which will remain nameless though there may be some who recall this incident and will figure it out) legislature decided that it had to do something about the large number of applicants to the state schools. Their entrance requirements were such that they pretty much had to accept anybody (or should I say "and warm body"?) that applied and the percentage that actually completed the four years was dropping like a stone. Low graduation rates do not look very good in the recruiting brochures so schools were looking for incoming students with better academic credentials. What they wanted to do was make it easier to find higher quality students that had a better chance of completing their degrees. The legislature, decided that, rather than raise the standards for ACT or SAT scores, the solution to this problem was to move the deadline for application earlier. Now high school guidance counselors aren't stupid. They just told all of their students to submit earlier; not just the ones that had the best chances of completing a bachelor's degree. In the end, that "solution" had no effect on the percentage of incoming students that actually made it through all four years and got their degree. That worked just about as well as I am expecting the USPTO's new plan will wind up increasing the quality of patents. (Of course, everyone here knows that's probably not high on their list of desired outcomes.)
All the new USPTO plan will really do is increase the revenues generated by patents. Large corporations will still submit as many patent applications as they are now and the USPTO will rake in even more cash than they do now. (Large corporations are addicted to the power they get from patents and I'd submit that a lot of people in those corporations receive bonuses from the number of patent submissions they create.) The drop-off in submissions by small businesses -- and the loss of application fee revenue -- will hardly be noticed. But... Congress will see the increase in revenues and conclude that the plan was a raging success.
Who was it that said that for every complicated problem there is a simple solution that is wrong? I'm thinking that the USPTO has just identified another one of those kinds of solutions.
> for things they bought it is even more worthless.
Ah... Reminds me of how CA deals with the product lines of the companies they buy. Price those products -- and their support -- to death. Apparently, they hope that enough saps will continue to pay and deal with the devil they know. Those customers who don't pay the higher costs and who want to migrate to someone else's product weren't worth keeping around as a customer anyway. Besides, their new vendor will eventually get bought out and we'll get 'em in the end.
> that should be Biiiing!
I was thinking it should be "Bazinga!"
(Oops! Wrong format. Fixed that.)
> that should be Biiiing! I was thinking it should be "Bazinga!"
It appears that Tesla thought of everything. So let's just toss out all those silly mobile patents and let the real innovation -- and competition -- begin.
What did he have to say about audio and video encoding?
... to call the number that come from the RIAA or the MPAA statistics. "Assertions" is what comes to mind when I hear or read the stories from these folks.
Is there a magical counter somewhere that counts the number of allegedly pirated versus the legally purchased songs or movies? No. So what we get are nothing more than assertions from these people that do nothing more than to serve their crazy claims of having lost umptyump millions or billions of dollars in supposedly lost revenue.
Nobody, other than a few gullible politicians, believes these numbers. Unfortunately, these few can do so much damage. I'm encouraged that governments are finally getting around to saying "Uh... wait just a second."
I would never have thought a Suzanne Vega reference would show up show up in this thread.
I can honestly say that it's possible to pull 80 hour weeks during a coding binge. Now that includes meal breaks (that usually included dragging along listings that let you do some debugging, rearranging, etc. while eating; they double as a placemat, too) and sessions standing in front of a blackboard (sort of tells ya how long ago it was that I did this) working out the flow and logic of the code. Luckily I only did that for 3-4 four weeks while I was in grad school working over the summer. Most other weeks were only 50-60 hours. :-D
My dream device would be one built into every radio that automatically changes the station to one playing a song that's not using Autotune. That way "artists" that are so bad that they have to resort to Autotune to sound passable would sell so few CDs/MPs that they'd find other ways to spend their time instead of making awful music.
Is there an actual legitimate business use for Facebook now? Does HP, or example, have a Facebook page that I'm suposed to use for technical support matters? If not, why wouldn't most, if not all, companies merely block Facebook access using something like Websense if they didn't want employees using it during business hours?
I truly feel sorry for anyone working for a company whose management has nothing better to than to go out onto the web trolling for comments that their employees might have posted. One, they're anal little jerks that have no business even being in management and two, what makes them think that their employees are going to post something on their Facebook page like "Boy, my boss at MajorCorp is the biggest @#$#$@ you'll ever meet!" There are plenty of more appropriate places to make posts like that where you're more than likely not (unless you're a total moron) going to use your real name.
... "We don't expect to make any more money on CDs than we did before they became affordable because we've slashed the floor space devoted to CDs to the bone and nobody goes into that part of the store anymore. At least those that're even able to find where we've hidden it. Besides, we already make a lot more on crappy over-priced, replacement earpods that break in a couple of months than we expect to make on CDs. So we'll be devoting a lot more space to those products than we will for CDs."
... C-SPAN is awarded a patent for it insomnia cure.
It's not that I hate seeing the ads. I block ads when viewing some sites when they detract from the content that I'm trying to read. Modern web site "designs" are shrinking the area devoted to content more and more. It wasn't so bad when the advertisements were limited to banner ads at the top and, sometimes, bottom of the web page. Some sites are displaying as much, if not more, advertising on the page as there is content, breaking stories up into paragraph-sized chunks to maximize the number of ads displays, and failing to include "printable format" buttons to allow one to view the content without all the ads. And it's more and more all animated advertisements. I block ads because, with all that the dancing bologna surrounding the main content, I find that I cannot concentrate on the reason why I visited the page in the first place. (Plus there are the sites that only seem to display the content after all the advertisements have been loaded. This is an especially ugly practice for those with low-bandwidth connections.)
Imagine if, instead of showing ads serially in groups periodically throughout the show as they do now, all TV shows limited the programming to the middle 50% of the screen and had advertisements blinking around the edges all during the program. People would be turning off their TVs in droves. (Even more than they probably have already in response to the increase in so-called "reality" shows. But that's another story.)
That's only if their web crawler even looks at robots.txt. It's not required, only a courtesy. I'm sure they'll not be so courteous and claim that they need to do this because the violators they're looking for would block them anyway.
The sure fire way to keep them out would be to find out what is IP address Attributor is using and block that at your firewall. The trouble with that is they could easily change their IP address or even employ something akin to a botnet to do their web crawling so that their probes appear to be coming from a large number of different addresses on different networks. Try keeping up with that moving target.