The USPTO only has one type of patent. The "I want a monopoly on this" patent. There should be defensive patents, patents issued saying "we figured out how to do this on our own, we don't want to stop other people form figuring out the same thing we just don't want to be prevented from using our inventions." The cost should be (much) lower and they should be approved faster and nobody should own them. That way you know right off what's going on.
I also like the proposed reforms making large companies who apply for lots of patents pay much more and individuals pay much less.
My father died suddenly about a year ago. He maintained 3 different web sites, one personal, one for a sailing club he belonged to, and one for his cousin's business. He was the sole contact for two of the registrar, plus there were web hosting passwords, ftp server passwords, isp account passwords, email account passwords. Luckily, my mother and I knew all his passwords and have been able to keep everything running. Security is important but it's not a bad idea to have someone else know how to get in to certain things just in case. Email is probably the most important thing because you can usually get people to change your password and email you the new one.
(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
In the country I live in (USA) copying CD's is legal. Making MP3's out of them is legal.
Some people would like to make you think that "If you didn't pay for it, you're stealing." It's not true. As far as I know it's perfectly legal to tape things off the radio. It's perfectly legal to make mp3's out of those tapes. The P2P systems that exist now are just a higher quality easier versions of doing that. The legality is essentially undefined since we are in new territory that there aren't laws for yet. In our system, unless it's expressly forbidden by law, it's legal.
The mess we are dealing with now is silly paranoid whining from overzealous wealthy record companies. I believe in the compulsory licensing model the EFF proposes, it's a good idea. I think if the radio stations can play a song you should be able to swap it as an MP3.
As far as destroying the profitability of the record companies goes, I'm not so worried about that. The days of the starving artist are gone, replaced by the 12 year old multi millionaire crappy artist. I wouldn't cry too much if the record industry got significantly less profitable. They need to be able to make money but the model that exists now is unreasonable.
But that only works if by spending you increase your income more than you spend.
There are many places where spending money tends to pay off more than it costs. Spending money on a good education for every child, for example, is one of the main differences that made early America grow the way it did vs. other countries. That definitely has been, and continues to be, a wildly good investment. Universitie's research programs have been great at contributing back to the economies of the areas around them, advancing technology, and raising the standard of living of the country as a whole. Transportation is another place where money spent usually benefits the public (unless we're talking about the Big Dig, the worst waste of money ever). I haven't seen Bush increase spending in much of the areas that help the economy though. The place I see money going is to the invading foreign countries fund, not such a good economic investment. That basically pulls money out of our economy with a vast array of possible returns on our investment, most of them not so positive looking. Also now you will have to raise military compensation to attract the same number of recruits since a military career appears much more dangerous. Put it all together and you have a seriously bad economic stimulus package.
Since Bush increased spending and it looks doubtful he increased the tax base much, it would appear he just simply will end up having raised our taxes, not now, but down the road. Unless you are old or sick, he probably will have made you significantly poorer in the end. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it. That's up to you to decide. He's done a lot of things with his spending and changed the world in a lot of ways. Just don't kid yourself into thinking it didn't cost you a chunk of money. It did.
you can increase government revenue without actually raising taxes
It's true that you can raise spending without raising taxes "at that time" but you have to pay the money back eventually and you pay it through taxes. Raise spending and you are raising taxes now or raising taxes later.
Polititions love to try to convince us that it's the taxes that are important to the economic health of the country, not the spending. It's a lie. I didn't believe it when Regan did it and I don't believe it now.
The interesting thing that has come out of the last round seems to be that the markets are getting just slightly smarter than they were in the 80s and are starting to see through the false economy. Maybe I'm just being hopeful but I doubt the trick of spending more than you tax is going to work any more. I think the people who understand financial systems have figured out that it's spending that matters and the markets won't react as well to false tax cuts.
>Support our troops: Elect a responsible president!
Right you are! Re-elect Bush in 2004!
That's what makes that comment so fun. It's true no matter what side you are on.
Most people don't think Bush has been responsible with the lives of american troups though. A lot of dedicated patriotic people join the military to defend their country. We owe it to them to not elect someone who will get so many of them killed for so little.
Unless you die soon, Bush raised your taxes!
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase them now, he essentially increased them later.
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase taxes now, he essentially increased them later.
That's funny, I've noticed the same thing. Since I got my ReplayTV I'm getting really annoyed with NPR's stupid blurbs at the beginning and end of every show. It's advertizing, plain and simple. If they would just spend less money, they wouldn't need to advertize so much and they could put more programming in an hour. When I'm watching live TV I can get to about the second commercial and then I can't take it anymore. It starts to really annoy me.
I've become very sensitive to adds. I like that, I like not being bombarded with adds. I've even started buying shows on DVD.
.. and tell computer sellers that they can't make dual-boot computers without paying more for windows (out of all the things microsoft does, THIS is the one that I can't believe they keep getting away with...)
Hmm. Do they really forbid this? If they do that's absolutely anti-competitive.
Hello? FTC? Anyone there? Can someone please stop looking the other way?
Microsoft is finally facing real competition and what happens? Windows gets cheaper and they finally start paying attention to security and stability. $40 Windows XP lite, a huge new focus on stamping out viruses worms and gigantic security holes in their products. If there were no competition, Microsoft wouldn't care about these things. Microsoft is already being pushed around by Linux*.
Free software is already forcing Microsoft to work harder for it's money. Everyone who uses computers, whether they use free software or not, benefits from the competition it introduces into the market.
(* note: by Linux I mean the kernel and all the free software that runs on it most often including some GNU software and lots of non-GNU software)
I've been avoiding Far Cry. A friend of mine keeps recommending it but I'm spending so much time playing UT2004 that another game would just be too much. When I start getting tired of UT2004 I may give it a shot.
Interesting. I skipped over all those games. Now I'm glad I did! My 9800 runs great with all the games I've run on it, especially UT2004 (which I play constantly,)
I'm really happy NVidia fixed their lousy anti-aliasing. From what I've seen it's now aproximately as good as the 9800's. That was my biggest issue with the 59xx line and was one of 2 huge reasons I went to ATI. The other was the noise issue. They apparently fixed both.
I have a policy against spending more than $250 on a video card so we'll see how soon NV40 based cards become an option.
Hmm. Good to know. I haven't put my 9800 in one of my Linux boxes yet. It will probably end up in one some day, I hope they work the issues out by then.
Support our troops: Elect a responsible president! I agree with this part. Bush should be re-elected. A President Gore would have been disasterous after 9/11. We would still be negotiating with the Taliban over Al Queda. That would be the height of irresponsibility!
That's what makes that comment so fun. It's true no matter what side you are on. Most people don't think Bush has been responsible with the lives of american troups though. A lot of dedicated patriotic people join the military to defend their country. We owe it to them to not elect someone who will get so many of them killed for so little.
Unless you die soon, Bush raised your taxes! You must have a crappy accountant. I'm middle income, married, filing jointly and my taxes are down this year.
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase them now, he essentially increased them later.
I run Windows 2000. No kernel recompiles nececary.
Someday Linus et all will fix that Linux issue. You are a braver person than I to be trying to get a Radeon 9800 running on Linux (or maybe you just have too much time on your hands.)
Seriously. I had many more problems with my NVidia drivers than I've had with the ATI ones. I'm not sure what everyone else's experience has been but that has been mine.
No way. I found the ATI drivers to be just as easy to install and much more stable than the NVidia ones.
I have every major rev of Nvidia cards since the TNT (TNT2 GeForce 256, 2, 3, and 4) and tried nearly every driver release during that time and I've never had fewer problems than I do now with ATI ones.
ATI is supposed to announce the 420 soon. They've had some time to redesign too. I switched to ATI in the last round of upgrades and was very happy. I'll need a good reason to switch back. So far I have good reason but ATI could take it away with a decent new product.
Interix is a whole seperate subsystem that talks directly to the NT kernel, in parallel with the Win32 subsystem. Cygwin is a DLL kludge that rides on top of the Win32 subsystem.
I'm not sure I understand the difference between the Cygwin model and "a whole separate subsystem that talks directly to the NT kernel." I'm not trolling, just curious. I've done some work in Cygwin and found it surprisingly adept at handling things that I though Windows was incapable of doing. What can the interix (Windows Services for Unix) do that Cygwin can't?
Excelent. They are back on my list of options. I like them because the ports are in the back and the lights are in the front. That layout works better in my setup.
by 1983, I was tired of hearing people say that this was the year that *nix would start to take over
Absolutely. I keep hearing that from reporters who install Linux for the first time and are surprised it has a GUI! Wide scale linux addoption will probably happen over the course of 10 years starting 5 years out. Open source is patient. It's programmers can't be fired and forbidden to contribute anymore. As long as it's useful, it tends to stick arround.
At this point you can almost see Microsoft's tentrils creeping out in all directions cutting off the supply of money and resources to the open source world. The biggest imminant threat to MS is Open Office, not Linux. In "buying" Sun, they have probably scored a HUGE back door win since a large scale switch to Open Office would have cut half of MS's profits (Office) and opened the door for the other half being pulled away (Windows). Now with Open Office's main supporter in MS's pocket, the project is likely to stumble and bumble for a while before it finds new life.
Everyone watch for signs that OOo is being killed and gear up for pulling it in under a new umbrella. The nice thing about OOo is the MS can't kill it, no matter how much money they give Sun. OOo is open source so it can't be killed unless there is noone willing to support it.
No software that MS has perceived as a threat ever survived long. They buy, they undermine, they sue, and they kill anything that resembles competition ("hello?...FTC?....is anyone home?") Nothing has ever put up a fight like open source software has. We are several rounds in and OSS hasn't even broken a sweat.
Linux may end up changing the world by becomming the OS that everyone runs, that's still to be seen. What is certain, though, is that Linux has changed the world dramatically already by being the OS that everyone *could* run which has forced huge changes in Microsoft's normal behavior. Look at all the pro-customer backflips that Microsoft is doing right now to keep people from switching. Prices are dropping, quality is increasing, security is going up, developers are being handed newer better tools almost for free, all because MS is parranoid about any business reason people have to switch to Linux. And the great news is Linux can be killed through underhanded anti-competitive back channels (MS is trying though SCO but I doubt that will work). When Windows has to win on merrit, the customer can't loose!
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The USPTO only has one type of patent. The "I want a monopoly on this" patent. There should be defensive patents, patents issued saying "we figured out how to do this on our own, we don't want to stop other people form figuring out the same thing we just don't want to be prevented from using our inventions." The cost should be (much) lower and they should be approved faster and nobody should own them. That way you know right off what's going on.
I also like the proposed reforms making large companies who apply for lots of patents pay much more and individuals pay much less.
My father died suddenly about a year ago. He maintained 3 different web sites, one personal, one for a sailing club he belonged to, and one for his cousin's business. He was the sole contact for two of the registrar, plus there were web hosting passwords, ftp server passwords, isp account passwords, email account passwords. Luckily, my mother and I knew all his passwords and have been able to keep everything running. Security is important but it's not a bad idea to have someone else know how to get in to certain things just in case. Email is probably the most important thing because you can usually get people to change your password and email you the new one.
(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
In the country I live in (USA) copying CD's is legal. Making MP3's out of them is legal.
Some people would like to make you think that "If you didn't pay for it, you're stealing." It's not true. As far as I know it's perfectly legal to tape things off the radio. It's perfectly legal to make mp3's out of those tapes. The P2P systems that exist now are just a higher quality easier versions of doing that. The legality is essentially undefined since we are in new territory that there aren't laws for yet. In our system, unless it's expressly forbidden by law, it's legal.
The mess we are dealing with now is silly paranoid whining from overzealous wealthy record companies. I believe in the compulsory licensing model the EFF proposes, it's a good idea. I think if the radio stations can play a song you should be able to swap it as an MP3.
As far as destroying the profitability of the record companies goes, I'm not so worried about that. The days of the starving artist are gone, replaced by the 12 year old multi millionaire crappy artist. I wouldn't cry too much if the record industry got significantly less profitable. They need to be able to make money but the model that exists now is unreasonable.
But that only works if by spending you increase your income more than you spend.
There are many places where spending money tends to pay off more than it costs. Spending money on a good education for every child, for example, is one of the main differences that made early America grow the way it did vs. other countries. That definitely has been, and continues to be, a wildly good investment. Universitie's research programs have been great at contributing back to the economies of the areas around them, advancing technology, and raising the standard of living of the country as a whole. Transportation is another place where money spent usually benefits the public (unless we're talking about the Big Dig, the worst waste of money ever). I haven't seen Bush increase spending in much of the areas that help the economy though. The place I see money going is to the invading foreign countries fund, not such a good economic investment. That basically pulls money out of our economy with a vast array of possible returns on our investment, most of them not so positive looking. Also now you will have to raise military compensation to attract the same number of recruits since a military career appears much more dangerous. Put it all together and you have a seriously bad economic stimulus package.
Since Bush increased spending and it looks doubtful he increased the tax base much, it would appear he just simply will end up having raised our taxes, not now, but down the road. Unless you are old or sick, he probably will have made you significantly poorer in the end. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it. That's up to you to decide. He's done a lot of things with his spending and changed the world in a lot of ways. Just don't kid yourself into thinking it didn't cost you a chunk of money. It did.
you can increase government revenue without actually raising taxes
It's true that you can raise spending without raising taxes "at that time" but you have to pay the money back eventually and you pay it through taxes. Raise spending and you are raising taxes now or raising taxes later.
Polititions love to try to convince us that it's the taxes that are important to the economic health of the country, not the spending. It's a lie. I didn't believe it when Regan did it and I don't believe it now.
The interesting thing that has come out of the last round seems to be that the markets are getting just slightly smarter than they were in the 80s and are starting to see through the false economy. Maybe I'm just being hopeful but I doubt the trick of spending more than you tax is going to work any more. I think the people who understand financial systems have figured out that it's spending that matters and the markets won't react as well to false tax cuts.
>Support our troops: Elect a responsible president!
Right you are! Re-elect Bush in 2004!
That's what makes that comment so fun. It's true no matter what side you are on.
Most people don't think Bush has been responsible with the lives of american troups though. A lot of dedicated patriotic people join the military to defend their country. We owe it to them to not elect someone who will get so many of them killed for so little.
Unless you die soon, Bush raised your taxes!
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase them now, he essentially increased them later.
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase taxes now, he essentially increased them later.
That's funny, I've noticed the same thing. Since I got my ReplayTV I'm getting really annoyed with NPR's stupid blurbs at the beginning and end of every show. It's advertizing, plain and simple. If they would just spend less money, they wouldn't need to advertize so much and they could put more programming in an hour. When I'm watching live TV I can get to about the second commercial and then I can't take it anymore. It starts to really annoy me.
I've become very sensitive to adds. I like that, I like not being bombarded with adds. I've even started buying shows on DVD.
.. and tell computer sellers that they can't make dual-boot computers without paying more for windows (out of all the things microsoft does, THIS is the one that I can't believe they keep getting away with...)
Hmm. Do they really forbid this? If they do that's absolutely anti-competitive.
Hello? FTC? Anyone there? Can someone please stop looking the other way?
Will Linux* destroy Microsoft's business model?
No! It already did.
Microsoft is finally facing real competition and what happens? Windows gets cheaper and they finally start paying attention to security and stability. $40 Windows XP lite, a huge new focus on stamping out viruses worms and gigantic security holes in their products. If there were no competition, Microsoft wouldn't care about these things. Microsoft is already being pushed around by Linux*.
Free software is already forcing Microsoft to work harder for it's money. Everyone who uses computers, whether they use free software or not, benefits from the competition it introduces into the market.
(* note: by Linux I mean the kernel and all the free software that runs on it most often including some GNU software and lots of non-GNU software)
I've been avoiding Far Cry. A friend of mine keeps recommending it but I'm spending so much time playing UT2004 that another game would just be too much. When I start getting tired of UT2004 I may give it a shot.
Interesting. I skipped over all those games. Now I'm glad I did! My 9800 runs great with all the games I've run on it, especially UT2004 (which I play constantly,)
I'm really happy NVidia fixed their lousy anti-aliasing. From what I've seen it's now aproximately as good as the 9800's. That was my biggest issue with the 59xx line and was one of 2 huge reasons I went to ATI. The other was the noise issue. They apparently fixed both.
I have a policy against spending more than $250 on a video card so we'll see how soon NV40 based cards become an option.
Hmm. Good to know. I haven't put my 9800 in one of my Linux boxes yet. It will probably end up in one some day, I hope they work the issues out by then.
Support our troops: Elect a responsible president!
I agree with this part. Bush should be re-elected. A President Gore would have been disasterous after 9/11. We would still be negotiating with the Taliban over Al Queda. That would be the height of irresponsibility!
That's what makes that comment so fun. It's true no matter what side you are on. Most people don't think Bush has been responsible with the lives of american troups though. A lot of dedicated patriotic people join the military to defend their country. We owe it to them to not elect someone who will get so many of them killed for so little.
Unless you die soon, Bush raised your taxes! You must have a crappy accountant. I'm middle income, married, filing jointly and my taxes are down this year.
If you increase spending you are either increasing taxes now or later since all spending is paid for by taxes. Since he didn't increase them now, he essentially increased them later.
Acually, heat is transmitted very rapidly when a phase change is involved. It changes the design a bit but doesn't eliminate it as a possible coolant.
I run Windows 2000. No kernel recompiles nececary.
Someday Linus et all will fix that Linux issue. You are a braver person than I to be trying to get a Radeon 9800 running on Linux (or maybe you just have too much time on your hands.)
Seriously. I had many more problems with my NVidia drivers than I've had with the ATI ones. I'm not sure what everyone else's experience has been but that has been mine.
No way. I found the ATI drivers to be just as easy to install and much more stable than the NVidia ones.
I have every major rev of Nvidia cards since the TNT (TNT2 GeForce 256, 2, 3, and 4) and tried nearly every driver release during that time and I've never had fewer problems than I do now with ATI ones.
ATI is supposed to announce the 420 soon. They've had some time to redesign too. I switched to ATI in the last round of upgrades and was very happy. I'll need a good reason to switch back. So far I have good reason but ATI could take it away with a decent new product.
Reviews! not Revews. (My typo. Sorry)
Interix is a whole seperate subsystem that talks directly to the NT kernel, in parallel with the Win32 subsystem. Cygwin is a DLL kludge that rides on top of the Win32 subsystem.
I'm not sure I understand the difference between the Cygwin model and "a whole separate subsystem that talks directly to the NT kernel." I'm not trolling, just curious. I've done some work in Cygwin and found it surprisingly adept at handling things that I though Windows was incapable of doing. What can the interix (Windows Services for Unix) do that Cygwin can't?
Excelent. They are back on my list of options.
I like them because the ports are in the back and
the lights are in the front. That layout works
better in my setup.
Thanks
by 1983, I was tired of hearing people say that this was the year that *nix would start to take over
Absolutely. I keep hearing that from reporters who install Linux for the first time and are surprised it has a GUI! Wide scale linux addoption will probably happen over the course of 10 years starting 5 years out. Open source is patient. It's programmers can't be fired and forbidden to contribute anymore. As long as it's useful, it tends to stick arround.
At this point you can almost see Microsoft's tentrils creeping out in all directions cutting off the supply of money and resources to the open source world. The biggest imminant threat to MS is Open Office, not Linux. In "buying" Sun, they have probably scored a HUGE back door win since a large scale switch to Open Office would have cut half of MS's profits (Office) and opened the door for the other half being pulled away (Windows). Now with Open Office's main supporter in MS's pocket, the project is likely to stumble and bumble for a while before it finds new life.
Everyone watch for signs that OOo is being killed and gear up for pulling it in under a new umbrella. The nice thing about OOo is the MS can't kill it, no matter how much money they give Sun. OOo is open source so it can't be killed unless there is noone willing to support it.
No software that MS has perceived as a threat ever survived long. They buy, they undermine, they sue, and they kill anything that resembles competition ("hello?...FTC?....is anyone home?") Nothing has ever put up a fight like open source software has. We are several rounds in and OSS hasn't even broken a sweat.
Linux may end up changing the world by becomming the OS that everyone runs, that's still to be seen. What is certain, though, is that Linux has changed the world dramatically already by being the OS that everyone *could* run which has forced huge changes in Microsoft's normal behavior. Look at all the pro-customer backflips that Microsoft is doing right now to keep people from switching. Prices are dropping, quality is increasing, security is going up, developers are being handed newer better tools almost for free, all because MS is parranoid about any business reason people have to switch to Linux. And the great news is Linux can be killed through underhanded anti-competitive back channels (MS is trying though SCO but I doubt that will work). When Windows has to win on merrit, the customer can't loose!
Did it look like a SD2008 (Flat top and bottom) or a EG008W (slightly rounded top and bottom with legs on the sides)?
I'm hoping they did it right in the new SD2008 model.
Yup. Me too.