One thing I don't understand about this (probably because IANAPL) is why the prior art search has to be limited to web applications. It seems as though the patent covers a pretty common user interface element. And slapping words like "over a computer network" on the end shouldn't be enough to differentiate (though, didn't some company get a patent for dutch auctions on the web?).
So what I'm saying is, isn't something like the "bold" button in Microsoft Word prior art for this. Or, if we want to get more related, can't we look for prior art in the CD-ROM applications that were common in the early nineties? They had user interfaces very similar to web sites.
Ah, but you're missing a point. Our control over companies is as consumers, not as citizens. If enough people disagree with a company (and exercise that disagreement by not buying the company's products), then the company will change.
But, you might argue, the record company's aren't changing, even through lots of people aren't buying their products. To which I would point out, that the slashot/tech savvy crowd isn't really indicative of the general population. Enough people are still buying CDs to make the record companies think that there might be hope for their existing business model. Record sales are dropping, but not really by that much. If record sales dropped by, say, 60% in a year, you can bet your ass that the big five would turn on a dime.
Well, the ego trip that you mentioned is actually the feedback loop that insures that OS projects are relatively easy to use.
If the project leaders don't insure that their project is easy enough to use (by various means) by their intendend audience in most cases, then the intended audience won't use the project and the project leaders won't get the ego trip.
There isn't any particular flaw, but there are two other points to consider.
First, what you've described is only about one quarter of what struts does. A very important quarter, of course; the core of a common web application pattern. As to all the other stuff that struts does, there doesn't seem much point in listing it here. Check the site.
Second, look at what you're saying. You're saying, "I can write code that does what struts does". Sure, by why write code when a good third party library is already there. I could summarize the code required for a simple web server in a few paragraphs, but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to write one for every new project.
About the idea of Spirited Away being nominated for best picture, won't happen. The new category of best animated picture was created by the MPA specifically so that animated movies wouldn't be nominated for the best picture award.
This article depresses me because of two opposing facts:
1. People don't care about networks, they care about shows. Give me "The Sopranos", "Survivor", "Cowboy Bebop", "[Insert your favorite show here]", a la carte. I couldn't care less about these dinosaurs called networks. The sooner networks disappear the better.
2. But, this show based nirvana is never going to happen because the companies controlling the television system are just as violently opposed to changing their business model as the [RI|MP]AA companies. So even with a la carte networks, I'm still going to have to pay for 167 hours of crap each week for the one hour I do want.
I, for one, am really hoping that the Chinese go a little space crazy. American space activities need a good adversary to loosen the congressional purse strings and a Chinese space station should do it.
I'd like to point out that the book doesn't actually answer the question posed in its title (Why does software cost so much?).
The essay from which the book takes its title from isn't about the costs of developing software, it's about the real reason why people (generally management types) ask the question. The answer DeMarco gives, IIRC, is that it's generally asked as a rhetorical bargaining device.
DeMarco suggests that the correct answer to "why does software cost so much?" is "compared to what?"
Okay, I'm going to go into extreme cynicism mode here. You've been warned.
We get these Ask Slashdot posts from time to time along the lines of:
"I'm going to be meeting with a <government representative> about <topic> and what are some arguments I can use."
And to me they always seem futile. No matter how good your arguments are, if the other side has millions of <monetary units> to spend on lobbyists, it won't help. Politicians are fundamentally immune to logic. And this is a mistake that geek lobbyists keep making.
Anyway, on a more constructive note, I'm put in mind of a quote (which I unfortunately can't find the attribution for) which explains lobbying:
"If you're arguing, you've already lost."
The way to get your point across in political circles isn't to have many, well thought out points, unfortunately; but instead to have a short, pithy saying that you keep repeating over and over and over.
I think that yours is just a case of bad luck (DSL problem) rather than general Canadian problems.
The DSL market in Canada is actually wonderfully competitive. The govt. regulators did a good job in forcing the monopoly telcos to offer up the last mile at (almost) reasonable wholesale rates. In most major cities you have several DSL suppliers to choose from.
Cable broadband, however, is not open. If the regulators would do the same thing to cable that they did to telephone broadband, Canada would be broadband nirvana.
1. If the kernal maintainers think that a patent is not defensible (prior-art, obviousness, etc.) then they should go ahead and violate it.
2. We use community peer pressure (no really) to force the commercial linux distributors to set up a linux patent infringement legal defense fund supported by a small fixed percentage of the purchase price of the distribution.
3. And make it clear to all the tech companies that we'll spend every penny in the fund on lawyers to attempt to overturn any patents that they try to enforce against the kernel.
Hey, how about we get two "I always buy the wrong format" people to buy each of the formats and watch the universe disappear in a puff of irreconcilable contradiction.
Can't we just abandon the whole notion that getting computers to play any single game has anything to do with understanding intelligence. It's all just a parlour trick. Fun to watch, and interesting hobby, but it doesn't really provide any real insights into intelligence.
Now, maybe if you could create a program that could learn any game you put in front of it and get better at those games on it's own, you might have something.
What I don't understand is what they are actually spending $750 million on. The/. item just says they're "dumping" and the Reuters article just says "The Redmond, Washington-based behemoth was vague on details of its outlay" (hey! I actually read the reference before posting!).
Anybody care to make wild, paranoid, microsoft-bashing conspiracy guesses about what they're really buying? Or even informed, logical, reasonable guesses (but that's much less fun).
I think that the fundamental difference between ICANN and Linus isn't technical. It's the difference between a benevolent dictator and a malevolent dictator.
I admit it, the reason I hate ICANN is because they're doing it all wrong. If they did it right I'd let them keep their little dictatorship.
It's not a lack of democracy that pisses me off in this case, it's a lack of competance.
Companies don't have some inalienable right to have the same revenue streams forever. Just because the big 5 earned $X billion last year doesn't mean that they have some right to earn $X billion next year or five years from now.
And they sure as hell shouldn't have the right to buy legislation that uses the government's monopoly on force to maintain their revenue stream.
Markets change, and the revenue stream that company's gain from those markets changes.
The canonical example would be if the buggy whip manufacturers bought a law that required you to buy a new whip with every new car. It would maintain the revenue stream for the buggy whip manufacturing companys, but would it make any sense?
Well, on the issue of people that get lots of legitimate email from sender's they don't know, there's the "ask for confirmation" type of whitelist (where an email from an unknown sender generates a reply asking for the sender to undertake some action that is difficult to automate).
This might not always be acceptable, like for the job seeking example, but you can always temporarily turn off your whitelist while you're looking for work. Also, if whitelist use becomes common, even companies would get used to the idea.
And on the issue that whitelists don't decrease bandwidth (and might even increase it): I think that it's a bit idealistic to expect that we'll ever have a solution that actually gets rid of spam. Legal approaches just don't seem to work (dispite the occasional article on/.). Maybe we should keep fighting, just on principle, but in the meantime, I'm going to do something to make my life more bareable. Don't ask me to suffer through all the spam shit just to make a point.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing I don't understand about this (probably because IANAPL) is why the prior art search has to be limited to web applications. It seems as though the patent covers a pretty common user interface element. And slapping words like "over a computer network" on the end shouldn't be enough to differentiate (though, didn't some company get a patent for dutch auctions on the web?).
So what I'm saying is, isn't something like the "bold" button in Microsoft Word prior art for this. Or, if we want to get more related, can't we look for prior art in the CD-ROM applications that were common in the early nineties? They had user interfaces very similar to web sites.
Ah, but you're missing a point. Our control over companies is as consumers, not as citizens. If enough people disagree with a company (and exercise that disagreement by not buying the company's products), then the company will change.
But, you might argue, the record company's aren't changing, even through lots of people aren't buying their products. To which I would point out, that the slashot/tech savvy crowd isn't really indicative of the general population. Enough people are still buying CDs to make the record companies think that there might be hope for their existing business model. Record sales are dropping, but not really by that much. If record sales dropped by, say, 60% in a year, you can bet your ass that the big five would turn on a dime.
What's the current legal penalty for movie theatre staff that lets unaccompanied minors into R-rated movies?
I don't see why video game sales shouldn't simply be treated the same.
We don't need new laws, just extend existing ones to cover new media.
No, you're completely wrong.
Canadian television networks can only rebroadcast shows when they have paid the copyright holder for Canadian broadcast rights.
Well, the ego trip that you mentioned is actually the feedback loop that insures that OS projects are relatively easy to use.
If the project leaders don't insure that their project is easy enough to use (by various means) by their intendend audience in most cases, then the intended audience won't use the project and the project leaders won't get the ego trip.
Remember the lesson of "Jurassic Park":
If you don't pay your programmers enough money, a tyrannosaurus rex will eat your lawyer.
I, for one, am glad that the IAB publishes these standard ad sizes. It lets me know what images my filters should throw away.
There isn't any particular flaw, but there are two other points to consider.
First, what you've described is only about one quarter of what struts does. A very important quarter, of course; the core of a common web application pattern. As to all the other stuff that struts does, there doesn't seem much point in listing it here. Check the site.
Second, look at what you're saying. You're saying, "I can write code that does what struts does". Sure, by why write code when a good third party library is already there. I could summarize the code required for a simple web server in a few paragraphs, but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to write one for every new project.
About the idea of Spirited Away being nominated for best picture, won't happen. The new category of best animated picture was created by the MPA specifically so that animated movies wouldn't be nominated for the best picture award.
Kudos to Addison-Wesley and Kent Beck for including a book like this in the "official" XP series.
Now, can we expect to see a book called "Perhaps Windows is Not Always the Best Way" being published by Microsoft Press?
I'd recommend this article as a well-argued critique of XP: Case Against XP
Ooops. There's a hidden assumption in the parent that liberty=privacy. Many people (myself included) would argue that this assumption is incorrect.
Liberty and privacy do have an impact on each other, but they are not synonymous.
This article depresses me because of two opposing facts:
1. People don't care about networks, they care about shows. Give me "The Sopranos", "Survivor", "Cowboy Bebop", "[Insert your favorite show here]", a la carte. I couldn't care less about these dinosaurs called networks. The sooner networks disappear the better.
2. But, this show based nirvana is never going to happen because the companies controlling the television system are just as violently opposed to changing their business model as the [RI|MP]AA companies. So even with a la carte networks, I'm still going to have to pay for 167 hours of crap each week for the one hour I do want.
Feh! A pox on all their houses.
I, for one, am really hoping that the Chinese go a little space crazy. American space activities need a good adversary to loosen the congressional purse strings and a Chinese space station should do it.
I'd like to point out that the book doesn't actually answer the question posed in its title (Why does software cost so much?).
The essay from which the book takes its title from isn't about the costs of developing software, it's about the real reason why people (generally management types) ask the question. The answer DeMarco gives, IIRC, is that it's generally asked as a rhetorical bargaining device.
DeMarco suggests that the correct answer to "why does software cost so much?" is "compared to what?"
Okay, I'm going to go into extreme cynicism mode here. You've been warned.
We get these Ask Slashdot posts from time to time along the lines of:
"I'm going to be meeting with a <government representative> about <topic> and what are some arguments I can use."
And to me they always seem futile. No matter how good your arguments are, if the other side has millions of <monetary units> to spend on lobbyists, it won't help. Politicians are fundamentally immune to logic. And this is a mistake that geek lobbyists keep making.
Anyway, on a more constructive note, I'm put in mind of a quote (which I unfortunately can't find the attribution for) which explains lobbying:
"If you're arguing, you've already lost."
The way to get your point across in political circles isn't to have many, well thought out points, unfortunately; but instead to have a short, pithy saying that you keep repeating over and over and over.
I think that yours is just a case of bad luck (DSL problem) rather than general Canadian problems.
The DSL market in Canada is actually wonderfully competitive. The govt. regulators did a good job in forcing the monopoly telcos to offer up the last mile at (almost) reasonable wholesale rates. In most major cities you have several DSL suppliers to choose from.
Cable broadband, however, is not open. If the regulators would do the same thing to cable that they did to telephone broadband, Canada would be broadband nirvana.
How about this:
1. If the kernal maintainers think that a patent is not defensible (prior-art, obviousness, etc.) then they should go ahead and violate it.
2. We use community peer pressure (no really) to force the commercial linux distributors to set up a linux patent infringement legal defense fund supported by a small fixed percentage of the purchase price of the distribution.
3. And make it clear to all the tech companies that we'll spend every penny in the fund on lawyers to attempt to overturn any patents that they try to enforce against the kernel.
Hey, how about we get two "I always buy the wrong format" people to buy each of the formats and watch the universe disappear in a puff of irreconcilable contradiction.
Can't we just abandon the whole notion that getting computers to play any single game has anything to do with understanding intelligence. It's all just a parlour trick. Fun to watch, and interesting hobby, but it doesn't really provide any real insights into intelligence.
Now, maybe if you could create a program that could learn any game you put in front of it and get better at those games on it's own, you might have something.
Did anyone else read the parent and get really confused why Gloria Steinem was writing articles for Microsoft (MS) magazine?
Sure, I eventually figured it out. But this is
What I don't understand is what they are actually spending $750 million on. The /. item just says they're "dumping" and the Reuters article just says "The Redmond, Washington-based behemoth was vague on details of its outlay" (hey! I actually read the reference before posting!).
Anybody care to make wild, paranoid, microsoft-bashing conspiracy guesses about what they're really buying? Or even informed, logical, reasonable guesses (but that's much less fun).
I think that the fundamental difference between ICANN and Linus isn't technical. It's the difference between a benevolent dictator and a malevolent dictator.
I admit it, the reason I hate ICANN is because they're doing it all wrong. If they did it right I'd let them keep their little dictatorship.
It's not a lack of democracy that pisses me off in this case, it's a lack of competance.
Companies don't have some inalienable right to have the same revenue streams forever. Just because the big 5 earned $X billion last year doesn't mean that they have some right to earn $X billion next year or five years from now.
And they sure as hell shouldn't have the right to buy legislation that uses the government's monopoly on force to maintain their revenue stream.
Markets change, and the revenue stream that company's gain from those markets changes.
The canonical example would be if the buggy whip manufacturers bought a law that required you to buy a new whip with every new car. It would maintain the revenue stream for the buggy whip manufacturing companys, but would it make any sense?
Well, on the issue of people that get lots of legitimate email from sender's they don't know, there's the "ask for confirmation" type of whitelist (where an email from an unknown sender generates a reply asking for the sender to undertake some action that is difficult to automate).
/.). Maybe we should keep fighting, just on principle, but in the meantime, I'm going to do something to make my life more bareable. Don't ask me to suffer through all the spam shit just to make a point.
This might not always be acceptable, like for the job seeking example, but you can always temporarily turn off your whitelist while you're looking for work. Also, if whitelist use becomes common, even companies would get used to the idea.
And on the issue that whitelists don't decrease bandwidth (and might even increase it): I think that it's a bit idealistic to expect that we'll ever have a solution that actually gets rid of spam. Legal approaches just don't seem to work (dispite the occasional article on