Maybe they don't make it all in a few weeks, but 7 years is long enough.
Don't forget: 1) Hollywood accounting - they "never make money". Who do you think the "costs" really go to? They've _consistently_ "never made" money in box office for _years_ running, you'd think they'd stop and do something different/else by now. 2) Include rest of the world in the gross. 3) Hollywood also makes a lot of money from TV licensing (some say the most money, but with Hollywood accounting one can never tell;) ). Many of the "TV" (cable etc) companies are owned by the same bunch.
Lastly I don't actually consider it a problem if Hollywood has problems with "7 years" and has to either go bust or change the way they operate.
"Well if he had it his way then Vista would have smoked OSX"
I wouldn't be that confident of Vista "smoking OSX" but if it did I don't see that as a minus. I'm not an Apple zealot so if Microsoft actually comes up stuff that's much better than Apple's, that's good.
As for IP enforcement making it difficult for MS to borrow, history shows that they just copy anyway (see stacker etc).
After a while it may well be that the OS would become a commodity item like the way the PC BIOS is nowadays.
Then people (and their resources) could actually move on to more interesting stuff.
Microsoft would hate it of course, since BIOS vendors don't make as much $$$.
Example of lifetime of brutal work from a developer?
0) Remember the 7 year monopoly starts from when you _release_ your work, not when you start working on it. As I said - if 7 years is not long enough for you (or people you pay to help) to convince enough people to pay enough for your work, you probably should do something else to earn a living.
1) Just because you put in lots of work doesn't mean you deserve a monopoly.
When someone takes a lifetime of brutal work to get something done, too often it's because they are crap at it. They should do something else instead, and do that "brutal work stuff" as a hobby.
The people like Douglas Engelbart will always be _decades_ ahead of everyone, so the only monopolies that will help them will be way too long for the 99.999% of the other scenarios.
My proposal to encourage such people is that we create prizes for them - similar to the Nobel Prizes.
While they wait to be recognized, they'll just have to find a patron/company to support them, or get a job that pays them enough so they can do their stuff.
If we assume that technology and communications is improving, and the pace of progress is increasing then logically the duration of monopoly should get shorter and shorter rather than longer.
Nowadays if a movie is good it makes a profit within a few weeks of its release. If it's not good, stop making bad movies then.
It is ridiculous that there should be a monopoly for > 100 years.
Think about it, if copyright only lasted 7 years, do you think Microsoft would dare release something as crap as Vista? They'd have to make something significantly better than Windows 2000.
If Microsoft won't want to play by those rules, I'm sure Apple or some others will be happy to take over.
As for patents and people talking about drugs needing long patent terms, the AFAIK drug companies spend more money on marketing (aka bribing doctors with goodies and holidays) than R&D, and FDA approval.
If your middle manager actually does his/her job (i.e. manage), then it's fine giving nonpadded estimates.
By default pad your estimates significantly (e.g. 3 x ), do not announce stuff is finished before time and assume you have to manage your manager.
If you give your manager an estimate, and the manager later gives you something significant extra to be finished first, AND still expects your old estimate to hold true, then you know your manager cannot handle the truth.
If you notice your manager does not pad your estimates when your manager reports to upper management, then you know your manager cannot handle upper management. If your manager tells upper management that X will be done by day Y and it isn't, your manager will end up in trouble, and you are likely to end up in trouble too.
If after a month or so you notice that your manager actually has a clue, then you can _reduce_ (not eliminate - stuff happens;) ) the padding on your estimates, and let your manager do his/her job more effectively.
You don't need to give all managers extremely conservative estimates, some actually know how to do their jobs.
A manager who does his/her job properly, can get far more work done than one who can't. The team won't need to give estimates like "3 weeks" for stuff that can be done in 3 days, because they can trust the manager to do the right thing.
How about if someone just goes to the airport to see a friend off with the relevant residues on his hands and just touches door handles, taps, etc then goes back home without trying to board a plane.
If it's that sensitive, then lots of people would get flagged.
"The problem I have with your idea is that it requires the consumer to read the contract/license agreement in the store and make a legal decision"
I don't see that as a problem at all.
If Corp A's product requires buyers to sign 5 pages of fine print[1], and as a result people prefer to buy stuff from competitors who just stuck to the conventional "you buy it, it's yours", then I see it as a good thing, not a problem.
[1] Typically onerous and offensive fine print that can be summarized as "you the buyer agree to being screwed (except in states/countries where it is illegal)".
I won't be surprised if there's a very small percentage of the population who are more sensitive to mercury.
In my opinion I think the safety levels for something that's compulsory for _everybody_ should be higher than medical treatment that's elective.
For treatment that's elective it's not too bad if 0.1% have serious problems - since you only take it if the doctor thinks you're sick, and there's a good chance that it'll help.
Whereas if you have 1 million _required_ to take it, even if only 0.01% have serious problems, that's 100 who weren't sick before who are now sick.
Given what we know about mercury compounds, if it was me in charge, I wouldn't feel so good about injecting everyone with a mercury compound, even if 100 out of 100 humans have no problems with it, and 1000 out of 1000 mice have no problems.
Heh, it's good to see someone who lives in the real world and realizes it.
That said USD80K buys you a lot where I live (50K to 65K meals). So managing the hardware may not cost as much if you're in a different part of the real world.
Looking at the NIH link on that page, it seems like it's not as bad as asbestos:
"Symptoms usually improve after stopping exposure to the dust. Continued exposure can lead to damaged lung function. In the U.S., worker's compensation may be available to people with byssinosis".
It's probably significant, there are plenty of ways windmills can start fires - heat from friction from failed/worn bearings, sparks from static electricity.
Anyway, it's good if he builds the farm, the rest of us elsewhere can learn from the results:).
To make things a bit clearer. It's also not the most profitable in the wishy washy terms of $$$ per "human work/effort" needed.
For example, when you buy a bottle of fancy mineral water, you are paying a lot more $$$ per gallon/litre than you are when you buy gasoline/petrol (assuming USA).
With fancy mineral water, the companies try to advertise that they hardly do anything to the water except find a marketable place with water, pump the water out, filter it a bit, test it, bottle it, distribute it.
With gasoline/petrol, there's a lot more work involved, the oil companies have to keep finding new places to drill for oil, build an oil rig or whatever, drill for it (and it's not 100% guaranteed they'll get oil), pump the oil out, store it, send it to the refinery, refine the oil, send it to add the necessary additives (with the associated costs of R&D), distribute it to fuel stations.
It's not the most profitable in profit margin terms, and certainly not the most profitable in terms of ROI.
Oil is just the biggest business because almost everyone with money needs oil AND they need lots of it. So with a 10% profit margin, they'd end up making a lot more money in absolute terms than everyone else.
I wonder which you should be more afraid of, the "evil terrorists" (or is it China/Iran this year?), or 30,000 people a year losing their freedom of speech.
I'm sure their loss of freedom of speech is not that broad, but then again they can't tell you can they?;)
If you're using Win 2K Pro with some registry tweaks you can add zones and even configure the My Computer zone. I've added "Other Zones", for zones I can't bear to call Trusted Sites, but require active scripting. And I've actually got the "My Computer" zone in a high security setting - but this means that you can't use the new style views for explorer - have to use "classic". I'm not sure if it works on WinXP Pro.
That said, for stuff like Facebook and MySpace, I'd use a virtual machine;).
By the time you get a car/plane that's accepted by the "market", the insides are going to be of a certain quality, no matter what the process used.
Did I get that right?:)
So now the question is how long did it take to get that level of quality. And maybe there is a difference in quality but the measurement used is not sensitive enough, or not as appropriate or his conclusion isn't quite correct - he measured a difference, just didn't show in his conclusion;).
I do point out that everyone is going to die anyway. But I don't see how it means "nothing really matters". It makes it matter even more how you live your life NOW and till you die.
I find it funny that _some_ people torture themselves with diets they find unpleasant, so that they can avoid getting heart attacks, when that means that if the diets work they'd increase their chances of dying of cancer or stroke.
IMO dying from a heart attack is much better than dying of cancer.
Of course if they found those diets _enjoyable_ then it's a different matter (same if they're in danger of dying of a heart attack at 40, which is way too early to go - lots of fun things left to do).
I don't think Icahn actually believes what he is claiming. He's just claiming it so that he can make even more boatloads of cash.
The Yahoo deal would have made a lot of people like Icahn richer. They take the profits, run and do they really care what happens to Yahoo? No they don't.
If you think the deal doesn't make sense, then the people who should worry should be the people owning Microsoft shares.
The founders of Yahoo may not like their baby being destroyed in the long run, but that's what happens when you take a company public - it's no longer 100% in your hands.
"you wind up seeing lots of movies that EVERYONE can agree are really bad"
Not really, usually those critics don't even bother reviewing those, and once you figure out what genre it is, that's often good enough to figure out why the critic didn't like it.
While I'm not a big fan of "so bad that it becomes good" movies, I believe there are a fair number of people who like that sort of stuff - they have a few beers (I don't like beer either;) ), watch it with friends etc.
There's no accounting for taste. I mean just look at some of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood - when they are so surprised it bombs. Sometimes they seem so surprised why something is a success too. Those hollywood bunch just have rather different tastes from their audience I guess- so they're just shooting in the dark. Either that or they have some sort of agenda to not give the masses what they want.
You don't need a critic you usually agree with. It could be a critic you usually disagree with. So you just watch what that critic hates:).
I'd say all you really need from reviewers is a list of movies that reviewer likes, a list of those he hates and which movies he thinks "this" movie is like and whether he hates it or likes it.
That way, no spoiler, but you still know whether you want to watch it or not, as long as that reviewer is consistent, and has good correlation with your preferences (whether negative or positive).
Of course reviewers won't get paid very much for doing stuff like this:).
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Maybe they don't make it all in a few weeks, but 7 years is long enough.
;) ). Many of the "TV" (cable etc) companies are owned by the same bunch.
Don't forget:
1) Hollywood accounting - they "never make money". Who do you think the "costs" really go to? They've _consistently_ "never made" money in box office for _years_ running, you'd think they'd stop and do something different/else by now.
2) Include rest of the world in the gross.
3) Hollywood also makes a lot of money from TV licensing (some say the most money, but with Hollywood accounting one can never tell
Lastly I don't actually consider it a problem if Hollywood has problems with "7 years" and has to either go bust or change the way they operate.
"Well if he had it his way then Vista would have smoked OSX"
I wouldn't be that confident of Vista "smoking OSX" but if it did I don't see that as a minus. I'm not an Apple zealot so if Microsoft actually comes up stuff that's much better than Apple's, that's good.
As for IP enforcement making it difficult for MS to borrow, history shows that they just copy anyway (see stacker etc).
After a while it may well be that the OS would become a commodity item like the way the PC BIOS is nowadays.
Then people (and their resources) could actually move on to more interesting stuff.
Microsoft would hate it of course, since BIOS vendors don't make as much $$$.
Example of lifetime of brutal work from a developer?
0) Remember the 7 year monopoly starts from when you _release_ your work, not when you start working on it. As I said - if 7 years is not long enough for you (or people you pay to help) to convince enough people to pay enough for your work, you probably should do something else to earn a living.
1) Just because you put in lots of work doesn't mean you deserve a monopoly.
When someone takes a lifetime of brutal work to get something done, too often it's because they are crap at it. They should do something else instead, and do that "brutal work stuff" as a hobby.
The people like Douglas Engelbart will always be _decades_ ahead of everyone, so the only monopolies that will help them will be way too long for the 99.999% of the other scenarios.
My proposal to encourage such people is that we create prizes for them - similar to the Nobel Prizes.
While they wait to be recognized, they'll just have to find a patron/company to support them, or get a job that pays them enough so they can do their stuff.
If we assume that technology and communications is improving, and the pace of progress is increasing then logically the duration of monopoly should get shorter and shorter rather than longer.
Nowadays if a movie is good it makes a profit within a few weeks of its release. If it's not good, stop making bad movies then.
It is ridiculous that there should be a monopoly for > 100 years.
Think about it, if copyright only lasted 7 years, do you think Microsoft would dare release something as crap as Vista? They'd have to make something significantly better than Windows 2000.
If Microsoft won't want to play by those rules, I'm sure Apple or some others will be happy to take over.
As for patents and people talking about drugs needing long patent terms, the AFAIK drug companies spend more money on marketing (aka bribing doctors with goodies and holidays) than R&D, and FDA approval.
Doh. You can do the same sort of thing on Linux too.
Replace init with bash. Or specify init=/bin/bash while booting. Or linux single. There tons of ways to get in.
The article is due to one or more of the following: stupidity, ignorance or malice.
As it is, even if it turns out to not be fusion or new energy source, it still seems to be an interesting phenomena worthy of some study.
At worst it's an unusual battery or energy storage/conversion device, and someone might later find a real use for it.
In contrast the hot fusion people have gone through billions of dollars, and what major advance have they produced?
If your middle manager actually does his/her job (i.e. manage), then it's fine giving nonpadded estimates.
;) ) the padding on your estimates, and let your manager do his/her job more effectively.
By default pad your estimates significantly (e.g. 3 x ), do not announce stuff is finished before time and assume you have to manage your manager.
If you give your manager an estimate, and the manager later gives you something significant extra to be finished first, AND still expects your old estimate to hold true, then you know your manager cannot handle the truth.
If you notice your manager does not pad your estimates when your manager reports to upper management, then you know your manager cannot handle upper management. If your manager tells upper management that X will be done by day Y and it isn't, your manager will end up in trouble, and you are likely to end up in trouble too.
If after a month or so you notice that your manager actually has a clue, then you can _reduce_ (not eliminate - stuff happens
You don't need to give all managers extremely conservative estimates, some actually know how to do their jobs.
A manager who does his/her job properly, can get far more work done than one who can't. The team won't need to give estimates like "3 weeks" for stuff that can be done in 3 days, because they can trust the manager to do the right thing.
How about if someone just goes to the airport to see a friend off with the relevant residues on his hands and just touches door handles, taps, etc then goes back home without trying to board a plane.
If it's that sensitive, then lots of people would get flagged.
If those 100 cases are avoidable, then it's more a matter of how to avoid them and how much it costs.
;). Just kidding :).
And perhaps there are other people damaged just not as severely.
After all, apparently a lot of people voted Bush back in for a second term
I'm no thief (or ex-thief), but for fun I might try using dry ice (or similar) to break the window or lock.
Basically if the lock/window is hard, you can probably freeze it, make it brittle and then shatter it.
If the lock/window is soft, you can cut or drill it.
"The problem I have with your idea is that it requires the consumer to read the contract/license agreement in the store and make a legal decision"
I don't see that as a problem at all.
If Corp A's product requires buyers to sign 5 pages of fine print[1], and as a result people prefer to buy stuff from competitors who just stuck to the conventional "you buy it, it's yours", then I see it as a good thing, not a problem.
[1] Typically onerous and offensive fine print that can be summarized as "you the buyer agree to being screwed (except in states/countries where it is illegal)".
I won't be surprised if there's a very small percentage of the population who are more sensitive to mercury.
In my opinion I think the safety levels for something that's compulsory for _everybody_ should be higher than medical treatment that's elective.
For treatment that's elective it's not too bad if 0.1% have serious problems - since you only take it if the doctor thinks you're sick, and there's a good chance that it'll help.
Whereas if you have 1 million _required_ to take it, even if only 0.01% have serious problems, that's 100 who weren't sick before who are now sick.
Given what we know about mercury compounds, if it was me in charge, I wouldn't feel so good about injecting everyone with a mercury compound, even if 100 out of 100 humans have no problems with it, and 1000 out of 1000 mice have no problems.
Heh, it's good to see someone who lives in the real world and realizes it.
That said USD80K buys you a lot where I live (50K to 65K meals). So managing the hardware may not cost as much if you're in a different part of the real world.
Looking at the NIH link on that page, it seems like it's not as bad as asbestos:
"Symptoms usually improve after stopping exposure to the dust. Continued exposure can lead to damaged lung function. In the U.S., worker's compensation may be available to people with byssinosis".
It adds to the risk.
:).
It's probably significant, there are plenty of ways windmills can start fires - heat from friction from failed/worn bearings, sparks from static electricity.
Anyway, it's good if he builds the farm, the rest of us elsewhere can learn from the results
To make things a bit clearer. It's also not the most profitable in the wishy washy terms of $$$ per "human work/effort" needed.
For example, when you buy a bottle of fancy mineral water, you are paying a lot more $$$ per gallon/litre than you are when you buy gasoline/petrol (assuming USA).
With fancy mineral water, the companies try to advertise that they hardly do anything to the water except find a marketable place with water, pump the water out, filter it a bit, test it, bottle it, distribute it.
With gasoline/petrol, there's a lot more work involved, the oil companies have to keep finding new places to drill for oil, build an oil rig or whatever, drill for it (and it's not 100% guaranteed they'll get oil), pump the oil out, store it, send it to the refinery, refine the oil, send it to add the necessary additives (with the associated costs of R&D), distribute it to fuel stations.
All for prices cheaper than fancy mineral water.
It's not the most profitable in profit margin terms, and certainly not the most profitable in terms of ROI.
Oil is just the biggest business because almost everyone with money needs oil AND they need lots of it. So with a 10% profit margin, they'd end up making a lot more money in absolute terms than everyone else.
Wow 30,000 a year.
;)
I wonder which you should be more afraid of, the "evil terrorists" (or is it China/Iran this year?), or 30,000 people a year losing their freedom of speech.
I'm sure their loss of freedom of speech is not that broad, but then again they can't tell you can they?
The one where one man one vote really is one man one vote? ;)
If you're using Win 2K Pro with some registry tweaks you can add zones and even configure the My Computer zone. I've added "Other Zones", for zones I can't bear to call Trusted Sites, but require active scripting. And I've actually got the "My Computer" zone in a high security setting - but this means that you can't use the new style views for explorer - have to use "classic". I'm not sure if it works on WinXP Pro.
;).
That said, for stuff like Facebook and MySpace, I'd use a virtual machine
By the time you get a car/plane that's accepted by the "market", the insides are going to be of a certain quality, no matter what the process used.
:)
;).
Did I get that right?
So now the question is how long did it take to get that level of quality. And maybe there is a difference in quality but the measurement used is not sensitive enough, or not as appropriate or his conclusion isn't quite correct - he measured a difference, just didn't show in his conclusion
I do point out that everyone is going to die anyway. But I don't see how it means "nothing really matters". It makes it matter even more how you live your life NOW and till you die.
I find it funny that _some_ people torture themselves with diets they find unpleasant, so that they can avoid getting heart attacks, when that means that if the diets work they'd increase their chances of dying of cancer or stroke.
IMO dying from a heart attack is much better than dying of cancer.
Of course if they found those diets _enjoyable_ then it's a different matter (same if they're in danger of dying of a heart attack at 40, which is way too early to go - lots of fun things left to do).
You really think he's that stupid?
I don't think Icahn actually believes what he is claiming. He's just claiming it so that he can make even more boatloads of cash.
The Yahoo deal would have made a lot of people like Icahn richer. They take the profits, run and do they really care what happens to Yahoo? No they don't.
If you think the deal doesn't make sense, then the people who should worry should be the people owning Microsoft shares.
The founders of Yahoo may not like their baby being destroyed in the long run, but that's what happens when you take a company public - it's no longer 100% in your hands.
"you wind up seeing lots of movies that EVERYONE can agree are really bad"
;) ), watch it with friends etc.
Not really, usually those critics don't even bother reviewing those, and once you figure out what genre it is, that's often good enough to figure out why the critic didn't like it.
While I'm not a big fan of "so bad that it becomes good" movies, I believe there are a fair number of people who like that sort of stuff - they have a few beers (I don't like beer either
There's no accounting for taste. I mean just look at some of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood - when they are so surprised it bombs. Sometimes they seem so surprised why something is a success too. Those hollywood bunch just have rather different tastes from their audience I guess- so they're just shooting in the dark. Either that or they have some sort of agenda to not give the masses what they want.
You don't need a critic you usually agree with. It could be a critic you usually disagree with. So you just watch what that critic hates :).
:).
I'd say all you really need from reviewers is a list of movies that reviewer likes, a list of those he hates and which movies he thinks "this" movie is like and whether he hates it or likes it.
That way, no spoiler, but you still know whether you want to watch it or not, as long as that reviewer is consistent, and has good correlation with your preferences (whether negative or positive).
Of course reviewers won't get paid very much for doing stuff like this