If you think your reliability for keeping data is better than Google's you are insane. Unlike Microsoft, famed for the Sidekick data loss caused by destroying the backups they were keeping on the same SAN as their originals, Google actually backs up to tape and has demonstrated the ability to use them several times.
On the other hand, what you should be scared of are the privacy implications. There is a massive difference between sending email through gmail; where your email client will actually have been checked for what garbage it puts in files; and using local applications which are probably failing to zero stuff in files. I would never use Google drive without making sure I encrypted it.
Actually, by preference you should send your gmail with GPG, however that does rather spoil the search feature. That's another discussion though.
Err.. much as I used to love the interface, you wouldn't catch me dead using OS/X. I would plan to run Linux on it. My experience with MacBooks is that I don't trust the Linux device drivers that much so that's another reason this would be better.
On if you can hack it. As long as you can still open up the developer mode and if you can upgrade the local storage, even with some difficulty then this becomes a way of getting a MacBook Pro workalike without giving money to either Apple or Microsoft then I'm for it. Actually I will go for the more "expensive" 64G / LTE version too. It's still cheaper than the $2,199.00 Amazon pops up with for a retina Macbook.
I especially love the idea of having a proper shape of screen. I would sacrifice very much performance for that.
> If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent.
Well, there are several ways you could deal with that problem. Here are some of them:
* Deal with each chunk separately. Just let each machine decide when to delete its chunk.
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the latest modification date on all of them. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
this is (one of) the solution(s) given in
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the earliest modification date on all of them. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's chunks is not updated
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the average of the modification dates. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's chunks is updated but the others all become old
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the file date listed in the shared filename. Update the modification dates accordingly, and then let each machine deal with its chunk independently of the others.
doesn't solve the right problem; you can no longer refer to a file by a fixed name
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the file date listed in the shared filename. Update the modification dates accordingly, sort all of the time files by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
as previous answer
...etc. There are many, many variations on this technique that you might imagine. The one described in this patent is different from all of them:
deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks;...
...which is why the patent was issued.
There are lots of things which are different from the patent, for example going around the block. However, that doesn't mean that the patent isn't an obvious solution to the given problem when added to the prior art. For example; let's say I want to get the number 105353284. Probably nobody has explicitly published a method of getting it by adding 105353175 to 109. However that doesn't mean I get to have a patent on it. The fact that addition exists overall is prior art. Just like the fact that comparing timestamps and looking through lists exists is should be prior art to this patent.
No; I agree. You are right in a sense. The sense is that, when you know that you have a distributed file system in which there are timestamps distributed to different chunks, every single programmer you can find will realises that you have to compare your expiry period against all of the distributed timestamps (at least until you find a newer one). However, until you have the actual technical details of some distributed filesystem you can't know exactly what you have to do to deal with it. That's the trick the judges use to pretend this isn't obvious.
Your definition of "obvious" is different from the Federal Circuit's. They mean something like "if you put a programmer in a room he would come up with this sponaneously" where you mean something like "if asked to solve a problem I could come up with this quickly and wouldn't need to look up a patent to do it". Your definition would be better and fit better with humans understanding of the word "obvious". It would also make more chance that patents would be valuable. Unfortunately, however, law doesn't work like that. Obvious is defined by the politicians, lawyers and judges. Very often the politicians deliberately twist the words so that the law seems acceptable when a layman reads it but they manage to screw the layman over for the interests of their big corporate buddies.
Mostly because, by putting up a false accusation in the original article, the poster became vulnerable to this type of comment. Remember there are a number of people who benefit from patents by ensuring that it's difficult for competition to enter the software market. There are plenty more who believe they benefit even when they are actually getting lower paid jobs because of this. If someone makes a stupid accusation these people will always step in to show that it was wrong.
What I meant is that I don't see how the fact that the temp. files being deleted are on a distributed file system is relevant to the concept of cleaning them up?
It's because there's no concept of the inode where I can go and see a single timestamp for the age of the file. Instead I have a timestamp on each of the chunks which make up the file. This adds the following to claim one
selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks
Which legally, according to East Texas and the Federal circuit, but probably not according to the more recent decisions of the supreme court of the USA, is sufficient to make this patentable material. Note that it doesn't tell you some magic new fast algorithm for doing this. There is nothing valuable in this patent. However, if Google didn't patent it Microsoft would and would then sue them in East Texas and have the court ignore the fact that Google had published it as prior art. They have little choice but to do stupid patents as long as the stupidity of software patents continues.
Yes; maybe; and the whole summary is stupid. From claim one of the patent; the very first paragraph:
having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers
So; where the mainframes of the 70s had single consolidated disks stores this is talking about doing this on a distributed filesystem. The area of application is indeed new completely opposite to the claim of the summary.
Patents are not supposed to control what you do; instead they control how you do it. Since the way that Google is claiming to do this is by going around comparing the timestamps on a bunch of different distributed chunks of a file, this is something that no mainframe of the 70s is likely to have had to to so it may even be a new way to automatically delete temporary files. I wish people would begin to understand this and commenters would point it out every time. I wonder if this isn't a bunch of patent lawyers trying to make us look silly.
Having said that; If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent. You certainly wouldn't have great difficulty in deciding how you do it; suddenly think "maybe there's a patent that might tell me how to do this"; go to the patent office and read the patent then come back inspired and manage to solve your problem only because Google was so nice as to publish their solution. Patents are supposed to record valuable secrets that companies might otherwise keep to themselves in a way that helps humanity. This one is failing at that.
What this comes down to is that the whole idea of patents on things as abstract as software is stupid and is an illegal interference in free speech a right everyone should have under the universal declaration of human rights. The patent officers of the USPTO and the congressmen who put them there should be arrested.
Firstly, you and he grandparent are simply lying. Bill neither mentioned Windows Mobile nor Windows Phone. He was talking about Microsoft's strategy in general. That would include both; otherwise he would say something like "I wasn't satisfied with Microsoft's mobile strategy but now Steve has fixed it and we have a good chance in future". Notice how, despite the total sales disaster, he's still pretending that Surface was a success. Any admission of failure that he makes leads to the immediate question "what are you doing to make sure they fix this".
Secondly; this is not some innocent babe talking here. Before the chairman of Microsoft talks on any subject related to the company he will have been briefed and considered everything with both public relations advisers and lawyers. He didn't say this as an accidental candid gesture. He said this as a specific warning to a bunch of existing parters. No doubt Nokia and AT&T have been repeatedly warned in private that they aren't delivering what Microsoft wants. This is a very clear attempt to get the message out "Microsoft's strategy is failing; we are going to have to change it; partners we consider are in the way had better get out of the way". In other words; some time soon Nokia at least; AT&T probably are going to get fucked. If there was any different message then when the Register called them (which they always do) or immediately after the story was published there would have been a retraction or clarification. The Register's story is exactly the message Microsoft wants put out. The reason is to explain why they are about to screw over their partners yet again.
I guess that is the smartest thing to do if I am a lone inventor..? Show the big players a proof of concept of something I can do and let them contract / hire / buy your company if they are interested?
N.B. this isn't really the best place to get advice. Your (patent) attorney will be better.
However, some things. A fundamental rule of patents is never to tell anyone not involved in the invention without having some kind of NDA in place. So your idea won't normally work because big companies normally won't agree to an NDA in this situation.
You might be able to get something in place by starting a patent application and then, having made the first application getting them involved before it's finished.
Very often the best thing to do is simply to publish the idea. Since you will have great difficulty benefiting from a patent you might as well save the fees. Publishing will stop anyone else from patenting the idea.
This has already happened. Try reading some random patents one day and you will see that you probably don't understand what they are about. This is especially true once you know that the only bit which matters, legally, is really the claims. Have a look at just the first claim (the first is normally the most general claim) of a random patent and see if you can understand what the original idea was. The original aim of the patent system was to ensure that inventions were recorded that might otherwise disappear when their inventor died. This has been subverted so that now the aim of most patents is to block competitors from a wide range of activities related to a product or even product idea.
Actually the other point would have been more clever. The inventors themselves very rarely end up owning the patents and defending them. It's more the companies that buy the patents in off the inventors in one way or another.
The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.
You are partly right. However, in this case the problem has started earlier and it really is the inventor. If you work in a big company and you come up with an invention your idea will go into the patent but you will put it through a patent expert. That person will take your work and turn it into something you don't recognize (there have been quite a few comments like that on Slashdot). What they are doing is taking your idea and generalizing it. They will ask "why did you use a spring" you will say "to store the energy". They will now take that patent and change it to say "in the preferred embodiment then energy will be stored in a spring, however one skilled in the art can also see that other methods of energy storage such as lifting a weight could also be used". Then, when the company changes your idea to use a battery instead that will fall under "other methods of energy storage".
This is before you even get to the stage of losing out due to lack of lawyers to fight in court with.
What a load of shit. A good gun safety course takes a few afternoons on the weekend
You seem to be deeply hard of reading. I will try to translate the proposal
get a firearm (note singular - for one person only) and sleep there (note - by basic principles of security you should assume that the opponents know you are sleeping there) alone then, when the assailants (unknown number) come in armed (with unknown set of weapons) do not attempt to frighten them off (they might get away); instead kill them all.
Remember that, whilst you might be lucky and get a bunch of punks who have no clue what they are doing, it's actually quite likely that, given that they are willing to attack an occupied building, you will meet heavily armed people ready to fight. Your average gun safety course will considerably reduce the chance of killing yourself accidentally with a weapon. In a random street encounter with lightly armed random assailants who are ready to run away it will give you a reasonable chance of even behaving in an effective way. It definitely does not prepare you to take on multiple heavily armed and prepared assailants and ensure that you kill them all.
So summarised
Buy at least a semi-automatic weapon; actually you almost certainly want multiple weapons
ensure that you have practiced in realistic indoor/ confusing situations; not just some "gun safety" firing range
make sure that you can shoot accurately and rapidly enough to expect to kill three or more "bad guys" yourself personally
Even with all of this; it's a thing you should only do in a situation of desperation. Doing it without that level of preparation comes under basic "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" rules. Planning to fight against multiple forewarned armed assailants with a single pistol,.45 or not, is stupidity of the highest order. Doing it at a time of their choosing in a situation where they know where you are and not the other way round is plain suicide.
Have a good firearm. Kill them. It works very well.
I won't respond to the obvious pro-anti gun control flamebait (only an idiot would do that*). We have no idea where this shop is based so you might be right; In some areas of Mexico where the police will never come this would probably be the right solution. Moreso if you live somewhere where you have no social security and are likely to starve to death if you lose your shop.
However, it doesn't fit the specification. "the solution needs to be almost free".
First of all, you want better and more effective weaponry than the people who are going to come to your shop. Heavy machine guns do not come cheap, and even if you will do with a pair of assault rifles they won't come free.
Secondly, as even the NRA will tell you; especially the NRA; you need to train with your weapon especially if you are planning to use it in a serious situation. An initial period of several months of intense training in marksmanship and urban combat followed up with weekly practice and regular refresher training will be needed. Even with a local club willing to help this is going to end up expensive.
Thirdly, most of the time people's firearms are used against them more than they get to use them. You will want to work in a pair (or more), with one person on guard duty, and one person serving the customers at all time. You will want to buy secure firearm storage for the occasions when you have to put the gun down.
Fourthly a firearm alone isn't going to cut it. If they get inside before you start firing you are going to end up in considerable danger anyway. Let's imagine that this is a stand alone store set back from a road in the Columbian countryside. You will want to have motion detectors and cameras wired to alarms and screens in your safe room together with a loudspeaker system outside. When the invaders come at night you need to give them warning (in case they are lost tourists or local paramilitary police dropping by to check on your health) before you open fire.
Finally, if you do end up killing them and are unlucky, you may want to be ready for the escalation from their drugs gang buddies. At least budget to buy a few RPGs and heavier machine guns; armoured reinforcement and ex-SAS security guards are probably advised.
Overall, whilst this may be excellent on paper, you will find such security does not always come cheap.
And also set up a camera on the building opposite so it records everything as teh camera on the violated property will probably get trashed if seen
I'd assume that all the cameras should send out to an off-premises server. In this case they should be recorded before they trash them.
The idea to get cameras opposite is good though. At that point getting together with all the shops in the area and setting up a system together might help. Scary and anti-freedom though this is, nobody will care or try to stop you. This will be much cheaper than paying for everything yourself.
it's violent porn that's the target, not anything else..
Care to give a link to a page where they have that clearly defined? There's certainly none given in the linked article. If you mean "porn created against the will of the participants through violence" then most of us would be for this. If you mean "porn the government happens to decide is violent" as happened in the UK then I think that's a bit less clear. A whole bunch of perfectly legal acts have become illegal if filmed. Even between consenting adults. People are right to be suspicious.
You've come to the wrong place if you wanted constructive criticism - Slashdot it only interested in positive reinforcement that Microsoft is blah blah blah blah.
When did the Microsoft shills become such whiny shits? All through this article there are hundreds of posts about how Slashdot is terribly biased. There are posts saying "show me a tablet which isn't impossible to repair" just below other people's comments saying "look at Google's Nexus 7 where you can just open the back and change the battery".
Guys; man up. This really isn't such a big deal. There is a legitimate review from a legitimate tear down site. They give a clear justification for giving a bad rating. They also gave other products bad ratings when they deserved it. If Microsoft ever makes a good product in future I'm sure you will get a good revew. You get a few negative comments on Slashdot; people have the right to make bad comments when you try to rip them off. Just take it like a man; treat the surface tablets as a lesson; learn to make a good product next time and move on.
Instead of that it's this terrible Microsoft persecution complex. "everybody's out to get us"; "everyone picks on us, not apple" (totally untrue there was also an anti-apple story before they improved their iPhone 5) Slashdot is biased (again not true; any time there might even be a slight misrepresentation against Microsoft there's always a shill ready to pile on and they always get modded to the heaven). blah blah blah. Give it up.
Excel can already use VBA, which in turn can use IronPython.
Done.
Awesome; but not quite done. At that point you can run an X86 emulator inside it and boot Linux. Then you can run Firefox inside it and finally, you will have access to a sensible language.
Actually, this is one of the best Ask Slashdots ever. A language war enclosed inside a user interface design war enclosed inside a programmer pet hate.
If there is only one implementation then what is the point of having standards? Not having enough competing implementations that keep each other sharp and make it meaningful for the makers to complyto a shared standard is what prevents the world from being burdened with another IE6.
Mod parent up. Let's add to that. Without multiple implementations it's often impossible to tell if the standard is complete. It's not until you find two different people reading it and writing software (think "the first byte will be set to one" - is that the left or the right hand byte?) that you find out that it isn't completely specified. The internet standards even explicitly say that you shouldn't have a standard before you have at least two different implementations to bake off.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think your reliability for keeping data is better than Google's you are insane. Unlike Microsoft, famed for the Sidekick data loss caused by destroying the backups they were keeping on the same SAN as their originals, Google actually backs up to tape and has demonstrated the ability to use them several times.
On the other hand, what you should be scared of are the privacy implications. There is a massive difference between sending email through gmail; where your email client will actually have been checked for what garbage it puts in files; and using local applications which are probably failing to zero stuff in files. I would never use Google drive without making sure I encrypted it.
Actually, by preference you should send your gmail with GPG, however that does rather spoil the search feature. That's another discussion though.
Err.. much as I used to love the interface, you wouldn't catch me dead using OS/X. I would plan to run Linux on it. My experience with MacBooks is that I don't trust the Linux device drivers that much so that's another reason this would be better.
So Microsoft Azure is now web scale? Does it use MongoDB?
You wish. It uses Microsoft SQL which gives it multi day outages. Search google for the string "replicas not helping" for more thoughts on the matter.
Depends...
On if you can hack it. As long as you can still open up the developer mode and if you can upgrade the local storage, even with some difficulty then this becomes a way of getting a MacBook Pro workalike without giving money to either Apple or Microsoft then I'm for it. Actually I will go for the more "expensive" 64G / LTE version too. It's still cheaper than the $2,199.00 Amazon pops up with for a retina Macbook.
I especially love the idea of having a proper shape of screen. I would sacrifice very much performance for that.
> If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent.
Well, there are several ways you could deal with that problem. Here are some of them:
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's
this is (one of) the solution(s) given in
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's chunks is not updated
doesn't solve the right problem; a file which has been recently used can be lost when one of it's chunks is updated but the others all become old
doesn't solve the right problem; you can no longer refer to a file by a fixed name
as previous answer
deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks;...
There are lots of things which are different from the patent, for example going around the block. However, that doesn't mean that the patent isn't an obvious solution to the given problem when added to the prior art. For example; let's say I want to get the number 105353284. Probably nobody has explicitly published a method of getting it by adding 105353175 to 109. However that doesn't mean I get to have a patent on it. The fact that addition exists overall is prior art. Just like the fact that comparing timestamps and looking through lists exists is should be prior art to this patent.
No; I agree. You are right in a sense. The sense is that, when you know that you have a distributed file system in which there are timestamps distributed to different chunks, every single programmer you can find will realises that you have to compare your expiry period against all of the distributed timestamps (at least until you find a newer one). However, until you have the actual technical details of some distributed filesystem you can't know exactly what you have to do to deal with it. That's the trick the judges use to pretend this isn't obvious.
Your definition of "obvious" is different from the Federal Circuit's. They mean something like "if you put a programmer in a room he would come up with this sponaneously" where you mean something like "if asked to solve a problem I could come up with this quickly and wouldn't need to look up a patent to do it". Your definition would be better and fit better with humans understanding of the word "obvious". It would also make more chance that patents would be valuable. Unfortunately, however, law doesn't work like that. Obvious is defined by the politicians, lawyers and judges. Very often the politicians deliberately twist the words so that the law seems acceptable when a layman reads it but they manage to screw the layman over for the interests of their big corporate buddies.
Mostly because, by putting up a false accusation in the original article, the poster became vulnerable to this type of comment. Remember there are a number of people who benefit from patents by ensuring that it's difficult for competition to enter the software market. There are plenty more who believe they benefit even when they are actually getting lower paid jobs because of this. If someone makes a stupid accusation these people will always step in to show that it was wrong.
What I meant is that I don't see how the fact that the temp. files being deleted are on a distributed file system is relevant to the concept of cleaning them up?
It's because there's no concept of the inode where I can go and see a single timestamp for the age of the file. Instead I have a timestamp on each of the chunks which make up the file. This adds the following to claim one
Which legally, according to East Texas and the Federal circuit, but probably not according to the more recent decisions of the supreme court of the USA, is sufficient to make this patentable material. Note that it doesn't tell you some magic new fast algorithm for doing this. There is nothing valuable in this patent. However, if Google didn't patent it Microsoft would and would then sue them in East Texas and have the court ignore the fact that Google had published it as prior art. They have little choice but to do stupid patents as long as the stupidity of software patents continues.
Yes; maybe; and the whole summary is stupid. From claim one of the patent; the very first paragraph:
having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers
So; where the mainframes of the 70s had single consolidated disks stores this is talking about doing this on a distributed filesystem. The area of application is indeed new completely opposite to the claim of the summary.
Patents are not supposed to control what you do; instead they control how you do it. Since the way that Google is claiming to do this is by going around comparing the timestamps on a bunch of different distributed chunks of a file, this is something that no mainframe of the 70s is likely to have had to to so it may even be a new way to automatically delete temporary files. I wish people would begin to understand this and commenters would point it out every time. I wonder if this isn't a bunch of patent lawyers trying to make us look silly.
Having said that; If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent. You certainly wouldn't have great difficulty in deciding how you do it; suddenly think "maybe there's a patent that might tell me how to do this"; go to the patent office and read the patent then come back inspired and manage to solve your problem only because Google was so nice as to publish their solution. Patents are supposed to record valuable secrets that companies might otherwise keep to themselves in a way that helps humanity. This one is failing at that.
What this comes down to is that the whole idea of patents on things as abstract as software is stupid and is an illegal interference in free speech a right everyone should have under the universal declaration of human rights. The patent officers of the USPTO and the congressmen who put them there should be arrested.
Firstly, you and he grandparent are simply lying. Bill neither mentioned Windows Mobile nor Windows Phone. He was talking about Microsoft's strategy in general. That would include both; otherwise he would say something like "I wasn't satisfied with Microsoft's mobile strategy but now Steve has fixed it and we have a good chance in future". Notice how, despite the total sales disaster, he's still pretending that Surface was a success. Any admission of failure that he makes leads to the immediate question "what are you doing to make sure they fix this".
Secondly; this is not some innocent babe talking here. Before the chairman of Microsoft talks on any subject related to the company he will have been briefed and considered everything with both public relations advisers and lawyers. He didn't say this as an accidental candid gesture. He said this as a specific warning to a bunch of existing parters. No doubt Nokia and AT&T have been repeatedly warned in private that they aren't delivering what Microsoft wants. This is a very clear attempt to get the message out "Microsoft's strategy is failing; we are going to have to change it; partners we consider are in the way had better get out of the way". In other words; some time soon Nokia at least; AT&T probably are going to get fucked. If there was any different message then when the Register called them (which they always do) or immediately after the story was published there would have been a retraction or clarification. The Register's story is exactly the message Microsoft wants put out. The reason is to explain why they are about to screw over their partners yet again.
I guess that is the smartest thing to do if I am a lone inventor..? Show the big players a proof of concept of something I can do and let them contract / hire / buy your company if they are interested?
N.B. this isn't really the best place to get advice. Your (patent) attorney will be better.
However, some things. A fundamental rule of patents is never to tell anyone not involved in the invention without having some kind of NDA in place. So your idea won't normally work because big companies normally won't agree to an NDA in this situation.
You might be able to get something in place by starting a patent application and then, having made the first application getting them involved before it's finished.
Very often the best thing to do is simply to publish the idea. Since you will have great difficulty benefiting from a patent you might as well save the fees. Publishing will stop anyone else from patenting the idea.
This has already happened. Try reading some random patents one day and you will see that you probably don't understand what they are about. This is especially true once you know that the only bit which matters, legally, is really the claims. Have a look at just the first claim (the first is normally the most general claim) of a random patent and see if you can understand what the original idea was. The original aim of the patent system was to ensure that inventions were recorded that might otherwise disappear when their inventor died. This has been subverted so that now the aim of most patents is to block competitors from a wide range of activities related to a product or even product idea.
Actually the other point would have been more clever. The inventors themselves very rarely end up owning the patents and defending them. It's more the companies that buy the patents in off the inventors in one way or another.
The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.
You are partly right. However, in this case the problem has started earlier and it really is the inventor. If you work in a big company and you come up with an invention your idea will go into the patent but you will put it through a patent expert. That person will take your work and turn it into something you don't recognize (there have been quite a few comments like that on Slashdot). What they are doing is taking your idea and generalizing it. They will ask "why did you use a spring" you will say "to store the energy". They will now take that patent and change it to say "in the preferred embodiment then energy will be stored in a spring, however one skilled in the art can also see that other methods of energy storage such as lifting a weight could also be used". Then, when the company changes your idea to use a battery instead that will fall under "other methods of energy storage".
This is before you even get to the stage of losing out due to lack of lawyers to fight in court with.
What a load of shit. A good gun safety course takes a few afternoons on the weekend
You seem to be deeply hard of reading. I will try to translate the proposal
get a firearm (note singular - for one person only) and sleep there (note - by basic principles of security you should assume that the opponents know you are sleeping there) alone then, when the assailants (unknown number) come in armed (with unknown set of weapons) do not attempt to frighten them off (they might get away); instead kill them all.
Remember that, whilst you might be lucky and get a bunch of punks who have no clue what they are doing, it's actually quite likely that, given that they are willing to attack an occupied building, you will meet heavily armed people ready to fight. Your average gun safety course will considerably reduce the chance of killing yourself accidentally with a weapon. In a random street encounter with lightly armed random assailants who are ready to run away it will give you a reasonable chance of even behaving in an effective way. It definitely does not prepare you to take on multiple heavily armed and prepared assailants and ensure that you kill them all.
So summarised
Even with all of this; it's a thing you should only do in a situation of desperation. Doing it without that level of preparation comes under basic "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" rules. Planning to fight against multiple forewarned armed assailants with a single pistol, .45 or not, is stupidity of the highest order. Doing it at a time of their choosing in a situation where they know where you are and not the other way round is plain suicide.
Have a good firearm. Kill them. It works very well.
I won't respond to the obvious pro-anti gun control flamebait (only an idiot would do that*). We have no idea where this shop is based so you might be right; In some areas of Mexico where the police will never come this would probably be the right solution. Moreso if you live somewhere where you have no social security and are likely to starve to death if you lose your shop.
However, it doesn't fit the specification. "the solution needs to be almost free".
First of all, you want better and more effective weaponry than the people who are going to come to your shop. Heavy machine guns do not come cheap, and even if you will do with a pair of assault rifles they won't come free.
Secondly, as even the NRA will tell you; especially the NRA; you need to train with your weapon especially if you are planning to use it in a serious situation. An initial period of several months of intense training in marksmanship and urban combat followed up with weekly practice and regular refresher training will be needed. Even with a local club willing to help this is going to end up expensive.
Thirdly, most of the time people's firearms are used against them more than they get to use them. You will want to work in a pair (or more), with one person on guard duty, and one person serving the customers at all time. You will want to buy secure firearm storage for the occasions when you have to put the gun down.
Fourthly a firearm alone isn't going to cut it. If they get inside before you start firing you are going to end up in considerable danger anyway. Let's imagine that this is a stand alone store set back from a road in the Columbian countryside. You will want to have motion detectors and cameras wired to alarms and screens in your safe room together with a loudspeaker system outside. When the invaders come at night you need to give them warning (in case they are lost tourists or local paramilitary police dropping by to check on your health) before you open fire.
Finally, if you do end up killing them and are unlucky, you may want to be ready for the escalation from their drugs gang buddies. At least budget to buy a few RPGs and heavier machine guns; armoured reinforcement and ex-SAS security guards are probably advised.
Overall, whilst this may be excellent on paper, you will find such security does not always come cheap.
* (or troll)
And also set up a camera on the building opposite so it records everything as teh camera on the violated property will probably get trashed if seen
I'd assume that all the cameras should send out to an off-premises server. In this case they should be recorded before they trash them.
The idea to get cameras opposite is good though. At that point getting together with all the shops in the area and setting up a system together might help. Scary and anti-freedom though this is, nobody will care or try to stop you. This will be much cheaper than paying for everything yourself.
Right, could be insider threat.
Good point. There's so much here that isn't made clear. Some questions to answer before deciding what to do:
it's violent porn that's the target, not anything else..
Care to give a link to a page where they have that clearly defined? There's certainly none given in the linked article. If you mean "porn created against the will of the participants through violence" then most of us would be for this. If you mean "porn the government happens to decide is violent" as happened in the UK then I think that's a bit less clear. A whole bunch of perfectly legal acts have become illegal if filmed. Even between consenting adults. People are right to be suspicious.
You've come to the wrong place if you wanted constructive criticism - Slashdot it only interested in positive reinforcement that Microsoft is blah blah blah blah.
When did the Microsoft shills become such whiny shits? All through this article there are hundreds of posts about how Slashdot is terribly biased. There are posts saying "show me a tablet which isn't impossible to repair" just below other people's comments saying "look at Google's Nexus 7 where you can just open the back and change the battery".
Guys; man up. This really isn't such a big deal. There is a legitimate review from a legitimate tear down site. They give a clear justification for giving a bad rating. They also gave other products bad ratings when they deserved it. If Microsoft ever makes a good product in future I'm sure you will get a good revew. You get a few negative comments on Slashdot; people have the right to make bad comments when you try to rip them off. Just take it like a man; treat the surface tablets as a lesson; learn to make a good product next time and move on.
Instead of that it's this terrible Microsoft persecution complex. "everybody's out to get us"; "everyone picks on us, not apple" (totally untrue there was also an anti-apple story before they improved their iPhone 5) Slashdot is biased (again not true; any time there might even be a slight misrepresentation against Microsoft there's always a shill ready to pile on and they always get modded to the heaven). blah blah blah. Give it up.
Excel can already use VBA, which in turn can use IronPython.
Done.
Awesome; but not quite done. At that point you can run an X86 emulator inside it and boot Linux. Then you can run Firefox inside it and finally, you will have access to a sensible language.
Actually, this is one of the best Ask Slashdots ever. A language war enclosed inside a user interface design war enclosed inside a programmer pet hate.
If there is only one implementation then what is the point of having standards? Not having enough competing implementations that keep each other sharp and make it meaningful for the makers to complyto a shared standard is what prevents the world from being burdened with another IE6.
Mod parent up. Let's add to that. Without multiple implementations it's often impossible to tell if the standard is complete. It's not until you find two different people reading it and writing software (think "the first byte will be set to one" - is that the left or the right hand byte?) that you find out that it isn't completely specified. The internet standards even explicitly say that you shouldn't have a standard before you have at least two different implementations to bake off.
"My kids having a seizure! Wait, I know! I have an app on my phone that will tell me what to do." - Said no one, ever.
Mock and laugh you may, but when you are trapped by an earthquake in Haiti. you will wish you shilled for a company that makes proper phones.
but I probably went through 3 iPhones a week back when I was snorting coke off those...
You have a tungsten carbide snorting tube?