I can think of a few things that could have been nonobvious and easily copyable in the early days of computing. Spreadsheets come to mind.
You are mistaken. Spreadsheets were merely an electronic implementation of an approach already used by accountants and bookkeepers. While the accountants and bookkeepers had to calculate cells on their own, the implementation of electronic spreadsheets was evolutionary, not revolutionary.
if you invent something that nobody in the universe would have figured out in the next 25 years
The problem, of course, is that it is unlikely that any software patent even comes a tiny fraction of the way towards meeting that description, and nevertheless patents penalise independent development of the same idea.
They are... It does not take a long essay to answer this.
I agree. I have always had a problem with Paul Graham because he is somebody who holds to situational morality - that is, his principles are negotiable depending on the situation he is in. The limits of what he considers acceptable go precisely to the limits of what he has already determined to do. In this essay he talks about how you have to patent because everybody else will - that it is acceptable because it is necessary, in his view. Things are only ever unacceptable to him if he has not found those things necessary in the course of his own activities.
Principles are only meaningful when you hold to them even when it is inconvenient to do so.
I see nothing there that is genuinely so innovative it deserves monopoly protection against others who might independently invent the same thing. At least one is blindingly obvious on its face, and the others seem to be nothing more than using natural combinations of existing uses ("next step in the road" type patents).
When the Samba developers do not maintain close communication with Microsoft about potential changes to roaming profiles and implement support for those changes, it is not Microsoft's fault when things break. It is the Samba team's fault.
The open source projects that in an ideal world would be working closely with Microsoft (most notable are Samba and Wine) are perfectly happy to do so and even occasionally approach Microsoft. Their discussions are of course conducted on open mailing lists and Microsoft could easily establish this co-operation any time they wanted, but with Microsoft on the other hand the discussions are secret, the identity and contact details of the people who need to be involved are closely held, and requests through the available channels hit a brick wall.
You sound like you are relishing that prospect, which is pretty sad.
Far out, somebody really needs their humour detector checked. The comment was a fairly obvious reference to City Slickers. Nevertheless, it is foolish to regard these conflicts as over. Afghanistan (which is what was mentioned originally) is as messy as, if not messier than, Iraq. In Iraq, the current situation is not a continuing war - in Afghanistan the original war continues, although I am sure the sometimes subtle distinctions involved will be lost on you.
The Moon does have an atmosphere. It consists of Helium 25%, Neon 25%, Hydrogen 23%, and Argon 20%
Then this whole "build a hotel on the moon" thing is disturbing. Hotels are going to want lights. If there's a lot of Neon up there we're going to have Las Vegas sur la Lune. I don't know about you, but I don't want to look up at the moon only to see "Live XXX Shows" in garish orange lights.
Assuming that is true, then probably the only way for Microsoft to move forward and still maintain backwards compatibility with old code is to do what Apple did: Ditch the OS, start fresh with a new one...
Ah ha! Microsoft will finally be forced to embrace Wine!
I originally chose Godaddy because it had user-friendly and net-friendly policies. One of the biggest things for me was that they only used your email address for transactional mail - in fact they used to make a point of this, while Verislime would send you promotional crap about every unrelated product under the sun.
Well, they're good guys no more. Today they have broken this long standing promise and sent their "Newsletter" to every single customer. The contents: Promotional crap for a bunch of services I don't give a rat's arse about.
Explain how it is that slowly a thought you have about a lecture down on paper, and in the process missing much information, is superior to writing that though down in a fraction of the time on a laptop.
If you were studying law then you should have been doing your assigned reading before class. The notes for this can be done on a computer, and then printed out and taken to class. In class you should be trying to identify points you have missed and clarifying things. This should entail following through your notes along with the lecture and jotting down the occasional note on your printouts, then making adjustments to your electronic notes after class. If speed is a problem, your preparation is inadequate.
They then require building permits, inspections, licensed contractors, and have to comply for fire code, and health and safety regs, etc. That gets to be big, big money.
Part of the fire code will be that there needs to be at least one sprinkler in each room, so you have to reroute the sprinklers to make sure each office has one, and may need higher capacity pipes in the roof to ensure that each sprinkler still distributes the regulation amount of water in a fire. You also may need to add more lighting and more air conditioning. Some of these changes may be impossible, and where possible will result in ongoing additional power expense. Alternatively, you could increase the area allocated to each person, but then you have ongoing higher rent expense.
They could throw it into it's own category, like doping. "He was disqualified for spamming".
Or they could do an interesting drug test - "We heard you are a spammer and need to find out if you have been using drugs. Drop your pants and stand next to this ruler."
#!/bin/sh for i do [ -d/proc/$i ] || { echo "$i: No such process"; continue; } echo $i: awk ' { split($1, vals, "-"); val = strtonum("0x" vals[2]) - strtonum("0x" vals[1]); types[$2] += val } END { for (i in types) printf "\t%s %9d\n", i, types[i] } ' </proc/$i/maps done
Congratulations on being the first person I have seen in many months spell "tow the... line" correctly (I am always amazed when people think the appendage at the end of the foot can be used as a verb). Pity about the word in the middle though. Perhaps you should switch to Konqueror - it would have highlighted the error.
The right-click-on-photo part that brings up every command?
That sucks. It should only bring up stuff relevant to manipulating bits of the image. The right-click menu is also known as the context menu - if I'm right-clicking on pixels I want something that relates to pixels. Some things that definitely should not be there: File, View, Image, and then most of the things on the sub-menus (which are also arranged in terms of GIMP internals rather than in terms of user-oriented categories).
The pull down menu above the photo that brings up every command?
It's not so much the menu as the fact that everything is impossible to find in the menu because it was apparently arranged by a seriously deranged individual bent on avoiding natural categories. Even when you can find something it takes 3-4 non-obvious menu options in sequence to do something that is one menu option in other drawing software.
The floating toolbox that brings up every command?
The customizable tab box which permits instant access to your most important subset of commands?
Sensible defaults are better than telling people to customise what is out of the box the Worst... Interface... Ever.
That near every subset of commands can be 'torn off' as a floating toolbar?
What the hell does this have to do with anything? Actually, now that I think of it, it does have something to do with the problem since these floating toolbars don't - they sink right to bloody bottom of the window stack and you have to go hunting for the bastards (this doesn't happen in an MDI interface by the way).
Or the part that doesn't look like Photoshop's unique boxes-in-boxes interface, a GUI style last universally popular in the Windows 3.x days?
And yet a style that is retained in every serious image editor*... but nooo, the GIMP people are right and everybody else is wrong.
GIMP's user interface really is a festering pile of crap. Go ahead, GIMP-fans, do your worst to my karma - I have plenty.
* Yes I know GIMP doesn't have it. I meant what I said.
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I'll bet any amount of money my son will still be able to break all the wheels of his toy cars after I've glued them back on.
If you can think of a better way of disposing of that damned awful place I'd like to hear it.
You are mistaken. Spreadsheets were merely an electronic implementation of an approach already used by accountants and bookkeepers. While the accountants and bookkeepers had to calculate cells on their own, the implementation of electronic spreadsheets was evolutionary, not revolutionary.
The problem, of course, is that it is unlikely that any software patent even comes a tiny fraction of the way towards meeting that description, and nevertheless patents penalise independent development of the same idea.
I agree. I have always had a problem with Paul Graham because he is somebody who holds to situational morality - that is, his principles are negotiable depending on the situation he is in. The limits of what he considers acceptable go precisely to the limits of what he has already determined to do. In this essay he talks about how you have to patent because everybody else will - that it is acceptable because it is necessary, in his view. Things are only ever unacceptable to him if he has not found those things necessary in the course of his own activities.
Principles are only meaningful when you hold to them even when it is inconvenient to do so.
Let's take a look at Paul Graham's patents:
I see nothing there that is genuinely so innovative it deserves monopoly protection against others who might independently invent the same thing. At least one is blindingly obvious on its face, and the others seem to be nothing more than using natural combinations of existing uses ("next step in the road" type patents).
The open source projects that in an ideal world would be working closely with Microsoft (most notable are Samba and Wine) are perfectly happy to do so and even occasionally approach Microsoft. Their discussions are of course conducted on open mailing lists and Microsoft could easily establish this co-operation any time they wanted, but with Microsoft on the other hand the discussions are secret, the identity and contact details of the people who need to be involved are closely held, and requests through the available channels hit a brick wall.
Everybody knows you're not supposed to say slow, you're supposed to say special. Windows is very special.
Far out, somebody really needs their humour detector checked. The comment was a fairly obvious reference to City Slickers . Nevertheless, it is foolish to regard these conflicts as over. Afghanistan (which is what was mentioned originally) is as messy as, if not messier than, Iraq. In Iraq, the current situation is not a continuing war - in Afghanistan the original war continues, although I am sure the sometimes subtle distinctions involved will be lost on you.
War ain't over yet.
Then this whole "build a hotel on the moon" thing is disturbing. Hotels are going to want lights. If there's a lot of Neon up there we're going to have Las Vegas sur la Lune. I don't know about you, but I don't want to look up at the moon only to see "Live XXX Shows" in garish orange lights.
Ah ha! Microsoft will finally be forced to embrace Wine!
Well, they're good guys no more. Today they have broken this long standing promise and sent their "Newsletter" to every single customer. The contents: Promotional crap for a bunch of services I don't give a rat's arse about.
I am well aware of how law is taught - I topped my graduating class.
If you were studying law then you should have been doing your assigned reading before class. The notes for this can be done on a computer, and then printed out and taken to class. In class you should be trying to identify points you have missed and clarifying things. This should entail following through your notes along with the lecture and jotting down the occasional note on your printouts, then making adjustments to your electronic notes after class. If speed is a problem, your preparation is inadequate.
Of course! PostgreSQL is so good that when people learn about it they switch to it. Hence anybody who knows about PostgreSQL uses it.
Ever since I discovered postgres, mysql has been relegated to...
Precisely!
Part of the fire code will be that there needs to be at least one sprinkler in each room, so you have to reroute the sprinklers to make sure each office has one, and may need higher capacity pipes in the roof to ensure that each sprinkler still distributes the regulation amount of water in a fire. You also may need to add more lighting and more air conditioning. Some of these changes may be impossible, and where possible will result in ongoing additional power expense. Alternatively, you could increase the area allocated to each person, but then you have ongoing higher rent expense.
His name is Stephen Spielberg. His basement is just so bloody big it won't fit under his house.
You are mistaken - it is entirely possible to distinguish the prior cases. BTW, IAAL.
Po-tae-to - Po-tah-to. If you take it, it's still larceny.
Or they could do an interesting drug test - "We heard you are a spammer and need to find out if you have been using drugs. Drop your pants and stand next to this ruler."
My bet is they're trying to figure out what the Prime Minister of Australia will do next.
Congratulations on being the first person I have seen in many months spell "tow the... line" correctly (I am always amazed when people think the appendage at the end of the foot can be used as a verb). Pity about the word in the middle though. Perhaps you should switch to Konqueror - it would have highlighted the error.
You could not possibly be more wrong.
GIMP is not all FOSS. It is one app that just has an appalling user interface.
That sucks. It should only bring up stuff relevant to manipulating bits of the image. The right-click menu is also known as the context menu - if I'm right-clicking on pixels I want something that relates to pixels. Some things that definitely should not be there: File, View, Image, and then most of the things on the sub-menus (which are also arranged in terms of GIMP internals rather than in terms of user-oriented categories).
The pull down menu above the photo that brings up every command?
It's not so much the menu as the fact that everything is impossible to find in the menu because it was apparently arranged by a seriously deranged individual bent on avoiding natural categories. Even when you can find something it takes 3-4 non-obvious menu options in sequence to do something that is one menu option in other drawing software. The floating toolbox that brings up every command?
The customizable tab box which permits instant access to your most important subset of commands?
Sensible defaults are better than telling people to customise what is out of the box the Worst... Interface... Ever.
That near every subset of commands can be 'torn off' as a floating toolbar?
What the hell does this have to do with anything? Actually, now that I think of it, it does have something to do with the problem since these floating toolbars don't - they sink right to bloody bottom of the window stack and you have to go hunting for the bastards (this doesn't happen in an MDI interface by the way).
Or the part that doesn't look like Photoshop's unique boxes-in-boxes interface, a GUI style last universally popular in the Windows 3.x days?
And yet a style that is retained in every serious image editor*... but nooo, the GIMP people are right and everybody else is wrong.
GIMP's user interface really is a festering pile of crap. Go ahead, GIMP-fans, do your worst to my karma - I have plenty.
* Yes I know GIMP doesn't have it. I meant what I said.