Stop passing judgment about the patents companies may or may not validly hold, and focus your rage productively on the USPTO. A 200 year old organization that still includes the rule: "If the inventor is insane, the application for patent may be made by a guardian." http://lmgtfy.com/?q=uspto+overhaul
Not having used Skype since it launched, are you saying that recording the call isn't already a feature? Seems like it could be a pretty popular plug-in if they neutered the redirection.
You are surprised that CNET's level of "research" didn't even pass the wikipedia test?
C'mon, this is CNET.
Lowensohn even got the Wikipedia citations that he did use wrong. He's labeled the Super Famicom Jr. as the Super Nintendo Jr., something that doesn't exist. No way in hell does the Jr. follow from the western SNES design, but there's still an arrow there for some reason...
The reason for not having the NES is apparently because it's too old. No "Four generations ago". He should have called it "a compact history." Bloody commercial bloggers.
If people pay money for something, that's because they think it's worth that money (eBay syndrome). If you get "more" for free on the PC, use a PC.
I like consoles, I like the variety, I like the differences, I like the exclusives, and I'm picky about what DLC I will buy. I like PC games, I like Steam as a distribution method, and I like retro gaming and emulators.
I did stop paying for it. I stopped paying for an endless upgrade cycle of PC hardware that wasn't worth the money. I may get more software for "free" on the PC, but I've paid a factor of 10 more on hardware components over the last couple decades, until I just threw the tower away and went for laptops and Macs. I can still play the games I bought in the 80s and 90s, but my Voodoo2 and AWE64Gold cards are just novelty pieces in a storage box now.
Super NES still works fine, still just as fun, don't care that the plastic is discoloured. Worst case is replacing a $3 save battery in a cartridge. Other than the Xbox 360 there hasn't been much in the way of hardware problems for major consoles, and almost none until optical discs came in. My PS2 lasers wore out because I used them as a DVD player too; buying a DVD drive for the PC was too expensive, at first. Same with my PS3 and Blu-Ray; early adopters pay through the nose, and I refuse to. I was not suckered into an HD-DVD drive for my 360. Console peripherals are doomed.
I respect that PC and *nix users in particular are do-it-yourselfers, and so they like the kind of control where you can replace or improve one part instead of losing access to your entire machine. My kung-fu was the best in the DOS days, when I was a geeky teenager and that was the most interesting way to spend my time. Now it's not. It's nice that some people get satisfaction out of updating and hacking their video card drivers, but I'd rather go out to a movie with friends, and send my gear to the shop when it breaks. It's not fun anymore for me.
It's not a value judgement, I'm not comparing the value of my time or my social activities to anyone else's choices, only to myself. It's a big enough world, and a big enough marketplace, that you can make those decisions for how best to spend your time and money.
One of my professors doesn't understand consoles at all, he thinks it's a con job to get people to buy new things all the time. I don't consider 5 - 10 years of practical & nostalgic life from a piece of hardware to be unreasonable. Especially when compared to a $500 video card that uses a motherboard interface that won't exist in 5 years. My attention span isn't so short, and my storage boxes are already full of cool unusable crap.
Europe has a larger population compared to US, yet it has a lesser amount of land to cover with cell sites.
As a result, people/tower ratio is quite good in Europe and partially contributes to better plans.
...yet Finland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe tops the chart. I think you'll need another explanation.
Nokia Corp. Quite simply, the largest company in the country wants every Finn to use their product. Having a low, centralized population and comparitively low land mass would both help to minimize what they charge at home.
Also a cell phone in Europe or Japan can be used to pay for purchases, like a charge card. I had read a few years ago that an average monthly bill in Europe included over $400 of purchases. You can bet the provider gets a skim of that.
Here in Canada, I've worked with people that manage phone networks. Land mass vs. population is a big factor of cost. Also, your bill will be lower if you dump that damn smartphone. North America has a pretty high penetration of iPhone and Blackberry compared to a few years ago. I see students and taxi drivers with them now.
TFA and commenters are talking USB (interesting that it applies to laptops too), but what about the other half of Apple's inventory with Bluetooth. Same? I assume it has the same exploitable flash. But how old a model can it be? I haven't read the PDF, sorry... figured TFA would echo Bluetooth if it was mentioned, since that would be a super easy way to swap out someone's keyboard physically or broadcast a firmware update.
It is interesting to wonder if our odds increase or decrease on being hit when there is a large massive body in our solar system. Like the article and summary say, some objects that would not have come close could be put on course for earth via Jupiter's gravitational forces. Who knows, maybe massive bodies like Jupiter pull more space debris into our system and make it more hostile than if it were just the earth orbiting the Sun?
Understanding the effects of Jupiter's gravitational field is the main thing. How close does an object of a catastrophic mass need to be before it is A) redirected to earth, versus B) sucked in to Jupiter. I think your theory is already answered by the summary:
Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield, deflecting incoming space junk away from the inner solar system where it could do to humans what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Wonderful when sentences contradict themselves. It's pretty clear that Jupiter was there 65 million years ago too. The problems include: 1) If Earth is on one side of the solar system (with the asteroid), and Jupiter on the other; probably won't help. 2) Did it skew that old trajectory; we'll never know. 3) It's just in that instance, mammals benefited more in the long run.
Maybe it will be avians (evolved dinosaurs) next time. So long and thanks for all the bread.
A successful antitrust suit is a pretty good indication that people are not using a company's product though choice.
No. It's a pretty good indication that the government thinks a company is getting too big for its britches. At least *read* the article you link to. A settlement is not the definition of a successful suit.
People file class-actions to make companies own up to their mistakes. Governments file antitrust to protect competitive commerce. Here's a quote cited in the very Wiki article you linked: "Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions - rival business firms did."
The DOJ suit was about the browser wars. It wasn't about OS/2 or OS9 or Office. It was about letting grannies install Netscape v4.79, and the upshot was all us web coders had to test pissy rendering quirks for an extra couple of years and keep using table layouts. The same was true for IE5 for OSX, thank god they let that die.
From Windows 95 through 2000, which we can now remember fondly, I installed web browsers literally hundreds of times on dozens of machines. From Mosaic to Netscape Gold to Opera, not once did Windows make that process at all inconvenient for me. It took a while, but the browser teams finally realized that browsers weren't something users should have to purchase, and that offering a better feature set was the best way to be competitive.
The real winner here is modern day open source, which removes the potential for corporations to outright buy competing products. My only genuine, non-bandwagon complaint about Microsoft is that it's products are so minimalist out of the box. There's always something missing. This is partly an effect of the antitrust concerns, and succeeds in creating an aftermarket for every product they have. I'm fine with using Microsoft products, I'm just sick of tinkering with them. Spending time looking for more choices and new features is damn annoying!
Now and ultimately, Microsoft will lag behind the curve with its application and OS development, because of its lumbering size, disparate teams, and categorical imperative to protect it's intellectual property; while always succeeding as an enterprise solution thanks to its immense level of tech support and training. Having the government make it lean-and-mean won't actually improve its products or our experiences/respect, and once the government thinks Google's britches are getting tight (and a wee bit evil), I expect we'll see the same things all over again.
Exactly. One of the worst traps you can fall into in professional life is to believe ideas have worth. Sorry, but they are almost worthless. Even a good implementation is borderline worthless without the proper business processes including marketing and advertising.
Good advice. Consider the number of products that have "patent pending" on them. They're released to market before even being protected, or possibly even rejected. So what? They're on the market!! Ain't gonna make a sale sitting in your garage, and by being out in the world, they then become prior art for the next poor bugger that isn't first to invent. Just be sure that your country isn't first to file instead. Which is most of the world apparently. Damn bureaucrats.
Also, pretty simple, but use Google and be specific. If the first few pages of results don't offer a service or product of some kind, there may be a (niche) market. Size of niche =/= number of hits.
Finally, if you go ahead with a domain name, for the love of mike, be aware the registrar may squat it if you don't buy right away. Someone is ALWAYS watching the registration and expiry logs.
Apple's managed to get more than fifty thousand apps through the process and onto the store. Nobody's going to write stories about the ones that went smoothly.
Nor will they write stories that fully 28% of those apps are in fact flashlights. (Or at least, that's their most practical use.)
digital information is literally carved in... Once cut, the disk can be read by an ordinary DVD reader on your computer
Sounds like pressing-on-demand.. with lasers. Even pressed discs can rot.
(Ordinary DVDs last anywhere from 3 to 12 years, on average.)
This made me LOL. There's not a single disc manufacturer that claims less than 30 years, and they used to just round up to 75 or 100. "We use BLUE dye!" Those aging chambers literally speed up time, y'know.
New != Best. A difficult sell on a tech site. Data migration will always be necessary. Always. Which hardware manufacturer will commit to making drives compatible with DVD+R for the next thousand years? Until the next crowd of/. commenters call the format antiquated, and are willing to pay $25-$30 for the next shiny thing.
Game companies should progressively lower prices of their games as time passes. This would eat up the used game market.
This typically does happen, but only after sales slow to a certain threshhold. This takes forever with Grand Theft Autos and Call of Dutys. It works well for PC games; a month after release they often drop $5-10. Not to mention starting $10 cheaper than consoles on average. And yes, there is a used PC game market at retail. Hell, back in my day, I remember renting 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
They may hold a small handful of valid patents - like, keyboard and mouse, maybe?
WTF are you talking about? Engelbart gave Xerox PARC their start.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent/Mouse.html
Stop passing judgment about the patents companies may or may not validly hold, and focus your rage productively on the USPTO. A 200 year old organization that still includes the rule: "If the inventor is insane, the application for patent may be made by a guardian."
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=uspto+overhaul
how do you get the data out of gmail to switch providers ?
IMAP or POP download. Which apparently wasn't affected.
I keep a local backup of my Gmail in Thunderbird. Try doing that with Hotmail.
Hm. Hardly offtopic since it's from the sans-malice-would-be-a-useful-thing dept. I was just raising the question.
Not having used Skype since it launched, are you saying that recording the call isn't already a feature?
Seems like it could be a pretty popular plug-in if they neutered the redirection.
Heavens no. This is from Microsoft and has the evil bit set. Mr. Jobs would never let something like that befall his faithful.
Actually I think evil takes 4-bits. Why? It's a HEX.
Sorry, I had to nibble.
Technically that's four words. ;)
Multipass.
>>>the Super Famicom Jr. as the Super Nintendo Jr.
That's trivial. There's no real difference between a S-Famicom and an SNES other than a name.
Inventing names for trademarked IP in an article self-titled as a "history" is trivial? No it's not, it's bush league.
The real difference is the design, which is what the article is about. Not the functionality.
The fundamental aspect of the Wikipedia concept was the fact that there wasn't a bureaucratic layer between your information and the world.
Grow a pair, Mr Wales.
But Wikipedia already has all the world's information. The number of self-referential citations proves this.
Also, I read it on Google.
Heretic, everyone knows there is only the one TRUE NES with the Zero Insertion Force cartridge system.
Hey, CNET is bad enough, leave ZIF out of it! ;)
You are surprised that CNET's level of "research" didn't even pass the wikipedia test?
C'mon, this is CNET.
Lowensohn even got the Wikipedia citations that he did use wrong. He's labeled the Super Famicom Jr. as the Super Nintendo Jr., something that doesn't exist. No way in hell does the Jr. follow from the western SNES design, but there's still an arrow there for some reason...
The reason for not having the NES is apparently because it's too old. No "Four generations ago".
He should have called it "a compact history." Bloody commercial bloggers.
Simple. Stop paying for it.
If people pay money for something, that's because they think it's worth that money (eBay syndrome). If you get "more" for free on the PC, use a PC.
I like consoles, I like the variety, I like the differences, I like the exclusives, and I'm picky about what DLC I will buy.
I like PC games, I like Steam as a distribution method, and I like retro gaming and emulators.
I did stop paying for it. I stopped paying for an endless upgrade cycle of PC hardware that wasn't worth the money. I may get more software for "free" on the PC, but I've paid a factor of 10 more on hardware components over the last couple decades, until I just threw the tower away and went for laptops and Macs. I can still play the games I bought in the 80s and 90s, but my Voodoo2 and AWE64Gold cards are just novelty pieces in a storage box now.
Super NES still works fine, still just as fun, don't care that the plastic is discoloured. Worst case is replacing a $3 save battery in a cartridge. Other than the Xbox 360 there hasn't been much in the way of hardware problems for major consoles, and almost none until optical discs came in. My PS2 lasers wore out because I used them as a DVD player too; buying a DVD drive for the PC was too expensive, at first. Same with my PS3 and Blu-Ray; early adopters pay through the nose, and I refuse to. I was not suckered into an HD-DVD drive for my 360. Console peripherals are doomed.
I respect that PC and *nix users in particular are do-it-yourselfers, and so they like the kind of control where you can replace or improve one part instead of losing access to your entire machine. My kung-fu was the best in the DOS days, when I was a geeky teenager and that was the most interesting way to spend my time. Now it's not. It's nice that some people get satisfaction out of updating and hacking their video card drivers, but I'd rather go out to a movie with friends, and send my gear to the shop when it breaks. It's not fun anymore for me.
It's not a value judgement, I'm not comparing the value of my time or my social activities to anyone else's choices, only to myself. It's a big enough world, and a big enough marketplace, that you can make those decisions for how best to spend your time and money.
One of my professors doesn't understand consoles at all, he thinks it's a con job to get people to buy new things all the time. I don't consider 5 - 10 years of practical & nostalgic life from a piece of hardware to be unreasonable. Especially when compared to a $500 video card that uses a motherboard interface that won't exist in 5 years. My attention span isn't so short, and my storage boxes are already full of cool unusable crap.
The magazine most likely to: Make me question my career choice.
Nokia Corp. Quite simply, the largest company in the country wants every Finn to use their product. Having a low, centralized population and comparitively low land mass would both help to minimize what they charge at home.
Also a cell phone in Europe or Japan can be used to pay for purchases, like a charge card. I had read a few years ago that an average monthly bill in Europe included over $400 of purchases. You can bet the provider gets a skim of that.
Here in Canada, I've worked with people that manage phone networks. Land mass vs. population is a big factor of cost.
Also, your bill will be lower if you dump that damn smartphone. North America has a pretty high penetration of iPhone and Blackberry compared to a few years ago. I see students and taxi drivers with them now.
...in large, friendly letters...
The people "making up" those nice round numbers are also afraid of becoming one if they don't instill a sufficient FUD factor.
TFA and commenters are talking USB (interesting that it applies to laptops too), but what about the other half of Apple's inventory with Bluetooth. Same? I assume it has the same exploitable flash. But how old a model can it be? I haven't read the PDF, sorry... figured TFA would echo Bluetooth if it was mentioned, since that would be a super easy way to swap out someone's keyboard physically or broadcast a firmware update.
Oh. Gee.
I don't think the "You got Bing in my Yahoo!" commercial would fly so well. I'm sure someone would misinterpret it.
+Funny if I could for you.
Though trust me, "Yang happy to merge with Ballmer" would sound much, much worse. Hell, it could be an AP headline.
The summary is tagged with Binghoo, but I'd argue "Ying" is more appropriate. These deals always have a light and dark side.
It is interesting to wonder if our odds increase or decrease on being hit when there is a large massive body in our solar system. Like the article and summary say, some objects that would not have come close could be put on course for earth via Jupiter's gravitational forces. Who knows, maybe massive bodies like Jupiter pull more space debris into our system and make it more hostile than if it were just the earth orbiting the Sun?
Understanding the effects of Jupiter's gravitational field is the main thing. How close does an object of a catastrophic mass need to be before it is A) redirected to earth, versus B) sucked in to Jupiter. I think your theory is already answered by the summary:
Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield, deflecting incoming space junk away from the inner solar system where it could do to humans what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Wonderful when sentences contradict themselves. It's pretty clear that Jupiter was there 65 million years ago too. The problems include: 1) If Earth is on one side of the solar system (with the asteroid), and Jupiter on the other; probably won't help. 2) Did it skew that old trajectory; we'll never know. 3) It's just in that instance, mammals benefited more in the long run.
Maybe it will be avians (evolved dinosaurs) next time. So long and thanks for all the bread.
A successful antitrust suit is a pretty good indication that people are not using a company's product though choice.
No. It's a pretty good indication that the government thinks a company is getting too big for its britches.
At least *read* the article you link to. A settlement is not the definition of a successful suit.
People file class-actions to make companies own up to their mistakes. Governments file antitrust to protect competitive commerce.
Here's a quote cited in the very Wiki article you linked: "Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions - rival business firms did."
The DOJ suit was about the browser wars. It wasn't about OS/2 or OS9 or Office. It was about letting grannies install Netscape v4.79, and the upshot was all us web coders had to test pissy rendering quirks for an extra couple of years and keep using table layouts. The same was true for IE5 for OSX, thank god they let that die.
From Windows 95 through 2000, which we can now remember fondly, I installed web browsers literally hundreds of times on dozens of machines. From Mosaic to Netscape Gold to Opera, not once did Windows make that process at all inconvenient for me. It took a while, but the browser teams finally realized that browsers weren't something users should have to purchase, and that offering a better feature set was the best way to be competitive.
The real winner here is modern day open source, which removes the potential for corporations to outright buy competing products. My only genuine, non-bandwagon complaint about Microsoft is that it's products are so minimalist out of the box. There's always something missing. This is partly an effect of the antitrust concerns, and succeeds in creating an aftermarket for every product they have. I'm fine with using Microsoft products, I'm just sick of tinkering with them. Spending time looking for more choices and new features is damn annoying!
Now and ultimately, Microsoft will lag behind the curve with its application and OS development, because of its lumbering size, disparate teams, and categorical imperative to protect it's intellectual property; while always succeeding as an enterprise solution thanks to its immense level of tech support and training. Having the government make it lean-and-mean won't actually improve its products or our experiences/respect, and once the government thinks Google's britches are getting tight (and a wee bit evil), I expect we'll see the same things all over again.
Exactly. One of the worst traps you can fall into in professional life is to believe ideas have worth. Sorry, but they are almost worthless. Even a good implementation is borderline worthless without the proper business processes including marketing and advertising.
Good advice. Consider the number of products that have "patent pending" on them. They're released to market before even being protected, or possibly even rejected. So what? They're on the market!! Ain't gonna make a sale sitting in your garage, and by being out in the world, they then become prior art for the next poor bugger that isn't first to invent. Just be sure that your country isn't first to file instead. Which is most of the world apparently. Damn bureaucrats.
Also, pretty simple, but use Google and be specific. If the first few pages of results don't offer a service or product of some kind, there may be a (niche) market. Size of niche =/= number of hits.
Finally, if you go ahead with a domain name, for the love of mike, be aware the registrar may squat it if you don't buy right away. Someone is ALWAYS watching the registration and expiry logs.
Apple's managed to get more than fifty thousand apps through the process and onto the store. Nobody's going to write stories about the ones that went smoothly.
Nor will they write stories that fully 28% of those apps are in fact flashlights. (Or at least, that's their most practical use.)
digital information is literally carved in...
Once cut, the disk can be read by an ordinary DVD reader on your computer
Sounds like pressing-on-demand.. with lasers. Even pressed discs can rot.
(Ordinary DVDs last anywhere from 3 to 12 years, on average.)
This made me LOL. There's not a single disc manufacturer that claims less than 30 years, and they used to just round up to 75 or 100. "We use BLUE dye!" Those aging chambers literally speed up time, y'know.
Even more lolworthy is that Ask /. commenters felt the same way just 4 short years ago. Optical media from 2005 will outlast microfiche, eh? Then I guess this Millenniata company is blowing smoke.
New != Best. A difficult sell on a tech site. Data migration will always be necessary. Always. Which hardware manufacturer will commit to making drives compatible with DVD+R for the next thousand years? Until the next crowd of /. commenters call the format antiquated, and are willing to pay $25-$30 for the next shiny thing.
Game companies should progressively lower prices of their games as time passes. This would eat up the used game market.
This typically does happen, but only after sales slow to a certain threshhold. This takes forever with Grand Theft Autos and Call of Dutys.
It works well for PC games; a month after release they often drop $5-10. Not to mention starting $10 cheaper than consoles on average.
And yes, there is a used PC game market at retail. Hell, back in my day, I remember renting 'em.