The US currently awards patents on a first to invent basis. The rest of the world, plus the US if this bill passes, awards patents on a first to file basis. The opponents of first to file often make the erroneous argument that inventors get screwed under first to file. Nonsense, the first to invent is in the best position to be first to file. The "problem" is that in the US folks are used to gaming the patent system to get a few extra years of patent protection.
Under a first to invent system a person begins a well document process and invents something. They postpone filing for a patent because it will take some number of additional years to turn an invention into a commercial product. They rely on the fact that if some other inventor files they can trump that filing with their documented history of invention. Under a first to file system someone who invents something and postpones filing until they are closer to having a marketable product is gambling that another inventor will not appear. If some other inventor appears the gamble is lost.
All that a switch to first to file will mean is that inventors can no longer safely gamble that a competitor will not appear during the timeframe that an invention is turned into a marketable product. The first to invent merely has to file immediately to protect their invention. The only thing that is lost is some time under patent protection, the time to create a marketable product. Given that patents are 20 years this is not a big deal, most inventors will get 17-19 years on the market under protection rather than 20.
The U.S. Congress is authorized by the Constitution to issue Letter of Marque and Reprisal. I say Congress should issue one to Buzz Aldrin and let him punch moon hoaxers in face. That includes some of the idiots posting around here, Jay and Silent Bob style tracking them down and ringing the doorbell on their Mom's house.;-)
When virtual reality is possible, the student can learn history by "being there"
I have family members who lived through *major* historical events. Being there didn't tell them why they were there nor why it was so important nor what was happening a few miles away and how that impacted them. They didn't really understand the big picture until I shared some of that old fashioned college book learning with them.
History is not merely a record of what happened, it also considers the various things that influenced what happened. The real work and study is often in the later.
Expecting to make any money off of a calculator application in this day and age is foolish. It's a trivial application to write, and everything comes with at least a built in simple calculator; usually with scientific and programmer modes as well.
The iPad does not come with a calculator. The built-in iPhone calculator does not support RPN, fractions, complex numbers, metric conversions, etc... and that's just the scientific side. The built-in also does not support 20 digits of precision so it can't perform 64-bit math. Neither does the built-in offer statistics functionality, business functionality, or hex functionality. Check out http://www.perpenso.com/calc/ and you will find quite a bit more functionality than the built-in calculator.
What about outside of gaming? For example I have an iPhone calculator app, Perpenso Calc, that includes scientific functionality, metric conversions, rpn, etc. However specialized functionality - statistics, business and hex - is made available through in app purchases. I thought putting the functionality of handheld scientific, business and hex calculators into a single app was more convenient than having separate apps. I also thought a single and higher bundled price would be disadvantageous. In app purchases seem to handle tailoring functionality for needs quite well. I'm interested in hearing opinions on what people think of this approach.
Back to games. For a gaming related app I would consider in app purchases for very high level things. For example the base game would only include single player functionality. Multiplayer functionality could be unlocked using an in app purchase. This keeps the base price of the game down, and from past experience with very popular single/multi-player games it was noticed that only have of the units sold ever connect to a game server. Again, price being tailored for desired functionality. Any opinions?
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
The job interviews for marketing at mobile phone vendors must be fun. How many beers does it take before you begin to have trouble keeping track of items on the counter or table.
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy
First we need to know how many unreleased iPhones are out there and for how long this field testing goes on. iPhones get lost/stolen in bars all the time, the pre-release loss rate may be comparable to the post-release loss rate. Personally I think it looks like drunk guys are not very good at keeping track of the expensive gadget they leave laying on the counter or table.
So you are saying the normal Google employee gets to work on what they want 20% of the time but Gosling would get to work on what he wants 100% of the time in his comfy Google office, what is the downside you care claiming for him to be at Google?:-)
They should focus on RPN calculators. In DayGlo colours to attract the youth market.
A self serving post but Perpenso Calc offers RPN, 20 digit precision (enough for 64-bit arithmetic), decimal based arithmetic (no binary rounding), fractions, complex numbers,... It's basically scientific, statistic, business and hex calculators in a single app. You can have a serious calculator and have some fun with color schemes too.
For fun try "0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1" to see if your calculator is using decimal math or the FPU and try "2 ^ 64" to see if your calculator can support 64-bit calculations. You should see whole number, no decimal points and fraction components, no exponents.
I work for a large publicly traded corporation. The priority list goes like this: Shareholders, Customers, Employees. So if they increase the perceived value of the company, they are doing their jobs in looking out for the #1 priority so they do give a shit, just not about anything else.
The flaw in the system is not the priority list, it is in the timeframe. If one's timeframe is long term then focusing on the customers yield the greater benefit for the shareholders.
PowerComputing products were not better, they were less expensive. We had both Apple and PowerComputing products at a previous employer. It was a startup and every dollar spent came out of the owner's pockets. Despite being one of the most enthusiastic believers in Apple you will ever meet, even in the darkest days of the 90s, he decided to save some money. The machines worked fine but there were a serious of noticeable relative deficiencies. One that comes to mind is being distractingly loud, a cheap power supply with a fan that made it sound like a friggin vacuum cleaner.
I guess all the cool stuff he can get for those extra 380m$ that he couldn't afford with his first 380m$ will keep him churning on at night.
How many CEOs of the largest US corporations get to $300M and say that's enough, I'm done here?
From what I've seen boards who give away insane bonuses (which 380m$ is) rarely handle it this way even when you have poorly performing CEOs.
I think you are mixing severance packages and this bonus, they are two separate things. Given the 5 and 10 year vesting periods this bonus can evaporate. That is the entire reason for such a long vesting period.
You are saying that Apple's board would fire its CEO and not hand that CEO some sort of multimillion dollar exit package on the way out? I guess you "Think Different" from the boards of pretty much every other major US company in recent history.
That is a weak straw man argument. A hypothetical exit package is something different from this bonus and would probably occur whether or not any such bonus existed.
What I am saying is that the $383M bonus vests 50% at 5 years and 100% at 10 years, so its pretty clear the CEO wouldn't be getting that were he to screw up royally.
It isn't a stereotype. It is what is taught. I also have engineer friends who are taking or have taken their MBA's, but this doesn't change the fact that a key part of what is taught is that to manage a group of people, one does not need to know or understand what those underneath you do.
I earned an MBA a few years ago, that is not what has been taught in recent times. That may or may not be what was taught many decades ago but that notion has long since been discredited in business circles. I confess that I did share your beliefs prior to going to business school. Part of what made business school fun was being amused at more former beliefs, I was as ignorant about business and managements as I had assumed MBAs were about their respective products and markets.
My friends got the degree because it is a credential, an a way into other jobs. I am sure some of what they learned will be helpful too.
Like my BS and MS computer science programs, my MBA program returned what I put into it. Whether one studies business or a technical field if one is in college just to get a piece of paper, to get their ticket punched, then the results will not be so good.
However I have also seen first hand the consequences of a person with an MBA managing a food production company when he had no background in food production. The result was disastrous.
And I've seen UC Berkeley honors grads completely screw up in engineering. Even when one does make an effort in college some people lack the common sense required in the real world. Its just as true for engineering as business.
What I was taught in business school is that if I took such a food production job I should learn as much as I could as fast as I could about food production. This includes spending a lot of time doing so outside of work hours. I was also taught to go directly to those experienced on the production line to get unfiltered and practical information.
The key problem is that they are taught to abstract out the details of what they are managing, to effectively blind themselves to minutiae, to delegate those things to others. They manage based largely on parameters, on graphs and equations that are supposed to describe what is most important about the businesses they are managing.
As I've said before I used to believe such things as well, however upon actually going to business school I learned just how ignorant I was. Sure I've seen some royally screwed up and ignorant managers over the decades of my career. Some self taught from fad management books next to the fad diet books at the local bookstore, some who were ticket punchers in college or business school, some who might have been taught nonsense many decades ago, and some who were taught how to do things correctly but did otherwise. Have you never seen or heard of a software developer that fails to get proper info from users first, despite have been told to do so in school? Business school can teach how to properly manage people and operations just like they teach ethics and social responsibility, not everyone is going to pay attention or follow through.
What they typically lack is the type of vision that someone like Steve Jobs has. They often have trouble crafting a wider view of what they do. I am certain there are exceptions to this, perhaps many exceptions. But this doesn't change what lies at the heart of the ideology of most business schools.
Being a visionary can not be taught. There has to be some innate ability. Of course education, training and experience is probably needed to supplement this ability in order to truly be a visionary. What is taught in business school today is to seek out vision and innovation, that these are the things that lead to long term success, that managing to produce a good quarterly report will doom an endeavor in the long term.
I can think of no greater expose of the weaknesses of the MBA bean counter management methodology than the comparison of Steve Jobs with John Sculley
MBAs might not be what you think. I've been to business school recently. About 1/3 of my class were engineers. Even those with accounting backgrounds did not think as you suggest and were quite interested in some of the lessons that Apple and Jobs has taught the business world.
MBAs are stereotyped and portrayed in the media about as accurately as engineers/scientists are stereotyped and portrayed in the media. I once had an arrogant engineers attitude towards MBAs and all things business and marketing. Part of what made business school so much fun for me was learning just how ignorant and misinformed I was.
Surely there are bad schools and bad students who graduate from good schools. This is true for both engineers and MBAs. You should no more assume all MBAs are equivalent than assume all engineers are equivalent.
They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.
Slashdot Mirror
The US currently awards patents on a first to invent basis. The rest of the world, plus the US if this bill passes, awards patents on a first to file basis. The opponents of first to file often make the erroneous argument that inventors get screwed under first to file. Nonsense, the first to invent is in the best position to be first to file. The "problem" is that in the US folks are used to gaming the patent system to get a few extra years of patent protection.
Under a first to invent system a person begins a well document process and invents something. They postpone filing for a patent because it will take some number of additional years to turn an invention into a commercial product. They rely on the fact that if some other inventor files they can trump that filing with their documented history of invention. Under a first to file system someone who invents something and postpones filing until they are closer to having a marketable product is gambling that another inventor will not appear. If some other inventor appears the gamble is lost.
All that a switch to first to file will mean is that inventors can no longer safely gamble that a competitor will not appear during the timeframe that an invention is turned into a marketable product. The first to invent merely has to file immediately to protect their invention. The only thing that is lost is some time under patent protection, the time to create a marketable product. Given that patents are 20 years this is not a big deal, most inventors will get 17-19 years on the market under protection rather than 20.
The U.S. Congress is authorized by the Constitution to issue Letter of Marque and Reprisal. I say Congress should issue one to Buzz Aldrin and let him punch moon hoaxers in face. That includes some of the idiots posting around here, Jay and Silent Bob style tracking them down and ringing the doorbell on their Mom's house. ;-)
Doesn't throwing money at elections create problems rather than solve them?
Not from the perspective of the people throwing the money
When virtual reality is possible, the student can learn history by "being there"
I have family members who lived through *major* historical events. Being there didn't tell them why they were there nor why it was so important nor what was happening a few miles away and how that impacted them. They didn't really understand the big picture until I shared some of that old fashioned college book learning with them.
History is not merely a record of what happened, it also considers the various things that influenced what happened. The real work and study is often in the later.
Correct. Some problems can be solved by throwing money at them.
Care to name one?
Elections?
Expecting to make any money off of a calculator application in this day and age is foolish. It's a trivial application to write, and everything comes with at least a built in simple calculator; usually with scientific and programmer modes as well.
The iPad does not come with a calculator. The built-in iPhone calculator does not support RPN, fractions, complex numbers, metric conversions, etc ... and that's just the scientific side. The built-in also does not support 20 digits of precision so it can't perform 64-bit math. Neither does the built-in offer statistics functionality, business functionality, or hex functionality. Check out http://www.perpenso.com/calc/ and you will find quite a bit more functionality than the built-in calculator.
What about outside of gaming? For example I have an iPhone calculator app, Perpenso Calc, that includes scientific functionality, metric conversions, rpn, etc. However specialized functionality - statistics, business and hex - is made available through in app purchases. I thought putting the functionality of handheld scientific, business and hex calculators into a single app was more convenient than having separate apps. I also thought a single and higher bundled price would be disadvantageous. In app purchases seem to handle tailoring functionality for needs quite well. I'm interested in hearing opinions on what people think of this approach.
Back to games. For a gaming related app I would consider in app purchases for very high level things. For example the base game would only include single player functionality. Multiplayer functionality could be unlocked using an in app purchase. This keeps the base price of the game down, and from past experience with very popular single/multi-player games it was noticed that only have of the units sold ever connect to a game server. Again, price being tailored for desired functionality. Any opinions?
Thanks in advance for any opinions or insights.
Yeah, like I need to be reminded what year it is on a daily basis.
Actually YMD is useful because it sorts.
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
The job interviews for marketing at mobile phone vendors must be fun. How many beers does it take before you begin to have trouble keeping track of items on the counter or table.
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy
First we need to know how many unreleased iPhones are out there and for how long this field testing goes on. iPhones get lost/stolen in bars all the time, the pre-release loss rate may be comparable to the post-release loss rate. Personally I think it looks like drunk guys are not very good at keeping track of the expensive gadget they leave laying on the counter or table.
So you are saying the normal Google employee gets to work on what they want 20% of the time but Gosling would get to work on what he wants 100% of the time in his comfy Google office, what is the downside you care claiming for him to be at Google? :-)
They should focus on RPN calculators. In DayGlo colours to attract the youth market.
A self serving post but Perpenso Calc offers RPN, 20 digit precision (enough for 64-bit arithmetic), decimal based arithmetic (no binary rounding), fractions, complex numbers, ... It's basically scientific, statistic, business and hex calculators in a single app. You can have a serious calculator and have some fun with color schemes too.
For fun try "0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1" to see if your calculator is using decimal math or the FPU and try "2 ^ 64" to see if your calculator can support 64-bit calculations. You should see whole number, no decimal points and fraction components, no exponents.
I work for a large publicly traded corporation. The priority list goes like this: Shareholders, Customers, Employees. So if they increase the perceived value of the company, they are doing their jobs in looking out for the #1 priority so they do give a shit, just not about anything else.
The flaw in the system is not the priority list, it is in the timeframe. If one's timeframe is long term then focusing on the customers yield the greater benefit for the shareholders.
PowerComputing products were not better, they were less expensive. We had both Apple and PowerComputing products at a previous employer. It was a startup and every dollar spent came out of the owner's pockets. Despite being one of the most enthusiastic believers in Apple you will ever meet, even in the darkest days of the 90s, he decided to save some money. The machines worked fine but there were a serious of noticeable relative deficiencies. One that comes to mind is being distractingly loud, a cheap power supply with a fan that made it sound like a friggin vacuum cleaner.
So maybe giving a CEO 1M shares in the company, 50% vested in 5 years and 100% vested in 10 years is not such a bad idea?
By the way, you are touching on the principal agent problem, ie how to get management's incentives aligned with the owner's incentives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem
If he screws up and AAPL falls to $30 in 10 years, he still gets $30,000,000. That's pretty good retirement money.
Nope, he'd be fired long before that. No job, no stock options.
I guess all the cool stuff he can get for those extra 380m$ that he couldn't afford with his first 380m$ will keep him churning on at night.
How many CEOs of the largest US corporations get to $300M and say that's enough, I'm done here?
From what I've seen boards who give away insane bonuses (which 380m$ is) rarely handle it this way even when you have poorly performing CEOs.
I think you are mixing severance packages and this bonus, they are two separate things. Given the 5 and 10 year vesting periods this bonus can evaporate. That is the entire reason for such a long vesting period.
You are saying that Apple's board would fire its CEO and not hand that CEO some sort of multimillion dollar exit package on the way out? I guess you "Think Different" from the boards of pretty much every other major US company in recent history.
That is a weak straw man argument. A hypothetical exit package is something different from this bonus and would probably occur whether or not any such bonus existed.
What I am saying is that the $383M bonus vests 50% at 5 years and 100% at 10 years, so its pretty clear the CEO wouldn't be getting that were he to screw up royally.
This way if the company continues to win and prosper, he will become wealthy. Otherwise no honey. This is the right way!
He can tank Apple stock by 90% and walk away with 38m$ bonus for it. The right way?
Or he can double Apple stock and walk away with a $767m bonus.
Also keep in mind that he can be fired if he performs poorly, so if he tanks Apple stock in the next 5 years he gets $0.
It isn't a stereotype. It is what is taught. I also have engineer friends who are taking or have taken their MBA's, but this doesn't change the fact that a key part of what is taught is that to manage a group of people, one does not need to know or understand what those underneath you do.
I earned an MBA a few years ago, that is not what has been taught in recent times. That may or may not be what was taught many decades ago but that notion has long since been discredited in business circles. I confess that I did share your beliefs prior to going to business school. Part of what made business school fun was being amused at more former beliefs, I was as ignorant about business and managements as I had assumed MBAs were about their respective products and markets.
My friends got the degree because it is a credential, an a way into other jobs. I am sure some of what they learned will be helpful too.
Like my BS and MS computer science programs, my MBA program returned what I put into it. Whether one studies business or a technical field if one is in college just to get a piece of paper, to get their ticket punched, then the results will not be so good.
However I have also seen first hand the consequences of a person with an MBA managing a food production company when he had no background in food production. The result was disastrous.
And I've seen UC Berkeley honors grads completely screw up in engineering. Even when one does make an effort in college some people lack the common sense required in the real world. Its just as true for engineering as business.
What I was taught in business school is that if I took such a food production job I should learn as much as I could as fast as I could about food production. This includes spending a lot of time doing so outside of work hours. I was also taught to go directly to those experienced on the production line to get unfiltered and practical information.
The key problem is that they are taught to abstract out the details of what they are managing, to effectively blind themselves to minutiae, to delegate those things to others. They manage based largely on parameters, on graphs and equations that are supposed to describe what is most important about the businesses they are managing.
As I've said before I used to believe such things as well, however upon actually going to business school I learned just how ignorant I was. Sure I've seen some royally screwed up and ignorant managers over the decades of my career. Some self taught from fad management books next to the fad diet books at the local bookstore, some who were ticket punchers in college or business school, some who might have been taught nonsense many decades ago, and some who were taught how to do things correctly but did otherwise. Have you never seen or heard of a software developer that fails to get proper info from users first, despite have been told to do so in school? Business school can teach how to properly manage people and operations just like they teach ethics and social responsibility, not everyone is going to pay attention or follow through.
What they typically lack is the type of vision that someone like Steve Jobs has. They often have trouble crafting a wider view of what they do. I am certain there are exceptions to this, perhaps many exceptions. But this doesn't change what lies at the heart of the ideology of most business schools.
Being a visionary can not be taught. There has to be some innate ability. Of course education, training and experience is probably needed to supplement this ability in order to truly be a visionary. What is taught in business school today is to seek out vision and innovation, that these are the things that lead to long term success, that managing to produce a good quarterly report will doom an endeavor in the long term.
I can think of no greater expose of the weaknesses of the MBA bean counter management methodology than the comparison of Steve Jobs with John Sculley
MBAs might not be what you think. I've been to business school recently. About 1/3 of my class were engineers. Even those with accounting backgrounds did not think as you suggest and were quite interested in some of the lessons that Apple and Jobs has taught the business world.
MBAs are stereotyped and portrayed in the media about as accurately as engineers/scientists are stereotyped and portrayed in the media. I once had an arrogant engineers attitude towards MBAs and all things business and marketing. Part of what made business school so much fun for me was learning just how ignorant and misinformed I was.
Surely there are bad schools and bad students who graduate from good schools. This is true for both engineers and MBAs. You should no more assume all MBAs are equivalent than assume all engineers are equivalent.
No, Fremen stillsuit boots pumped water from walking. They didn't generate or store electricity.
"... using the changing physical form of liquid drops ..." Not a pump but still pushing around water.
Sorry, I thought the above was responding to my original post. Slashdot somehow managed to list it as such. First time I ever noticed such a bug.
Yes I am aware of tablets used in 2001.
Even then, Stanley Kubrick's production designers already came up with the same rectangle.
Maybe the patent did not use the dimensions 9x4x1.
I think Heinlein used it as far back as the 1940s in his books. Of course others actually built them a century earlier, at least.
They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.