I own corporations and the information I receive daily is very involved. There is nothing, though, that a stockholder couldn't learn by studying the market.
Just like blackmail laws, insider trading laws are attempting to stifle free expression. Congress has no right to make a law governing one's expression.
I hate how people support the court here. I don't invest in stocks because I know it is a scam. Why would you?
Campaigns don't give government power. Campaign finance reform hurt third parties. To me, how you spend your money is protected by the 1st Amendment.
I don't want campaign reform, I want a court-imposed death penalty for any official that abuses their power, cheats or disobeys the oath to uphold the Constitution.
If it says "no law" and you propose one? Hanging squad. If it says "shall never" and you propose to? Hanging squad.
Absolute power can only be restrained in an absolute manner.
Your attempts to put every voter, party and politician in the "stupid" basket is an insult to those who fight this kind of nonsense.
Voting today will always be voting for the less r of two great evils. Candidates know the power they'll have to abuse. Only 1 Congressman in 42 years has voted Constitutionally. ONE.
Instead of blaming others (a very immature tactic) consider the things you might actually do to fight this:
I will blame those who enabled these tyrants. The voters.
* Join the EFF
Useless. Not one thing they've lobbied against has been prevented. Instead I support the Institute for Justice who have a proven track record.
* Write your congressperson/senators when they do something you really like or don't like
Yea, that works. Never has, never will. Democrats and Republicans equally break the Constitution.
* Tell other people how you feel outside of slashdot
I do. My newsletter was hitting almost 2000 daily readers, almost all who stopped voting.
* Join the ACLU
The ACLU is pro-racism, anti-male and anti-work. I would never support them.
My "utopia" is no voting and No laws covering more than maybe a 30 mile radius.
It likely will never happen, so until then, vote for yourself for every position. It'll skew the percentages. Imagine George Bush 5.1%, John Kerry 4.9% Other 89%. That's a mandate.
Vote no for every referendum.
Vote no for judge retention.
Vote no at school board meetings.
Refuse to send your child to public school, refuse to show your ID for any public official.
You don't need to continue enabling these drunken soldiers.
Juries are meant to be composed of one's peers -- people from the community who know the defendant. They should not be hand picked or completely neutral.
A jury can then judge the crime, the law AND the defendant as they'll know all 3.
If the actions of the masses defined ANY law at all, 65+ MILLION people trading songs would set a precedent saying trading was just fine.
No, the law takes precedent. I'm anti-copyright and have said for 15 years that copyright is wrong.
and you tell me this isn't the fault of those whom gladly trade their virtue in for power and money?
It isn't.
Our Constitution is firm. It is designed so the federal government has very tiny, restricted powers. They are to be so restricted that even billion dollar bribe couldn't get laws passed.
With a Constitutionally restricted Congress, Senate and Executive branch, campaign finance laws could be reversed. Money would have zero effect.
Uhm, no. They are following the letter of the laws they purchased through a Free Market Government.
Nice try. Free markets abhor the use of force. Government laws are legal uses of force, and not free markets.
Evil is the willingness to fuck over someone for your own gain. Pure evil is when that gain is just for your own enjoyment.
I agree. The teachers unions force me to pay their salaries. The army forces me to pay for wars. The RIAA doesn't force me to buy jack. Voters support teachers and soldiers.
Independent music is doing to the RIAA what free software is doing to Microsoft-- making them stay up at night, even if it doesn't appear to be a real threat at the moment.
I've been in the indie scene for 10 years. I just financed two indie albums. I go to 100+ concerts per year. Most indie music is crap. The RIAA sees no threat there. They see a threat from people breaking the laws that VOTERS SUPPORTED.
If they can do that, they can destroy the truly independed music scene before it even gets started.
And anyone who voted is to blame for creating laws that created the RIAA.
The voters elected a Congress with no concern for their enumerated and severely powers. Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Independents are equally evil.
The voters continue to vote, robbing everyone of their basic rights. The crazy majority has given their power away to a government more concerned with growing its power.
Don't confuse the RIAA with evil. You, the voter, are evil. They just followed the letter of the laws you wanted.
You can get rid of refresh entirely -- subscribe to slashdot, add the subscriber RSS feed to your RSS browser and have it notify you when an article goes from red to black:)
Re:Web, a Distraction at Work
on
Hooked On The Web
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yet in MY experience (and I have about 12 years of that experience actually paying attention to PC use in various customers' offices), the time wasted is actually a positive for motivating the employee. Nowadays we take work with us almost everywhere, including the home. The old days of working 36 hours a week and spending 10 of those hours on break, at the water cooler and in TPS meetings were not as productive as the 80 hours a week we're working (even if 30 of those hours are spent doing personal things for 30 seconds here and 90 seconds there).
I'm very sure that slashdot and other blogs make me more productive.
...or did this feel like an intervention focused solely on me?
I don't look at it as an addiction, really. There are those who have an honest drive for information. My life, my job and my hobbies revolve around information. I always think about the "it:" How does it work, where did it come from, why isn't it better, who else likes it?
With new forms of information available so quickly (wikipedia, google, etc) everywhere I go, I often have information in mere moments. I can turn on my PDA phone in about 2 seconds, touch tap (with my super thumb nail) any phrase into Google for PDA, and have a response in under a minute total. Does it mean I am addicted? Not when I am able to take so much of that "useless" information and transform it into a positive: profit or social fun or who knows what? The other day I was wondering what ever happened to those crazy "bubbles" of informational tidbits on TV shows and videos and was thinking how cool it would be to integrate a device with my TV that listens to content and offers instant pop-ups from the web.
People want information. 6-10% of the people thrive on knowing weird things. Does it mean we're hooked? I'm the same kid who loved the encyclopedia as well as odd old books that no one would read. The fact that I can now integrate with billions of others simultaneously adding/revising/editing/deleting the synopses of information that exist is mindblowing. Just 15 years ago I was running a BBS with a thousand or so users and I couldn't believe that one 16 year old kid could interact with so many people in such a large area (a hundred square miles). Now I look at the e-mails I receive from my blogs from people in South Africa and Australia and even Kansas. What is the end game for me? Information.
Insert obligatory "oh my God that guy played Ghandi" Sneakers quote here. I'll let you information addicts look it up.
Ideas have real monetary value within their context/environment.
Correct. Just having the idea on paper is non-contextual no matter how you word it.
The only way to know what the idea's value is, at any given moment, is to actually get out and offer the idea to others. If this idea is something others can perform for no cost, your idea is likely worthless (unless you can perform it behind a curtain). If this idea requires other processes that are harder to duplicate, now you can make some money.
I don't like people using government to protect them from being responsible and working hard. Life is about continually working to stay ahead of those who don't want to. Government is about using a "mandate of the people" to accomplish what others won't work hard to do.
All my ideas that I release to the public I do in order to get people to hire me to accomplish certain tasks. The basic ideas I've developed offer a glimpse of my abilities to others. They're better at performing their tasks, and as long as my task offers them a profit (for my cost), I'll get hired. Almost everything I do can be easily copied by my customer. They don't copy many of my proprietary ideas because I'm good at my jobs, and I utilize many different proprietary ideas in order to perform profitably for my customer.
Now take the cell phone. Most people can not copy the cell phone. Those who CAN copy the cell phone do so with MAJOR investment. A few patents on cell phone tasks do what exactly? They offer a copy a monopoly on a feature. They tell the market "This is a great feature, so you can't copy it without paying the inventor." But the item without the idea still holds a bigger value than the idea without the rest of the item. Why should we be protecting these ideas when, as a whole, so much more is needed to accomplish the end task, and products only get better as people continually release new ideas.
The first company to release a product with a new feature may not recoup the development costs of the new idea. This is a reality. When I open a store, I may not recoup the money I invest in opening that store (market research, build out, etc). So what? That is part of the business -- finding out how to get your customer to pay you even though they have billions of other things they can purchase. Patents and monopoly force don't make that big of a different, but they do stifle competition and innovation.
This is true, yet Microsoft instead of fixing the bugs decides to jump in an design their own anti-virus. I wonder if some of the virus exploits are just impossible to properly close off and still allow the system to function as the user intends. Maybe the anti-virus anti-spam anti-adware layers are needed just to decipher what a user's program is allowd to do an an unwanted program might try to do.
This is completely true, actually. Rothbard was really a remarkable theorist -- unfortunately he died before his third wave of fans came online.
The difficulty with the civil aspect (Devil's Advocate here) is what happens if you sell me your cell phone and I sign an agreement not to reverse engineer it and I give it to my brother who does reverse engineer it? Most/. readers would argue that they have enough contracts to click-sign, they're not going to want to live in a world where every action is governed by 100,000 page civilly-binding click-through agreements.
In the end, the law is the device of coercion and force. Who enforces the law? Not the courts, not the Congress and definitely not the executive branch. The lawyers do. Basic contracts can be very simple, but once you incoporate these monsters into any system, you'll destroy the simplicity.
The problem with patents is that (to me, an anarchocapitalist) evil begets evil.
RIM probably has dozens (hundreds?) of patents in their product. Of course people will take advantage of the law until the law is dismissed, and the more there are people that rely on the law, the less likely a law will be dismissed.
In part, RIM is only reaping what they've sown. (this entire post could be a cliche haha). They made their bed, they're sleeping in it. I'm definitely NOT defending RIM here, as I bet many of their patents are also common sense issues.
The cell phone is a massively complicated invention. Yet it has been around for decades and decades. Changes made on top of the cell phone are quickly copied by others -- which patents are actually protecting the cell phone manufacturers? Every phone I've had usually has 6-12 patents listed somewhere in the case. What the heck are they doing different from one another? How is this good for the consumer and good for the market?
I got news earlier today that the U.S. trial is moving forward as well.
The article shows why I am so anti-government:
Under U.S. law, a company can be guilty of violating patents it didn't know about.
Try reading every law. Try finding a lawyer that knows every law. Now expand that to patents that even the Patent Office doesn't know exist.
But a judge denied RIM's request to enforce a $450 million settlement the companies announced in March but never finalized.
$450 million over basically a dream or a vision. Patents are ridiculous. How can anyone rightfully say that just announcing an idea without having at the minimum a justification for how to implement the idea is worth more than $0? Ideas don't have value. Words don't have value. Business plans don't have value. What has value is the ability to convert anything INTO a marketable resource.
The typical slashdot reply is "without patents no one would develop anything" and "without patents drug companies wouldn't be able to protect their investment." I don't believe this at all. Even with rampant P2P, there are 10 thousand musicians right now trying to write music. Even with strict non-compete clauses, there are thousands of programmers writing the next big thing on their home computers. People will always develop, invent, dream and write. The key to making money is not just having the idea, but coming up with a plan on selling that idea before someone can knock it off. Sure, patent and copyright might restrict another company for a few years from selling the item (in some countries), but the instant a drug or a device comes out to the market, you better believe there are black market copies sold a few days later in some countries with more lacking patents.
I am a firm believer in a very simple idea: if you have something of value, don't give it to others. Don't leave your gold on your porch in the open. Don't make your idea until you can find ways to capitalize on it.
inventor Thomas Campana began acquiring patents for wireless communications. Campana co-founded NTP to collect royalties on them. He died of cancer in 2004.
I can only hope that one we find that cell phones DO cause cancer and that this bastard got what he deserved from not having enough karma.
Rubbish. Block all the ads on all the sites. The site owners can put up text ad links which are not nearly as annoying, or they can put in a pay wall for some/all of their content. You have no obligation to view or click on their ads. The market will adapt!
That's fine, it is completely your right to do so. But with every action in life, you have to make a few considerations: How does it affect me right now? How does it affect me in the future?
Allowing advertisements on sites you use is GOOD for you -- it keeps them in business, so you profit from seeing the advertising. Blocking the ads will allow the market to adapt, and that adaptation may mean limited content for non-subscribers or even the loss of the site in the future.
No one forces you to look at advertising, yet if I go to a site I like and I see ads that have even a minor interest to me, I always click and spend a few minutes with the sponsor. I don't usually on/. because I am a subscriber, but I have clicked a few ads in the past few weeks that actually interested me.
On the rare occasion that I buy something online, I always try to buy through a click-through to a site. It isn't fraud, it is helping the site that I like by helping me make a purchase.
If Microsoft fixed everything, then the companies that made programs that allowed users to work around the "flaws" in Windows would go to the federal prosecutors and demand that Microsoft be sued for having a monopoly on fixing their own bugs.
All kidding aside, Microsoft has a huge amount of users, maybe more than any other product in existance (I didn't do the research). This does mean that more bugs will be found, and the reason behind not fixing certain bugs may be that the bug was addressed in a future rollup or patch already. Because Microsoft is a massive corporation with so many departments, it is possible that Microsoft BugCentral says "Fix this!" and Microsoft PatchCentral says "We fixed it in Article 931321 coming next week" and Microsoft ReleaseCentral says "We're waiting for a fix on another bug before releasing that."
I'm not a fan of it, but it is really hard to just come out and say they're ignoring a bug, when it may be something deep set within the software (hard to remove) or it might be addressed but on hold for another reason (opened up another flaw?). If we think we as geeks found all the vulnerabilities, we're fooling ourselves. Windows is a massive program, and even Linux has ongoing flaws. When Linux has as many third party apps and interconnecting drivers as Windows does, I'll accept a complaint towards getting things fixed post haste. Until then, we just have to (thankfully) support third parties that give us options! (And paychecks)
Don't. Not unless you can afford establishment advertising.
Honestly. Advertising can work for the very select top tier products that become the establishment product, but in the long haul, there is only one way to make a product successful and profitable: quality.
It doesn't have to be the best, it has to work in the customer's situation. If you sell service, do it happily and as close to perfection as possible.
In all my years of being in business, I have never seen a good return on advertising that turned into a long run of regular customers. Sure, I may have seen some profits, but I also so many losses. I will never advertise again, I can't compete with Target or the like. What brings customers to my various businesses? Word of mouth. It spreads like wildfire when you perform a really good service or sell a great product.
The web is in trouble as programs like AdBlock and the like gain use. I know many of you use AdBlock, but if you use it on a website you like, turn it off. Click the damn ads. How do you think that site is being provided for? I pay as a subscriber to slashdot, and this Christmas I'm planning on giving a dozen or so subscription gifts to people on here that I admire. Sure, Taco and the boys have some nice money now, but I love the site, and I will continue to support it.
Advertising online doesn't work as well as many think it does. I've been watching the companies that have started to use AdSense within their catalogs (offering paid links to their competition). Only the top companies are making it big. I've spoken to some large bloggers (off the record) and their numbers in advertising don't make their blogging a real income. Yeah, there are a few who are making it big.
Google is taking in the most, but they have to find ways to combat against AdBlock and other ways to avoid the advertising. I don't know how they'll do it, but as I find AdBlock being used on more and more systems, I know that Google won't remain the king.
I do believe that sponsorship advertising of the web might work. Basically a monthly payment in order to say "Slashdot, brought to you by Microsoft" or something of the sort. Some podcasts I've listened to are receiving sponsorships, and they are't tacky ads but well thought out slogans or quick product placements.
Slashdot Mirror
Insider trading shouldn't be illegal.
I own corporations and the information I receive daily is very involved. There is nothing, though, that a stockholder couldn't learn by studying the market.
Just like blackmail laws, insider trading laws are attempting to stifle free expression. Congress has no right to make a law governing one's expression.
I hate how people support the court here. I don't invest in stocks because I know it is a scam. Why would you?
Campaigns don't give government power. Campaign finance reform hurt third parties. To me, how you spend your money is protected by the 1st Amendment.
I don't want campaign reform, I want a court-imposed death penalty for any official that abuses their power, cheats or disobeys the oath to uphold the Constitution.
If it says "no law" and you propose one? Hanging squad. If it says "shall never" and you propose to? Hanging squad.
Absolute power can only be restrained in an absolute manner.
Your attempts to put every voter, party and politician in the "stupid" basket is an insult to those who fight this kind of nonsense.
Voting today will always be voting for the less r of two great evils. Candidates know the power they'll have to abuse. Only 1 Congressman in 42 years has voted Constitutionally. ONE.
Instead of blaming others (a very immature tactic) consider the things you might actually do to fight this:
I will blame those who enabled these tyrants. The voters.
* Join the EFF
Useless. Not one thing they've lobbied against has been prevented. Instead I support the Institute for Justice who have a proven track record.
* Write your congressperson/senators when they do something you really like or don't like
Yea, that works. Never has, never will. Democrats and Republicans equally break the Constitution.
* Tell other people how you feel outside of slashdot
I do. My newsletter was hitting almost 2000 daily readers, almost all who stopped voting.
* Join the ACLU
The ACLU is pro-racism, anti-male and anti-work. I would never support them.
What have *you* done lately?
More than you could imagine.
My "utopia" is no voting and No laws covering more than maybe a 30 mile radius.
It likely will never happen, so until then, vote for yourself for every position. It'll skew the percentages. Imagine George Bush 5.1%, John Kerry 4.9% Other 89%. That's a mandate.
Vote no for every referendum.
Vote no for judge retention.
Vote no at school board meetings.
Refuse to send your child to public school, refuse to show your ID for any public official.
You don't need to continue enabling these drunken soldiers.
Juries are meant to be composed of one's peers -- people from the community who know the defendant. They should not be hand picked or completely neutral.
A jury can then judge the crime, the law AND the defendant as they'll know all 3.
If the actions of the masses defined ANY law at all, 65+ MILLION people trading songs would set a precedent saying trading was just fine.
No, the law takes precedent. I'm anti-copyright and have said for 15 years that copyright is wrong.
and you tell me this isn't the fault of those whom gladly trade their virtue in for power and money?
It isn't.
Our Constitution is firm. It is designed so the federal government has very tiny, restricted powers. They are to be so restricted that even billion dollar bribe couldn't get laws passed.
With a Constitutionally restricted Congress, Senate and Executive branch, campaign finance laws could be reversed. Money would have zero effect.
The voters made this mess.
Uhm, no. They are following the letter of the laws they purchased through a Free Market Government.
Nice try. Free markets abhor the use of force. Government laws are legal uses of force, and not free markets.
Evil is the willingness to fuck over someone for your own gain. Pure evil is when that gain is just for your own enjoyment.
I agree. The teachers unions force me to pay their salaries. The army forces me to pay for wars. The RIAA doesn't force me to buy jack. Voters support teachers and soldiers.
Independent music is doing to the RIAA what free software is doing to Microsoft-- making them stay up at night, even if it doesn't appear to be a real threat at the moment.
I've been in the indie scene for 10 years. I just financed two indie albums. I go to 100+ concerts per year. Most indie music is crap. The RIAA sees no threat there. They see a threat from people breaking the laws that VOTERS SUPPORTED.
If they can do that, they can destroy the truly independed music scene before it even gets started.
And anyone who voted is to blame for creating laws that created the RIAA.
You, the voter.
The voters elected a Congress with no concern for their enumerated and severely powers. Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Independents are equally evil.
The voters continue to vote, robbing everyone of their basic rights. The crazy majority has given their power away to a government more concerned with growing its power.
Don't confuse the RIAA with evil. You, the voter, are evil. They just followed the letter of the laws you wanted.
And that's all you have to do.
Don't complain to Congress, the SEC, the CUB, the UN. Just don't use the service.
If Bell is your only provider, you're to blame. Many States and cities made it a mess to compete, and the voters wanted it that way.
Nothing to see here. With competition, these things don't matter.
The key to Linux not failing is email.
Without it, it will fail. Not failing != success.
I do agree in thinking webmail is the future.
You can get rid of refresh entirely -- subscribe to slashdot, add the subscriber RSS feed to your RSS browser and have it notify you when an article goes from red to black :)
Yet in MY experience (and I have about 12 years of that experience actually paying attention to PC use in various customers' offices), the time wasted is actually a positive for motivating the employee. Nowadays we take work with us almost everywhere, including the home. The old days of working 36 hours a week and spending 10 of those hours on break, at the water cooler and in TPS meetings were not as productive as the 80 hours a week we're working (even if 30 of those hours are spent doing personal things for 30 seconds here and 90 seconds there).
I'm very sure that slashdot and other blogs make me more productive.
...or did this feel like an intervention focused solely on me?
I don't look at it as an addiction, really. There are those who have an honest drive for information. My life, my job and my hobbies revolve around information. I always think about the "it:" How does it work, where did it come from, why isn't it better, who else likes it?
With new forms of information available so quickly (wikipedia, google, etc) everywhere I go, I often have information in mere moments. I can turn on my PDA phone in about 2 seconds, touch tap (with my super thumb nail) any phrase into Google for PDA, and have a response in under a minute total. Does it mean I am addicted? Not when I am able to take so much of that "useless" information and transform it into a positive: profit or social fun or who knows what? The other day I was wondering what ever happened to those crazy "bubbles" of informational tidbits on TV shows and videos and was thinking how cool it would be to integrate a device with my TV that listens to content and offers instant pop-ups from the web.
People want information. 6-10% of the people thrive on knowing weird things. Does it mean we're hooked? I'm the same kid who loved the encyclopedia as well as odd old books that no one would read. The fact that I can now integrate with billions of others simultaneously adding/revising/editing/deleting the synopses of information that exist is mindblowing. Just 15 years ago I was running a BBS with a thousand or so users and I couldn't believe that one 16 year old kid could interact with so many people in such a large area (a hundred square miles). Now I look at the e-mails I receive from my blogs from people in South Africa and Australia and even Kansas. What is the end game for me? Information.
Insert obligatory "oh my God that guy played Ghandi" Sneakers quote here. I'll let you information addicts look it up.
Ideas have real monetary value within their context/environment.
Correct. Just having the idea on paper is non-contextual no matter how you word it.
The only way to know what the idea's value is, at any given moment, is to actually get out and offer the idea to others. If this idea is something others can perform for no cost, your idea is likely worthless (unless you can perform it behind a curtain). If this idea requires other processes that are harder to duplicate, now you can make some money.
I don't like people using government to protect them from being responsible and working hard. Life is about continually working to stay ahead of those who don't want to. Government is about using a "mandate of the people" to accomplish what others won't work hard to do.
All my ideas that I release to the public I do in order to get people to hire me to accomplish certain tasks. The basic ideas I've developed offer a glimpse of my abilities to others. They're better at performing their tasks, and as long as my task offers them a profit (for my cost), I'll get hired. Almost everything I do can be easily copied by my customer. They don't copy many of my proprietary ideas because I'm good at my jobs, and I utilize many different proprietary ideas in order to perform profitably for my customer.
Now take the cell phone. Most people can not copy the cell phone. Those who CAN copy the cell phone do so with MAJOR investment. A few patents on cell phone tasks do what exactly? They offer a copy a monopoly on a feature. They tell the market "This is a great feature, so you can't copy it without paying the inventor." But the item without the idea still holds a bigger value than the idea without the rest of the item. Why should we be protecting these ideas when, as a whole, so much more is needed to accomplish the end task, and products only get better as people continually release new ideas.
The first company to release a product with a new feature may not recoup the development costs of the new idea. This is a reality. When I open a store, I may not recoup the money I invest in opening that store (market research, build out, etc). So what? That is part of the business -- finding out how to get your customer to pay you even though they have billions of other things they can purchase. Patents and monopoly force don't make that big of a different, but they do stifle competition and innovation.
This is true, yet Microsoft instead of fixing the bugs decides to jump in an design their own anti-virus. I wonder if some of the virus exploits are just impossible to properly close off and still allow the system to function as the user intends. Maybe the anti-virus anti-spam anti-adware layers are needed just to decipher what a user's program is allowd to do an an unwanted program might try to do.
This is completely true, actually. Rothbard was really a remarkable theorist -- unfortunately he died before his third wave of fans came online.
/. readers would argue that they have enough contracts to click-sign, they're not going to want to live in a world where every action is governed by 100,000 page civilly-binding click-through agreements.
The difficulty with the civil aspect (Devil's Advocate here) is what happens if you sell me your cell phone and I sign an agreement not to reverse engineer it and I give it to my brother who does reverse engineer it? Most
In the end, the law is the device of coercion and force. Who enforces the law? Not the courts, not the Congress and definitely not the executive branch. The lawyers do. Basic contracts can be very simple, but once you incoporate these monsters into any system, you'll destroy the simplicity.
(I am a huge fan of Rothbard)
The problem with patents is that (to me, an anarchocapitalist) evil begets evil.
RIM probably has dozens (hundreds?) of patents in their product. Of course people will take advantage of the law until the law is dismissed, and the more there are people that rely on the law, the less likely a law will be dismissed.
In part, RIM is only reaping what they've sown. (this entire post could be a cliche haha). They made their bed, they're sleeping in it. I'm definitely NOT defending RIM here, as I bet many of their patents are also common sense issues.
The cell phone is a massively complicated invention. Yet it has been around for decades and decades. Changes made on top of the cell phone are quickly copied by others -- which patents are actually protecting the cell phone manufacturers? Every phone I've had usually has 6-12 patents listed somewhere in the case. What the heck are they doing different from one another? How is this good for the consumer and good for the market?
Haha, thanks. Both noted (I wondered why existance didn't show up in my word completer). Oops.
I got news earlier today that the U.S. trial is moving forward as well.
The article shows why I am so anti-government:
Under U.S. law, a company can be guilty of violating patents it didn't know about.
Try reading every law. Try finding a lawyer that knows every law. Now expand that to patents that even the Patent Office doesn't know exist.
But a judge denied RIM's request to enforce a $450 million settlement the companies announced in March but never finalized.
$450 million over basically a dream or a vision. Patents are ridiculous. How can anyone rightfully say that just announcing an idea without having at the minimum a justification for how to implement the idea is worth more than $0? Ideas don't have value. Words don't have value. Business plans don't have value. What has value is the ability to convert anything INTO a marketable resource.
The typical slashdot reply is "without patents no one would develop anything" and "without patents drug companies wouldn't be able to protect their investment." I don't believe this at all. Even with rampant P2P, there are 10 thousand musicians right now trying to write music. Even with strict non-compete clauses, there are thousands of programmers writing the next big thing on their home computers. People will always develop, invent, dream and write. The key to making money is not just having the idea, but coming up with a plan on selling that idea before someone can knock it off. Sure, patent and copyright might restrict another company for a few years from selling the item (in some countries), but the instant a drug or a device comes out to the market, you better believe there are black market copies sold a few days later in some countries with more lacking patents.
I am a firm believer in a very simple idea: if you have something of value, don't give it to others. Don't leave your gold on your porch in the open. Don't make your idea until you can find ways to capitalize on it.
inventor Thomas Campana began acquiring patents for wireless communications. Campana co-founded NTP to collect royalties on them. He died of cancer in 2004.
I can only hope that one we find that cell phones DO cause cancer and that this bastard got what he deserved from not having enough karma.
Rubbish. Block all the ads on all the sites. The site owners can put up text ad links which are not nearly as annoying, or they can put in a pay wall for some/all of their content. You have no obligation to view or click on their ads. The market will adapt!
/. because I am a subscriber, but I have clicked a few ads in the past few weeks that actually interested me.
That's fine, it is completely your right to do so. But with every action in life, you have to make a few considerations: How does it affect me right now? How does it affect me in the future?
Allowing advertisements on sites you use is GOOD for you -- it keeps them in business, so you profit from seeing the advertising. Blocking the ads will allow the market to adapt, and that adaptation may mean limited content for non-subscribers or even the loss of the site in the future.
No one forces you to look at advertising, yet if I go to a site I like and I see ads that have even a minor interest to me, I always click and spend a few minutes with the sponsor. I don't usually on
On the rare occasion that I buy something online, I always try to buy through a click-through to a site. It isn't fraud, it is helping the site that I like by helping me make a purchase.
If Microsoft fixed everything, then the companies that made programs that allowed users to work around the "flaws" in Windows would go to the federal prosecutors and demand that Microsoft be sued for having a monopoly on fixing their own bugs.
All kidding aside, Microsoft has a huge amount of users, maybe more than any other product in existance (I didn't do the research). This does mean that more bugs will be found, and the reason behind not fixing certain bugs may be that the bug was addressed in a future rollup or patch already. Because Microsoft is a massive corporation with so many departments, it is possible that Microsoft BugCentral says "Fix this!" and Microsoft PatchCentral says "We fixed it in Article 931321 coming next week" and Microsoft ReleaseCentral says "We're waiting for a fix on another bug before releasing that."
I'm not a fan of it, but it is really hard to just come out and say they're ignoring a bug, when it may be something deep set within the software (hard to remove) or it might be addressed but on hold for another reason (opened up another flaw?). If we think we as geeks found all the vulnerabilities, we're fooling ourselves. Windows is a massive program, and even Linux has ongoing flaws. When Linux has as many third party apps and interconnecting drivers as Windows does, I'll accept a complaint towards getting things fixed post haste. Until then, we just have to (thankfully) support third parties that give us options! (And paychecks)
Don't. Not unless you can afford establishment advertising.
Honestly. Advertising can work for the very select top tier products that become the establishment product, but in the long haul, there is only one way to make a product successful and profitable: quality.
It doesn't have to be the best, it has to work in the customer's situation. If you sell service, do it happily and as close to perfection as possible.
In all my years of being in business, I have never seen a good return on advertising that turned into a long run of regular customers. Sure, I may have seen some profits, but I also so many losses. I will never advertise again, I can't compete with Target or the like. What brings customers to my various businesses? Word of mouth. It spreads like wildfire when you perform a really good service or sell a great product.
The web is in trouble as programs like AdBlock and the like gain use. I know many of you use AdBlock, but if you use it on a website you like, turn it off. Click the damn ads. How do you think that site is being provided for? I pay as a subscriber to slashdot, and this Christmas I'm planning on giving a dozen or so subscription gifts to people on here that I admire. Sure, Taco and the boys have some nice money now, but I love the site, and I will continue to support it.
Advertising online doesn't work as well as many think it does. I've been watching the companies that have started to use AdSense within their catalogs (offering paid links to their competition). Only the top companies are making it big. I've spoken to some large bloggers (off the record) and their numbers in advertising don't make their blogging a real income. Yeah, there are a few who are making it big.
Google is taking in the most, but they have to find ways to combat against AdBlock and other ways to avoid the advertising. I don't know how they'll do it, but as I find AdBlock being used on more and more systems, I know that Google won't remain the king.
I do believe that sponsorship advertising of the web might work. Basically a monthly payment in order to say "Slashdot, brought to you by Microsoft" or something of the sort. Some podcasts I've listened to are receiving sponsorships, and they are't tacky ads but well thought out slogans or quick product placements.
You didn't notice that the copyright below changed from OSTN to MSTN, eh?
My dame believes in Christian mysticism, and you'd be surprised how much Christianity and pre-Christ mysticism have in common.
I don't think anything precludes being a Christian and having a deep respect and love for nature and nature's processes.
I'm not trying to convert here. I have a "pagan" friend who found Christ and also found ways to adapt his old beliefs fairly well.
Yes, I do believe I have biblical backing.