Why shouldn't bloggers be protected like other journalists? Since there's no concrete definition of journalism (and yes since websters has two separate definitions, bloggers most definately can fall under the "someone who keeps a journal".)
In my opinion, if some whack wants to distribute pamphlets saying that the government has some sort of secret conspiracy, he has every right to do so.
I, in turn, have every right to avoid him and not listen to any crap he has to say.
Conversely any website that I might go to may have false information on it. But again, I take everything with a grain of salt. After all, EVERYONE has some agenda. (Oh wait, that's just my opinion...but aren't you glad you're entitled to your own?)
So if the show is JUST for the media and retailers why is it that anyone can register? On E3's website, it says you could have registered as either:
An Exhibitor
A Member of the Media
An Attendee
If it was truly for just media and retailers then it should be closed to the public. (No regular "Attendees")
I'm not saying there aren't legitimate problems (population is always a problem) there but if he really wants to find out the latest and greatest from the big companies he should setup a interview with them directly.
Ironically all the things that he says would make things better would KILL the convention. Reducing prices, reducing population, and providing "special" treatment to media are all costs that would basically kill the convention.
Look at how unpopular Comdex is and it used to be the BIG ONE. (I used to be SERIOUSLY impressed at how well Vegas handled Comdex...cops running the traffic used to give priority to Comdex shuttles) and the convention used to be layed out across 3 different hotels. Now no one goes there and they had to cancel 2004.
Seriously though, if he wants preferential treatment, he should pay for it himself. No One "deserves" special treatment. We make it for ourselves. If he wants to play the games or get in the front of the crowd, get up early and get there. If he doesn't want to pay high prices for food there, bring a lunch or go somewhere else. It's not like once you leave E3, you're not allowed to come back. Nothing is stopping him from doing these things, but his own laziness.
I especially liked how he claimed that only the big media got special attention. Having worked at a few conferences myself, ask any of the big wig media types. It doesn't matter how much attention they get, they don't think its enough...I remember how we had to enforce security because this one guy from some local news station kept trying to sneak in to get pictures of the exhibit hall while people were still setting up. This is even with a BIG sign on the door saying "Exhibitors Only". Then we found he tried to get one of the exhibitors to let him in as part of their group if he focused his coverage on their booth. We told them that if they wanted him in as an exhibitor, they would have to pay the exhibitor fees for him and were responsible for him since their were boxes and boxes of computer equipment everywhere. All of a sudden, they decided they didn't want him that much and he certainly wasn't willing to pay the fees himself.
I wonder if they ever the movie industry will ever think about doing more indy titles like Rising Stars or The Darkness?
Rising Stars would be great for its plot, and the darkness is kinda kewl as the anti-hero (along the lines of Sin City) with a hit-man trying to deal with his dark powers and still be honerable to himself.... And how about stuff like Mage (A Hero discovered). It would be kewl if its done right. Although I think that personally part of the appeal of that comic for me is the artwork.
What would even be cooler would be if they did 10 movies like how Cross-gen does it's 'comic universe'; each comic is independent but reveals something about its relationship to every other comic. A movie about the Negation, The First, and then maybe Mystic, Sojourn, Crux and Sigil would be pretty slick. So long as each movie had some element that showed crossover with every other movie, I think the appeal to viewers overall would increase.
Intellectual property is an oxymoron. It isn't property at all. Its an idea thats' written down.
When writing software, you're essentially writing down your idea on how to make the computer work. Someone else may want to make a similar idea on how it works. They may even want it to do exactly the same thing as you want to do but that still doesn't make it a piece of "property". It makes a copied idea.
Now if they were to remove your name from it and put theirs on it and claim they wrote it, then its fraud. Again there's no theft going on. Merely the copied and falsely written claim that they came up with the code. Like a real-estate agent who doesn't provide full disclosure about a house, neither is a programmer providing full disclosure about where the software really came from.
I had Verizon DSL (640K/72K dl/ul) when he came out in our area in beta meaning I was one of the first hundred or so to get it in MD. I also about 4 months later decided to order ComCast Cable. On top of that I ordered Sprint's DSL service (they were offering 8MB/1MB dl/ul for $249). Yeah, I know..I'm a bandwidth freak. Anyway, from PERSONAL experience I found that the Verizon which went down maybe 4-5 times a year was more reliable then ComCast. ComCast had this annoying habit of going down when i got home from work, only to be available again when I was about to go to bed. In addition, I had intermittent drops in my connection and I had service techs come out 3 times to look at it and couldn't find any problems. Eventually I chose to drop Comcast because it was too unrealiable and the tech support was just not helpful. (When I called it, that it was down..all I got was, "we reset the system, check it in about an hour. Call back if you have further problems..." which of course I did and never got anywhere with it...) After 4 months I got so fed up with it, I cancelled my entire comcast cable including the TV portion. Now my favorite at the time was Sprint's DSL..Fast, responsive on tech questions, and (at the time) cheap for the bandwidth. Alas, they dropped all their Wireless and DSL services so I ended up staying with Verizon. So what am I using now?
SpeakEasy DSL with 7MB/720K dl/ul AND Verizon FIOS (Fiber access is SWEET) w 11MB/2MB dl/ul. My speakeasy dsl went down once for 4 hours and my Verizon FIOS has not gone down yet. (Although initially, I was having some latency issue with one of the hops through Verizon's network.)
My recommendation: Try them all out till you find one (or two) you like.
Tell them that if what you read in the contract doesn't mean what u think it means then its not clear enough in the contract that it means what they say its "suppose" to mean. If they truly don't mean what they say, then they should write it down or be willing to make the minor alterations such as "within the scope of..." to the contract. If they won't make the changes ask them if theres someone else to talk to..or turn down the job because if they're not willing to at least talk about it..theres usually a reason....
It's funny...people talk about how impossible it is to lure people away from Microsoft Word and Office. What I get a kick out of is that I heard this all before back in the day, when WordPerfect was the de-facto standard and Microsoft word was the "noob" on the block.
I even remember one secretary (before everything got relabeled to administrative assistants) who said with authority, "I was born using WordPerfect and a typewriter and will never use anything else!"
Of course she retired just as we started deploying Microsoft Word. (Yes, she was that old.) I even remember people saying that "NO WAY will we ever change over to Word, ALL of our documents are in WordPerfect!".
But it still happened. Change will happen. It always does. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst but most importantly because people come up with some reason for it. Ultimately what did Word have over Wordperfect? WordPerfect at the time had every function known to Man and a macro language to automate stuff up the wazhoo..(I remember vividly what a pain it was to try to rewrite a macro for the organization I was with in Word...even then it couldn't do everything the users wanted).
Honestly, I don't know what it was about Word that made people want to change, but I think more importantly people wanted to change and Word was the excuse.
I think that if XML does become the standard then it'll be the reason for people to change because they want to. Of course, if Microsoft was smart, they'd just advertise that they support XML as well!
Actually there's a lot of truth to that..I once flew in an airliner overseas which had the tv screens built into the back of the seat in front of me.
In the middle of the movie, the screen did the classic "blue screen of death" and rebooted with the Windows logo. There were quite a few chuckles in the aircraft when the movie was restarted and then the jokes started flying about the plane running on Microsoft Windows....(uh..oh..we're going to crash!..no wait, that's just Microsoft Windows)
Well...I guess the interesting question is that if the University can state that no toaster ovens or hotplates are allowed in dorm rooms (cause of the fire hazard) then they pretty much have full authority to do what they want on anything else especially if it affects the infrastructure of the school.
You're upset about paying $15 a month for COH? How much do you pay for Cable?
Personally, I dropped cable tv 2 years ago. Instead of spending $50 a month watching reality tv shows with 20 minutes of advertisements per hour, I find the amount of time spent playing COH much more worthwhile and cost effective at $15 a month.
Admittedly though, more then $20 a month is pushing it for me.
This is a good example but the key thing is a) whether or not Company A "disregards these terms" and b) destributes a "derivative" work.
What constitutes disregarding? If Company borrowed the "Hello World, Program" with equally restrictive license agreements to look at does that mean that no one in that company is now allowed to EVERY write a "Hello World" program because it's considered Derivative? If the program was written in C, and it's rewritten in Shell, Pascal, or perl is that derivative? The fact that MS gives the code to a company has to have some "reasonable" room to disseminate the information that's given. Obviously a line by line copy of code shouldn't and never should be cut and pasted into any work. But where does the limits of "derivative" work begin and end?
Considering that SCO pointed to code such as signal.h as being a "derivative" work when any programmer knows there's no way this can be "derivative" it's unique to the hardware platform, and has to be engineered as such, makes one realize that SCO's claim is shakey at best when they point to code that they say is stolen which is wrong.
As a lifelong sysadmin who actually enjoys helping people (for the most part) I actually had my IT group come in and buy me a can of coke! Man, what a treat!
...is why people keep saying that "Windows" is trademarked. "Windows" by itself is not trademarked, whereas "Microsoft Windows" is. Even if people use an abbreviated version of the trademark in day to day talk, it doesn't mean that Microsoft owns the word, "Windows" any more then they own the word "win" or "soft". A owner of a trademark is not automatically granted the abbreviation to said trademark.
If someone created a company called Remus's Famous Cookies and trademarked it, it doesn't mean that they can sue another company that came out with "Amos Famous Cookies or Ms. Fields Famous Cookies" even if their trademark was granted first.
I think the big concern is how much of a bully Microsoft can be. For example, many people don't even realize that Wordperfect had a product called WordPerfect Office, (that was dos-based) long before Microsoft decided to bundle, Word, Excell and Access and call it Microsoft Office. However, WordPerfect was such a small company they didn't want to risk Microsoft stomping all over thier product so they changed the name of their suite of applications instead.
patent the process of suing a company or business for the intent to make money?
Then anytime someone makes a silly lawsuit, you can sue claiming they're infringing on your patent!!! If they have reasonable cause, you can "give them" permission to sue for money!
But considering I work for a startup pharmaceutical company, I feel I gotta say something. Lots of people here seem to think that the HIGH costs of drugs are related to pure profit. Working as a techie in the field myself, I'm really surprised people don't know that the high costs has more to do with spending $10-20 MILLION dollars to get a drug through the FDA then it does with trying to make a profit on it.
It's no wonder people go overseas...drugs are a LOT easier to produce there..
And yes, $10 million is usually the minimum amount of money needed to get APPROVAL to get a single drug into the marketplace in the US. Anyone else knows of a better way to sell a product that costs $10 million + production costs to produce BEFORE they see a profit?
Honestly, you have better luck with a Krispy Kreme donut.....
If the patent is for an automated procedure for licensing sub-domain names via an Internet portal, then isn't anything done on a computer a method of "automation"? SO whats the difference between a person typing it into the computer manually and a person writing a program that generates it on the computer?
Isn't ANY use of a computer "automating" the process??????
Definition of automate (www.dictionary.com): 1.) To convert to automatic operation: automate a factory. 2.) To control or operate by automation.
So regardless of whether a program wrote it or not, the patent can be used to argue ANY subdomain level creation is their property since YOU HAVE TO USE A COMPUTER TO DO IT and ANY COMPUTER YOU USE is an AUTOMATION that you control or operate???
I guess I just DON't see the innovation here that a patent is supposed to defend....
Can someone explain or clarify this for me exactly why?
Given this scenario...Suppose my name is Lenny and I open up a diner...Does the fact that I want to call it Lenny's Diner mean that Denny's will sue me now?
We're in the same field selling the same products..(Food..drink, etc.) The similarities in what we sell would be hard to miss...
So in other words, if I'm a software programmer making a new graphical interface with "windows" then I'm not allowed to use that in a name?
As an additional note, a lot of people are saying that the name Lindows is only different from Microsoft Windows by one letter. Technically, it's different from Microsoft Windows by 10 letters...namely it's called Lindows, not Microsoft Lindows (which is really the difference of a single letter....)
Actually, the basic HP printer driver under 2000 or XP doesn't need a reboot.
But some printer drivers do require a reboot...we once had an old tektronix phaser vxi that we installed on a print server and sure nuff it needed the system to be rebooted before it woul allow you to even configure it properly. Also some fax/print drivers for fax servers definately need to reboot before they will function properly.
Yeah...but that's like saying let spammers keep spamming...and let telemarketeers keep calling...how long has it taken now for telemarketeers to be forced to use a "Do Not Call" List by law?
Is this really patentable? The concept of secure communications between two networked devices have been around for years. Just because it's a "console" doesn't mean that its "novel" enough because a network adapter was added to it.
Neither the S/Key method described, nor the networked technologies described are anything "innovative" that Microsoft came up with. Certainly secured encryption is important to prevent cheating but this sounds like Microsoft is trying to claim exclusive rights to a concept that's always been part of console gaming. Does this mean Atari or Sony or Nintendo can't use encryption in their games?
In other words, will Microsoft patent this and then start sue'ing Nintendo and Playstation 2 when they try to release a networked game that requires encryption to prevent cheating?
When you buy software you are really.. a) buying a copyrighted material b) buying a patented virtual process c) buying a trademarked item d) buying a copyrighted, patented, trademarked license to "use" a piece of software at the sole discretion of the IDSA.
Seriously though, the realy problem is what's making LAWYERS soooo RICH is the loosely defined boundaries that they keep arguing over what software is.
Wait, you're not allowed to use that piece of software to make money, it's a patented process. Oh, patents run out after 10 years? Well, it's not really a process is it? It's technically a copyright that expires after 75 years...Oh, but copyrights are allowed to be copied? Well, then really it's not a copyright but a trademark and you can't infringe on a trademark can you? Oh, trademarks are only 17 years? well..really software is a copyrighted piece of work..Oh but really it's none of those, its a contract between the software company and the user...oh...the users can claim breach of contract if I don't support them? well, really it's a software patent....(and so on..and so on...)
So long as lawyers get away with bouncing around with what software really is, this will ALWAYS keep happening and lawyers will ALWAYS be rich.
So how many of you would pretend to sell your energy/food/minerals and then run away a fraction of a second before the timer run out?
Or buy up all the energy/food/minerals just so there would always be a shortage in the game?
Or stockpile a huge amount of energy/food/minerals (whatever your players were focusing on..) and then selling like crazy just to produce a huge surplus and make the prices drop like crazy?
I don't know about anyone else but my favorite was always the old Northgate Omnikey keyboard on my old 486. There was absolutely nothing special about the layout or the design and it was completely based on the original IBM keyboard layout (with a large key for the slash button).
What was really great was the incredible feel of the omnikey. If you typed really fast, you would understand exactly what I mean. It had such a high response rate that when you held down a key to do a keyboard repeat, it litterally blew 4 lines of characters across the screen in a second. (As opposed to all the other keyboards I've used that only do it about 8 seconds.) It may seem odd to like a keyboard for being able to do something silly as an ultrafast keyboard repeat rate...but then again, I KICKED everyone's ass in DOOM..... (Of course as soon as they found out why I was able to run circles around them 4 of my friends went out and bought the same keyboard...ahh....rivalry!)
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Why shouldn't bloggers be protected like other journalists? Since there's no concrete definition of journalism (and yes since websters has two separate definitions, bloggers most definately can fall under the "someone who keeps a journal".)
In my opinion, if some whack wants to distribute pamphlets saying that the government has some sort of secret conspiracy, he has every right to do so.
I, in turn, have every right to avoid him and not listen to any crap he has to say.
Conversely any website that I might go to may have false information on it. But again, I take everything with a grain of salt. After all, EVERYONE has some agenda. (Oh wait, that's just my opinion...but aren't you glad you're entitled to your own?)
So if the show is JUST for the media and retailers why is it that anyone can register? On E3's website, it says you could have registered as either:
An Exhibitor
A Member of the Media
An Attendee
If it was truly for just media and retailers then it should be closed to the public. (No regular "Attendees")
I'm not saying there aren't legitimate problems (population is always a problem) there but if he really wants to find out the latest and greatest from the big companies he should setup a interview with them directly.
Ironically all the things that he says would make things better would KILL the convention. Reducing prices, reducing population, and providing "special" treatment to media are all costs that would basically kill the convention.
Look at how unpopular Comdex is and it used to be the BIG ONE. (I used to be SERIOUSLY impressed at how well Vegas handled Comdex...cops running the traffic used to give priority to Comdex shuttles) and the convention used to be layed out across 3 different hotels. Now no one goes there and they had to cancel 2004.
Seriously though, if he wants preferential treatment, he should pay for it himself. No One "deserves" special treatment. We make it for ourselves. If he wants to play the games or get in the front of the crowd, get up early and get there. If he doesn't want to pay high prices for food there, bring a lunch or go somewhere else. It's not like once you leave E3, you're not allowed to come back. Nothing is stopping him from doing these things, but his own laziness.
I especially liked how he claimed that only the big media got special attention. Having worked at a few conferences myself, ask any of the big wig media types. It doesn't matter how much attention they get, they don't think its enough...I remember how we had to enforce security because this one guy from some local news station kept trying to sneak in to get pictures of the exhibit hall while people were still setting up. This is even with a BIG sign on the door saying "Exhibitors Only". Then we found he tried to get one of the exhibitors to let him in as part of their group if he focused his coverage on their booth. We told them that if they wanted him in as an exhibitor, they would have to pay the exhibitor fees for him and were responsible for him since their were boxes and boxes of computer equipment everywhere. All of a sudden, they decided they didn't want him that much and he certainly wasn't willing to pay the fees himself.
I wonder if they ever the movie industry will ever think about doing more indy titles like Rising Stars or The Darkness?
... And how about stuff like Mage (A Hero discovered). It would be kewl if its done right. Although I think that personally part of the appeal of that comic for me is the artwork.
Rising Stars would be great for its plot, and the darkness is kinda kewl as the anti-hero (along the lines of Sin City) with a hit-man trying to deal with his dark powers and still be honerable to himself.
What would even be cooler would be if they did 10 movies like how Cross-gen does it's 'comic universe'; each comic is independent but reveals something about its relationship to every other comic. A movie about the Negation, The First, and then maybe Mystic, Sojourn, Crux and Sigil would be pretty slick. So long as each movie had some element that showed crossover with every other movie, I think the appeal to viewers overall would increase.
Intellectual property is an oxymoron. It isn't property at all. Its an idea thats' written down.
When writing software, you're essentially writing down your idea on how to make the computer work. Someone else may want to make a similar idea on how it works. They may even want it to do exactly the same thing as you want to do but that still doesn't make it a piece of "property". It makes a copied idea.
Now if they were to remove your name from it and put theirs on it and claim they wrote it, then its fraud. Again there's no theft going on. Merely the copied and falsely written claim that they came up with the code. Like a real-estate agent who doesn't provide full disclosure about a house, neither is a programmer providing full disclosure about where the software really came from.
Throwing in my 2 cents...
I had Verizon DSL (640K/72K dl/ul) when he came out in our area in beta meaning I was one of the first hundred or so to get it in MD. I also about 4 months later decided to order ComCast Cable. On top of that I ordered Sprint's DSL service (they were offering 8MB/1MB dl/ul for $249). Yeah, I know..I'm a bandwidth freak. Anyway, from PERSONAL experience I found that the Verizon which went down maybe 4-5 times a year was more reliable then ComCast. ComCast had this annoying habit of going down when i got home from work, only to be available again when I was about to go to bed. In addition, I had intermittent drops in my connection and I had service techs come out 3 times to look at it and couldn't find any problems. Eventually I chose to drop Comcast because it was too unrealiable and the tech support was just not helpful. (When I called it, that it was down..all I got was, "we reset the system, check it in about an hour. Call back if you have further problems..." which of course I did and never got anywhere with it...) After 4 months I got so fed up with it, I cancelled my entire comcast cable including the TV portion. Now my favorite at the time was Sprint's DSL..Fast, responsive on tech questions, and (at the time) cheap for the bandwidth. Alas, they dropped all their Wireless and DSL services so I ended up staying with Verizon. So what am I using now?
SpeakEasy DSL with 7MB/720K dl/ul AND Verizon FIOS (Fiber access is SWEET) w 11MB/2MB dl/ul. My speakeasy dsl went down once for 4 hours and my Verizon FIOS has not gone down yet. (Although initially, I was having some latency issue with one of the hops through Verizon's network.)
My recommendation: Try them all out till you find one (or two) you like.
Tell them that if what you read in the contract doesn't mean what u think it means then its not clear enough in the contract that it means what they say its "suppose" to mean. If they truly don't mean what they say, then they should write it down or be willing to make the minor alterations such as "within the scope of..." to the contract. If they won't make the changes ask them if theres someone else to talk to..or turn down the job because if they're not willing to at least talk about it..theres usually a reason....
It's funny...people talk about how impossible it is to lure people away from Microsoft Word and Office. What I get a kick out of is that I heard this all before back in the day, when WordPerfect was the de-facto standard and Microsoft word was the "noob" on the block.
I even remember one secretary (before everything got relabeled to administrative assistants) who said with authority, "I was born using WordPerfect and a typewriter and will never use anything else!"
Of course she retired just as we started deploying Microsoft Word. (Yes, she was that old.) I even remember people saying that "NO WAY will we ever change over to Word, ALL of our documents are in WordPerfect!".
But it still happened. Change will happen. It always does. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst but most importantly because people come up with some reason for it. Ultimately what did Word have over Wordperfect? WordPerfect at the time had every function known to Man and a macro language to automate stuff up the wazhoo..(I remember vividly what a pain it was to try to rewrite a macro for the organization I was with in Word...even then it couldn't do everything the users wanted).
Honestly, I don't know what it was about Word that made people want to change, but I think more importantly people wanted to change and Word was the excuse.
I think that if XML does become the standard then it'll be the reason for people to change because they want to. Of course, if Microsoft was smart, they'd just advertise that they support XML as well!
Actually there's a lot of truth to that..I once flew in an airliner overseas which had the tv screens built into the back of the seat in front of me.
In the middle of the movie, the screen did the classic "blue screen of death" and rebooted with the Windows logo. There were quite a few chuckles in the aircraft when the movie was restarted and then the jokes started flying about the plane running on Microsoft Windows....(uh..oh..we're going to crash!..no wait, that's just Microsoft Windows)
Well...I guess the interesting question is that if the University can state that no toaster ovens or hotplates are allowed in dorm rooms (cause of the fire hazard) then they pretty much have full authority to do what they want on anything else especially if it affects the infrastructure of the school.
You're upset about paying $15 a month for COH? How much do you pay for Cable?
Personally, I dropped cable tv 2 years ago. Instead of spending $50 a month watching reality tv shows with 20 minutes of advertisements per hour, I find the amount of time spent playing COH much more worthwhile and cost effective at $15 a month.
Admittedly though, more then $20 a month is pushing it for me.
This is a good example but the key thing is a) whether or not Company A "disregards these terms" and b) destributes a "derivative" work.
What constitutes disregarding? If Company borrowed the "Hello World, Program" with equally restrictive license agreements to look at does that mean that no one in that company is now allowed to EVERY write a "Hello World" program because it's considered Derivative? If the program was written in C, and it's rewritten in Shell, Pascal, or perl is that derivative? The fact that MS gives the code to a company has to have some "reasonable" room to disseminate the information that's given. Obviously a line by line copy of code shouldn't and never should be cut and pasted into any work. But where does the limits of "derivative" work begin and end?
Considering that SCO pointed to code such as signal.h as being a "derivative" work when any programmer knows there's no way this can be "derivative" it's unique to the hardware platform, and has to be engineered as such, makes one realize that SCO's claim is shakey at best when they point to code that they say is stolen which is wrong.
As a lifelong sysadmin who actually enjoys helping people (for the most part) I actually had my IT group come in and buy me a can of coke! Man, what a treat!
It really hit the spot too!
...is why people keep saying that "Windows" is trademarked. "Windows" by itself is not trademarked, whereas "Microsoft Windows" is. Even if people use an abbreviated version of the trademark in day to day talk, it doesn't mean that Microsoft owns the word, "Windows" any more then they own the word "win" or "soft". A owner of a trademark is not automatically granted the abbreviation to said trademark.
If someone created a company called Remus's Famous Cookies and trademarked it, it doesn't mean that they can sue another company that came out with "Amos Famous Cookies or Ms. Fields Famous Cookies" even if their trademark was granted first.
I think the big concern is how much of a bully Microsoft can be. For example, many people don't even realize that Wordperfect had a product called WordPerfect Office, (that was dos-based) long before Microsoft decided to bundle, Word, Excell and Access and call it Microsoft Office. However, WordPerfect was such a small company they didn't want to risk Microsoft stomping all over thier product so they changed the name of their suite of applications instead.
Actually, to be completely unbiased about it, you should hate the game AND the player...
Hate the game (the patent system) because of the anarchistic mechanisms that it attempts to use to protect people's ideas.
Hate the players for abusing the patent system.
patent the process of suing a company or business for the intent to make money?
Then anytime someone makes a silly lawsuit, you can sue claiming they're infringing on your patent!!! If they have reasonable cause, you can "give them" permission to sue for money!
Come on, let's get the EFF to apply for this!
But considering I work for a startup pharmaceutical company, I feel I gotta say something. Lots of people here seem to think that the HIGH costs of drugs are related to pure profit. Working as a techie in the field myself, I'm really surprised people don't know that the high costs has more to do with spending $10-20 MILLION dollars to get a drug through the FDA then it does with trying to make a profit on it.
It's no wonder people go overseas...drugs are a LOT easier to produce there..
And yes, $10 million is usually the minimum amount of money needed to get APPROVAL to get a single drug into the marketplace in the US. Anyone else knows of a better way to sell a product that costs $10 million + production costs to produce BEFORE they see a profit?
Honestly, you have better luck with a Krispy Kreme donut.....
If the patent is for an automated procedure for licensing sub-domain names via an Internet portal, then isn't anything done on a computer a method of "automation"? SO whats the difference between a person typing it into the computer manually and a person writing a program that generates it on the computer?
Isn't ANY use of a computer "automating" the process??????
Definition of automate (www.dictionary.com):
1.) To convert to automatic operation: automate a factory.
2.) To control or operate by automation.
So regardless of whether a program wrote it or not, the patent can be used to argue ANY subdomain level creation is their property since YOU HAVE TO USE A COMPUTER TO DO IT and ANY COMPUTER YOU USE is an AUTOMATION that you control or operate???
I guess I just DON't see the innovation here that a patent is supposed to defend....
Can someone explain or clarify this for me exactly why?
Given this scenario...Suppose my name is Lenny and I open up a diner...Does the fact that I want to call it Lenny's Diner mean that Denny's will sue me now?
We're in the same field selling the same products..(Food..drink, etc.) The similarities in what we sell would be hard to miss...
So in other words, if I'm a software programmer making a new graphical interface with "windows" then I'm not allowed to use that in a name?
As an additional note, a lot of people are saying that the name Lindows is only different from Microsoft Windows by one letter. Technically, it's different from Microsoft Windows by 10 letters...namely it's called Lindows, not Microsoft Lindows (which is really the difference of a single letter....)
Most good sysadmins have to wear multiple OS hats so here's a bunch that I frequent when researching for solutions....
http://www.sysinternals.com...it's a decent place for windows related discussions...
For sun stuff, the best place is really sun itself http://forum.sun.com...
For tru64 stuff go subscribe to the tru64 mailing lists, I think it's the only thing that's staying alive for that stuff...
as for Linux, well...really you could look just about anywhere for that...
Actually, the basic HP printer driver under 2000 or XP doesn't need a reboot.
But some printer drivers do require a reboot...we once had an old tektronix phaser vxi that we installed on a print server and sure nuff it needed the system to be rebooted before it woul allow you to even configure it properly. Also some fax/print drivers for fax servers definately need to reboot before they will function properly.
Yeah...but that's like saying let spammers keep spamming...and let telemarketeers keep calling...how long has it taken now for telemarketeers to be forced to use a "Do Not Call" List by law?
Is this really patentable? The concept of secure communications between two networked devices have been around for years. Just because it's a "console" doesn't mean that its "novel" enough because a network adapter was added to it.
Neither the S/Key method described, nor the networked technologies described are anything "innovative" that Microsoft came up with. Certainly secured encryption is important to prevent cheating but this sounds like Microsoft is trying to claim exclusive rights to a concept that's always been part of console gaming. Does this mean Atari or Sony or Nintendo can't use encryption in their games?
In other words, will Microsoft patent this and then start sue'ing Nintendo and Playstation 2 when they try to release a networked game that requires encryption to prevent cheating?
When you buy software you are really..
a) buying a copyrighted material
b) buying a patented virtual process
c) buying a trademarked item
d) buying a copyrighted, patented, trademarked license to "use" a piece of software at the sole discretion of the IDSA.
Seriously though, the realy problem is what's making LAWYERS soooo RICH is the loosely defined boundaries that they keep arguing over what software is.
Wait, you're not allowed to use that piece of software to make money, it's a patented process. Oh, patents run out after 10 years? Well, it's not really a process is it? It's technically a copyright that expires after 75 years...Oh, but copyrights are allowed to be copied? Well, then really it's not a copyright but a trademark and you can't infringe on a trademark can you? Oh, trademarks are only 17 years? well..really software is a copyrighted piece of work..Oh but really it's none of those, its a contract between the software company and the user...oh...the users can claim breach of contract if I don't support them? well, really it's a software patent....(and so on..and so on...)
So long as lawyers get away with bouncing around with what software really is, this will ALWAYS keep happening and lawyers will ALWAYS be rich.
So how many of you would pretend to sell your energy/food/minerals and then run away a fraction of a second before the timer run out?
Or buy up all the energy/food/minerals just so there would always be a shortage in the game?
Or stockpile a huge amount of energy/food/minerals (whatever your players were focusing on..) and then selling like crazy just to produce a huge surplus and make the prices drop like crazy?
I don't know about anyone else but my favorite was always the old Northgate Omnikey keyboard on my old 486. There was absolutely nothing special about the layout or the design and it was completely based on the original IBM keyboard layout (with a large key for the slash button).
What was really great was the incredible feel of the omnikey. If you typed really fast, you would understand exactly what I mean. It had such a high response rate that when you held down a key to do a keyboard repeat, it litterally blew 4 lines of characters across the screen in a second. (As opposed to all the other keyboards I've used that only do it about 8 seconds.) It may seem odd to like a keyboard for being able to do something silly as an ultrafast keyboard repeat rate...but then again, I KICKED everyone's ass in DOOM..... (Of course as soon as they found out why I was able to run circles around them 4 of my friends went out and bought the same keyboard...ahh....rivalry!)