Here's the text of a letter that I will be mailing to Symantec CEO John W. Thompson today. Please feel free to use the body of the letter yourself. Note that I am mailing this the old-fashioned way. A storm of email is too easy to launch; it takes dead trees to garner the attention of most CEOs and politicians.
Dear Mr. Thompson:
I am writing to express my extreme disappointment with your decision to pursue and attempt to enforce a patent on "microdefinition technology" as discussed in your Feb. 7, 2001, press release.
The patenting of obvious technology in the face of a preponderance of prior art is a grave threat to true innovation, does a great disservice to the consumer, and has made our patent office the laughing-stock of the technical community. To be clear, the ability to download files that allow incremental patching of existing running software has been available for many years on Unix and Linux systems. Your attempts to enforce a patent on this reflect a complete disregard for your customers and potential customers that is not in accord with what I have come to expect from Symantec.
I deeply regret that Symantec has chosen to join in the software patent land-grab. Unless Symantec takes action to allow this technology to remain freely available I will have no choice but to remove Symantec from the list of suppliers that my clients and I can trust with our business.
There are multiple names for some of the elements since the dates of synthesis are disputed. The first group to synthesize an element has naming rights. Thus if the dates are disputed the names are disputed. US researchers did not accept Soviet claims of first-synthesis and Soviet researchers did not accept US claims.
With regard to names given to proofs, during the Soviet era there was precious little funding for mathematicians. This created a climate in the Soviet Union where the full details of proofs were not published and what was published was obsfucated. If no one else could understand your proof then no one else could build on it; this prevented other Soviet researchers from taking a slice of the very small pie. Unfortunately, this meant that the more descriptive proofs developed outside the eastern bloc were the ones referenced in other papers, leading to the western researchers having their names associated with the proofs.
The only remaining questions no one could answe [sic] me are: How low must the self-esteem of a nation be that it needs to re-write history in such a way? How bad must an educational system be to promote such lies? And finally, if the system messes with facts in the technical area, how do they mess with facts in politics, history, science? Evolution, any one?
Our problem is that our self-esteem as a nation is too high, not too low. However, believing that nothing is impossible leads one to accomplish the impossible, much to the chagrin of those who said it was impossible.
No worse than one that does not acknowledge the reasons for the discrepancies.
The biggest flaw in our educational system is that it teaches people that stridency replaces reason and that having an opinion, rather than arguing logicallly and persuasively, is the only excuse one needs to insist that action be taken. Though assuming you are not US educated, that seems to be a problem in your education system as well. That said, in a free society control of what is taught rests with the people not the state. In the US education is controlled at the local level. This means that in some areas stupid decisions will be made (e.g., Kansas Board of Education vs. every respected biologist in the world on the question of evolution). However, it is the best system I know of for reducing the likelihood that government sponsored propaganda is force-fed to our children.
Curt
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
The site says that it is not a commercial product, but rather a build-one-yourself-from-these-specs type of thing.
It seems to me that for a product to be vapor it has to be commercial and not shipping. As Joe's office-mate I can assure you that the player is quite solid, nothing gaseous about it.
At least they recognize the fact that an open-source project might actually/make/ them money, unlike some/Japanese/ firms who won't let emulators out there hit the market.
It seems that the Japanese firm in question recognizes the fact that an emulator will NOT make them money. An emulator lets you use hardware you already own to perform the function of the hardware the manufacturer would like to sell to you. Therefore you don't need to buy the hardware and the company doesn't make any money. Yeah, I know, all the people using the emulators are buying the games.
Lego clearly benefits from an Open Source development environment. Nintendo clearly loses with widely available emulators. Open Source is not the answer to every question.
the guise of the budget surplus was achieved by mis^H^H^Hreappropriating funds that SHOULD have been used to stabilize social security, thus leaving anyone who would be elegible after 2020, out in the cold. I'm not especially FOR or AGAINST social security persay, but I'm steamed that I will continue to pay this tax when it's common knowledge that no one in born after 1970 will be able to collect a reasonable benefit amount.
Not quite. The budget surplus is the result of prolonged growth in the economy causing income tax revenues to grow faster than Congress could spend the money (amazing when you think about it.) The budget surplus is not a surplus in Social Security receipts. The Social Security surplus is used to fund the national debt. The general fund borrows money from Social Security and pays it back with interest. Were this not the case, the Social Security surplus would sit in a vault somewhere (OK, some bits would sit in a tape somewhere) and decline in value at the rate of inflation. This is why the Republicans' plan to "lock up Social Security" is not just political opportunism but is bad economics.
Social Security is funded through the separate 15% tax that we all pay on all the money we earn. As another poster said, Social Security is just a Ponzi scheme. Bungalow is right that those of us in the generation that is younger and smaller than the boomers will be stuck with the tab. I would extend his definition to include those born after 1960. We should have no doubt that our parents will use their voting clout to shoulder us with the burden of paying their Social Security. They may stop paying in at 65 or 75 but they certainly won't stop voting. In addition to this burden we will have the additional burden of investing for our own retirement since the larger generation behind us will have the voting clout to eliminate Social Security when it's our turn to collect.
I think the best solution is to allow individuals to direct their Social Security funds to a set of private investment options. Government bonds could be one choice, essential the current default option. The key here is it is appealing enough to get current boomers to support it, while at the same time segregating each individual's contribution, thus breaking the Ponzi scheme. Of course those currently collecting would be SOL, which is why both the President and Congress are directing 1/3 of the projected surplus to Social Security.
- With apologies to the boomers and to the readers with non-U.S. address for whom the "we" doesn't apply.
This gives the manufacturer a monopoly in their platform and then the best software will be developed for that platform, it'd be great if an open standard could be defined for game consoles that all consoles could be based upon. That would make it easy to make games that would work on all platforms and would give the user a choice in which platform to buy. Of course there's problems in this idea but there does need to be some openness in the game consoles or we'll get another Microsoft type situation.
linuxci rightly points out that there are problems with the open-console idea. The foremost among these, it seems to me, is that once a standard console architecture is defined the market is solely differentiated by price. Since that is a recipe for declining profit margins, the manufacturers will immediately look for other ways to differentiate their products. This differentiation will lead to incompatibilities between machines that claim to follow the same standard. Once again, the user is back in the "what hardware, add-ons, components do I need to play this game" mode.
This reasoning brings to mind several questions:
Does a single manufacturer need to control the hardware and APIs for a particular console in order to ensure compatibility?
Should the open-source community work on an open-source game console kernel and hardware specification?
Do we all need to buy one of each type of game console to make sure all the manufacturers stay in business?
I attended a lecture recently by Kevin Nielsen of Newmonics. They are developing a real-time Java for embedded systems. He presented data on the number of computers with which the average person interacts on a daily basis. The current number is in the 30-50 range; there are 8-12 computers in a new car. They are projecting the total number of daily computer-individual interactions to climb to over 200 in the next 5 years. We will still have PCs on our desks, but they will be everywhere else as well.
This is another example of marketing folks (or, god forbid, the programmers) trying to hype the features of a product and, by neglecting to mention its limitations, ending up lying about what the program can do.
Given the word "releases" in the URL I would guess this is a press release written by some PR hack in the university's public relations department. You have to get those reporters and TV cameras in so the alumni are proud and send in their checks.:-)
...is not surprising coming from Microsoft. After all, they believe that "Windows NT" stands for a stable, scalable operating system. This is much different than the definition that is in common use.
I've always said, "Think of how stupid the average person is. Half the people are dumber than that."
Still very little reason to upgrade fomr Palm Pro
on
Pictures of the Palm V
·
· Score: 1
While a color screen would be cool, wireless net access would actually be useful. Many of us cannot survive without our Palm Pilots. I think if you're into time management or have gotten seriously burned for not being into time management, then you come to depend on your Pilot.
However, if you just get one because they're cool, eventually the novelty wears off and they begin to gather dust. A color screen would just delay the onset of dust gathering. But wireless net access in a smaller form factor--then I'd have to get out the credit card.
Slashdot Mirror
There are multiple names for some of the elements since the dates of synthesis are disputed. The first group to synthesize an element has naming rights. Thus if the dates are disputed the names are disputed. US researchers did not accept Soviet claims of first-synthesis and Soviet researchers did not accept US claims.
With regard to names given to proofs, during the Soviet era there was precious little funding for mathematicians. This created a climate in the Soviet Union where the full details of proofs were not published and what was published was obsfucated. If no one else could understand your proof then no one else could build on it; this prevented other Soviet researchers from taking a slice of the very small pie. Unfortunately, this meant that the more descriptive proofs developed outside the eastern bloc were the ones referenced in other papers, leading to the western researchers having their names associated with the proofs.
The only remaining questions no one could answe [sic] me are: How low must the self-esteem of a nation be that it needs to re-write history in such a way? How bad must an educational system be to promote such lies? And finally, if the system messes with facts in the technical area, how do they mess with facts in politics, history, science? Evolution, any one?
Curt
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
The site says that it is not a commercial product, but rather a build-one-yourself-from-these-specs type of thing.
It seems to me that for a product to be vapor it has to be commercial and not shipping. As Joe's office-mate I can assure you that the player is quite solid, nothing gaseous about it.
At least they recognize the fact that an open-source project might actually /make/ them money, unlike some /Japanese/ firms who won't let emulators out there hit the market.
It seems that the Japanese firm in question recognizes the fact that an emulator will NOT make them money. An emulator lets you use hardware you already own to perform the function of the hardware the manufacturer would like to sell to you. Therefore you don't need to buy the hardware and the company doesn't make any money. Yeah, I know, all the people using the emulators are buying the games.
Lego clearly benefits from an Open Source development environment. Nintendo clearly loses with widely available emulators. Open Source is not the answer to every question.
the guise of the budget surplus was achieved by mis^H^H^Hreappropriating funds that SHOULD have been used to stabilize social security, thus leaving anyone who would be elegible after 2020, out in the cold. I'm not especially FOR or AGAINST social security persay, but I'm steamed that I will continue to pay this tax when it's common knowledge that no one in born after 1970 will be able to collect a reasonable benefit amount.
Not quite. The budget surplus is the result of prolonged growth in the economy causing income tax revenues to grow faster than Congress could spend the money (amazing when you think about it.) The budget surplus is not a surplus in Social Security receipts. The Social Security surplus is used to fund the national debt. The general fund borrows money from Social Security and pays it back with interest. Were this not the case, the Social Security surplus would sit in a vault somewhere (OK, some bits would sit in a tape somewhere) and decline in value at the rate of inflation. This is why the Republicans' plan to "lock up Social Security" is not just political opportunism but is bad economics.
Social Security is funded through the separate 15% tax that we all pay on all the money we earn. As another poster said, Social Security is just a Ponzi scheme. Bungalow is right that those of us in the generation that is younger and smaller than the boomers will be stuck with the tab. I would extend his definition to include those born after 1960. We should have no doubt that our parents will use their voting clout to shoulder us with the burden of paying their Social Security. They may stop paying in at 65 or 75 but they certainly won't stop voting. In addition to this burden we will have the additional burden of investing for our own retirement since the larger generation behind us will have the voting clout to eliminate Social Security when it's our turn to collect.
I think the best solution is to allow individuals to direct their Social Security funds to a set of private investment options. Government bonds could be one choice, essential the current default option. The key here is it is appealing enough to get current boomers to support it, while at the same time segregating each individual's contribution, thus breaking the Ponzi scheme. Of course those currently collecting would be SOL, which is why both the President and Congress are directing 1/3 of the projected surplus to Social Security.
- With apologies to the boomers and to the readers with non-U.S. address for whom the "we" doesn't apply.
linuxci writes:
linuxci rightly points out that there are problems with the open-console idea. The foremost among these, it seems to me, is that once a standard console architecture is defined the market is solely differentiated by price. Since that is a recipe for declining profit margins, the manufacturers will immediately look for other ways to differentiate their products. This differentiation will lead to incompatibilities between machines that claim to follow the same standard. Once again, the user is back in the "what hardware, add-ons, components do I need to play this game" mode.
This reasoning brings to mind several questions:
I attended a lecture recently by Kevin Nielsen of Newmonics. They are developing a real-time Java for embedded systems. He presented data on the number of computers with which the average person interacts on a daily basis. The current number is in the 30-50 range; there are 8-12 computers in a new car. They are projecting the total number of daily computer-individual interactions to climb to over 200 in the next 5 years. We will still have PCs on our desks, but they will be everywhere else as well.
...is not surprising coming from Microsoft. After all, they believe that "Windows NT" stands for a stable, scalable operating system. This is much different than the definition that is in common use.
> The above average person is dumb.
I've always said, "Think of how stupid the average person is. Half the people are dumber than that."
While a color screen would be cool, wireless net access would actually be useful. Many of us cannot survive without our Palm Pilots. I think if you're into time management or have gotten seriously burned for not being into time management, then you come to depend on your Pilot.
However, if you just get one because they're cool, eventually the novelty wears off and they begin to gather dust. A color screen would just delay the onset of dust gathering. But wireless net access in a smaller form factor--then I'd have to get out the credit card.