A key assistant for the office worker would be an automated deflector of the neverending stream of things seemly designed to stop you working.
Such an assistant would recognise you were falling behind on certain projects and proactively send compatible excuses to the project manager, blaming someone else. The advanced version would recognise problems ahead and kick the problem 'upstairs' for resolution, together with a suggested approach that pushes responsibility elsewhere.
It would recognise key phrases in emails from named individuals, 'losing' those which would cause trouble with a bounce message.
It would generate excuses as to why you couldn't attend meetings, workshops or other timewasting activities.
It would automatically blow your own trumpet if you managed to do something useful, simultaneous storing reference away for review time.
I've always considered there is something rotten with the political grandstanding of greenpeace.
A better question is what would be the truthfull assessment of greenness of greenpeace be? After all the produce nothing, the only effect they have is to prevent actions. They are the last word in paracitical, pointless organisations - dedicated to the idea that to do nothing is the best course. And yet the burn up valuable resources steaming around the world.
Take the money and energy wasted by greenpeace and put it into something with purpose that actually supports environmental progress rather than political positioning.
More important, if the 32 bit OS is so open to kernel hacks that their precious DRM isn't safe, what's to make the 64 bit OS any more secure?
Surely what is being said is "Mr Cracker, if you create a 64bit kernel crack you can reencode this content in something without any DRM, maybe on a dual layer DVD, and have an open market to people who couldn't watch this by paying for it even if they wanted to".
Maybe the killer app for Linux is a bootable DVD loader that puts HD movies on your desktop from an 8.4GB DVD?
Once again there is the confusion in the US mind that sex = harmful. I thought the puritans died out several centuries ago. Some more extreme stuff I can understand, but the basics of the idea that all types of sex should be kept from children, rather than being seen as a normal part of life, is the more harmful attitude.
Just how screwed up do you have to be to consider a nipple to be threat to a child's development?
Better to concentrate on ensuring that child can grow up in a world that has freedom of speech, a clean environment and open minds than one that views sex as somehow dirty.
Nah, the question is if there will be enough customers for it to make a difference.
If Sony pull this one off and don't have a damp squib launch someone will be due a huge bonus. I don't bother with consoles and even I am interested by the Wii if the price is right.
If personal freedom and democracy is such a good way to run a country, why is it supposed to be a no no for a company. Think back, who told you it was?
Companies pay fees for specific work; they don't own souls.
Is the problem here the IT managers, or Microsoft?
From my perspective I consider businesses and the IT gestapo all to ready to claim that everything that touches 'their' machines their sole property. The reality is that individuals have a right to privacy and a right to keep certain things to themselves - whichever computing resource they might use. Some companies seem to be run along very fascist lines.
Encrypted folders are not the threat, over inquisitive BOFH and PHB are the threat.
But as the article mentions, the OED was updated to include many of these terms earlier - and inclusion in the OED is much more the definition of if a word has arrived than Merriam-Webster.
Firstly, I doubt that WGA is allowed anywhere near most EU government computers. It would cause all kind of problems and concerns - its basically spyware. Those computers are centrally controlled, managed and updated.
Second, if microsoft were to try to play hardball the EU could easily just remove their copyright on windows. It would become public domain, the authentication could easily be bypassed and microsoft would have no recourse. When you write the laws, you can make anything legal.
Microsoft have been playing political games, hoping it will go away. However with the lack of love for microsoft in europe eventually they are going to have to give up and knuckle under.
Why not just accept that any government, or pseudo government organisation, will make a screw up of anything to do with something like the Internet. To much ego, to little clue.
The replacement for ICANN should first and foremost not be beholden to any government; and secondly be populated by those who understand what the Internet is - not politicians, accountants, managers, economists, philosophers, etc.
Open elections for qualified candidates should be voted upon by a similar pool of qualified voters.
Things should return to people who know what they are doing, care, and have an interest in moving things forward. Have you noticed how progress has essentially stopped once the politicos got involved?
This concerns a patent for a method of shifting data from Excel to Access. I thought we had all agreed that software patents were a bad idea? All of them.
This guy managed to take two packages made by Microsoft and work a way of shifting data between them. So what? I'll guess (given that no reference is given to the actual patent) that given the two packages there are only very few mechanisms, and these are obvious in the context of the software. I can quite understand Microsoft telling him to take a hike for an export/import routine.
As much as it may pain some, this person looks to be a chancer. Just because its the little guy and Microsoft doesn't make it right.
Managers blame the workers
Workers blame the managers
The way this blog is written makes it obvious why its late, and why it probably won't hit the needs of the users. All the effort goes into playing the bureaucracy game and between the 'them' and 'us' everything important gets lost.
Personally I believe its a failing of the MBA courses, etc. The idea that 'A' controls 'B', rather than they work together as a team is prevalent and its fundamentally incompatible with good projects. By default I tend to look questioningly at those who claim to be able to manage because 'they've done the course'. Too often they forget they are costs to the programme and have to offer real, obvious, value to be worth having.
This is an extremely dumb move. Not only is this PHB going to royally piss people off, just so that he can confuse matters enough that there is no tracability in his performance - he is implementing this bone headed plan at just the moment when oil prices mean telecommuting should be extended further.
If there are issues with the performance of some, that is cause to change the system, not throw everything out and make it worse for the majority. The 'everyone round the watercooler, discussing problems' idea in reality doesn't require the watercooler - it requires the culture where those that have the knowledge are recognised in their passing it on. I'll bet that it isn't in HP.
Two obvious solutions could be tried. Either companies could be forced to pay the commuting costs of their staff (that would make them understand that fuel costs are not a joke); or the HP staff could club together and pay to get this jerk wacked. Overall the second is probably best for the long term future of the company.
Sooner or later they will work out that streaming each live concert and charging for that as well will make them even more money. Sure the point of a live concert is in part the atmosphere, but if you're honest a view from the back of a tiny dot on stage isn't that great.
What we are approaching is a graded experience; from right at the front with a great view, great sound (and atmosphere); through the also rans in the arena; to those watching live at home, and finally those watching the concert DVD. People will pay varying amount depending on the quality of that experience. Particularly stupid people will pay very, very large amounts. At the same time, the performer may well want demonstrative fans at the front to feed off. That brings in the concept of 'fan points', offsetting pure money will other contributions to the event.
The smart promoter will do more than a simple auction of seats - they will optimise on the value of the event and the contributions to that both on and off stage; and in reputation and future album sales.
I wonder if there actually are any smart promoters out there?
I think they are looking for new way to get the message out as to how worthwhile NASA is - eg novel marketing.
If I had such a mechanism I'm likely to want to employ it first in the commercial field - since any idea is going to get copied pretty soon after it first appears. Thus even with IP control over the concept, NASA is going to be way down my list. Double that because there's no prize money involved, only cost.
For instance, I might suggest allowing people to name newly discovered stars, nebula, galaxies, craters, etc. However I'm better off just doing it anyway and selling the certificates at $10 a shot.
Mind you, on the other hand it might be worthwhile keeping an eye on submissions in case there is something that comes out that you can use in more financially interesting ways.
That is what I found, although mention is made of two patents. Maybe its just a followup patent that companies usually file to carve out a bigger segment of patentspace?
Face it, this is an obvious menu system based on obvious metadata. The problem here is it should never have been granted a patent in the first place. The patent office has become mired in money making scams in recent decades and the whole system has fallen into disrepute. It serves nobody well.
The small inventor has no way of using a patent to protect them since costs are high and costs of protecting the patent are even higher. Any reasonably sized company can grind them into dust in the courts.
Companies actually creating virtually anything find there is some spurious over-general patent somewhere that they infringe in putting one piece of plastic next to one piece of metal; so there is an orgy of cross licencing and costs associated. This all takes time and reduces the pace of innovation
The public aren't served by ideas being freely available and built upon, because most of the ideas are obvious, the patent tries hard to make it impossible to understand, and if you ever use the information you get slapped with an injunction.
Oops, sorry, there is one group of people that do well, the lawyers. Strange that.
Face it. We need a year zero in IP, a fundamental reexamination of why we give any protection at all, and how much is the right amount. We need to accept that all IP to this date is on very shaky ground and that the simplest approach is to wipe the slate clean. Above all, we need to make it a criminal offence for a company to attempt to buy laws. How many of our problems can be traced back to corporate/politician corruption? Maybe the best solution is to extract a written guarantee from anyone standing in the midterms that they will ensure IP laws are scaled back? Make it an issue.
A jihad against lawyers wouldn't be a bad idea either.
I won't bother to do the usual/. thing of calling you an idiot for looking at this solution, on the basis of your one paragraph summary. You know more of the details than me.
I have sitting in front of me a fingerprint USB flash drive from Adata. Cheap. Comes in capacities up to 2GB. Study in a plastic sort of way, it would take abuse. Perhaps most interesting there are no drivers to install, when you plug it in it runs the autorun code which does the fingerprint check and then runs up a tray icon with access to a number of utilities (eg email client) which are stored on the disk. Only takes up 7Mb of the space, the rest of which is available to you. Windows only however. No fingerprint, no access to any of the files.
I've no idea how secure it really is against access, my bet is not very. However it might be possible to change the tray program to contain programmes of interest to you and a Truecrypt partition and driver software could be included for more security.
In reality unions have had their day, not because managers aren't out to squeeze the last drop out of 'their' workers given a chance - but because they are well aware of the tools and operating methods of conventional unions. They literally laugh and the slow and predictable approaches employed. They are well ready to counter any conventional effort to employ union power. If you want to gain the advantages of group action you need to create and implement truly innovative approaches which are proof against distruptive efforts from within and without. Above all you need to have your fist firmly grasped around the balls of the organisation and be able to squeeze at a moments' notice.
And then you have to have the ethically backbone not to unless there is no other way.
Lastly, your grasp better be international in reach.
The Times Cryptic Crossword is extremely well known in the UK for being extremely difficult and, well cryptic. A judge is exactly the kind of person that would do such a crossword everyday.
The thing that's nagging at me is its 'smithycode', not 'smithcode'. Why? It makes it ten characters long which makes me wonder if smithycode is an anagram of anything.
And IE has its own zoom function. And Firefox has its canvas (but no way to get at it from a webpage), etc. etc.
Although I agree that standard availability of things like SVG is a good thing, I do wish the CompSci types would get off their ivory towers for a bit and do the simple stuff, simply, that would enable simple functionality (like being able to arbitrarily scale any container) that people need. How difficult would it have been to have a zoom attribute to a container tag? One that worked and was followed? One page of spec, a week of coding - its not that complicated, half of its already there.
Instead the web seems not to really have moved on since in the past decade since HTML 4. XHTML is pointless and XForms may make some happy, but most of us just don't care about closing BR tags. Get the important, simple stuff right first. And don't over complicate things. There is a reason HTML took off and SGML wasn't used. There is a reason why the web is based on the work of a scientific researcher, not a computer academic. Learn the lesson.
1) The US is not the world, so your laws can go hang.
2) Your views of what is sexually explicit are screwed up, so your rating system would be as well.
3) The real problem are the spammer and scammers stealing millions from the public. When I don't receive 100s of spams a day - then you can start getting worked up over boobies.
4) We don't trust you, we certainly don't trust you enough to let you do something this. Earn that trust back first.
Slashdot Mirror
Such an assistant would recognise you were falling behind on certain projects and proactively send compatible excuses to the project manager, blaming someone else. The advanced version would recognise problems ahead and kick the problem 'upstairs' for resolution, together with a suggested approach that pushes responsibility elsewhere.
It would recognise key phrases in emails from named individuals, 'losing' those which would cause trouble with a bounce message.
It would generate excuses as to why you couldn't attend meetings, workshops or other timewasting activities.
It would automatically blow your own trumpet if you managed to do something useful, simultaneous storing reference away for review time.
A better question is what would be the truthfull assessment of greenness of greenpeace be? After all the produce nothing, the only effect they have is to prevent actions. They are the last word in paracitical, pointless organisations - dedicated to the idea that to do nothing is the best course. And yet the burn up valuable resources steaming around the world.
Take the money and energy wasted by greenpeace and put it into something with purpose that actually supports environmental progress rather than political positioning.
Surely what is being said is "Mr Cracker, if you create a 64bit kernel crack you can reencode this content in something without any DRM, maybe on a dual layer DVD, and have an open market to people who couldn't watch this by paying for it even if they wanted to".
Maybe the killer app for Linux is a bootable DVD loader that puts HD movies on your desktop from an 8.4GB DVD?
Just how screwed up do you have to be to consider a nipple to be threat to a child's development?
Better to concentrate on ensuring that child can grow up in a world that has freedom of speech, a clean environment and open minds than one that views sex as somehow dirty.
If Sony pull this one off and don't have a damp squib launch someone will be due a huge bonus. I don't bother with consoles and even I am interested by the Wii if the price is right.
Companies pay fees for specific work; they don't own souls.
From my perspective I consider businesses and the IT gestapo all to ready to claim that everything that touches 'their' machines their sole property. The reality is that individuals have a right to privacy and a right to keep certain things to themselves - whichever computing resource they might use. Some companies seem to be run along very fascist lines.
Encrypted folders are not the threat, over inquisitive BOFH and PHB are the threat.
Why both reporting the also ran?
Second, if microsoft were to try to play hardball the EU could easily just remove their copyright on windows. It would become public domain, the authentication could easily be bypassed and microsoft would have no recourse. When you write the laws, you can make anything legal.
Microsoft have been playing political games, hoping it will go away. However with the lack of love for microsoft in europe eventually they are going to have to give up and knuckle under.
The replacement for ICANN should first and foremost not be beholden to any government; and secondly be populated by those who understand what the Internet is - not politicians, accountants, managers, economists, philosophers, etc.
Open elections for qualified candidates should be voted upon by a similar pool of qualified voters.
Things should return to people who know what they are doing, care, and have an interest in moving things forward. Have you noticed how progress has essentially stopped once the politicos got involved?
And remember, focus.
I've skimmed through the vast extent of it and some points arise:
- it should never have got accepted in the first place, its a piece of software, written as patent
- it references Microsoft FoxPro as something it works within, which both dates it and calls into question the Access/Excel claims
- its a mess of AI, Genetic algorothms, decision support, data mining and virtually every other buzzphrase in the known universe
- it describes a level of intelligent action on input data such as I've never seen in a Microsoft application
If this is really the PoS that $65m is built on, I'm in the wrong game.This guy managed to take two packages made by Microsoft and work a way of shifting data between them. So what? I'll guess (given that no reference is given to the actual patent) that given the two packages there are only very few mechanisms, and these are obvious in the context of the software. I can quite understand Microsoft telling him to take a hike for an export/import routine.
As much as it may pain some, this person looks to be a chancer. Just because its the little guy and Microsoft doesn't make it right.
Workers blame the managers
The way this blog is written makes it obvious why its late, and why it probably won't hit the needs of the users. All the effort goes into playing the bureaucracy game and between the 'them' and 'us' everything important gets lost.
Personally I believe its a failing of the MBA courses, etc. The idea that 'A' controls 'B', rather than they work together as a team is prevalent and its fundamentally incompatible with good projects. By default I tend to look questioningly at those who claim to be able to manage because 'they've done the course'. Too often they forget they are costs to the programme and have to offer real, obvious, value to be worth having.
We need project management, version 2.01
If there are issues with the performance of some, that is cause to change the system, not throw everything out and make it worse for the majority. The 'everyone round the watercooler, discussing problems' idea in reality doesn't require the watercooler - it requires the culture where those that have the knowledge are recognised in their passing it on. I'll bet that it isn't in HP.
Two obvious solutions could be tried. Either companies could be forced to pay the commuting costs of their staff (that would make them understand that fuel costs are not a joke); or the HP staff could club together and pay to get this jerk wacked. Overall the second is probably best for the long term future of the company.
Since the above is about as likely as duck being joined by a flying pig...
What we are approaching is a graded experience; from right at the front with a great view, great sound (and atmosphere); through the also rans in the arena; to those watching live at home, and finally those watching the concert DVD. People will pay varying amount depending on the quality of that experience. Particularly stupid people will pay very, very large amounts. At the same time, the performer may well want demonstrative fans at the front to feed off. That brings in the concept of 'fan points', offsetting pure money will other contributions to the event.
The smart promoter will do more than a simple auction of seats - they will optimise on the value of the event and the contributions to that both on and off stage; and in reputation and future album sales.
I wonder if there actually are any smart promoters out there?
If I had such a mechanism I'm likely to want to employ it first in the commercial field - since any idea is going to get copied pretty soon after it first appears. Thus even with IP control over the concept, NASA is going to be way down my list. Double that because there's no prize money involved, only cost.
For instance, I might suggest allowing people to name newly discovered stars, nebula, galaxies, craters, etc. However I'm better off just doing it anyway and selling the certificates at $10 a shot.
Mind you, on the other hand it might be worthwhile keeping an eye on submissions in case there is something that comes out that you can use in more financially interesting ways.
Face it, this is an obvious menu system based on obvious metadata. The problem here is it should never have been granted a patent in the first place. The patent office has become mired in money making scams in recent decades and the whole system has fallen into disrepute. It serves nobody well.
Oops, sorry, there is one group of people that do well, the lawyers. Strange that.
Face it. We need a year zero in IP, a fundamental reexamination of why we give any protection at all, and how much is the right amount. We need to accept that all IP to this date is on very shaky ground and that the simplest approach is to wipe the slate clean. Above all, we need to make it a criminal offence for a company to attempt to buy laws. How many of our problems can be traced back to corporate/politician corruption? Maybe the best solution is to extract a written guarantee from anyone standing in the midterms that they will ensure IP laws are scaled back? Make it an issue.
A jihad against lawyers wouldn't be a bad idea either.
I have sitting in front of me a fingerprint USB flash drive from Adata. Cheap. Comes in capacities up to 2GB. Study in a plastic sort of way, it would take abuse. Perhaps most interesting there are no drivers to install, when you plug it in it runs the autorun code which does the fingerprint check and then runs up a tray icon with access to a number of utilities (eg email client) which are stored on the disk. Only takes up 7Mb of the space, the rest of which is available to you. Windows only however. No fingerprint, no access to any of the files.
I've no idea how secure it really is against access, my bet is not very. However it might be possible to change the tray program to contain programmes of interest to you and a Truecrypt partition and driver software could be included for more security.
And then you have to have the ethically backbone not to unless there is no other way.
Lastly, your grasp better be international in reach.
The thing that's nagging at me is its 'smithycode', not 'smithcode'. Why? It makes it ten characters long which makes me wonder if smithycode is an anagram of anything.
Also looked at the key being
HBHGDVC
from the text of paragraph 52.
Its not as simple as all that. Other thing to take into account is this is a judge, and therefore may will be a Times crossword type.
smithycode could be a crossword clue.
Although I agree that standard availability of things like SVG is a good thing, I do wish the CompSci types would get off their ivory towers for a bit and do the simple stuff, simply, that would enable simple functionality (like being able to arbitrarily scale any container) that people need. How difficult would it have been to have a zoom attribute to a container tag? One that worked and was followed? One page of spec, a week of coding - its not that complicated, half of its already there.
Instead the web seems not to really have moved on since in the past decade since HTML 4. XHTML is pointless and XForms may make some happy, but most of us just don't care about closing BR tags. Get the important, simple stuff right first. And don't over complicate things. There is a reason HTML took off and SGML wasn't used. There is a reason why the web is based on the work of a scientific researcher, not a computer academic. Learn the lesson.
1) The US is not the world, so your laws can go hang.
2) Your views of what is sexually explicit are screwed up, so your rating system would be as well.
3) The real problem are the spammer and scammers stealing millions from the public. When I don't receive 100s of spams a day - then you can start getting worked up over boobies.
4) We don't trust you, we certainly don't trust you enough to let you do something this. Earn that trust back first.