Are you saying that if someone found a way to solve NP complete problems efficiently then that person should be allowed to forbid everyone else from using it?
Doesn't sound like such a good idea to me.
A 20 year monopoly for finding out how to do something that most credible experts in the field think cannot be done? Why not?
Because it would stall innovation.
If you want to reward the inventor, give him a Nobel Prize or some other form of monetary reward but don't stall innovation.
What makes you think someone wouldn't publish this type of discovery if it wasn't protected by patent law anyways?
The product was developed without any knowledge of these patents. Some patents were really far off; Most were vague; None were useful.
The idea of patents is to promote the publication of new ideas. Instead, it's a barrier to innovation.
So did you infringe on any of them? Was the product scuttled? Did you find you had to engineer around any claims?
I reported why I thought our product didn't infringe. I didn't work around any patent. The product was, still is, a success.
These are important questions because it makes a difference as to whether innovation was really stiffled or whether the team was merely inconvenienced by having to review unrelated materials. If, earlier in development, you did any serious search of existing publications related to your work, you probably would have suffered a comparable inconvenience in sorting through far off, vague, and useless materials.
I don't know what happened after I provided my report. However this inconvenience, as you call it, cost the company money: my time and that of others, legal fees, potentially paying off the trolls.
Also, this product started development in 1990 so using the Internet to search for patents was not an option. Doing a search would have required hiring a patent lawyer.
When you decide to put a system in place, you need to weight its advantages against its disadvantages. In the case of the patent system, there's very little evidence that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. This system is broken. Except for patent trolls and lawyers, who profits. The idea might have merits but its implementation doesn't work. We could try to fix it but sometimes giving up is a better choice.
As a minimal test, take the number of people who have actually searched for methods to provide some features in a software application and been able to take advantage of the published patent. Now compare that number with the number of lawsuits that companies and individuals have had to go through. Add to that the number of out-of-court settlements.
Are you saying that if someone found a way to solve NP complete problems efficiently then that person should be allowed to forbid everyone else from using it? Doesn't sound like such a good idea to me.
I'm against patents in all cases.
The first time I had to deal with patents was after the company I worked for had developed an electronic device. I was provided with a list of patents to read to figure out if we were infringing on these patents. The trolls, this was circa 1995, had already sent their cease and desists notice and the product wasn't even out yet.
The product was developed without any knowledge of these patents. Some patents were really far off; Most were vague; None were useful. The idea of patents is to promote the publication of new ideas. Instead, it's a barrier to innovation.
It's a question of semantics.
If you say that you are going from 10^12 to 2^40 then you gain 9.95% whereas if you go from 2^40 to 10^12, you lose 9.05%.
here or simply
I guess it depends on your POV so I'll admit I was wrong. Still 1 TiB-1 TB is 92.6 GiB (99GB).
But why should it matter if they are a cult or a religion? If another religion already has the right to wear hoods in their store everybody regardless of their religious views should have the same rights. Discrimination against a religion means that you are making special rules against a religion. Once you've established that you are OK with people wearing hoods you shouldn't need to be in a religion to have that right. If a store doesn't allow people to wear roller skates in their store, then no matter what your religion requires, they shouldn't have to accept you. If the store decides to make an exception for the roller bladers of heaven then the exception should be for everyone. IMHO.
Since churches are exempt from paying taxes and since employers usually pay a portion of the tax burden, my understanding is that your father was not paying taxes at a higher rate than an employee; It just means that the state where you lived didn't think it was fair that a normally employed person would have his salary reduced by his employer (who has to pay taxes) but that a self employed person (or one whose 'employer' doesn't pay these taxes) wouldn't have to.
Troll? The OP says that Scientology is based on a book of fiction and gets modded Insightful but when someone points out that this is the case for all religions he gets modded troll? Maybe it's the claim that Jesus was a carpenter! What's wrong with being a carpenter?
There is an option in firefox's about:config to turn this feature off:
Just set
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false
What we need is a simple plugin in Firefox that returns the URL not found page when it sees the ip-address of one of these DNS redirected pages.
My biggest issue with this DNS redirection is that it adds useless entries into my history list.
I had the same thing happen to me with Bell's DNS hijacking but then I checked with nslookup and looked at the redirect page.
I believe that Firefox (and your browser may do this as well) tries www.domainname.com if domainname.com doesn't exist.
This would explain why the invaliddomain135.net redirected to that page.
I think he's saying that the fact that they could get away with this demonstrates that they are a legal monopoly.
If they didn't have a monopoly, the software companies that distributed these applications would have boycotted Windows and Microsoft would have had to stop that practice. Being a monopoly, that threat was irrelevant.
If we outlaw cracking iPhones then only outlaws will own cracked iPhones!
You:
If cracking iPhones is outlawed, only outlaws will own cracked iPhones.
As far as I can tell, "If cracking iPhones is outlawed" is the same as "If we outlaw cracking iPhones."
and "then only outlaws will own cracked iPhones!" is the same as "only outlaws will own cracked iPhones."
But you add that
the inversion of order of the action and outlaw[ed][s] is the whole point of the expression. Please try to get this right. Thank you, that is all.
I think many people realize that things weren't perfect before Bush. In general however, it seemed that liberty, before Bush, was taken seriously. Now, security is the big thing and is somehow more important than freedom. I guess different generations have different priorities.
But they so clearly do not respect OUR culture. They want no part of our culture - they do not identify themselves as Canadians - they do not consider themselves "French Canadians" (as it were), nor even Quebecois Canadian.
They are, exclusively, from Quebec.
First, the term "Canadien" was originally used to refer to people from Lower Canada. The term was "appropriated" by the rest of what is now Canada. Thought you'd like to know.
Second, most Quebecois can name 5 to 10 non french artists. How many french artists can the average anglo-Canadian name? In a recent French interview with the Canadian Minister of Culture at the television show "Tout le monde en parle", it appears that it's not that many.
This is not to say that EVERY person from Quebec is a douchebag, but certainly, since the following statements are true:
1. I know more than one person who has had a bad experience visiting Quebec.
1a. One such person had a negative view of ALL CANADIANS because of it.
So you have a racist friend who judges an entire country on one bad experience. Shows the kind of company you keep. I know several people who have come here for business and returned for a vacation. Guess we don't keep the same kind of company.
2. I myself have had bad experiences with french people (being someone who does not frequently have problems with people)
Guess what? I've also had bad experiences with french Quebecois. Also, with Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Chinese, Americans.
What's your point exactly?
3. They show no interest in being helpful, negotiable, or useful in any sort of political undertaking.
With that kind of attitude, what do you expect? I thought you said you got along with most people!
In any case, the history of multiple negotiations on the Constitution tend to demonstrate just the opposite.
4. They continue to take from the rest of Canada and give little in return.
Well, it seems that the last time we wanted to separate, the federal government decided that they would break the laws on how much can be spent during a referendum just to keep Quebec part of Canada. Maybe if your federal government stopped breaking our laws, we'd be a free nation and we wouldn't have to take so much and give so little back.
5. Restricting (sic) the rights of non-french-people in "their" province.
Which rights would these be?
And, while I certainly do apply hyperbole with a sprayer rather than a brush, (see?) the above is my basic decision towards a reasonable dislike of French Canadians.
Does this indicate that the French language needed to be protected from your use of it?
Yes. It also indicates that the OP is an idiot.
In Quebec, to get a University diploma, you need to pass a language skills exam. You can pass the exam in English or French. The OP was complaining that because he can't write well enough in his native language, he had to pass the exam in English.
The french language is beautiful but not that useful and people fail to recognize it.
I think most people recognize that French is not as useful as English in North America. These laws are not because people think that French is such a useful language. These laws are made because without them, the companies that want to make money in Quebec don't bother respecting the native language of the majority. For games for example, some companies had already made a French version for Europe but wouldn't bother selling that version in Quebec because they deemed it too much trouble. I think it's a question of respect.
In other regions of North America, this question doesn't come up because most people speak English and companies don't need incentives to appeal to the anglophone market. In Quebec, the same companies need a little more convincing. Most people that criticize the language laws in Quebec don't take that into account.
I'm not saying that all the language laws in Quebec are good but that, in North America, only Quebec and the aboriginals have this kind of situation where people will try to sell their products without respecting the culture of the people they sell to.
Of course, it matters. Corruption is not an on/off bit. It is a matter of degree. Otherwise, all you could say is that every country is "corrupt". An observation that can't distinguish is useless.
I agree that corruption is a matter of degree. Therefore, if I make a claim that a government is extremely corrupt then I am giving an idea of just how corrupt I think that government is.
You may not agree that the government in question is extremely corrupted and you may question the definition of "extremely." However, comparing that corruption to that of other governments won't change the degree of corruption of the government in question.
Also, I'm not saying that comparing the degree of corruption of different governments is useless. It's just that I believe that the measure of corruption of one government should be considered independently of the degree of corruption of other governments. In essence, the corruption level of other governments should not be used to justify the corruption level of another.
... As long as we practice one-man-one-vote the system will swing to a two-party system. You only get to choose from a menu of two...
That's only true if you keep thinking that way. If you think your vote only counts to elect an official in the current election, then you'll always be caught in a two-party system. If you vote for the better candidate in one election, knowing that your candidate probably won't win, you let others know that this candidate has support. In the next election, more people may be willing to
support the better candidate.
Slashdot Mirror
A 20 year monopoly for finding out how to do something that most credible experts in the field think cannot be done? Why not?
Because it would stall innovation. If you want to reward the inventor, give him a Nobel Prize or some other form of monetary reward but don't stall innovation. What makes you think someone wouldn't publish this type of discovery if it wasn't protected by patent law anyways?
So did you infringe on any of them? Was the product scuttled? Did you find you had to engineer around any claims?
I reported why I thought our product didn't infringe. I didn't work around any patent. The product was, still is, a success.
These are important questions because it makes a difference as to whether innovation was really stiffled or whether the team was merely inconvenienced by having to review unrelated materials. If, earlier in development, you did any serious search of existing publications related to your work, you probably would have suffered a comparable inconvenience in sorting through far off, vague, and useless materials.
I don't know what happened after I provided my report. However this inconvenience, as you call it, cost the company money: my time and that of others, legal fees, potentially paying off the trolls.
Also, this product started development in 1990 so using the Internet to search for patents was not an option. Doing a search would have required hiring a patent lawyer.
When you decide to put a system in place, you need to weight its advantages against its disadvantages. In the case of the patent system, there's very little evidence that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. This system is broken. Except for patent trolls and lawyers, who profits. The idea might have merits but its implementation doesn't work. We could try to fix it but sometimes giving up is a better choice.
As a minimal test, take the number of people who have actually searched for methods to provide some features in a software application and been able to take advantage of the published patent. Now compare that number with the number of lawsuits that companies and individuals have had to go through. Add to that the number of out-of-court settlements.
Are you saying that if someone found a way to solve NP complete problems efficiently then that person should be allowed to forbid everyone else from using it?
Doesn't sound like such a good idea to me.
I'm against patents in all cases.
The first time I had to deal with patents was after the company I worked for had developed an electronic device. I was provided with a list of patents to read to figure out if we were infringing on these patents. The trolls, this was circa 1995, had already sent their cease and desists notice and the product wasn't even out yet.
The product was developed without any knowledge of these patents. Some patents were really far off; Most were vague; None were useful.
The idea of patents is to promote the publication of new ideas. Instead, it's a barrier to innovation.
It's a question of semantics. If you say that you are going from 10^12 to 2^40 then you gain 9.95% whereas if you go from 2^40 to 10^12, you lose 9.05%. here or simply
I guess it depends on your POV so I'll admit I was wrong. Still 1 TiB-1 TB is 92.6 GiB (99GB).
More like 9.95%
But that's OK, you were only off by about 9%
But why should it matter if they are a cult or a religion?
If another religion already has the right to wear hoods in their store everybody regardless of their religious views should have the same rights.
Discrimination against a religion means that you are making special rules against a religion. Once you've established that you are OK with people wearing hoods you shouldn't need to be in a religion to have that right.
If a store doesn't allow people to wear roller skates in their store, then no matter what your religion requires, they shouldn't have to accept you. If the store decides to make an exception for the roller bladers of heaven then the exception should be for everyone. IMHO.
Since churches are exempt from paying taxes and since employers usually pay a portion of the tax burden, my understanding is that your father was not paying taxes at a higher rate than an employee; It just means that the state where you lived didn't think it was fair that a normally employed person would have his salary reduced by his employer (who has to pay taxes) but that a self employed person (or one whose 'employer' doesn't pay these taxes) wouldn't have to.
Troll?
The OP says that Scientology is based on a book of fiction and gets modded Insightful but when someone points out that this is the case for all religions he gets modded troll?
Maybe it's the claim that Jesus was a carpenter! What's wrong with being a carpenter?
I guess that decent firewall they are talking about must be running on a non MS machine.
There is an option in firefox's about:config to turn this feature off:
Just set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false
What we need is a simple plugin in Firefox that returns the URL not found page when it sees the ip-address of one of these DNS redirected pages.
My biggest issue with this DNS redirection is that it adds useless entries into my history list.
I had the same thing happen to me with Bell's DNS hijacking but then I checked with nslookup and looked at the redirect page.
I believe that Firefox (and your browser may do this as well) tries www.domainname.com if domainname.com doesn't exist.
This would explain why the invaliddomain135.net redirected to that page.
I think he's saying that the fact that they could get away with this demonstrates that they are a legal monopoly.
If they didn't have a monopoly, the software companies that distributed these applications would have boycotted Windows and Microsoft would have had to stop that practice. Being a monopoly, that threat was irrelevant.
Its a good think their where no others issue with that post than.
GP:
If we outlaw cracking iPhones
then only outlaws will own cracked iPhones!
You:
If cracking iPhones is outlawed,
only outlaws will own cracked iPhones.
As far as I can tell, "If cracking iPhones is outlawed" is the same as "If we outlaw cracking iPhones." and "then only outlaws will own cracked iPhones!" is the same as "only outlaws will own cracked iPhones."
But you add that
the inversion of order of the action and outlaw[ed][s] is the whole point of the expression. Please try to get this right. Thank you, that is all.
What did I miss?
You remember your uid but not the password?
Guess I'll have to stop playing the radio in my backyard.
That "may" be considered "making the songs available" and I can't even afford to pay the fine for a single hour.
You forgot to put the tags around your text. For a minute I thought you were serious. Good one.
I'm not USians but I try to follow along.
I think many people realize that things weren't perfect before Bush. In general however, it seemed that liberty, before Bush, was taken seriously. Now, security is the big thing and is somehow more important than freedom. I guess different generations have different priorities.
$1.00 a month seems reasonable to me. At that rate she might even finish paying before the copyrights expire.
Apologies accepted but in the future, please restrain this retard.
But they so clearly do not respect OUR culture. They want no part of our culture - they do not identify themselves as Canadians - they do not consider themselves "French Canadians" (as it were), nor even Quebecois Canadian.
They are, exclusively, from Quebec.
First, the term "Canadien" was originally used to refer to people from Lower Canada. The term was "appropriated" by the rest of what is now Canada. Thought you'd like to know.
Second, most Quebecois can name 5 to 10 non french artists. How many french artists can the average anglo-Canadian name? In a recent French interview with the Canadian Minister of Culture at the television show "Tout le monde en parle", it appears that it's not that many.
This is not to say that EVERY person from Quebec is a douchebag, but certainly, since the following statements are true:
1. I know more than one person who has had a bad experience visiting Quebec. 1a. One such person had a negative view of ALL CANADIANS because of it.
So you have a racist friend who judges an entire country on one bad experience. Shows the kind of company you keep. I know several people who have come here for business and returned for a vacation. Guess we don't keep the same kind of company.
2. I myself have had bad experiences with french people (being someone who does not frequently have problems with people)
Guess what? I've also had bad experiences with french Quebecois. Also, with Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Chinese, Americans.
What's your point exactly?
3. They show no interest in being helpful, negotiable, or useful in any sort of political undertaking.
With that kind of attitude, what do you expect? I thought you said you got along with most people!
In any case, the history of multiple negotiations on the Constitution tend to demonstrate just the opposite.
4. They continue to take from the rest of Canada and give little in return.
Well, it seems that the last time we wanted to separate, the federal government decided that they would break the laws on how much can be spent during a referendum just to keep Quebec part of Canada. Maybe if your federal government stopped breaking our laws, we'd be a free nation and we wouldn't have to take so much and give so little back.
5. Restricting (sic) the rights of non-french-people in "their" province.
Which rights would these be?
And, while I certainly do apply hyperbole with a sprayer rather than a brush, (see?) the above is my basic decision towards a reasonable dislike of French Canadians.
Does this indicate that the French language needed to be protected from your use of it?
Yes. It also indicates that the OP is an idiot.
In Quebec, to get a University diploma, you need to pass a language skills exam. You can pass the exam in English or French. The OP was complaining that because he can't write well enough in his native language, he had to pass the exam in English.
The french language is beautiful but not that useful and people fail to recognize it.
I think most people recognize that French is not as useful as English in North America. These laws are not because people think that French is such a useful language. These laws are made because without them, the companies that want to make money in Quebec don't bother respecting the native language of the majority. For games for example, some companies had already made a French version for Europe but wouldn't bother selling that version in Quebec because they deemed it too much trouble. I think it's a question of respect.
In other regions of North America, this question doesn't come up because most people speak English and companies don't need incentives to appeal to the anglophone market. In Quebec, the same companies need a little more convincing. Most people that criticize the language laws in Quebec don't take that into account.
I'm not saying that all the language laws in Quebec are good but that, in North America, only Quebec and the aboriginals have this kind of situation where people will try to sell their products without respecting the culture of the people they sell to.
Government is not a pass/fail quiz, the question "is it OK?" has no meaning. It is always as good or as bad as we make it.
I don't understand your argument. Why would the question "is it OK to be corrupt" be meaningless? Is it not a fair question?
Of course, it matters. Corruption is not an on/off bit. It is a matter of degree. Otherwise, all you could say is that every country is "corrupt". An observation that can't distinguish is useless.
I agree that corruption is a matter of degree. Therefore, if I make a claim that a government is extremely corrupt then I am giving an idea of just how corrupt I think that government is.
You may not agree that the government in question is extremely corrupted and you may question the definition of "extremely." However, comparing that corruption to that of other governments won't change the degree of corruption of the government in question.
Also, I'm not saying that comparing the degree of corruption of different governments is useless. It's just that I believe that the measure of corruption of one government should be considered independently of the degree of corruption of other governments. In essence, the corruption level of other governments should not be used to justify the corruption level of another.
... As long as we practice one-man-one-vote the system will swing to a two-party system. You only get to choose from a menu of two ...
That's only true if you keep thinking that way. If you think your vote only counts to elect an official in the current election, then you'll always be caught in a two-party system. If you vote for the better candidate in one election, knowing that your candidate probably won't win, you let others know that this candidate has support. In the next election, more people may be willing to support the better candidate.