Tax the fuel. It's not just Oregonians that use the road.
In Holland, they already tax the fuel, with some 200%, which makes fuel here 4 times more expensive than in the US. The new system will tax you on top of that. It will replace the road tax that we now pay, which is about $80 a month for small cars, going up to a few hundred a month for bigger cars. And they tax you when you buy the car, with 45%.
They want us to use public transport. But the capacity of pt is such that if 10% of people take pt instead of the car, public transport would grind to a halt. Also, they don't take into account that for some people pt is not an option. I don't live near a train station, pt more than doubles my travel to work time. So probably I should move. But then, they tax you for moving also. I wonder what idiots voted for a government like this. Oh, it's democracy. Oh well...
Seriously, if "Slide to Lock" deserves a patent, someone in the USPTO should be hit over the head with a hammer. Repeatedly.
Like the person who granted the "one click" patent. Doesn't patent law say that a patent can be granted on an invention, not on just anything you think of while taking a shower? A patent lawyer once explained to me that "an invention" is something that an average engineer doesn't come up with in just a couple of days. "Slide to lock" takes just five seconds to come up with.
I think patents can be useful to people with bright ideas, but they should be valid for just six months, enough for that person to make their point.
It's Italy, what can you expect? A country that had a prime minister - Andreotti - who turned out to be a mobster? A country where the current prime minister owns all TV stations?
older programmers who were typically maths graduates are far more skilled than the younger "computer science" graduates
I second that. The kids I've hired right out of school hadn't learned decent programming in school, they had all been doing their own projects on the side. When I started my career as a programmer, there was no computer science department at the university, so we did math or physics, or astrophysics, which involves a lot of programming and a lot of problem solving.
As a BB developer, you can't use the api's that RIM developers can use to build apps. While Apple and Google do what they can to make life easy for their developers, RIM doesn't seem to like their developers.
This will definitely help: it will help pedophiles do their thing undisturbed. Filtering pictures of child abuse off the web makes them invisible to a general public, which will cease to put pressure on the government to stop child abuse. Meanwhile, pedophiles use their own channels to continue to distribute pictures of child abuse, and for that, to abuse children. ISPs should not filter anything. Governments should put maximum effort in taking down child abuse networks. And let's stop calling it "child pornography". It's not pornography. It's pictures of child abuse. Very often, it's pictures of severe child abuse.
Does this mean that "prior art" is no longer recognized? I mean, if I can prove in court that I invented something first, would this give the right to my invention to a company filing my patent before I do? That makes life harder for individual sofware developers who don't have - or are not willing to spend - the cash to file a gazillion patents. Why not just set criteria for filing patents as to allow only patents that really are major inventions?
A tablet is just a notebook pc without the keyboard, that is, a tablet is the useful part of a laptop. It is the future of portable pc's. But it's too bad that Google separates them from smartphones, it would be so much nicer if there were no clear distinction between the two. Why should a 15" tablet run different software than a 3" tablet pc?
This really worries me. Are teachers afraid of religious fanatics who want them to teach the bible in school? Or are teachers too dumb or not enough educated or well trained to be able to explain why evolution makes sense? Next we know the big bang is not taught any more, and Galileo isn't, and we go back to the stone age.
Smart people should have more children. Otherwise, evolution is in favor of the anti-evolution people.
I think Murch has a point here. Converging on one distance and focus on another is not what your eyes were made for, or rather, what your brain was made for. If you'd stay in the 3D cinema for the rest of your life, your brain would adapt quickly. But adapting to a situation where one moment you're in the cinema and another your in reality, that may prove harder. Although, I must say, I thought I'd never get used to vari-focus glasses, and I did within a day.
We should abandon the concept of software patents. They don't make sense and they're in the way of innovation. If abandoning patents can't be done, then limit their validity to six or twelve months. That's enough to recoup your software development investments, but not long enough to prevent others to invent your wheel too.
The whole issue with software patents is that 99% of them are so obvious that any programmer would have come up with the same idea and the same software, independently. Patents are supposed to protect inventions that are not obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
There are no alligators in polders in Holland.
I like to think that I'm fairly competent at English, thank you
Think so?
Tax the fuel. It's not just Oregonians that use the road.
In Holland, they already tax the fuel, with some 200%, which makes fuel here 4 times more expensive than in the US. The new system will tax you on top of that. It will replace the road tax that we now pay, which is about $80 a month for small cars, going up to a few hundred a month for bigger cars. And they tax you when you buy the car, with 45%.
They want us to use public transport. But the capacity of pt is such that if 10% of people take pt instead of the car, public transport would grind to a halt. Also, they don't take into account that for some people pt is not an option. I don't live near a train station, pt more than doubles my travel to work time. So probably I should move. But then, they tax you for moving also. I wonder what idiots voted for a government like this. Oh, it's democracy. Oh well...
Seriously, if "Slide to Lock" deserves a patent, someone in the USPTO should be hit over the head with a hammer. Repeatedly.
Like the person who granted the "one click" patent. Doesn't patent law say that a patent can be granted on an invention, not on just anything you think of while taking a shower? A patent lawyer once explained to me that "an invention" is something that an average engineer doesn't come up with in just a couple of days. "Slide to lock" takes just five seconds to come up with.
I think patents can be useful to people with bright ideas, but they should be valid for just six months, enough for that person to make their point.
I used to read New Scientist. Now I read /.
It's Italy, what can you expect? A country that had a prime minister - Andreotti - who turned out to be a mobster? A country where the current prime minister owns all TV stations?
No, they don't make sense, because you can buy a 20" screen for $100.
I agree. When I work at a customers site, I bring my laptop, customer lends me an extra monitor and a keyboard, everybody's happy.
Unfortunately the data might just prove that good programmers continue to older age while their less skilled kin get promoted out of it.
That would explain why IT managers are mostly clueless.
older programmers who were typically maths graduates are far more skilled than the younger "computer science" graduates
I second that. The kids I've hired right out of school hadn't learned decent programming in school, they had all been doing their own projects on the side. When I started my career as a programmer, there was no computer science department at the university, so we did math or physics, or astrophysics, which involves a lot of programming and a lot of problem solving.
As a BB developer, you can't use the api's that RIM developers can use to build apps. While Apple and Google do what they can to make life easy for their developers, RIM doesn't seem to like their developers.
This will definitely help: it will help pedophiles do their thing undisturbed. Filtering pictures of child abuse off the web makes them invisible to a general public, which will cease to put pressure on the government to stop child abuse. Meanwhile, pedophiles use their own channels to continue to distribute pictures of child abuse, and for that, to abuse children.
ISPs should not filter anything. Governments should put maximum effort in taking down child abuse networks. And let's stop calling it "child pornography". It's not pornography. It's pictures of child abuse. Very often, it's pictures of severe child abuse.
Didn't Heinrich Heine say something like "where they make important features optional, tomorrow they'll remove them altogether" ?
What would a JudgeWare know about HardWare?
They will achieve something bigger than being a chess superpower. They will have kids that have learned to think. To think really hard.
First they tweet the master key, then they sue you. Nice plot.
Does this mean that "prior art" is no longer recognized? I mean, if I can prove in court that I invented something first, would this give the right to my invention to a company filing my patent before I do? That makes life harder for individual sofware developers who don't have - or are not willing to spend - the cash to file a gazillion patents. Why not just set criteria for filing patents as to allow only patents that really are major inventions?
A tablet is just a notebook pc without the keyboard, that is, a tablet is the useful part of a laptop. It is the future of portable pc's. But it's too bad that Google separates them from smartphones, it would be so much nicer if there were no clear distinction between the two. Why should a 15" tablet run different software than a 3" tablet pc?
This really worries me. Are teachers afraid of religious fanatics who want them to teach the bible in school? Or are teachers too dumb or not enough educated or well trained to be able to explain why evolution makes sense? Next we know the big bang is not taught any more, and Galileo isn't, and we go back to the stone age.
Smart people should have more children. Otherwise, evolution is in favor of the anti-evolution people.
I think Murch has a point here. Converging on one distance and focus on another is not what your eyes were made for, or rather, what your brain was made for. If you'd stay in the 3D cinema for the rest of your life, your brain would adapt quickly. But adapting to a situation where one moment you're in the cinema and another your in reality, that may prove harder. Although, I must say, I thought I'd never get used to vari-focus glasses, and I did within a day.
We should abandon the concept of software patents. They don't make sense and they're in the way of innovation. If abandoning patents can't be done, then limit their validity to six or twelve months. That's enough to recoup your software development investments, but not long enough to prevent others to invent your wheel too.
The whole issue with software patents is that 99% of them are so obvious that any programmer would have come up with the same idea and the same software, independently. Patents are supposed to protect inventions that are not obvious.
"iPhone is more secure than Android because being an open-source platform lets attackers know more about the underlying architecture."
And that guy is the chairman of a computer security company?
They should have known.
How come this guy is not in jail yet?
It's always smart to exclude search results that don't match your personal prejudice.
Does this mean that you can sue just anyone for something that someone else allegedly did? Now we can all get rich fast!