That's kind of the point of patent\copyright laws; Math: not patentable, Art: is patentable.
Hate to burst your logic bubble there, but guess what? Art is NOT patentable. So far, at least. (That's not to say some attorneys in the U.S. haven't tried.)
Trying to read a book on a backlit LCD screen in a pain in the ass on a good day...
While I will be the first to admit that e-ink is truly wonderful for direct sunlight condition, I still have to say, "Wow, hyperbole much?"
A month ago I spent four days' vacation in the Dominican Republic, most of which was spent lounging around the pool with my wife. She's got a Kindle Fire and I have a Nook Color. Neither one of us had any problem at all reading books in sunlight bright enough to require sunglasses.
Here's a tip: Don't forget to turn up the screen brightness all the way before going outside. That's all that's really required.
Oh, please. AD and Firefly's handling by Fox couldn't have been more different.
AD: All 3 seasons shown in a stable slot. All episodes shown in order.
Firefly: 1 season shown wherever Fox felt like shoving it. You never knew week by week where it was going to be. The episodes were shown so far out of order that it was impossible to understand what the backstory was.
Frankly, I think an executive at Fox wanted the show eliminated as fast as possible to make room for a pet project or two. It's a wonder that any of us stuck with the show long enough to figure out what a gem it truly was.
Now, I'm not saying that Firefly was a show that would appeal to everyone. However, I am certain that it would have had a much, MUCH larger audience if Fox had just given it a decent chance.
Getting off topic here, but this is why I don't download directly from the B&N store to my Nook. I buy online through my PC, download it there, then read it on my Nook. I also tend to buy books that are DRM free or use tools that will let me read my ebooks however I want. Calibre'splug-inarchitecture makes this possible.
"Sure, I can refuse to buy another game from the developer, but that doesn't really fix anything. They already have my money."
Sure, for that game. I haven't bought a game from EA in 5 years. Over that time period, I've probably spent a couple of hundred bucks or so on games from other publishers that I downloaded from Steam sales, GoG, and Stardock, or as physical media (Battlefront.Com, for example)
The point is, if you've been burned by a vendor, look twice or even three times before ever spending another nickel with that company again. All the info about Ubisoft and EA's shenanigans have been widely reported in the gaming trade rags, so it's easy enough to avoid buying into their very flawed business model.
Side note: If you like FPS games as part of your multiplayer fix, take a look at Bohemia Interactive's alpha release of ArmA 3 on Steam. It's already proving to be a platform as stable as and with about as much content as some AAA titles final release. There are already hundreds of servers up with all kinds of player content out there and it's only been out a week! Well worth looking into for any FPS player.
Wow. I had no idea that so many ereaders were that poorly implemented. Speaking strictly as a reader and not as an author, can you recommend an ebook reader that doesn't exhibit this kind of thing? (Preferably FLOSS but I'd be interested in anything.)
You're an author, right? Why get into deep formatting at all? And given the very broad coverage of devices and markets that EPUB gives you these days, why would you attempt the formatting on any other platform by yourself?
If you feel you really need that coverage, why not just use something like Smashwords' services to get the other formats covered? (Granted, I'm not happy with the requirement to submit in.DOC myself, but for that kind of market reach I would be tempted.;-) )
I am frankly amazed that there aren't more major security breaches in our banking infrastructure.
Yeahh, those of us in IT in the banking industry love consultants like you. Seriously, who has the better track record in preventing loss through computer theft and fraud? Those of us who have to protect your money for a living, or consultants who get to waltz in, pronounce their wisdom from on high, and leave?
Look, I'll grant you that security, both information and physical, is hard. Security between parties is even harder. Changing customer behavior, especially retail customers, takes forever. Figuring out how to pay for changes to meet an ever changing threat model is extremely difficult. Yet, as an industry we seem to be doing a pretty good job of it. When was the last time you heard about someone getting away with millions? (No, I'm not talking about investment bankers, I'm talking about consumer and commerical bankers. The ones handling your money, not those sociopaths ripping the rest of us off.)
Did it ever occur to you that the reason why banks do things the way that they do is because the level of loss through theft is essentially zero? We take our responsibility to protect our clients' assets very seriously, if for no other reason than a high profile report of loss through negligence on our part is guaranteed to cost us millions (if not billions!) in lost revenue and fines.
U.S. banks have auditors from a dozen different Federal agencies PLUS the Payment Card Industry consortium crawling through our IT infrastructrure literally on an almost daily basis. If we don't measure up, it can cost us tens of millions in fines and/or lost business through loss of access to Visa and MasterCard's networks. I'm sure banks in other countries face similar scrutiny.
Any bank of significant size has multiple layers of checks layered throughout their business logic. Just cracking the front door by any number of means doesn't give you instant access to account information, nor does it give you authorization to open up a wire transfer. Not to mention the fact that everyone, not just the customer facing staff, goes through annual refresher training on how to spot fraud of all types. Don't forget, banks have to absorb the losses, not the customer. (Yes, yes. I know we have insurance. What do you think would happen to our insurance rates if we continually screwed up? Not to mention the risk of having the country holding our charter just shutting us down!)
Personal examples: In the past several years, I have had a change in my purchasing behavior on my credit card trigger a contact from the issuing bank within a few days on at least three separate occasions. On two occasions, I have had an issuing bank spot a problematic transaction (used in another country on another continent), shut down the card, notify me, and re-issue a fresh card within two days. On every single occasion, the issuing bank absorbed all the costs associated with those actions. Those five(-ish) examples cover three different credit card networks and four different issuing banks.
Dealing with security issues is what we do every day. We have dedicated information security people constantly looking for new ways to strengthen and extend our defenses. We have development staff who get hammered if they bring in weak solutions, so they've learned to do the right thing. We have the aforementioned sensitivity to fraud.
...that may very well be how Valve ends up resolving the issue. He's already talking about figuring out how to implement player to player transactions for stuff that players create.
Soldiers are trained from day one to obey orders without questioning them. If your officer commands you to shoot, you shoot.
Actually, that's not quite accurate. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are all trained to obey LEGAL orders. And yes, a fair amount of time is spent in boot camp going over the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) to make sure that every recruit has a basic understanding of it.
In the case of personal doubt as to the illegality of an order, the recommendation we heard was to obey the orders of a superior and report the incident to higher authority at the earliest possible opportunity. There's also the right to demand that an order be given in a written fashsion so that a written protest can be documented at the same time. (Rarely used, though, as it is pretty much a career ending move.)
However, taking those actions does not necessarily absolve the individual if it can be shown that the junior should have known that orders in question were illegal. e.g., the only people who received any significant punishment when Abu Ghraib came to light were the junior personnel.
Yes, there are miscarriages of justice within the system. Given the amount of sheer, brazen corruption we're seeing lately within the DoJ, I'd say that the odds of a fair hearing nowadays may actually be better in a military court!
Yeah, I was responding to the general state of workers' rights more than the comments about pollution in the GP and GGP. That, to me, was even more important than the environmental issues from just 20 years ago. Or 50 years ago.
...that for you, the cost of a smartphone is a very small portion of the overall cost of service because you want far more data per month than many people do. From what I've seen here and elsewhere, you are an outlier. That's fine. There are data plans for you.
For the rest of us, there are far cheaper plans that provide us with what we need, so the cost of a smartphone becomes a significant fraction of the overall cost of service. That's why cheap Android phones are taking off in almost every market where they are introduced.
Excuse me? How about instead of automatically assuming that the only solution is to cut taxes, we get tax rates on the people who benefit the most from government services back were they belong?
Personally, I would LOVE to see effective tax rates on the top 5% of the country back where they were in the '60s. Heck, put 'em back where they were in the '50s! Let's get some real equality going here.;-)
The NYT had a pretty good commentary on the topic yesterday. (I know, I know. Gotta log in to see it. Sorry 'bout that.) There were a couple of excerpts that I found really fascinating. For example:
In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it.
One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.
And this one:
In a recent report, Gartner, the information technology research company, called Google âoethe only strong competitorâ to Microsoft in cloud-based business productivity software, though it warned that âoeenterprise concerns may not be of paramount importance to the search giant.â
Google is tight-lipped about how many people use Google Apps, saying only that in June more than five million businesses were using it, up from four million in late 2011. Almost all these companies are tiny, but in early December Google announced that even companies with fewer than 10 employees, which used to get Google Apps free, would have to pay.
That would be kind of tough because (according to the Wiki article the OP linked to) Erector Sets are actually rebadged Meccano sets built in France.:-)
As has been discussed pretty thoroughly at Groklaw, there are ways to overturn a jury verdict. One of the ways is to prove juror misconduct. The question at hand is whether the jury foreman is/was guilty of that or not. When you take all of the evidence into account (including, btw, that there was no such thing as a 10 year limit during the jury selection), I think it's pretty clear that this juror had an axe to grind and failed in his duty.
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to burst your logic bubble there, but guess what? Art is NOT patentable. So far, at least. (That's not to say some attorneys in the U.S. haven't tried.)
While I will be the first to admit that e-ink is truly wonderful for direct sunlight condition, I still have to say, "Wow, hyperbole much?"
A month ago I spent four days' vacation in the Dominican Republic, most of which was spent lounging around the pool with my wife. She's got a Kindle Fire and I have a Nook Color. Neither one of us had any problem at all reading books in sunlight bright enough to require sunglasses.
Here's a tip: Don't forget to turn up the screen brightness all the way before going outside. That's all that's really required.
Oh, please. AD and Firefly's handling by Fox couldn't have been more different.
AD: All 3 seasons shown in a stable slot. All episodes shown in order.
Firefly: 1 season shown wherever Fox felt like shoving it. You never knew week by week where it was going to be. The episodes were shown so far out of order that it was impossible to understand what the backstory was.
Frankly, I think an executive at Fox wanted the show eliminated as fast as possible to make room for a pet project or two. It's a wonder that any of us stuck with the show long enough to figure out what a gem it truly was.
Now, I'm not saying that Firefly was a show that would appeal to everyone. However, I am certain that it would have had a much, MUCH larger audience if Fox had just given it a decent chance.
Getting off topic here, but this is why I don't download directly from the B&N store to my Nook. I buy online through my PC, download it there, then read it on my Nook. I also tend to buy books that are DRM free or use tools that will let me read my ebooks however I want. Calibre's plug-in architecture makes this possible.
Just watch that award winning documentary, "Kentucky Fried Movie" to see it demonstrated. ;-)
n/t
Yeah, but I'll bet you're all bored to tears driving from Point A to Point B. :-)
What's currently running in the U.S. is just a remake of a BBC series from 1990. Naturally it doesn't really eflect Washington in 2013.
"Sure, I can refuse to buy another game from the developer, but that doesn't really fix anything. They already have my money."
Sure, for that game. I haven't bought a game from EA in 5 years. Over that time period, I've probably spent a couple of hundred bucks or so on games from other publishers that I downloaded from Steam sales, GoG, and Stardock, or as physical media (Battlefront.Com, for example)
The point is, if you've been burned by a vendor, look twice or even three times before ever spending another nickel with that company again. All the info about Ubisoft and EA's shenanigans have been widely reported in the gaming trade rags, so it's easy enough to avoid buying into their very flawed business model.
Side note: If you like FPS games as part of your multiplayer fix, take a look at Bohemia Interactive's alpha release of ArmA 3 on Steam. It's already proving to be a platform as stable as and with about as much content as some AAA titles final release. There are already hundreds of servers up with all kinds of player content out there and it's only been out a week! Well worth looking into for any FPS player.
Wow. I had no idea that so many ereaders were that poorly implemented. Speaking strictly as a reader and not as an author, can you recommend an ebook reader that doesn't exhibit this kind of thing? (Preferably FLOSS but I'd be interested in anything.)
You're an author, right? Why get into deep formatting at all? And given the very broad coverage of devices and markets that EPUB gives you these days, why would you attempt the formatting on any other platform by yourself?
If you feel you really need that coverage, why not just use something like Smashwords' services to get the other formats covered? (Granted, I'm not happy with the requirement to submit in .DOC myself, but for that kind of market reach I would be tempted. ;-) )
This is the most insightful, objective item that I've read on this topic in a very long time.
Let's come up with some relevant suggestions, shall we?
Yeahh, those of us in IT in the banking industry love consultants like you. Seriously, who has the better track record in preventing loss through computer theft and fraud? Those of us who have to protect your money for a living, or consultants who get to waltz in, pronounce their wisdom from on high, and leave?
Look, I'll grant you that security, both information and physical, is hard. Security between parties is even harder. Changing customer behavior, especially retail customers, takes forever. Figuring out how to pay for changes to meet an ever changing threat model is extremely difficult. Yet, as an industry we seem to be doing a pretty good job of it. When was the last time you heard about someone getting away with millions? (No, I'm not talking about investment bankers, I'm talking about consumer and commerical bankers. The ones handling your money, not those sociopaths ripping the rest of us off.)
Did it ever occur to you that the reason why banks do things the way that they do is because the level of loss through theft is essentially zero? We take our responsibility to protect our clients' assets very seriously, if for no other reason than a high profile report of loss through negligence on our part is guaranteed to cost us millions (if not billions!) in lost revenue and fines.
U.S. banks have auditors from a dozen different Federal agencies PLUS the Payment Card Industry consortium crawling through our IT infrastructrure literally on an almost daily basis. If we don't measure up, it can cost us tens of millions in fines and/or lost business through loss of access to Visa and MasterCard's networks. I'm sure banks in other countries face similar scrutiny.
Any bank of significant size has multiple layers of checks layered throughout their business logic. Just cracking the front door by any number of means doesn't give you instant access to account information, nor does it give you authorization to open up a wire transfer. Not to mention the fact that everyone, not just the customer facing staff, goes through annual refresher training on how to spot fraud of all types. Don't forget, banks have to absorb the losses, not the customer. (Yes, yes. I know we have insurance. What do you think would happen to our insurance rates if we continually screwed up? Not to mention the risk of having the country holding our charter just shutting us down!)
Personal examples: In the past several years, I have had a change in my purchasing behavior on my credit card trigger a contact from the issuing bank within a few days on at least three separate occasions. On two occasions, I have had an issuing bank spot a problematic transaction (used in another country on another continent), shut down the card, notify me, and re-issue a fresh card within two days. On every single occasion, the issuing bank absorbed all the costs associated with those actions. Those five(-ish) examples cover three different credit card networks and four different issuing banks.
Dealing with security issues is what we do every day. We have dedicated information security people constantly looking for new ways to strengthen and extend our defenses. We have development staff who get hammered if they bring in weak solutions, so they've learned to do the right thing. We have the aforementioned sensitivity to fraud.
We do know what we are doing. :-)
So I should spend even more money to get back basic functionality that has been in the UI since the very beginning?!? What have you been smoking?
...that may very well be how Valve ends up resolving the issue. He's already talking about figuring out how to implement player to player transactions for stuff that players create.
Actually, that's not quite accurate. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are all trained to obey LEGAL orders. And yes, a fair amount of time is spent in boot camp going over the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) to make sure that every recruit has a basic understanding of it.
In the case of personal doubt as to the illegality of an order, the recommendation we heard was to obey the orders of a superior and report the incident to higher authority at the earliest possible opportunity. There's also the right to demand that an order be given in a written fashsion so that a written protest can be documented at the same time. (Rarely used, though, as it is pretty much a career ending move.)
However, taking those actions does not necessarily absolve the individual if it can be shown that the junior should have known that orders in question were illegal. e.g., the only people who received any significant punishment when Abu Ghraib came to light were the junior personnel.
Yes, there are miscarriages of justice within the system. Given the amount of sheer, brazen corruption we're seeing lately within the DoJ, I'd say that the odds of a fair hearing nowadays may actually be better in a military court!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. :-)
Yeah, I was responding to the general state of workers' rights more than the comments about pollution in the GP and GGP. That, to me, was even more important than the environmental issues from just 20 years ago. Or 50 years ago.
Actually, it was closer to 120 years ago, not 20. That minor quibble aside, you do have a point.
...that for you, the cost of a smartphone is a very small portion of the overall cost of service because you want far more data per month than many people do. From what I've seen here and elsewhere, you are an outlier. That's fine. There are data plans for you.
For the rest of us, there are far cheaper plans that provide us with what we need, so the cost of a smartphone becomes a significant fraction of the overall cost of service. That's why cheap Android phones are taking off in almost every market where they are introduced.
Excuse me? How about instead of automatically assuming that the only solution is to cut taxes, we get tax rates on the people who benefit the most from government services back were they belong?
Personally, I would LOVE to see effective tax rates on the top 5% of the country back where they were in the '60s. Heck, put 'em back where they were in the '50s! Let's get some real equality going here. ;-)
The NYT had a pretty good commentary on the topic yesterday. (I know, I know. Gotta log in to see it. Sorry 'bout that.) There were a couple of excerpts that I found really fascinating. For example:
In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it.
One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.
And this one:
In a recent report, Gartner, the information technology research company, called Google âoethe only strong competitorâ to Microsoft in cloud-based business productivity software, though it warned that âoeenterprise concerns may not be of paramount importance to the search giant.â
Google is tight-lipped about how many people use Google Apps, saying only that in June more than five million businesses were using it, up from four million in late 2011. Almost all these companies are tiny, but in early December Google announced that even companies with fewer than 10 employees, which used to get Google Apps free, would have to pay.
That would be kind of tough because (according to the Wiki article the OP linked to) Erector Sets are actually rebadged Meccano sets built in France. :-)
As has been discussed pretty thoroughly at Groklaw, there are ways to overturn a jury verdict. One of the ways is to prove juror misconduct. The question at hand is whether the jury foreman is/was guilty of that or not. When you take all of the evidence into account (including, btw, that there was no such thing as a 10 year limit during the jury selection), I think it's pretty clear that this juror had an axe to grind and failed in his duty.
Don't believe me? How about the official record?