I wouldn't tie it to revenue, that's too hard to account for. Just use a predefined scale.
$1 for the first year $10 for the second year $100 for the third year $1,000 for the fourth year $10,000 for the fifth year $100,000 for the sixth year $1,000,000 for the seventh, and final year
If the smalltime inventor hasn't sold the patent or started to make money by the fifth year, he is never going to and doesn't deserve to block other people out of the market. Plus, the scaling rate means that only directly profitable patents will be held. The fewer patents, the better.
Really? Name 1 Canadian citizen who has been subject to the treatment you describe (whatever that is). And no, being captured as part of the Taliban in Afganistan doesn't count.
I assumed that you'd parallelize smaller jobs. For instance, suppose you're decoding mpeg. Mpeg is broken up into macroblocks. You could get a theoretical 8x performance boost by dividing up the work across all the processors. Don't think in terms of big threads, think about little, task specific threads.
Re:What's the count now?
on
aMSN 0.95 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Wrong. There was a whole fiasco with the gaim-vv and gaim 2.0 merge. In a nutshell, the guys working on gaim-vv submitted a big patchset, the lead gaim developer got hired by Google, and now, in a weird coincidence, the gaim-vv merge is cancelled to add Google Talk voice support instead.
There was a lot of hype about that project when it got going, but for a while now it's just claimed "we're rolling into gaim mainline" with no indication of progress. Not to mention all the news entries about "MSN not working" and all that.
But we all know that the ladies like guys with big arms, right? Here's the solution to making geeks with giant pythons. Nintendo has started an exercise revolution!
Re:Little Point Learning Perl If Not Already Learn
on
Learning Perl, 4th Ed.
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· Score: 1
Repectfully disagree. For some people, programming languages are just one small tool of many, rather than being the focus of the job (e.g. scientists).
Suppose I have several large datafiles, and I need a subset of the data from all of these in a different format. Perl is the best tool I've found for dealing with that. Variations on perl -ne 'print if/some_regex/' have saved me loads of time to do other, more interesting things. Call it a glorified awk or sed, but it's a huge time-saver.
Wow, you're right! Quick, call RMS and tell him to cancel the GPL! After all it's just a license and can't give you any bonus rights that copyright doesn't.
Jackassery aside, the CC provides licenses that a creator can easily apply to their work. This provides an easy to understand approach to licensing, both for the "creator" and "users".
The University of Waterloo in Canada generally makes a selling point of the fact that staff, faculty, students, RAs, etc retain ownership of any copyrights or patents that stem from their research.
In addition to writing your MP (which is a good start), you could get some signatures for the d-c.ca petition and send 'em to your MP with a nice letter asking him to present them to parliament. Maybe mention that many of his constituents (read: votes) feel strongly about the issue.
The problem with copyrights is that unlike health care etc, most people just don't care. The content owners are the only people who make a big fuss about it, and so they get their extensions. The few nerds who do care lack the clout to get their viewpoint heard and are just ignored. I find it really frustrating.
In Free Culture, Lessig gives a background on the Statute of Anne, which was the first codification of modern copyright law. What is interesting is that at the time England already had copyright in the common law. The reason they codified it was to specifically add expiration to break the publishing monopolies, and hence encourage both creativity and capitalism. From a historical perspective, the GP is exactly right - the purpose of copyright law is to expire copyrights. Weird, eh?
I took the liberty of noting that TD's mark is for: Mail order catalog services featuring computers and computer related products; and Retail store services featuring computers and computer related products.
Now, to pick a random operating system, the MS Windows trademark is for: G & S: computers and components therefor, computer peripherals, and computer programs in the field of graphical applications, and manuals therefor sold as a unit.
Interesting how they expect the Tiger OS to conflict with the mail-order business.
A KHTML developer could call Apple and ask for the code, but they would tell him to go fly a kite. If Apple sent someone their derivative work (Safari), it wouldn't come with the code either. All the law requires Apple to do is to make their source available to those who have received Safari from Apple.
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
Why is it that people who hate private companies that are successful enough to be the main player in a given industry have absolutely no trouble with the government being the main player in others?
It's all about intent. The goal (and indeed, legal obligation in most cases) of a company is to make as much money as possible. In the case of a company with a monopoly, especially in an industry with a high barrier to entry, it's possible for the company to take advantage of the monopoly and milk the customers.
On the other hand, the point of the government isn't to make as much money as possible. In fact, generally the stakeholders (i.e. citizens) get upset if it seems like the government is trying to make more money. So it seems reasonable that there if is to be a monopoly situation, the people would be better servered by the group not looking to maximize profit.
Oh, readability is definately the way to do things typically. The occasional golf is a fun diversion though. I missed an easy change to shave off another character.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't tie it to revenue, that's too hard to account for. Just use a predefined scale.
$1 for the first year
$10 for the second year
$100 for the third year
$1,000 for the fourth year
$10,000 for the fifth year
$100,000 for the sixth year
$1,000,000 for the seventh, and final year
If the smalltime inventor hasn't sold the patent or started to make money by the fifth year, he is never going to and doesn't deserve to block other people out of the market. Plus, the scaling rate means that only directly profitable patents will be held. The fewer patents, the better.
Really? Name 1 Canadian citizen who has been subject to the treatment you describe (whatever that is). And no, being captured as part of the Taliban in Afganistan doesn't count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
Stop trying to go to TML games and the ticket price goes way down.
Most theatres are still choosing to roll out 2K, as 4K projectors make too many compromises and end up with worse picture quality than the 2Ks.
There is a lightweight native Moz derivative for Windows. It's called K-Meleon.
I assumed that you'd parallelize smaller jobs. For instance, suppose you're decoding mpeg. Mpeg is broken up into macroblocks. You could get a theoretical 8x performance boost by dividing up the work across all the processors. Don't think in terms of big threads, think about little, task specific threads.
Wrong. There was a whole fiasco with the gaim-vv and gaim 2.0 merge. In a nutshell, the guys working on gaim-vv submitted a big patchset, the lead gaim developer got hired by Google, and now, in a weird coincidence, the gaim-vv merge is cancelled to add Google Talk voice support instead.
There was a lot of hype about that project when it got going, but for a while now it's just claimed "we're rolling into gaim mainline" with no indication of progress. Not to mention all the news entries about "MSN not working" and all that.
But we all know that the ladies like guys with big arms, right? Here's the solution to making geeks with giant pythons. Nintendo has started an exercise revolution!
Repectfully disagree. For some people, programming languages are just one small tool of many, rather than being the focus of the job (e.g. scientists).
/some_regex/' have saved me loads of time to do other, more interesting things. Call it a glorified awk or sed, but it's a huge time-saver.
Suppose I have several large datafiles, and I need a subset of the data from all of these in a different format. Perl is the best tool I've found for dealing with that. Variations on perl -ne 'print if
It's in the works for Thunderbird.
Wow, you're right! Quick, call RMS and tell him to cancel the GPL! After all it's just a license and can't give you any bonus rights that copyright doesn't.
Jackassery aside, the CC provides licenses that a creator can easily apply to their work. This provides an easy to understand approach to licensing, both for the "creator" and "users".
The University of Waterloo in Canada generally makes a selling point of the fact that staff, faculty, students, RAs, etc retain ownership of any copyrights or patents that stem from their research.
In addition to writing your MP (which is a good start), you could get some signatures for the d-c.ca petition and send 'em to your MP with a nice letter asking him to present them to parliament. Maybe mention that many of his constituents (read: votes) feel strongly about the issue.
The problem with copyrights is that unlike health care etc, most people just don't care. The content owners are the only people who make a big fuss about it, and so they get their extensions. The few nerds who do care lack the clout to get their viewpoint heard and are just ignored. I find it really frustrating.
In Free Culture, Lessig gives a background on the Statute of Anne, which was the first codification of modern copyright law. What is interesting is that at the time England already had copyright in the common law. The reason they codified it was to specifically add expiration to break the publishing monopolies, and hence encourage both creativity and capitalism. From a historical perspective, the GP is exactly right - the purpose of copyright law is to expire copyrights. Weird, eh?
digital-copyright.ca is a meeting place for people concerned about this. The Petition for User Rights was presented to parliament recently. The mailing list is active, with draft letters, media analysis, etc.
Don't feel bad, it annoyed me too. :D
Point of interest, but Firefox has had Windows builds since the first release, 0.1.
They disappeared from the univeristy plaza at least a year ago.
Thanks for the link.
I took the liberty of noting that TD's mark is for: Mail order catalog services featuring computers and computer related products; and Retail store services featuring computers and computer related products.
Now, to pick a random operating system, the MS Windows trademark is for: G & S: computers and components therefor, computer peripherals, and computer programs in the field of graphical applications, and manuals therefor sold as a unit.
Interesting how they expect the Tiger OS to conflict with the mail-order business.
Oh, I agree with you. The recording industry makes asinine claims, and the levy is a big scam.
But it's not like the gov't is calling everyone a criminal. They're just spreading the cost out, in the exact same way insurance companies do.
It's all about intent. The goal (and indeed, legal obligation in most cases) of a company is to make as much money as possible. In the case of a company with a monopoly, especially in an industry with a high barrier to entry, it's possible for the company to take advantage of the monopoly and milk the customers.
On the other hand, the point of the government isn't to make as much money as possible. In fact, generally the stakeholders (i.e. citizens) get upset if it seems like the government is trying to make more money. So it seems reasonable that there if is to be a monopoly situation, the people would be better servered by the group not looking to maximize profit.
That's my theory, anyway.
I imagine that you'd be importing blank media, and you'd have to pay the levy at customs. Much like taxes that get applied at the border.