If that's truely the case, then you haven't been human for years.
But somehow I doubt it. I suspect you have been working on something.
Or you've been wasting your life... whatever you do that is worthwhile enough to make "wasting your life" and inaccurate characterization, it takes work.
You misunderstand. Whatever form your highest ideal takes it will take *work* to get there... even if its is *work* to make a sculpture, or help cure a disease, or build a bridge somewhere, or remodel your house, or raise your kids.
For me, its the act of creating software for profit.
I was certain she was full of it and I'd hate it and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into reading Atlas Shrugged, but after I did I realized I was wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy them... I find the re-readability to be high as well.
If it was written recently, I haven't read it. I read a bunch of books like that awhile back, but I suspect that was not one of them.
Can you give me a short summation as to what he means by the work ethic?
While this work is what I would choose, other work, say for a non-profit, or purely for the sake of art-- fits my ethic as well. As long as you are striving the be the most excellent person you can be... which is a standard that will naturally will be different for everyone.
Well, as I pointed out, nobody starves in this society. At least nobody with enough sense to go to the local food bank.
This idea that I am responsible for your well being is an absurd one, created by those who want to get rich off of my sense of guilt. IT has nothing to do with helping the poor- I do that, I and I do that of my own free will. IT is completely about forcing me, and others, at gunpoint to help the "poor" baurocrats who take our money.
Charities answer that need you speak of. And charities do not require the violation of human rights that you so easily advocate.
If my sister's farm is failing and I need to help her out, who are you to show up with a gun and take my moeny from me -- money that would go to her, but instead goes to fraud, waste and abuse in the guise of "helping others". Taxes are exactly this kind of robbery.
You say I should not be allowed to help my sister becuase your "cause" is more important.
Many people are already working well over 40-hour weeks, and they still barely make enough to feed their family;
Actually this is a common notion but its false. The reason most people don't have enough money to invest much of it is that they took on way too much debt and rather than pay it off, they continue to live beyond their means. But also, those who choose to have so many children that they can barely support them have also CHOSEN to be in this situation-- they didn't have the job forced on them, they choose to have too many children. Did they think children were cheap?
But excluding those with lots of kids, the average family is short on cash only because they are carrying way too much bad debt, often at %18.
do you expect those people to start a business?
Hell yes. How else are they going to get out of the quagmire. There is no other way. Pay off your debts, cut up your credit cards. Then start putting all that money that was sucked away into the cards into a prudent investment for your future. A side business is an excellent one, or if you like your job and want to keep working there, put it into stocks and other investments. Hell, many people have gotten wealthy by buying real estate for investment-- I'm not talking the peopel you see on Tv, I'm talking my friend the CPA-- the tenants pay the mortgage, and you have to deal with toilets. For me, the toilets aren't worth it, but the leverage you can get with real estate loans is huge and this makes the bar for entry to this kind of business rather low, if you want to do it. And you could do something like that on the weekends. AFter all, if you have a duplex you're renting out they aren't going to have 4 breakdowns a month! So, most of your weekends would be free.
No, though you occasionally hear "success stories" where people are catapulted from poverty to upper-class, most entrepreneurship comes from people who can work on it full-time.
Wrong. This is quite factually wrong. Most entrepreneurship is done part time. Eventually it becomes full time, but for every startup business with venture capital there are 10 or a hundred small side businesses done by housewives in their part time, or people who are moonlighting.
As to people escaping poverty-- I have first hand experience with this. All it takes is working, even at a minimum wage job, and managing your money carefully while getting the job skills to get better jobs. The opportunity is there for anyone who wants to take it. In the US at least, being in poverty is a choice.
Hell, you talked about working over 40 hours a week just to put food on the table-- I know its a common expression, but literally it is wrong. There are many agencies that will provide enough food for free that you never have to buy food to live. In this state someone who gets minimum wage with a full time job has $852 a month after taxes. With free food and a $300 apartment, a $100 bus pass, that leaves $452 a month to put into something useful that improves ones situation. If there are two of your, then your apartment costs are cut in half. If you have 6 children, well you chose to have them... but at least you can feed them for free.
You don't have to work full time to start a side business. Most people who do, do it part time. And the vast majority of people who chose not to are doing so to their own detriment... its not like they are being prevented.
Yeah, I have some web business ideas too. One with a bad business model, one with a good one... but it was inferior to the idea I eventually went with.
You don't have to sell software one at a time. you can sell the application wholesale to a company that then sells it to its customers. Don't forget that.
This type of sales is more like an interview combined wiht a demo than the typical salesman's selling on the road bit (I've actually done that and learned a lot.)
You have a leg up in that you know a lawyer too.
But the other thing I've found is that learning the technology and doign the work in creating this stuff is rewarding, but also gives new ideas for new products, and eventually one of them will be right. I spent about a year working down paths of ideas that ended up being non-workable (Bad business models, for instance) Before I hit something that I think is really workable...
I gave a philosophical response. You wanna call it a political rant, fine.
You miss the point.
People aren't forced into jobs they hate. They settle for jobs they shouldn't settle for.
Wishing it werent' so, doesn't make it so. Maybe you hate your job and want to believe you didn't have a choice. Fine.... but you'd be happier if you went and made the correct choice.
Sheesh. No, I didn't win the lottery. did you even pay attention? The company struggled and was only able to survive as long as it did because its work was protected.
What you want is for microsoft to be able to take your invention and run with it and never pay you a dime, or compensate you in any way.
You want microsoft to steal technology like it does today, but to do so with impunity.
Somehow you think theft is moral and protecting against theft is immoral.
I find it interesting that you bash me for your assumption that I won the lottery, but you tell us nothing about how you lost money to patents....
And you had better go a lot further than bashing me if you want to jsutify taking my rights away-- the code I wrote nad the novel processes I invent belong to me. They are the result of my labor.
To say they belong to everybody-- to the collective-- is to say that I am the slave of the collective and that I don't own my work.
We saw how wonderfully that worked in the past. You cannot have collectivism without brutal repression... because the first person who says "I have a right to be free.. I will go work for myself" will bring the house of cards down if he isn't exterminated.
No, patents have worked quite well for this country-- BY AND LARGE-- for the past hundred or more years. The few exceptions do not make the rule.
Yes, lets talk aobut the real world. I'd like you to join it.
"Patents in the real world only help the big corps"
Bullcaca. I provided an example of a company that could never have survived as long as it did against the big companies without the protection of its patents.
You make this claim, but you are not appealing to logic, facts or reason-- you are appealing to bigotry.
That doesn't cut it as a rational argument in the real world, sorry.
You hate big companies, fine. Stop buying their products. When you do that, then we can talk.
Yes, so lets throw the baby out with the bathwater is what you say.
Making software patents not possible is way over kill to fixing the few patents that are incorrectly issued.
And pretty stupid in light of the fact that htere is a process for contesting poorly made patents... which is well established and pretty easy for anything that is covered by prior art.
But no, just because some stupid patents can be issued you want to take away human rights for everyone? Forget it.
Of course making money is a human right. If it isn't then you support the idea that someone can say "you don't have the right to work for anyone else. you have to work for me for free."
Eg: if selling your labor for money (making money) is not a human right, then you believe everyone is a slave who has to get permission to live.
Who says the person who comes up with the idea 5 years later can't use it? They just have to pay a license fee to the person who patented the process. If the license fee isn't reasonable (market forces will ensure that it is) then he can come up with another way of doing the same thing or use the prior art, well known ways of doing it.
Patents only cover *exceptional* novel processes. This is something many people seem unclear on. Its as if they think someone will patent the if/then structure and then nobody will be able to use it in programming.
IF you live near water, I say, start now. I've gone down this path. This is my retirement dream.
You can get a small old sailboat for $2,000 to learn on and get used to sailing, and then get a bigger better one when you retire.
The years of sailing on the weekends will come in handy when you're island hopping and will make you happier in the interim than you would be otherwise.
Sailing isn't somethign you stop work one day and go do the next... so start early.
There are those who say "if your dream is to sail around the world, just do it. You don't need money, you don't need nothing. I did it, I get by on odd jobs". And they are right. I'm not "just doing it" in part because I want more sailing experience and to get my lovers up to speed so that they can sail well too... but if you want to sail around, mostly hitting third world countries to dock (Say the pacific, the carribian, south america, etc.) you can do it very cheaply.
Say, $5,000 a year. And a little work getting a skill can make it free-- one couple knows how to repair sails and goes to antigua for regatta week-- spends the whole week repairing blown out sails working 24x7 and then has enough money to fund the rest of their year!
Hey- and there's nothing to stop you from working while you take care of the kids.
Become a freelance programmer.
Make a product you like and sell it.
you have the perfect opportunity-- what you save in daycare will more than cover the costs of funding a one man software development house.
And in my experience, when you go this route you find there are others who are doing similar things who can use the business to help you out in areas you're not good at (designing the icons for your application, maybe?)
Taking a couple years and just spending them on the kids-- no problem. But when you start wanting more challenge for yourself-- at least try going into business for yourself.
There's nothing like being a self employed programmer-- my boss works me hard, never forces bad technology decisions on me, does put a lot of pressure on me, but I do get all the financial rewards. ITs a great life.
While my previous company was a wonderful one to work for, a team of engineers is always going to involve compromise. With modern tools, I've found that one person can get an amazing amount of development done and a one-person product done in a couple months that is worth paying for is totally possible.
Nobody is forced into a job, unless you were drafted into an army.
If you compromised your principles and took a job you didn't like then that was your choice-- note, choice, not force.
Yes, its true, far too many people choose jobs that are illsuited for them or for idiotic people and they do so out of FEAR of being without a job.
Which is pointless and silly when there are so many good jobs out there, and in the end you don't even need a job-- freelance work is not impossible and there are few professions where you can't do it.
What's that you say? You're an automotive assembly line person? You can't do that freelance because you don't have a billion dollar factory?
Forget it, I say-- you don't need the factory. Start building kit cars for people. Or do electric conversions for people. There are lots of people who would like to have a kit car or an electric conversion but don't have the time to do it. Start in your spare time, keeping your job and build it up until you have a profitable enterprise and can dump the job you hate. Will it take work? Of course! IS it hard? Of course.
But nobody owes you a "living wage" or happiness.. only you are responsible for it.
Note, I just tried to think of something that required a big factory, and even auto workers could do custom work for people... there are very few jobs you can't do alone, and most of them you could join with your coworkers and do some version on the side and eventually become independent of the company you hate.
Look at it this way-- MOST of the reason companies suck is because people don't leave when they are treated poorly. IF people left when mistreated, no company would be poorly managed-- every company is needs employees to function. But so many people sell their souls by staying in these poor jobs because they don't have the backbone to stand up for themselves and they only make it worse on others by saying "Yes, I'll take this treatement, slap me around some more" until virtual slapping is just part of the corporate cutlure.
Hate your job? Get another one. Bad economy? Pfooi. There is opportunity everywhere, you just have to look for it.
Somehow people got this idea that working was dirty and only necessary for money. But if I had a million bucks (About twice the amount necessary to retire and never work again) I'd start a business.
Sure, I'd spend a couple years travelling the world, but that would be the early, formative years where I was working out the idea, methods and execution of the business plan. There's nothing, for getting creative juices flowing that I've found better than being in an extremely remote place, chile, north of the arctic circle in alaska,... yeah, travel. But I'd be working on a business.
Working isn't what we have to do rather than what we really want to do-- that's the recipe for an unhappy life and its no suprise so many are unhappy. Working is the expression of our highest human self. The most noble and heroic thing any person can do is start a business. Not only is it the most fun, but it brings to your core the challenges, self realization and self understanding necessary.
I know there are lots of people who will say self indulgent things like "I'd go feed poor people" or "two chicks at once" --- hey if that's all your life is worth, fine. (BTW, two chicks at once is a lot of fun, I do recommend it.) But these things will only entertain you for awhile.
Eventually, you'll be at a crossroads and you'll have to choose between two courses- on one hand you can be a lazy person just doing nothing but spending money (this goes for both the "feed the poor" and the "party every night" types) and on the other hand you can pursue a challenge that brings out the best in you.
Challenge isn't hardship-- its opportunity to excel. Butsiness isn't about money, its about personal expression. Sure, money is involved.. but if you're only interested in money you won't get much of it and you won't be happy. If, instead, you're pursuing your personal best, both money and happiness are easy to come by.
Its unfortunate, though, that there are so many who tell you that you don't have a right to be happy, and they give you the recipe for unhappiness to insure it. Don't fall for it.
Since many people will probably post in response to this that they'll do something that involves sacrificing their lives so that others can be better, I've got a little quote for you. I'll leave out for now the proof that this activity actually damages the people you try to help, more often than not... but I provide rebuttal for the many voices insisting that EVERYONE should be sacrificing themselves:
"...just listen to anyprophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice-- run. Run faster than from the plague. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where' there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that its your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself-- that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries."
I know some people who are amazon wealthy, and do a person they are not out challenging themselves. They are being lazy, pointless people. And they are not happy.
If you find yourself in this position-- rise to your highest, most noble calling. Start a company, or pursue an invention. Create.
Oh come on. Why do even Mac fans slander apple by saying 10 wasn't ready for prime time?
I ran the point zero release right out of the box and it worked great. I had:
Zero crashes. Zero bugs that I noticed. Zero issues that impacted productivity. Zero problems running my old apps under classic.
Sure, I'm a developer, don't like the bleeding edge and never installed any of the betas. As a guy I work with said, pre-release of 10.0 when we were discussing whether to upgrade "I trust the engineers"... and we do, and did and had no problems with it.
Anti-Apple bigotry is at such a high level that even those who support Apple feel compelled to bash it in some small way, lest they seem biased.
But nobody calls the obvious bias of explicitly anti-apple organizations, such as ars technica. Why is that? (Yes, I know I'm going to get flamed/modded down for pointing out ars bias.)
Why would we care what a PC-fanboy, mac hating, non-technical website would have to say about an Apple OS?
That they criticize weird things (like the placement of finder windows-- something I've never seen, they've been correctly placed for me.) or complain that its not windows does not surprise me.
This is like telling the world about a KKK review of a michael jackson album. Or letting us know that Microsoft doesn't yet recommend that we switch from windows to OS X.
I'm serious. IF there is a bastion of non-technical technical "opinion" ars technica is it. The only people who think they are an authority are non-technical people who don't know better.
Of course, I'm going to get modded down for "flamebait" by those mac haters who want to see mac bashing go unchecked. But its not flamebait or trolling when its true.
Like the guy wondering why Apple hasn't fixed the problem running 1400x12000 resolution on a 19 inch display-- its not a PROBLEM for Apple to Fix. Its the *correct* way things should work. Ars Technica is a collection of self-styled authorities who lack a basic understanding of computer technology.
Don't put them forth as an "unbiased" authority-- they are neither.
And that is what software patents try to do, restrict the very language use and tools we use to contruct our bodies of work.
This is precisely incorrect. Correclty issued patents do nothing of the kind.
It is this kind of misinformation and make-believe that leads so many supposedly otherwise rational people to believe in the elimination of their paycheck under the guise of being less oppressed.
Anything that fits the definition you just gave would NOT be novel and would have significant prior art and therefore would not fit the DEFINITION of a patent.
You don't get to redefine what a patent is to fit your political agenda. ITs unfortunate that so many people believe this hogwash.
At the risk of getting modded -1 flame for taking a politically incorrect position in a slashdot post, I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing wrong with software patents.
There *may* be something wrong with some of the patents that have been issued. And that goes for all kinds of patents, software or non-software. But I'm not even sure about that.
There's certainly nothing wrong with the length of the patent. 20 years sounds really long in computer time but it isn't really-- the fact that computers move so fast means that the patent is more likely to be worthless before it expires... meaning if you want to exploit your patent you have to strike while the irons hot. There is no potential of monopolizing a segment of the industry for 20 years here like there was when the cotton gin was patented.
As party to a couple patents, one of which was claimed by posters on Slashdot to have "ethernet networks" as prior art-- I think a lot of the hullabaloo is from people who don't bother to read the patent, see what really IS being patented, and then just claim that anything that does networking is not-patentable because ethernet's been around. Never mind that it is a novel and original process (which to this day has not been beaten by others.) Now, the market being what it was we were unable to successfully exploit that novel process. But if we had, the 5 years since the patent was issued would have given us time to get some business going. As the SMALL GUY, the patent was critical to protecting the company's interests--- otherwise a large company would have just taken our idea and run with it and we could have done nothing. Eventually one of the large guys bought the company, something that also never would have happened if we hadn't been able to patent the product.
So, basically, all the people saying "software patents are wrong" are saying that the dozen of us who labored for 4 years coming up with this novel process should have enjoyed no protection from others copying it and profiting from our work, and deserved, essentially, no compensation for our work at all. You literally want to take food off of our table. You want us to be poor and possibly unable to feed our families. You are arguing for the oppression of the small guy (as usual) under the guise of protecting the small guy.
Anyone with a two bit lawyer can get themselves a patent. Only multibillion dollar corporations have multibillion-dollar market presences to leverage in the competitive landscape. The patent is an EQUALIZER, not an OPPRESSOR. If the corporation came up with the novel idea first, then they earned it and deserve the patent... but fortunately something about large organizations makes them less competitive. They are less likely to come up with the killer innovation-- hell its even become a trend with companies acquiring innovation by buying small companies rather than developing it in house.
Without intellectual property protection, how is the small guy to protect himself from the bigger companies with better market presence who can just copy the product wholesale, put their name on it, and sell it? WE were dealing with the constant announcements by Microsoft that they had already exceeded our capabilities (A flat out lie, but one that the potential customers had to take seriously.)
Yes, there may be poor software patents. But I don't think Amazon's "one click" covers just clicking a button, the prior art of the Macintosh in 1984 does not obliviate that patent-- there's got to be more too it.
If your country wants to be a good country for IT, to compete against the US. Go to your political friend and make the case FOR software patents. Caution him that the patents have to be decent, and that they need engineers who can understand them to evaluate them. But if you want to have a job a decade or so from now, the best thing your country can do is protect intellectual property.
After all, as IT people we don't make widgets, we move bits. Either the configuration of bits has value or it doesn't. Any configuration of bits is only intellectual property, its not real property, its not a physical product. Since it has value to those who need it, those who made it deserve compensation, and protection from those who would steal it.
Support software patents. They are not only necessary to protect the small guy, they are a form of HUMAN RIGHTS.
It not coincidental that those who lead the opposition of software patents, in the guise of stallman, et. al, also opposed human rights. If they had their way, nobody would be allowed to charge for their labor, no programmer would be allowed to get paid. Oh, they won't admit to it, but what else will it be when it is illegal to ship software without the source code?
The software economy is driven by innovation, and getting paid for that innovation. Once its no longer innovative, its in everyone's best interests to open source it. Market forces will insure a continuing supply of new open source software.
But if you take it too far and make selling your innovation illegal -- by removing the protections of patent and copyright and implementing the Stallman Politburo-- you will kill the software industry.
Protect software patents. You have a right to your body-- you own it, it is property. The work you do with it you own as well, as property. You have a right to trade that work for money, and to REFUSE to make the trade with people who won't pay.
Taking away software patents is essentially saying that anyone who is a programmer doesn't have the right to refuse to work for someone who won't pay.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's truely the case, then you haven't been human for years.
But somehow I doubt it. I suspect you have been working on something.
Or you've been wasting your life... whatever you do that is worthwhile enough to make "wasting your life" and inaccurate characterization, it takes work.
You misunderstand. Whatever form your highest ideal takes it will take *work* to get there... even if its is *work* to make a sculpture, or help cure a disease, or build a bridge somewhere, or remodel your house, or raise your kids.
For me, its the act of creating software for profit.
I was certain she was full of it and I'd hate it and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into reading Atlas Shrugged, but after I did I realized I was wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy them... I find the re-readability to be high as well.
If it was written recently, I haven't read it. I read a bunch of books like that awhile back, but I suspect that was not one of them.
Can you give me a short summation as to what he means by the work ethic?
While this work is what I would choose, other work, say for a non-profit, or purely for the sake of art-- fits my ethic as well. As long as you are striving the be the most excellent person you can be... which is a standard that will naturally will be different for everyone.
Well, as I pointed out, nobody starves in this society. At least nobody with enough sense to go to the local food bank.
This idea that I am responsible for your well being is an absurd one, created by those who want to get rich off of my sense of guilt. IT has nothing to do with helping the poor- I do that, I and I do that of my own free will. IT is completely about forcing me, and others, at gunpoint to help the "poor" baurocrats who take our money.
Charities answer that need you speak of. And charities do not require the violation of human rights that you so easily advocate.
If my sister's farm is failing and I need to help her out, who are you to show up with a gun and take my moeny from me -- money that would go to her, but instead goes to fraud, waste and abuse in the guise of "helping others". Taxes are exactly this kind of robbery.
You say I should not be allowed to help my sister becuase your "cause" is more important.
I say, "begone thief!"
Many people are already working well over 40-hour weeks, and they still barely make enough to feed their family;
Actually this is a common notion but its false. The reason most people don't have enough money to invest much of it is that they took on way too much debt and rather than pay it off, they continue to live beyond their means. But also, those who choose to have so many children that they can barely support them have also CHOSEN to be in this situation-- they didn't have the job forced on them, they choose to have too many children. Did they think children were cheap?
But excluding those with lots of kids, the average family is short on cash only because they are carrying way too much bad debt, often at %18.
do you expect those people to start a business?
Hell yes. How else are they going to get out of the quagmire. There is no other way. Pay off your debts, cut up your credit cards. Then start putting all that money that was sucked away into the cards into a prudent investment for your future. A side business is an excellent one, or if you like your job and want to keep working there, put it into stocks and other investments. Hell, many people have gotten wealthy by buying real estate for investment-- I'm not talking the peopel you see on Tv, I'm talking my friend the CPA-- the tenants pay the mortgage, and you have to deal with toilets. For me, the toilets aren't worth it, but the leverage you can get with real estate loans is huge and this makes the bar for entry to this kind of business rather low, if you want to do it. And you could do something like that on the weekends. AFter all, if you have a duplex you're renting out they aren't going to have 4 breakdowns a month! So, most of your weekends would be free.
No, though you occasionally hear "success stories" where people are catapulted from poverty to upper-class, most entrepreneurship comes from people who can work on it full-time.
Wrong. This is quite factually wrong. Most entrepreneurship is done part time. Eventually it becomes full time, but for every startup business with venture capital there are 10 or a hundred small side businesses done by housewives in their part time, or people who are moonlighting.
As to people escaping poverty-- I have first hand experience with this. All it takes is working, even at a minimum wage job, and managing your money carefully while getting the job skills to get better jobs. The opportunity is there for anyone who wants to take it. In the US at least, being in poverty is a choice.
Hell, you talked about working over 40 hours a week just to put food on the table-- I know its a common expression, but literally it is wrong. There are many agencies that will provide enough food for free that you never have to buy food to live. In this state someone who gets minimum wage with a full time job has $852 a month after taxes. With free food and a $300 apartment, a $100 bus pass, that leaves $452 a month to put into something useful that improves ones situation. If there are two of your, then your apartment costs are cut in half. If you have 6 children, well you chose to have them... but at least you can feed them for free.
You don't have to work full time to start a side business. Most people who do, do it part time. And the vast majority of people who chose not to are doing so to their own detriment... its not like they are being prevented.
There is plenty of opportunity.
Yeah, I have some web business ideas too. One with a bad business model, one with a good one... but it was inferior to the idea I eventually went with.
You don't have to sell software one at a time. you can sell the application wholesale to a company that then sells it to its customers. Don't forget that.
This type of sales is more like an interview combined wiht a demo than the typical salesman's selling on the road bit (I've actually done that and learned a lot.)
You have a leg up in that you know a lawyer too.
But the other thing I've found is that learning the technology and doign the work in creating this stuff is rewarding, but also gives new ideas for new products, and eventually one of them will be right. I spent about a year working down paths of ideas that ended up being non-workable (Bad business models, for instance) Before I hit something that I think is really workable...
Good luck...
I gave a philosophical response. You wanna call it a political rant, fine.
You miss the point.
People aren't forced into jobs they hate. They settle for jobs they shouldn't settle for.
Wishing it werent' so, doesn't make it so. Maybe you hate your job and want to believe you didn't have a choice. Fine.... but you'd be happier if you went and made the correct choice.
I don't think you even understand the definition of the word fraud.
Its theft. but it is not protected as theft without patents.
Withtout patents such theft would be perfectly legal.
This is why we need patents to protect one person from stealing intellectual property from another.
Copyright does not cover re-creation of the process, and patents cover process.
Software is not mathematics. Patents are not copyright. Patents are on PROCESSES.
Sheesh. Get a basic understanding of the situation before you tell others they are wrong.
Sheesh. No, I didn't win the lottery. did you even pay attention? The company struggled and was only able to survive as long as it did because its work was protected.
What you want is for microsoft to be able to take your invention and run with it and never pay you a dime, or compensate you in any way.
You want microsoft to steal technology like it does today, but to do so with impunity.
Somehow you think theft is moral and protecting against theft is immoral.
I find it interesting that you bash me for your assumption that I won the lottery, but you tell us nothing about how you lost money to patents....
And you had better go a lot further than bashing me if you want to jsutify taking my rights away-- the code I wrote nad the novel processes I invent belong to me. They are the result of my labor.
To say they belong to everybody-- to the collective-- is to say that I am the slave of the collective and that I don't own my work.
We saw how wonderfully that worked in the past. You cannot have collectivism without brutal repression... because the first person who says "I have a right to be free.. I will go work for myself" will bring the house of cards down if he isn't exterminated.
No, patents have worked quite well for this country-- BY AND LARGE-- for the past hundred or more years. The few exceptions do not make the rule.
Wow. Now I feel a bit less like the only sheep in the wilderness, surrounded by wolves who want to take my rights away.
Thanks.
Yes, lets talk aobut the real world. I'd like you to join it.
"Patents in the real world only help the big corps"
Bullcaca. I provided an example of a company that could never have survived as long as it did against the big companies without the protection of its patents.
You make this claim, but you are not appealing to logic, facts or reason-- you are appealing to bigotry.
That doesn't cut it as a rational argument in the real world, sorry.
You hate big companies, fine. Stop buying their products. When you do that, then we can talk.
Yes, so lets throw the baby out with the bathwater is what you say.
Making software patents not possible is way over kill to fixing the few patents that are incorrectly issued.
And pretty stupid in light of the fact that htere is a process for contesting poorly made patents... which is well established and pretty easy for anything that is covered by prior art.
But no, just because some stupid patents can be issued you want to take away human rights for everyone? Forget it.
Of course making money is a human right. If it isn't then you support the idea that someone can say "you don't have the right to work for anyone else. you have to work for me for free."
Eg: if selling your labor for money (making money) is not a human right, then you believe everyone is a slave who has to get permission to live.
Who says the person who comes up with the idea 5 years later can't use it? They just have to pay a license fee to the person who patented the process. If the license fee isn't reasonable (market forces will ensure that it is) then he can come up with another way of doing the same thing or use the prior art, well known ways of doing it.
Patents only cover *exceptional* novel processes. This is something many people seem unclear on. Its as if they think someone will patent the if/then structure and then nobody will be able to use it in programming.
Now that's an excellent example of turning the dream into a business.
If you built your track in a wise location, you could end up making more from it than you did working.
Of course its a basic characteristic of humanity. Its not a cultural product.
The idea that work is bad-- that's a cultural idea. It goes with the idea that people are bad, money is bad, and all that other puritan thinking.
IF you're not creating, you're doing nothing worthwhile.
Aquire a Sail boat
:-)
IF you live near water, I say, start now. I've gone down this path. This is my retirement dream.
You can get a small old sailboat for $2,000 to learn on and get used to sailing, and then get a bigger better one when you retire.
The years of sailing on the weekends will come in handy when you're island hopping and will make you happier in the interim than you would be otherwise.
Sailing isn't somethign you stop work one day and go do the next... so start early.
There are those who say "if your dream is to sail around the world, just do it. You don't need money, you don't need nothing. I did it, I get by on odd jobs". And they are right. I'm not "just doing it" in part because I want more sailing experience and to get my lovers up to speed so that they can sail well too... but if you want to sail around, mostly hitting third world countries to dock (Say the pacific, the carribian, south america, etc.) you can do it very cheaply.
Say, $5,000 a year. And a little work getting a skill can make it free-- one couple knows how to repair sails and goes to antigua for regatta week-- spends the whole week repairing blown out sails working 24x7 and then has enough money to fund the rest of their year!
Don't dream it, be it.
Hey- and there's nothing to stop you from working while you take care of the kids.
Become a freelance programmer.
Make a product you like and sell it.
you have the perfect opportunity-- what you save in daycare will more than cover the costs of funding a one man software development house.
And in my experience, when you go this route you find there are others who are doing similar things who can use the business to help you out in areas you're not good at (designing the icons for your application, maybe?)
Taking a couple years and just spending them on the kids-- no problem. But when you start wanting more challenge for yourself-- at least try going into business for yourself.
There's nothing like being a self employed programmer-- my boss works me hard, never forces bad technology decisions on me, does put a lot of pressure on me, but I do get all the financial rewards. ITs a great life.
While my previous company was a wonderful one to work for, a team of engineers is always going to involve compromise. With modern tools, I've found that one person can get an amazing amount of development done and a one-person product done in a couple months that is worth paying for is totally possible.
Nobody is forced into a job, unless you were drafted into an army.
If you compromised your principles and took a job you didn't like then that was your choice-- note, choice, not force.
Yes, its true, far too many people choose jobs that are illsuited for them or for idiotic people and they do so out of FEAR of being without a job.
Which is pointless and silly when there are so many good jobs out there, and in the end you don't even need a job-- freelance work is not impossible and there are few professions where you can't do it.
What's that you say? You're an automotive assembly line person? You can't do that freelance because you don't have a billion dollar factory?
Forget it, I say-- you don't need the factory. Start building kit cars for people. Or do electric conversions for people. There are lots of people who would like to have a kit car or an electric conversion but don't have the time to do it. Start in your spare time, keeping your job and build it up until you have a profitable enterprise and can dump the job you hate. Will it take work? Of course! IS it hard? Of course.
But nobody owes you a "living wage" or happiness.. only you are responsible for it.
Note, I just tried to think of something that required a big factory, and even auto workers could do custom work for people... there are very few jobs you can't do alone, and most of them you could join with your coworkers and do some version on the side and eventually become independent of the company you hate.
Look at it this way-- MOST of the reason companies suck is because people don't leave when they are treated poorly. IF people left when mistreated, no company would be poorly managed-- every company is needs employees to function. But so many people sell their souls by staying in these poor jobs because they don't have the backbone to stand up for themselves and they only make it worse on others by saying "Yes, I'll take this treatement, slap me around some more" until virtual slapping is just part of the corporate cutlure.
Hate your job? Get another one. Bad economy? Pfooi. There is opportunity everywhere, you just have to look for it.
I'd start another business.
Somehow people got this idea that working was dirty and only necessary for money. But if I had a million bucks (About twice the amount necessary to retire and never work again) I'd start a business.
Sure, I'd spend a couple years travelling the world, but that would be the early, formative years where I was working out the idea, methods and execution of the business plan. There's nothing, for getting creative juices flowing that I've found better than being in an extremely remote place, chile, north of the arctic circle in alaska,
Working isn't what we have to do rather than what we really want to do-- that's the recipe for an unhappy life and its no suprise so many are unhappy. Working is the expression of our highest human self. The most noble and heroic thing any person can do is start a business. Not only is it the most fun, but it brings to your core the challenges, self realization and self understanding necessary.
I know there are lots of people who will say self indulgent things like "I'd go feed poor people" or "two chicks at once" --- hey if that's all your life is worth, fine. (BTW, two chicks at once is a lot of fun, I do recommend it.) But these things will only entertain you for awhile.
Eventually, you'll be at a crossroads and you'll have to choose between two courses- on one hand you can be a lazy person just doing nothing but spending money (this goes for both the "feed the poor" and the "party every night" types) and on the other hand you can pursue a challenge that brings out the best in you.
Challenge isn't hardship-- its opportunity to excel. Butsiness isn't about money, its about personal expression. Sure, money is involved.. but if you're only interested in money you won't get much of it and you won't be happy. If, instead, you're pursuing your personal best, both money and happiness are easy to come by.
Its unfortunate, though, that there are so many who tell you that you don't have a right to be happy, and they give you the recipe for unhappiness to insure it. Don't fall for it.
Since many people will probably post in response to this that they'll do something that involves sacrificing their lives so that others can be better, I've got a little quote for you. I'll leave out for now the proof that this activity actually damages the people you try to help, more often than not... but I provide rebuttal for the many voices insisting that EVERYONE should be sacrificing themselves:
"...just listen to anyprophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice-- run. Run faster than from the plague. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where' there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that its your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself-- that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries."
I know some people who are amazon wealthy, and do a person they are not out challenging themselves. They are being lazy, pointless people. And they are not happy.
If you find yourself in this position-- rise to your highest, most noble calling. Start a company, or pursue an invention. Create.
10.0.x were for the true bleeding edge.
Oh come on. Why do even Mac fans slander apple by saying 10 wasn't ready for prime time?
I ran the point zero release right out of the box and it worked great. I had:
Zero crashes.
Zero bugs that I noticed.
Zero issues that impacted productivity.
Zero problems running my old apps under classic.
Sure, I'm a developer, don't like the bleeding edge and never installed any of the betas. As a guy I work with said, pre-release of 10.0 when we were discussing whether to upgrade "I trust the engineers"... and we do, and did and had no problems with it.
Anti-Apple bigotry is at such a high level that even those who support Apple feel compelled to bash it in some small way, lest they seem biased.
But nobody calls the obvious bias of explicitly anti-apple organizations, such as ars technica. Why is that? (Yes, I know I'm going to get flamed/modded down for pointing out ars bias.)
Why would we care what a PC-fanboy, mac hating, non-technical website would have to say about an Apple OS?
That they criticize weird things (like the placement of finder windows-- something I've never seen, they've been correctly placed for me.) or complain that its not windows does not surprise me.
This is like telling the world about a KKK review of a michael jackson album. Or letting us know that Microsoft doesn't yet recommend that we switch from windows to OS X.
I'm serious. IF there is a bastion of non-technical technical "opinion" ars technica is it. The only people who think they are an authority are non-technical people who don't know better.
Of course, I'm going to get modded down for "flamebait" by those mac haters who want to see mac bashing go unchecked. But its not flamebait or trolling when its true.
Like the guy wondering why Apple hasn't fixed the problem running 1400x12000 resolution on a 19 inch display-- its not a PROBLEM for Apple to Fix. Its the *correct* way things should work. Ars Technica is a collection of self-styled authorities who lack a basic understanding of computer technology.
Don't put them forth as an "unbiased" authority-- they are neither.
Which is, of course, irrelevant. Patents propmote progress by protecting proprietary inventions and their profits.
Patenting software processes promotes progress and protects proprietary profits. Not to mention human rights.
Now say that 500 times fast, until you can say it without laughing and understand what it means rather than just trying to get to the end
And that is what software patents try to do, restrict the very language use and tools we use to contruct our bodies of work.
This is precisely incorrect. Correclty issued patents do nothing of the kind.
It is this kind of misinformation and make-believe that leads so many supposedly otherwise rational people to believe in the elimination of their paycheck under the guise of being less oppressed.
Anything that fits the definition you just gave would NOT be novel and would have significant prior art and therefore would not fit the DEFINITION of a patent.
You don't get to redefine what a patent is to fit your political agenda. ITs unfortunate that so many people believe this hogwash.
At the risk of getting modded -1 flame for taking a politically incorrect position in a slashdot post, I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing wrong with software patents.
There *may* be something wrong with some of the patents that have been issued. And that goes for all kinds of patents, software or non-software. But I'm not even sure about that.
There's certainly nothing wrong with the length of the patent. 20 years sounds really long in computer time but it isn't really-- the fact that computers move so fast means that the patent is more likely to be worthless before it expires... meaning if you want to exploit your patent you have to strike while the irons hot. There is no potential of monopolizing a segment of the industry for 20 years here like there was when the cotton gin was patented.
As party to a couple patents, one of which was claimed by posters on Slashdot to have "ethernet networks" as prior art-- I think a lot of the hullabaloo is from people who don't bother to read the patent, see what really IS being patented, and then just claim that anything that does networking is not-patentable because ethernet's been around. Never mind that it is a novel and original process (which to this day has not been beaten by others.)
Now, the market being what it was we were unable to successfully exploit that novel process. But if we had, the 5 years since the patent was issued would have given us time to get some business going. As the SMALL GUY, the patent was critical to protecting the company's interests--- otherwise a large company would have just taken our idea and run with it and we could have done nothing. Eventually one of the large guys bought the company, something that also never would have happened if we hadn't been able to patent the product.
So, basically, all the people saying "software patents are wrong" are saying that the dozen of us who labored for 4 years coming up with this novel process should have enjoyed no protection from others copying it and profiting from our work, and deserved, essentially, no compensation for our work at all. You literally want to take food off of our table. You want us to be poor and possibly unable to feed our families. You are arguing for the oppression of the small guy (as usual) under the guise of protecting the small guy.
Anyone with a two bit lawyer can get themselves a patent. Only multibillion dollar corporations have multibillion-dollar market presences to leverage in the competitive landscape. The patent is an EQUALIZER, not an OPPRESSOR. If the corporation came up with the novel idea first, then they earned it and deserve the patent... but fortunately something about large organizations makes them less competitive. They are less likely to come up with the killer innovation-- hell its even become a trend with companies acquiring innovation by buying small companies rather than developing it in house.
Without intellectual property protection, how is the small guy to protect himself from the bigger companies with better market presence who can just copy the product wholesale, put their name on it, and sell it? WE were dealing with the constant announcements by Microsoft that they had already exceeded our capabilities (A flat out lie, but one that the potential customers had to take seriously.)
Yes, there may be poor software patents. But I don't think Amazon's "one click" covers just clicking a button, the prior art of the Macintosh in 1984 does not obliviate that patent-- there's got to be more too it.
If your country wants to be a good country for IT, to compete against the US. Go to your political friend and make the case FOR software patents. Caution him that the patents have to be decent, and that they need engineers who can understand them to evaluate them. But if you want to have a job a decade or so from now, the best thing your country can do is protect intellectual property.
After all, as IT people we don't make widgets, we move bits. Either the configuration of bits has value or it doesn't. Any configuration of bits is only intellectual property, its not real property, its not a physical product. Since it has value to those who need it, those who made it deserve compensation, and protection from those who would steal it.
Support software patents. They are not only necessary to protect the small guy, they are a form of HUMAN RIGHTS.
It not coincidental that those who lead the opposition of software patents, in the guise of stallman, et. al, also opposed human rights. If they had their way, nobody would be allowed to charge for their labor, no programmer would be allowed to get paid. Oh, they won't admit to it, but what else will it be when it is illegal to ship software without the source code?
The software economy is driven by innovation, and getting paid for that innovation. Once its no longer innovative, its in everyone's best interests to open source it. Market forces will insure a continuing supply of new open source software.
But if you take it too far and make selling your innovation illegal -- by removing the protections of patent and copyright and implementing the Stallman Politburo-- you will kill the software industry.
Protect software patents. You have a right to your body-- you own it, it is property. The work you do with it you own as well, as property. You have a right to trade that work for money, and to REFUSE to make the trade with people who won't pay.
Taking away software patents is essentially saying that anyone who is a programmer doesn't have the right to refuse to work for someone who won't pay.