But what happens if his/her funding fell through? With no money to market and sell the idea, all of his/her hard work and dedication would be for nothing!
This would be covered by the responsibility guidelines in a couple of ways: As I mentioned, patents would be issues in different "classes"--inventions that are more complex would be allowed more implementation time than simple ones (yes, even today there could be simple but non-obvious invention). A relatively simple patented process could potentially be implemented within a year. More complex ideas would be classified differently.
Finding investors is not marketing--it is part of the process to bring an invention to market. Furthermore, getting an extension would not be simply as easy as saying "I'm still looking for investors". There would have to be documented proof of that and it would be a bit of an involved process. In any case, if an inventor cannot get investment within the generous time frame alloted by the patent office then it seems apparent to me the invention lacks merit (too impractical or not useful enough) and it is basically a form of "natural selection" (there are a lot of zany patents cluttering the USPTO after all). If an invention has merit then there will always be someone there to help out because of the incentives granted by the patent--for example, a small inventor can entice a large manufacturer to produce and distribute his invention on a large scale by providing exclusive license to the invention, and that would satisfy the patent holder's obligations to keep the patent for the full term.
RIM was pretty much unheard of until they really were big, and so it's part of plausible deniability
I said "reasonable" I didn't say "total and full" enforcement. I wouldn't have expected the patent troll in this example to have given RIM the smackdown when RIM was just a couple of University of Waterloo engineering students obviously. But to say that RIM was unheard of until they were really big is ludicrous! RIM was BEYOND really big by the time this lawsuit came up--they were so big that national governments were concerned that an injunction would cause chaos in their day-to-day operations! RIM was easily noticeable at the time of their IPO or on the launch of their first blackberry product with reasonable amount of research/enforcement by the patent holders. Sorry, "plausible deniability" doesn't cut it--RIM was very well known by the general public--much less an inventor or enthusiast of wireless communication technology for years before the lawsuit. It was very reasonable to expect the patent holders to know about them and enforce their patents much sooner.
Overall I think these ideas are on the right track, but it will be very, very hard to stop people from abusing any patent system, regardless of what that system entails.
And that is why many more resources must be dedicated to patent offices than is done today. I suspect you would rather see no patent protection at all. However it is important to keep in mind that intellectual property law IS a double-edged sword (whether we are talking patents or copyright). Although IP law is starting to be used to try and shut down Free/open software (and hardware) it is also what allows us to PROTECT Free technology as well. If there was no copyright the GPL would have no teeth and GPLed code could be lifted, altered and used for profit by competitors without any obligation to contribute back. Patent law can be used to the same effect--insulin was patented and then immediately licensed to the University of Toronto for $1 to ensure that it could be made available at an affordable price to those who needed it. Without patent law a large pharmaceutical company could've taken the technology and quickly establish itself as a monopoly supplier and set the price as high as the market would bear. So although IP law in general is very abused it IS important--we've just lost sight of their true intentions and it is now so twisted it is used to stop innovation and creativity rather tham encourage it.
I'm reminded of the 1975 Saturday Night Live parody commercial about a three-bladed razor
Tech advances always give marketing a chance to get into these sort of competitions. The fact that at least three razor manufacturers not market triple blade razors for real makes it even funnier to watch this parody today.
Interestingly enough a four blade and then a FIVE blade razor came out in 2005, so SNL decided to pay homage to the old parody 30 years later with a commercial about an EIGHT blade razor...it would "strip you to the bone in one pass"!
Given that there has been talk and research about multi-layer optical media for many years now, and regular consumers have only ever been able to get no more than dual-layer, it makes me wonder if this hype is more marketing-driven penis-envy than actual reality. By the time the technology to add more layers is reliable for mass production it seems that technology to make each layer more dense beats it to market (we were supposed to have many more layers on DVD but then HD-DVD and blu-ray came out). Besides this multi-layer tech there is also ongoing parallel development of holographic optical storage media with far greater densities. By the time triple or quad layer HD-DVD or Blu-Ray media is out and players are out there to support it we could see compact-flash-sized holographic cards with 50 GB capacity, or even DVD sized discs with half-a-terabyte. Furthermore, the transfer rate potential of the card format would be faster and the readers and writers simpler to manufacture because they have less mechanical parts.
One other thing to make not of: I think optical media (any physical media actually) as a distribution method for movies, music, etc. is on the wane and that HD-DVD and BD may be the last common physical media formats we will see for this use. The industry seems bent on its own destruction actually--everything from this stupid format war to DRM/"content protection"/bending-over-for-Hollywood is turning off consumers and slowing the uptake of these new formats, and at the same time online distribution (legitimate and otherwise) is reaching that "elbow" in the exponential growth curve. Because of this, I think that new physical storage technology will shift from being driven by entertainment distribution to general digital storage (backup/archival purposes and other computer uses). Therefore I think that a) the market will be smaller and b) that the first new format standards that reliably allow WRITE capability will be the most successful.
I don't think it should be TOO easy to revoke patents, however as it stands it is much too difficult to do so. More importantly, I think that the patent systems in pretty much all juristictions are missing an important thing: RESPONSIBILITIES.
Patents essentially grant monopoly rights to inventors for their creations for an extended time (say 20 years). This is to encourage innovation by giving the inventor time to fully develop and market inventions before competitors can rip them off. This is all based on the assertion that there is always a bigger, richer, "more evil" entity out there who could develop and market an inventor's creation more quickly than a resource-strapped inventor could. Without the originally intended patent protection many inventions would've been commandeered by big, established corporations and the end result would be that innovation would die away and the only entities capable of innovation would be those with vast resources (very large corporations and governments)--and such entities by nature are anti-innovation.
The problem is that patent enforcement is only one-way--it grants protection TO the inventor but asks little to nothing FROM the inventor in terms of responsibility. I think patent reform should include a set of RESPONSIBILITIES as well as rights, and if the patent holder does not live up to those responsibilities the patent should be automatically revoked. The responsibilities I see would be something like the following:
* The inventor must plan to develop and market this invention (make it available to the public in some way) within 'x' years or the patent will expire. The 'x' year period would be much shorter than the 20 year lifespan of a typical patent, and would depend on the "class" of a patent--complex physical devices would be granted several years where simple physical objects and non-physical inventions (technical processes, etc) would be allowed only one year from the granting of a patent. The inventor may develop and market the invention himself or license it to another entity, but the patent-holder CANNOT sit on a patent without actively trying to make the invention happen. If the patent expires after this time frame it becomes public domain.
* The inventor must consistently enforce the patent--if someone willfully violates the patent and it is evident that the patent holder knows of this violation they must pursue royalties or other legal action against the violator within a reasonable time frame. There should be protection from "submarine patents" wielded by patent trolls, such as those used against RIM for example. If RIM made improper use of patented technology there was AMPLE time for the patent holder to take issue with it. It seems that the patent holders in this case deliberately waited until RIM had sufficiently deep and full pockets before reaching into those pockets for a settlement. The patent holder should have a cooperative relationship with developers and manufacturers, not a parasitic one. In such a situation the accused patent violator should have the means to have a patent revoked if it is wilfully abused this way.
* If an invention DOES get developed and is marketed publicly, within the specified time frame and is properly enforced by patent holders, then the patent can be held for the full time frame. However, it must be CONTINUOUSLY marketed/licensed during that time. If the patented item ceases to be publicly marketed/used, and/or there are no current licensees to the technology, then the patent should expire early. Although the intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation, they have become a means of SLOWING innovation because so many good ideas sit in patent files gathering dust on shelves. It is perverse that corporations out there apply for patents (or purchase the patent rights) so they can DELIBERATELY shelve them, and sue out of existence any competition that tries to use the ideas covered in them.
Patent law is just another case of what happens when rights are not balanced with responsibilities.
everyone will drop all their "bad" patents at the same time.
If everyone did that, the incredible mass of patent paperwork impacting the earth's surface simultaneously would produce a force so great as to shift the orbit of the planet! If you think CO2 causes climate change, wait'll you see what THAT would do!
Or is it more like the kind of software that walks into their shop and says `Really nice place you have here, pity if it would burn, eh? Luigi here is really disappointed with your negative attitude to us.'
Well, that's the way Microsoft has managed its partnerships with third party software developers for years. Perhaps they have established their Dynamics CRM solution to leverage that expertise.
People like having a physical object to hold, to use, to show off in display cases - whatever.
When people buy a DVD they aren't buying a movie--they are putting down $20 or whatever to buy a cheap, over-packaged plastic disc worth a few cents plus a license granting them permission to private, non-commercial exhibition. The only true reason for physical distribution media under such a business model, in the media industry, is that it is the best, most established practical technology right now for distribution. The technological requirement for physical media has unfortunately given the impression to consumers that they "own a movie" (or even a "copy of a movie") when no regular individual has EVER really "owned" a movie (or music, or whatever)--the best you can hope for is a "perpetual rental agreement".
I think that electronic distribution not only has the potential to make things much more convenient for the consumer, it is also a more true representation of what you are REALLY getting when you purchase media content--the essential product is not (and never has been) a physical thing but rather the right to enjoy (loot at, listen to, etc) multimedia content. The fact that there is no discrete physical item involved in distribution is merely further optimisation (from film to magnetic tape to optical disc to on-line electronic).
and for the foreseeable future, people will continue to prefer to purchase things which have some physical component, rather than one that is entirely computer based.
I think most people would LOVE to free up all that shelf space in ther display cases for other, more attractive keepsakes (I know very few examples of videos being "shown off", unless it is, say, the star wars geek who has a rare original Betamax release of the "Star Wars" trilogy still in shrink-wrap or something like that). People, aside from those rare exceptions like the aforementioned one, actually buy DVDs to *watch the movie*. Furthermore, people buy non-tangible things all the time, especially in the form of services and utilities: I buy electricity to light my house, I buy internet connectivity, I purchase securities with my online broker and so on, and in none of those cases am I expecting some fixed, physical object in return (though as the case with media, there is generally some transitory physical manifestation associated with the use of these non-tangible items). Consumers aren't so unsophisticated that they cannot at least recognise that not everything you have to pay for is tangible in nature.
It looks to me like the lifespan of physical media formats is undergoing geometric decay: 8mm and 16mm Film were the chief consumer distribution formats (mostly in schools but in a few homes too) for, lets say, four decades (1940s to 1970s). Videotape (U-Matic, then Beta and VHS) became widespread in the 1970s and started giving way to DVD in the 1990s--four decades. Standard-definition digital optical media (DVDs) arrived en-force in the late 1990s and are poised to fade in the late 2000s--one decade. It stands to reason that high-definition digital optical media (BD and HD-DVD) could have a five-year lifespan. Beyond that the whole idea of physical media could be obsolete.
Yes, I know my time frames are perhaps too approximate (small-gauge film existed many years before the 1940s, videotape existed earlier and is still sold today, and so on) but I'm talking about the era of a technology's rise and prominence in the consumer market. Movies will be sold on little plastic discs for a long time to come, but I can't see it being the contemporary distribution method in the 2020s.
My chief concern is that as technology advances distribution becomes more efficient and less costly, however the big, old media distributors are still big and old and inefficient, and are fighting tooth and nail to maintain and even inflate the prices they make consumers pay for their content, using a combination of legislation (DMCA) and what I call "false innovation"
Distance to the shops in miles, distance to the sun in kilometers I measure my weight in stones and pounds, but I cook in grams. Size of my wang in feet (ok, ok inches) size of my windows in cm.
Canada is a mix'n'match too but not the same as in the UK. Our close proximity to the US and more-recent official conversion to metric than many other countires has made us one confused lot:
* we measure distances to places in units of time (there is a Tim's five minutes away from nearly everywhere in Canada, It is 30 minutes to my office, I live three hours from the US border)
* we measure outdoor temperatures in humidex (a dimensionless number invented in Canada) on hot summer days, Celcius on mild days, wind chiill factor on cold winter days, and number of seconds it takes for exposed flash to freeze solid when in Winnipeg or Edmonton.
* we measure our wangs (ok, ok, in feet;-) AND windows in inches
However, a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold, because feathers are measured using the avoirdupois system (1 pound = about 453.59 g) while gold uses Troy (1 pound = about 373.24 g).
Hold on a minute--I always thought that a pound was a pound was a pound, and that a "Troy ounce" was different from a "normal ounce" (1/12 of a pound vs 1/16 of a pound). Now, becaus of you and Wikipaedia I now know that not only are the ounces different AND the number of ounces in each pound are Different, but the size of each pound is different too!
Even more perverse--a Troy Oz is HEAVIER than a normal ox, but a Troy pound is LIGHTER than a normal pound!
It's no wonder y'all down there in the US crash your space probes into planets.
Anyone else have experience with popped caps not causing a motherboard to fail?
I have had two of five motherboards reach the end of their useful life due to capacitor failure. On both occasions the computers were still usable but were not reliable. The symptoms were intermittent/inconsistent software crashes that gradually increased in frequency. My old Win2K machine would get BSODs every once in awhile, and it gradually got worse (I suspect as more of the capacitors burst). It wasn't until several failed that I got fed up and took it apart and noticed. What was actually bad Chinese capacitors I had been blaming on crappy Windows! I still think Windows is crappy though--it is a magnet for crackers and too high-maintenance for my tastes, and I switched to Linux on the desktop out of frustration when I replaced the motherboard and Win2k wouldn't boot (even into safe mode or with the recovery floppies) without major OS surgery.
The other capacitor failure was on a PC being used as a Linux server. It would kernel panic and/or spontaneously shut down on random occasions. The noisy CPU fan tricked me into thinking that its cooling ability had degraded and that it was shutting down due to overheating. I replaced it and the problem persisted. When I opened it back up I noticed three burst caps---HIDING UNDER THE HEAT SINK--lying on their sides adjacent to the CPU socket! What a horrible place to put such a component! I also took the opportunity to upgrade there as well. Unlike with Windows, Linux allowed me to swap motherboards and still boot into the OS to reconfigure drivers and the process was much less of a hassle.
Anyways, I think it is highly unlikely that the failure of a single electrolytic capacitor will be immediately noticeable. Firstly, a failed cap (puffed up and/or leaky) usually still has capacitance and might even be good enough to do the job. Second, these giant capacitors are most often are used on voltage supply lines for isolation (to keep the DC signal smooth and free of spikes and dropouts). The exact value of these caps is not critical as long as it is large enough to do the job. Often for simplicity's sake (to reduce the number of different caps needed) the manufacturer will use a much larger cap than required just because there are (for example) three others that need to be that size anyways--the reduction in number of different parts reduces manufacturing costs.
As I said neither machine became completely non-functional, and I suspect from their physical appearance that one or two caps failed long before the others in both cases. It depends on what the capacitor was doing, and how badly it failed. When a capacitor fails that is involved in power conditioning the result could be spikes and dropouts in the power supply connections to your CPU or other critical components. The result, I can attest, is maddening: Kernel panics, what look like memory errors cropping up and memory tests still passing and so on. As such, I applaud any motherboard manufacturer for making systems more reliable by reducing or eliminating less efficient components like electrolytic capacitors. The marketing of it is pretty dubious though--the replacements are "faster"? I didn't know that DC power rails had to be fast, or even COULD be fast! Fast-switching digital circuits are supposed to have the SMALLEST capacitance possible aren't they? I think the point is that solid capacitors are better for over-clockers because of their temperature resistance and better reliability at higher voltages, not because they're "faster".
You should do a little research into Microsoft's motives before you blindly bash.
As I mentioned in my original post, I was not "blindly bashing". I was speaking of Microsoft's long and well-known track record on usability. I also acknowledged that my exposure to the latest Office was too limited to comment definitively and that the presentation I viewed some months ago gave me the impression that they haven't completely learned their lesson (and even asked others if I was wrong--after all you can't say until you've used it if a UI is really user-friendly).
The vast majority of the changes Microsoft implements are the result of user request and feedback.
EXACTLY. That is also the exactly WRONG way to do user interface design. The problem is that in the past users would make requests on HOW as well as WHAT. The problem is that for many years there was not enough usability testing of the resulting product, and guess what? Users are rarely competent at user interface design. They are great for giving feedback on what you have done, but are not good at telling you what to do because they can only work in the context of what they know...and all they know is how the old stuff worked. How the old stuff worked plus some addon is more often than not quite a sub-optimal solution, and often an incremental CHANGE would be a better alternative. No, after so many incremental ADDITIONS MS got to the point where they had to do a drastic, wholesale change from one version to the next.
In short, MS' myopia has bitten them in the ass.
Back in Office 2000, they introduced "adaptive menus", which you (and everyone else) hated. Why did they do it? Because people were bitching about the menus being too big and hard to navigate.
The problem with MS isn't that they haven't acknowledged bloat. The problem is that they did it the wrong way. Users were complaining that the menus were too big and something along the lines of "I never use that...you should get rid of it to make the menus simpler". So MS did like I said above--they "designed by opinion poll" rather than using proper design principles. MS crunched the numbers and they decided...FOR THEMSELVES...which functions deserved to be relegated to hidden status. THAT is what drove people up the wall--that MS was telling users what was best for them. Furthermore, there was nothing significant done to improve navigation--adaptive menus only addressed the size part of the complexity equation.
My point is that Microsoft is not "forcing" anything on the user; they're actually *gasp* trying to help the user, trying to give them what they want.
WRONG...MS---at least in the past--HAS "forced" a lot on the user. If that was not the case why would the O'reilly "annoyances" series even exist, much less be so highly regarded? The default always has been to enable all the hand-holding, MS-knows-best features in Windows and the Office suite. XP has this "adaptive" start menu by default. After some head-scratching, the typical user can switch it to "classic" mode or find out how to "pin" icons to the top-level menu. However, out-of-the-box behaviour is this ever-changing top-level menu with unpredictable behaviour (I still haven't figured it out--it seems to be related to frequence of use, however there are apps that I'll open several times a day that refuse to go on the start menu until I pin them there).
Until recently, Office would also open up with all sorts of annoying junk enabled by default, such as the notorious clippy who tries to guess what you are doing and autocorrecting-this and active-that. Try pasting C or Perl listings into a document with default word behaviour some time, and watch as bracket-and-semicolons get changed into cutsey winky-faces and the slashes and asterisks in comments get interpreted as bold and italic formatting cues, and indenting tabs getting interpreted inconsistently and so on. Perl source can look bad enough as it is---Word turns it into unusable Egyptian heiro
Their "open" XML format for office docs is a prime example of this.
I think Steve Jobs was the one who first said "Microsoft just doesn't get it". Microsoft was probably the very first third-party software developer for the Mac and this was Jobs' reaction to Microsoft's first Mac applications (I think a port of Multiplan--which was re-incarnated into Excel IIRC, and MSBasic). They really WERE "tasteless", ugly and took almost no advantage of the revolutionary GUI interface--their DOSness really showed through--I think in the case of Multiplan the mouse could be used only to jump the cursor to a certain cell and that was it--the rest was all like in DOS.
MS Windows is another example--Microsoft didn't "get it" well enough until the third major release. Now MS is SLOWLY "getting it" with the beneficial characteristics of XML standards. Microsoft's early XML efforts are like Windows 1.0--there is some very rudmentary understanding of the mechanics but not the philosophy of XML, and I wonder if this is why SOAP ended up NOT so simple (given Microsofties were involved in its creation and seemed to be trying to make it a DCOM-in-XML-but-dumber thing). Microsoft's "Version1" XML might look like this:
"See? We're using XML and SOAP! We're hip! We're cooool! You can't say we don't play by the rules now!"
Of course, this is an obtuse, opaque and obsfucated way to use XML andtotally NOT in the spirit of interoperability and openness. I won't even go into the nifty XML tools MS has made...nifty to use but they've done a lot to obliterate the S out of SOAP in their crazy output.
OOXML (Opaque and Obsfucated XML) standard is "version 2.0"--they're doing their best to eliminate ambiguity but now we've gone over to hyper-specificity, and the standard is being shared a bit better...problem is that they don't fully describe the interpretation of the standard elements so as to keep its advantage. All they've done is taken every formatting option and mapped it to an XML element--it is monolithic and completely non-extensible. But hey, at least its publicly available and doesn't involve weirdness like encoded-binary-blobs.
In a few years MS will reach version 3.0 of "getting" XML...
and in its place is a steering wheel and foot pedals and a streamlined context-sensitive dash-board control with only a few buttons, but only the buttons that you happen to need at the time
A "context-sensitive dashboard"? What a horrible idea! Another poster very insightfully responded with a comparison to iDrive on BMWs and a few other high-end cars. General consensus is that it is total garbage--annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Why is that? Well, in a car the driver is the primary user of the dashboard and the driver is generally looking at the road ahead. The dashboard should NOT be "context-sensitive" or otherwise dynamic in nature. IT SHOULD BE STATIC. The important functions of a dashboard should ALL be visible, in the same place, ALL THE TIME (even better there should be a tactile element as well--buttons, knobs and such should be raised).
Drivers need to be able to use such an interface using quick glances and/or by feel. iDrive's ever-changing, and largely non-tactile user interface is much too distracting to the driver...it was so poorly conceived that Microsoft had to simplify the interface navigation and make the little knob have better tactile feedback in the next revision because as it was in its introduction it was almost totally unusable unless the driver was able to pull over, and users wanted many iDrive functions to be safely accessible while driving. Add to that the software bugs that caused such things as radio to go on and off at whim, trunks to open spontaneously and so on and iDrive has been a disaster.
I haven't yet tried out these "ribbon" things, though I've on a couple of occasions seen live demonstrations of the user interface. While almost anything could be better than the horrid menu system Office has traditionally had such a drastic change is pretty risky--they didn't even leave the wheel and pedals (to carry on the analogy)--it is more like they replaced the wheel with a joystick and the pedals with thumb-and-trigger buttons. Everything is in different places and WORKS differently--it doesn't matter if some study deems that technical advantages exceed disadvantages or that it is easier to learn--the fact is there are a billion people out there who know the old way of driving.
It is true that a desktop isn't a car and that the analogy isn't TOTALLY valid, however there are some universal principals of designing for usability that MS repeatedly insists on violating. The biggest of these is making things too "automatically dynamic". They've been doing this since sometime not long after NT4 came out: First they hide rarely-used start menu items...AUTOMATICALLY...WITHOUT user's input on how or when to do it. THEN they release XP and hide the old menu items under an added layer...and put FREQUENTLY used items out front...again without much control given to the user. I guess at least they threw us a *little* bone and let us "pin" icons and clear them out totally at will, but they re-appear (or don't) on what seems like a total whim.
Now they have this new MS Office with its "ribbons" and context-sensitivity and reorganisation and my first impression is that they KEEP ON HIDING AND MOVING STUFF for us. Much of the new interface is clever and makes navigation much less cumbersome. However, then they go and mess with your head again with these "dynamic" elements (galleries) and obscurity (putting what are basically file management functions in "another start menu" indicated only by a goofy little "office system" logo). I would've preferred a somewhat different approach--one that allowed a bit more user configure-ability. In any case I'll have a more informed opinion once I actually have to use it rather than sitting and watching a demo of it.
Perhaps someone can confirm to me whether or not my concerns is valid--has MS learned anything or are they still pushing the user around by doing too may user-interface alterations automatically?
The problem isn't with running a low-voltage wire through a high-voltage conduit - the problem is that someone could later run a high-voltage wire through the same conduit.
Although that is a good reason to NOT use high-voltage conduit for low-voltage runs I do NOT believe it is a code violation (it is merely "not recommended"). In the interests of simplicity in large installations it might be easier to use the same kind of conduit for all runs. The remedy to the problem you describe is to MARK THE CONDUIT PROPERLY. I worked for a time in the Physical Plant dept. of a large medical facility and the same kind of conduit and cable trays were used for all sorts of wiring. To meet code/safety requirements the conduit was marked with standard coloured stripes and labeled at regular intervals ("comms", "low voltage", "120/208V", etc).
The electrician/inspector did not have to order the conduit removed--it probably would'vebeen fine to paint a stripe down the side and stencil "comms cable only" at regular intervals...thus it is a suitable candidate for "silly hacks".
...amongst apologists on both sides: short and inaccurate.
You might want to look at who controlled congress in 1994
Well...looking back it seems that the Hollywood Party (R)(TM) (more commonly known as the Democrats) ran the entire show at that point. Yes, 1994 was a pivotal election year, however those elections happen at the END of the year and the new bums didn't throw out the old bums officially until 1995.
Congress writes the laws, the president merely signs them or vetoes them
Which begs the question that if Clinton was such a great president for the 'net and information freedom why he didn't actually USE those veto powers.
So, you've gone and voted out the Oil Party and brought back in the Hollywood Party. Somehow I don't foresee any big sea change in IP law as a result.
Assuming a worst-case scenario of those queries being shoe-horned into a typical 8-hour working day, that equates to an average of 35 queries a second, multiplied by some factor to account for peak usage. I have no experience of MySQL specifically but that doesn't sound like an unreasonable ball-park to me - with a decent server, proper indexing and well-written queries I don't see why you should struggle.
I'd also say from experience that either of the main Free/open source options could handily manage the load you've described here. Besides making sure you have robust hardware there are application design and requirements to consider in the choice of RDBMS as well that relate to "quality and not quantity"
Personally I'd choose PostgreSQL 8.x over MySQL because (again from direct experience) is is head and shoulders above any other Free solution out there when it comes to concurrency and its transactional support is a fair bit more mature than MySQL. The main consideration is how update-heavy your application is. The article poster said that these transactions would be done concurrently with reporting and data analysis. If the transactions are essentially a series of INSERT statements then there wouldn't be much impact on performance in MySQL and I'd say stick with it because it is what you have now (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). The performance gap has closed quite a bit in the last few years, but MySQL still has a bit of an edge when it comes to single-table queries and basic INSERTs. If that is what you are doing most then it is great.
However, if you are doing multi-statement transactions with UPDATEs on one or more existing records, and/or INSERT and UPDATE operations that rely on data retrieved from some moderate to complex SELECT statement and this is within a single transaction then you have to be a fair bit more careful with MySQL than with PostgreSQL to avoid concurrency problems. If one client runs such a transaction on a MySQL database there are more situations where the transaction will lock rows and/or tables and all other clients will e blocked until the transaction is finished. Generally it is good practice (regardless of the RDBMS used) to avoid long-running transactions as much as possible, however at times an expensive transaction may be unavoidable and that is where PostgreSQL's MVCC handles things much better.
Another consideration is how your business logic is handled. I prefer to make use of the database to make sure business rules are followed as it offers, almost without exception, the best performance by far. It is basically impossible to use tools/languages like PHP, Perl, Ruby or Python to handle ground-floor business logic faster or better than the database can. MySQL's heritage is simplicity and performance and thus there has been little emphasis on data integrity. It is pretty slow and tedious to have to rely on higher-level layers to do things like make sure '0000-00-00' and '2007-02-30' are not accepted as valid dates, or ensure referential integrity, or simulate triggers. If you know the data going into the database is already of high quality (it is validated at a higher-level, or it is acquired through automation such as barcodes or RFIDs or industrial controllers) and you are doing straight SELECTs without processing at the DBMS level then MySQL will present no problems and its performance and small footprint might be worth more than the unused capabilities of a heavier database back-end.
However, if you must validate human-entered data at the DBMS level or need to create queries that do calculations or other data manipulations (aggregate functions, concatenations, getting a timespan from different dates, etc) then MySQL is VERY INFURIATING to a seasoned database admin or programmer. This is because while MySQL behaves consistently, it is often consistently WRONG behaviour (by that I don't mean it spits out 2+2=5 or it works differently from howit was designed--I mean wrong in that it is different from how most people thin
...the original Religious War of personal-computerdom. It has set the pace for later religous wars between PC vs. Mac and Linux/open vs. Windows/proprietary.
The Commodore 64 had the same component video outputs. It used 1 RCA cable for each, whereas the S-Video uses a single cable with 4 wires.
The C64 also wasn't introduced until three years after the Atari 800--the PET and Vic-20 were Commodore's initial offering against the Atari 800 and they were decidedly less capable with video and did not have component video output as the Atari did.
The Commodore actually didn't use one cable for each component--it was like the Atari in that it had a single DIN connector (looks like a giant version of S-video). The cable just split into three RCA-style plugs on the end. The other little 8-bit computer I had with a component video output was the Coleco ADAM, released a year or so after the C64.
Infuriatingly, they all similar connectors but the pinout was different amongst all of them. The 1702 monitor from Commodore had component inputs that worked with the Atari and Coleco...but you needed different cables! To make matters worse, whatever plans Atari and Coleco had to introduce cables (and maybe monitors) where shelved and they never offered such cables, so you had to solder up your own. I went through the trouble and managed to make the Commodore 1702 work with an Atari 800 and a Coleco ADAM just fine.
Oddly enough, the Commodore 64's display on a Commodore 1702 was noticeably less crisp than the Atari's display. Besides being sharper the Atari's colour was much better. Commodore had a selection of 16 hues of a fixed brightness, all over-saturated. Atari 800 had 16 hues with 8 levels of brightness and a much better saturation level. My theory about the crispness was that the whole Atari 800 ran off the colourburst crystal--the processor merely used the colourburst divided by two (just under 1.8 MHz). Commodore's system frequency was just over 1 MHz and didn't divide evenly into the colourburst frequency used by the video circuitry, which maybe made it more prone to interference (NTSC, and even the 1702 monitor, used colourburst as the fundamental frequency of operation).
And thus the rivalry between the systems--they had many similarities (CPU, overall power, size of software library, entertainment-oriented sound and graphics capabilities) and their differences seemed to cancel each other out (C64 had superior sound and better sprites, Atari had better overall graphics and crisper display, Atari had much faster disk drive and peripherals, C64 had much slower disk drive but could store a lot more on each disk, etc).
Thus, no "vintage" collection would be complete without a C64 and an Atari 800 (or derivative like 800XL or maybe even 65XE). The big early personal computer players in North America were Commodore, Tandy/Radioshack, Apple, Atari and Texas Instruments so thatwouldbe quite a complete collection. To cover Europe/UK you cannot ignore Sinclair (Spectrum and ZX81), BBC/Acorn or Amstrad/CPC.
Also, you must include CP/M and S100-bus computers as they are the progenitors of today's open-architecture PC platform. The MITS Altair was the first S100 (it was the inspiration for the platform). Individual S100 vendors were never big players but the CP/M-on-S100 market as a whole was comparable or larger in size than the total market size of the above players. If you want an "interesting" machine within your budget then you might opt for an S100 machine over something as common as a C64 or Atari 800 or Apple IIe. Altairs are much too rare but other specimens from the likes of IMSAI or Cromemco or Processor Technologies might be available very cheaply if you can find them (you might be lucky and find someone who has such equipment and doesn't even know what it is).
As for consoles, I consider vintage anything introduced over 20 years ago (more recent than that id "retro" but I'd say that it is not yet "vintage") so despite some posters here disag
"What's for dinner honey?" - "Caterpillars and worms...
Hey there is hope for the Linux desktop yet! For a few years now Microsoft Windows users have been fed a very steady diet of worms. Lots and lots of worms. Thousands of different kinds of worms. And Windows has been able to serve them up faster than McDoe's could ever hope to serve up a Big Mac!
Really, MS and the Linux desktop are simply leapfrogging over each other...in 2001 we got a prettied up desktop in XP, in 2002 GNOME and KDE leapfrogged over them with a major version, in 2007 MS will bring Vista to the unwashed masses and I imagine in 2008/2009 Linux will get more greatness from GNOME and KDE.
This is a pretty lame indictment of the Free software community if you ask me. The author of the article makes a great deal of noise about there being six or seven years between major releases of GNOME and KDE, and seems to have glossed over the fact that MS went over five years themselves, despite having thousands of developers and billions of dollars to throw at it. Furthermore, calling XP a major release is questionable...it was by and large window-dressing to Win2000 (and technically it WAS a point-release from 5.0 to 5.1 wasn't it? I think the SP2 upgrade was probably almost as significant as 2k-to-XP too...). Really, MS will have gone almost EIGHT years between major releases.
Besides, I question the focus on the numbering system as a measure of progress--I've found that historically Free software products progress faster and have more significant changes between major releases. Nobody would say that from kernel 2.0.x to kernel 2.6.x there has been a lack of progress due to the fact it'll be something over a decade after 2.0 before a 3.x.x release. Projects like the kernel and Apache (and, yes, the desktop environments) have reserved the major release number for very fundamental, architectural overhauls. If Windows was a Free software project I do not think it would be numbered like it was--Windows 2.x would've been 1.x releases, 3.0 through Me would've been 2.x and NT 3.1 through XP would've been 3.x releases. For what its worth, I think that although Apple has been the pacesetter that Linux is still easily out-pacing Microsoft in terms of modernising the desktop overall, despite the whining about lack of "major releases".
And a company thinking they can be fascist about everything risks losing their employees.
Well, if the IT dept. is a bunch of control freaks that lock down things so badly their employees struggle to get their work done it is a problem. However, if you call your employer fascist for using proxy servers, firewalls, VPNs, corporate anti-virus and so on to run a tight shift then you risk losing your employer (and a good reference to use on your hunt for your next job). I think most employers take a dim view of employees who have such a negative view about the company and who consciously try to thwart measures put in place to keep IS infrastructure secure and reliable.
There are two kinds of organisations that can afford to provide luxuries like seamless remote access and multi-gigabyte inboxes in house: Very large, tech-savvy enterprises like Google and Microsoft (who can give such things out like candy) or very small, tech-savvy outfits (such as self-employed consultants or an employee count in the dozens or less) where a mid-range server-class PC has the capacity to provide this and it can be managed by one egghead. The rest of medium to large enterprises with hundreds to thousands of users do have a challenge--especially those businesses that are not in the tech industry and cannot dedicate huge resources to set of a big data centre. Thus, the vast majority of workers have to contend with relatively tiny inboxes and somewhat less-than-integrated systems.
These days, however, I really do NOT see the justification for forwarding corporate email to a public account like gMail or Hotmail. You have a bit of a problem managing your in-box if you need a gigabyte. The vast majority of employers with personnel who need remote access now provide VPNs or otherwise have some secured/encrypted remote accessibility to email and selected other systems too. Furthermore, things like customer contact lists, purchase orders, estimates and so on are fairly private. We wouldn't like to have people send our credit card statements, including the account number and expiry and details of all our purchases, to be sent un-encrypted and without our knowledge of when and where it is going. If personal private info can be afforded this protection why can't businesses have a reasonable level of privacy too?
It seems interesting that there was enough demand for a 2GB mailbox offering for any reason anyhow. I am quite a hobbyist and a one-time self-employed consultant and still have my own email server so I can set my limits however I want--I have set up to accept 256MB attachments and have 40GB of space allocated for use as my mail store/home directory. Despite that I've never received an email message over about 25MB and my inbox has never even reached 1GB much less 2GB. I have IMAP set up and keep things organised in multiple folders and the entire email directory of all folders, with years of messages, is a small fraction of that. If I have large binary attachments the message gets deleted and the file gets put outside mail into the home or shared directories. Given the usage my personal wide-open setup I see even less justification for corporations to dedicate such capacity, so I'd expect that any employee who asks for the ability to forward to gMail or get his own email-gigabox would have to present a convincing case of extraordinarily special needs. More than likely such employees just have a fetish for big fancy technology and want bragging rights. I have only seen in VERY rare cases recently where corporations do not put significant effort into providing for the access needs of their remote employees.
They're talking about multiple random outputs - ie - each and every file has a different signature and watermark.
Let me explain a few things about trademarks and the defence that Autodesk is using. I'm not saying it is TOTALLY right, however there IS legal justification.
a) Autodesk's signature/watermark is NOT randomly generated--it is a calculated using a fixed algorithm.
b) A trademark does NOT only cover an EXACT representation of a mark--it never has.
Unless the software is designed to submit each and every signature and watermark that is generated for trademark status, their case basis doesn't hold liquid, gas or solid matter.
You are wrong. Under current trademark law, when applied to traditional (visual, non-digital) marques, a single trademark registration can cover ANY NUMBER of variations that convey the identity of a product or company that is used in trade. For example, a unique or invented word or phrase can be registered as a trademark REGARDLESS of visual representation. The word "Olympic" is a registered trademark for example, and it is valid whether or not it is accompanied by the 5-ring graphical symbol and regardless of the colour it is written in, or the font or the size. There are companies that have been legally challenged for trading using marques such as "Olympic Leather" and "Olympic Meats". The IOC often loses such cases, however the court more often than not places legal restrictions on such uses--for example Olympic Leather couldn't manufacture and sell sporting goods/apparel using the "Olympic" marque, even if they contain their leather, without licensing the trademark from the IOC.
Apple Computer is another example of how trademarks work--they have trademarked the words "Apple" and "MacIntosh" without specific visual representation for the purposes of trading in personal computers. The same goes with iPod for music players (in fact, Apple has gone a bit TOO crazy and tried to make a case that the initial lowercase "i" is their trademark...I think trademarking plain words it pushing it too much let alone a single letter...). Apple also has a registered trademark for the "Apple" graphic for use on personal computers and consumer electronic devices. It doesn't specify the original "mixed up rainbow" colour scheme, nor does the position or presence of the bite matter. Apple Records has also trademarked the use of an apple on audio media and music marketing/distribution materials and even though their respective graphic representations differ it has been a contentious issue over the years (Apple Records had little defense so long as Apple Computer restricted itself to trading in computers, but when Macs were marketed for use in creating music using Midi and digitising, and later when the iPod music player was introduced, the dispute resurfaced).
Obviously then a trademark registration does NOT limit itself to a specific visual definition of a marque. In fact, when you register a trademark legal experts specifically advise you NOT to be overly specific (you should NOT implicitly or explicitly describe the colour, size, font, specific uses and so on unless it is required to make your marque distinctive--it is better to err on the generic side and add specificity if your registration is challenged). This is Autodesk's argument--the FIXED data that makes up some or all of the algorithm represents a distinct marque, and the data in the drawing that combines with it to create the signature represents a variation of that marque. The signature generated by combining your drawing with their watermark/key/algorithm is the legal equivalent to applying colour, shading, decorative typeface or other embellishment to the registered version of the trademark.
I do agree that this is quite a stretch, but these lawyers have obviously carefully examined the law to craft this argument and it sounds quite valid. Perhaps it is a bit evil, and yes I the motive isn't based only on tec
that information and services will be widely available, in widely adopted formats, so that they can be harnessed together in unforeseen ways to create new applications almost in near-real time.
Your description EXACTLY DESCRIBES a scenario in which I have direct knowledge. Where I am, industrial consumers of electricity can get market prices of electricity, both current and historical. This information is "widely available" and provided in "widely adopted" XML format. This data is "harnessed together" by power consumers in ways "unforseen" by electrical utilities to create "new applications" to monitor operational costs "in near real time".
The fact that companies still pay millions to SAP and IBM for system integration on a case-by-case basis is a strong counter argument to your assertion that this vision is already realized.
It does nothing of the sort. It actually is the exact opposite--it strongly SUPPORTS my argument. You don't even have the right idea about my argument--it isn't that the "vision has been realised"--it is that the world is catching onto the vision. Of COURSE it hasn't been realised yet--such a task is gargantuan! The reason companies have to pay for integration on a case-by-case basis is NOT because the end result is different for each company--it is because the STARTING POINT is different. And arcane. And very proprietary. There is also great inertia to overcome and the fact that there is movement at all to change the way of collaborating is a feat in itself.
All this information is already recorded, but only in disparate systems and formats. Wal-Mart (for instance) tracks this sort of information closely, yet you'll be kicked out of their store if you so much as go into a store and write down the prices of goods on the shelves.
You seem to be focusing solely on the business-to-end-consumer part of the supply chain as if the rest of the stuff didn't even exist. You completely ignore the relationship between wal-mart and its suppliers, those suppliers and their suppliers of raw materials, the transportation/distribution/logistic companies and all of the above, etc. The B2C end part of the chain is probably the least developed! You talk about having this "personal agent" doing comparison shopping for you, well Wal-mart themselves ALREADY DOES THAT--they have their own "business intelligence" software that takes data from ALL their suppliers, in a format mandated by wal-mart to their suppliers, and takes inventory data from ALL their stores and churns through it and finds out the lowest cost suppliers for each category, which stores move which merchandise the best, etc, etc. Wal-mart takes that data and uses it to it maximum potential--ruthlessly. If a supplier is not moving goods fast enough or comes out the most expensive or with the lowest profit margin, that supplier is hauled to the carpet and told to get in line or your contract will not be renewed (or it could even be terminated).
You mention "Wal-mart tracks this information closely" and then just leave it at that, like that has nothing to do with the argument. The way wal-mart does this is EXACTLY the philosophy that web service technology follows (whether or not wal-mart implements exactly this technology): Data is widely available (the network of wal-mart stores is MASSIVE and HQ can see EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE) and is in a standard format (mandated by Wal-mart, but in our case mandated by open standards) and used in unforseen ways (walmart-continually improves its business intelligence software, and suppliers never have any idea how the data they provide is used by wal-mart). Everyone is starting to realise the potential of such a philosophy and the importance of it. We are merely at the forefront and in many years that is where things are heading.
The airline industry is constantly bucking legislation requiring them to state upfront the simple total price of a ticket. Same for cell phone companies. The fact is, there is strong resistance to elim
They're arguing that since you don't own the computer the message is stored on, you have no right to privacy. That makes no sense,
If you confess to a murder on the back of a postcard and email it to your brother, and your brother goes to the police with said postcard, or even if the mailman sees it and goes to the police before you brother even reads it, there is nothing stopping the police from charging you with murder. If the police find YOUR bloody gloves in your neighbours' yard the evidence is admissable if the neighbours willingly allowed the search or the police had a warrant to search their premesis.
Don't know where to start with this one. First, when we talk about "public domain," we're talking copyrightable works. The internet isn't copyrightable. Second, the government doesn't own the individual links in the internet backbone.
How about starting here: Search warrants are based upon the location not on the owner or originator of the evidence, so whatever copyright or ownership issues you have really do not matter. If you leave a used condom in a public park after having relations with a prostitute that later turns up dead, should that evidence be inadmissible or require some special warrant before it is examined? Is it an unjustifiable "invasion of privacy" because they can find out about your sex life? OF COURSE NOT! If you are having sex with a prostitute in a public place and don't umm...clean up after yourself, or if you confess on the back of a postcard and send it outside your private domain you cannot expect to be afforded protection of privacy.
Hell, chances are your every move is being recorded as you do your Christmas shopping, and pretty much everywhere you walk on the streets of London in public view...and you expect that sending an UNENCRYPTED transmission through a PUBLIC network to an OUTSIDE computer--without the permission of the recipient I might add--should be protected under some sort of right to privacy? What makes email so much more special than a message on a postcard, or walking down the street with a bullhorn, or skywriting, or beating the sh!t out of Rodney King on a public street whilst being videotaped by a concerned observer behind a bush?
I'm having a hard time seeing why an unsecured communication between two people should be protected when it's a phone conversation taking place over, say, Verizon-owned fiber, but not if it's an email saved on a Verizon-owned hard drive.
You're having a hard time because they AREN'T THE SAME THING. If law enforcement monitored a telephone conversation--or an instant message conversation, or perhaps the packets of data in and out of your PC, in real time, unbeknownst to EITHER party involved in the exchange, then yes, that would be wiretapping and it would require a warrant. If you are a stalker and leave a dirty phone message on some lady's answering machine, and the lady freaks out and brings in the message to the police, then there is no need for a warrant. I think that when some dork mass mails me some penis enlargement advertisement that it is the same as the stalker leaving dirty messages on an answering machine--the only difference is the media.
The only use of the signature is to control access to Autodesk files.
If that is what the court finds then the case will be immediately thrown out, because at that point it is no longer a trademark. The thing is that at this point there is NO RESTRICTION AT ALL on opening and using DWGs that lack the signature. From what I understand, the current version of AutoCAD puts up a warning box to nag you with some FUD around saying it isn't an "official" DWG file and it might crash the system. I think that is a bit over-the-top and I imagine most engineers and draftsmen will probably just scoff at it and disable the warnings.
If I was ruling on such a case (and I probably couldn't make such a ruling but I think it would be the fairest way of handling it) I would give this one to Autodesk, with the proviso that they have to send out a patch that disables the warning box by default (and to keep it disabled in all future Autodesk products) so as not to artificially influence the market for competitors. This would protect AutoCADs trademark and help the consumer with technical assistance if there are problems (AutoCAD support could tell the user to go File->properties or something, and if the drawing didn't have an Autodesk signature they could inform the user to contact customer support for the right product).
the semantic web and web services will never fly. Companies don't want to make their data and services available to each other.
I shake my head that this was modded "insightful". Sounds more like a troll to me but whatever. Either timeOday is a master at trolling or he has his head very far up his arse. I hoe it is the former but fear it may be the latter.
In my career I've seen companies spend a GREAT DEAL of time and money trying to "make their data and services available to one another". They don't do this because it is a fad--they do it because they HAVE to to stay competitive and there is a very convincing cost-benefit-analysis argument to do so. There is a VERY large industry in systems integration and EDI (electronic data interchange). Companies have spent millions on systems based upon SAP and IBM WebSphere and the like to do EXACTLY what you day companies don't want to do! ERP systems are being upgraded to accept orders from customers, to send orders to suppliers, utility billing and monitoring, financial reporting to meet securities regulations, etc...ALL USING WEB SERVICES and related technologies. In fact, manufacturers who deal with large retailers HAVE to do this to survive--you HAVE to have a very close electronic link with Walmart's suppliy-chain management system to even have the privlige of getting shelf space in their stores!
Companies have been trying to share data and otherwise interact electronically for decades, and success has always been limited to some degree. This mostly has to do with the EDI industry being infested with proprietary, single-vendor formats and protocols and the expense associated with implementing and integrating them. Web services demolish nearly all those barriers. It is not only not a fad, the hype is actually giving way to an uptick in actual, real-life implementation of the technology!
I cannot say whether the demise of Google's SOAP API is being done in the name of simplicity but I CAN tell you it has nothing at all to do with the failure of the semantic web, OR web services because they are nto failing at all. However, Google DOES subscribe to the KISS philosophy and has recently redoubled its efforts to keep to that philosophy while it grows its product and service line along with its corporate size. Therefore simplicity probably is the most likely reason. They will have an AJAX API with which to offer their searching service to others without visiting their site, and SOAP really IS overly complex to provide such a function.
All in all, I think it is a sign that the web services space is maturing and becoming more sophisticated. There are well known and better-suited alternatives to SOAP for many applications now so there is no need to support it--not like in earlier times before the rise of AJAX-style apps when it seemed there was this mentality that Web Services meant SOAP over HTTP and that was it.
including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization,
That is the key statement in the claim. The code in the libraries that read and generate.dwg files are clean from a copyright standpoint but the libraries have the ability to watermark or digitally sign the file--it is the signature in the resulting file generated by the library that is what Autodesk has taken issue with and they have pulled the lawyers out of their legal cesspool..uhhh..I mean department...to block the use of their signatures. Precedent doesn't allow them to block competitors from using the.dwg format itself.
The lawyers say that the watermarks and digital signatures are equivalent to a logo and that it is afforded protection under trademark law. The car analogy is pretty apt here: Imagine you want to rice-ify your 1989 Civic--you can get cheap third-pary knockoffs from any company--even those without any affiliation with Honda and those suppliers are legally allowed to make everything from spoilers-big-enough-to-use-as-the-tail-of-a-737 to neon-coloured-ignition-wires-and-matching-chromed- valve-cover-engine-bling that you can easily fit to your modest little DX for that pimpin' project.
There is next to nothing Honda could do to prevent anyone from making and selling parts with matching bolt patterns, electrical connectors, etc. that interoperate with their cars. Believe me, automakers have tried a few times in the past without success to apply industrial design and patent law without success (and rightly so). What Honda CAN do (and probably should be able to do anyways) is prevent anyone from putting the Honda LOGO on their knockoff parts, or the phrase "Genuine Honda" or similar such markings as it misrepresents the source of the aftermarket parts and leads consumers into making wrong assumptions about the quality, source, warranty, etc. Which is why Honda really doesn't like those fake R stickers and has made some effort to stop them from being made. Of course, those fake Rs are easily produced and distributed do it is a really hard game of whack-a-mole, plus the fakers only have to alter the appearance of their own Rs slightly to get around trademark issues.
Anyways, because of this I don't really have an issue with Autodesk protecting their trademarks--though I think that a digital signature is brushing the line of what constitutes a trademark. If all that is at issue is the idea that a user can open a DWG and look at its properties and it has a "generated by AutoCAD xxxx" property in there when it was NOT generated by AutoCAD then what's the big deal? I think it is probably best that programs that do greate.DWGs properly report what was used to create the file for support purposes anyways. After all, it has ALWAYS annoyed me that Microsoft has always had "mozilla" in their user agent string for all those years as its roots from the original spyglass software gradually withered and died.
Where I WOULD have a problem is if Autodesk were to use this signature to prevent interoperability, which would in my mind constitute abuse of a monopoly position. If...at any point and in any way...the absence of a "generated by genuine AutoCAD" signature prevented the file from being FULLY usable in AutoCAD or prevented "genuine autocad" files from being fully used by 3rd party software...then it ceases to be a trademark and becomes an access control mechanism that limits interoperability. Though I imagine then they'd LOVE to pull a DMCA trick....oh well...THAT is the point where Autodesk will have truly moved into the dark side.
...makes me wonder what business outside the US have to do to hold a valid certificate to get the "green light"
Incorporating in my case (1-person business) would mean hiring a lawyer and accountant to file the annual state forms, draw up the stock agreement, and file the taxes in return for a few hundred dollars in tax savings and pretty much no liability protection.
In my case there wasn't much difference either way in terms of operating expenses or tax advantages--it was all a wash, but I incorporated anyways because I figured it put me in a better position should my revenues grow or I was to hire full-time employees.
Anyways, I incorporated in Canada and doing so did NOT require me to hire a lawyer OR an accountant (though you can certainly do so if you want the help--it often is a good idea especially if you are already an established sole proprietor or partnership). The annual corporate return is no more complicated than my personal income taxes (and is actually simpler than my personal taxes have been in some years)--and I've always done my own taxes. Did you really NEED a lawyer and accountant to incorporate a 1-person business in your state or is the paperwork really that complex? I thought the US had LESS red tape than Canada--guess that is a bit of a stereotype. The incorporation forms can be bought at a registry office where I'm at and filing an annual return is the same cost as renewing the registration of your personal vehicle (IIRC--all of these things are done at "authorised registry agencies" where I live--there is no separate "DMV" and you go to the same place to file corporate returns, register vehicles, get drivers licences and ID, marriage licenses, etc).
My first impression was like the grandparent post--basically "it's a bit of a pain in the arse, but not a REAL big deal, so just incorporate and you'll be fine". Well, then I read some of the replies here and really READ the effin' article. It looks like in many foreign countries it is a much bigger hassle and large expense to incorporate (1000s of euros? need a board of 5 directors or more? Seems like overkill bureaucracy to me...). Then in the article they talk about LLCs and S and C and other American-only oddities. These corporate structures/terminologies do not apply in Canada. We have provincial and federal incorporation and different tax rates based on the size/income of the corporation (there is not need to be a special type of corporation to get a lower small-business tax rate). However, Canada also has co-operatives covered under the incorporation act as legal entities distinct from normal corporations that have no exact analogue to a type of corporation in the US. Canadian business trusts are also different than those in the US (Canadian business trusts are more like the way they were in the US when Standard Oil used them as a vehicle to propel themselves to monopoly status--though the taxation advantages are being phased out over the next few years which will bring their status more into line with how they are treated in the US).
Anyways, the unique Canadian situation means that some VERY big, established and/or well-regarded businesses are NOT actually corporations (or LLCs or whatever else) as described in the article. Do these businesses have to establish corporations to get the enhanced certificates? Are these certificates only available from Microsoft (it says these are based on a standard devised by an 18-member consortium so maybe not)? To foreign businesses have to incorporate in the US? THAT would be quite a higher hurdle for smaller, foreign businesses with an established online presence in foreign markets.
I think it'll take awhile to sort out--longer than it will to even see Vista and IE7 to become prominent. So, for a long time all users will see are white bars, with a smattering of yellow and red alerts, and a few green bars--mostly on Microsoft sites or close MS affiliates, or REALLY major sites like ebay or Amazon. So, no I don't think users are stupid enou
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But what happens if his/her funding fell through? With no money to market and sell the idea, all of his/her hard work and dedication would be for nothing!
This would be covered by the responsibility guidelines in a couple of ways: As I mentioned, patents would be issues in different "classes"--inventions that are more complex would be allowed more implementation time than simple ones (yes, even today there could be simple but non-obvious invention). A relatively simple patented process could potentially be implemented within a year. More complex ideas would be classified differently.
Finding investors is not marketing--it is part of the process to bring an invention to market. Furthermore, getting an extension would not be simply as easy as saying "I'm still looking for investors". There would have to be documented proof of that and it would be a bit of an involved process. In any case, if an inventor cannot get investment within the generous time frame alloted by the patent office then it seems apparent to me the invention lacks merit (too impractical or not useful enough) and it is basically a form of "natural selection" (there are a lot of zany patents cluttering the USPTO after all). If an invention has merit then there will always be someone there to help out because of the incentives granted by the patent--for example, a small inventor can entice a large manufacturer to produce and distribute his invention on a large scale by providing exclusive license to the invention, and that would satisfy the patent holder's obligations to keep the patent for the full term.
RIM was pretty much unheard of until they really were big, and so it's part of plausible deniability
I said "reasonable" I didn't say "total and full" enforcement. I wouldn't have expected the patent troll in this example to have given RIM the smackdown when RIM was just a couple of University of Waterloo engineering students obviously. But to say that RIM was unheard of until they were really big is ludicrous! RIM was BEYOND really big by the time this lawsuit came up--they were so big that national governments were concerned that an injunction would cause chaos in their day-to-day operations! RIM was easily noticeable at the time of their IPO or on the launch of their first blackberry product with reasonable amount of research/enforcement by the patent holders. Sorry, "plausible deniability" doesn't cut it--RIM was very well known by the general public--much less an inventor or enthusiast of wireless communication technology for years before the lawsuit. It was very reasonable to expect the patent holders to know about them and enforce their patents much sooner.
Overall I think these ideas are on the right track, but it will be very, very hard to stop people from abusing any patent system, regardless of what that system entails.
And that is why many more resources must be dedicated to patent offices than is done today. I suspect you would rather see no patent protection at all. However it is important to keep in mind that intellectual property law IS a double-edged sword (whether we are talking patents or copyright). Although IP law is starting to be used to try and shut down Free/open software (and hardware) it is also what allows us to PROTECT Free technology as well. If there was no copyright the GPL would have no teeth and GPLed code could be lifted, altered and used for profit by competitors without any obligation to contribute back. Patent law can be used to the same effect--insulin was patented and then immediately licensed to the University of Toronto for $1 to ensure that it could be made available at an affordable price to those who needed it. Without patent law a large pharmaceutical company could've taken the technology and quickly establish itself as a monopoly supplier and set the price as high as the market would bear. So although IP law in general is very abused it IS important--we've just lost sight of their true intentions and it is now so twisted it is used to stop innovation and creativity rather tham encourage it.
I'm reminded of the 1975 Saturday Night Live parody commercial about a three-bladed razor
Tech advances always give marketing a chance to get into these sort of competitions. The fact that at least three razor manufacturers not market triple blade razors for real makes it even funnier to watch this parody today.
Interestingly enough a four blade and then a FIVE blade razor came out in 2005, so SNL decided to pay homage to the old parody 30 years later with a commercial about an EIGHT blade razor...it would "strip you to the bone in one pass"!
Given that there has been talk and research about multi-layer optical media for many years now, and regular consumers have only ever been able to get no more than dual-layer, it makes me wonder if this hype is more marketing-driven penis-envy than actual reality. By the time the technology to add more layers is reliable for mass production it seems that technology to make each layer more dense beats it to market (we were supposed to have many more layers on DVD but then HD-DVD and blu-ray came out). Besides this multi-layer tech there is also ongoing parallel development of holographic optical storage media with far greater densities. By the time triple or quad layer HD-DVD or Blu-Ray media is out and players are out there to support it we could see compact-flash-sized holographic cards with 50 GB capacity, or even DVD sized discs with half-a-terabyte. Furthermore, the transfer rate potential of the card format would be faster and the readers and writers simpler to manufacture because they have less mechanical parts.
One other thing to make not of: I think optical media (any physical media actually) as a distribution method for movies, music, etc. is on the wane and that HD-DVD and BD may be the last common physical media formats we will see for this use. The industry seems bent on its own destruction actually--everything from this stupid format war to DRM/"content protection"/bending-over-for-Hollywood is turning off consumers and slowing the uptake of these new formats, and at the same time online distribution (legitimate and otherwise) is reaching that "elbow" in the exponential growth curve. Because of this, I think that new physical storage technology will shift from being driven by entertainment distribution to general digital storage (backup/archival purposes and other computer uses). Therefore I think that a) the market will be smaller and b) that the first new format standards that reliably allow WRITE capability will be the most successful.
I don't think it should be TOO easy to revoke patents, however as it stands it is much too difficult to do so. More importantly, I think that the patent systems in pretty much all juristictions are missing an important thing: RESPONSIBILITIES.
Patents essentially grant monopoly rights to inventors for their creations for an extended time (say 20 years). This is to encourage innovation by giving the inventor time to fully develop and market inventions before competitors can rip them off. This is all based on the assertion that there is always a bigger, richer, "more evil" entity out there who could develop and market an inventor's creation more quickly than a resource-strapped inventor could. Without the originally intended patent protection many inventions would've been commandeered by big, established corporations and the end result would be that innovation would die away and the only entities capable of innovation would be those with vast resources (very large corporations and governments)--and such entities by nature are anti-innovation.
The problem is that patent enforcement is only one-way--it grants protection TO the inventor but asks little to nothing FROM the inventor in terms of responsibility. I think patent reform should include a set of RESPONSIBILITIES as well as rights, and if the patent holder does not live up to those responsibilities the patent should be automatically revoked. The responsibilities I see would be something like the following:
* The inventor must plan to develop and market this invention (make it available to the public in some way) within 'x' years or the patent will expire. The 'x' year period would be much shorter than the 20 year lifespan of a typical patent, and would depend on the "class" of a patent--complex physical devices would be granted several years where simple physical objects and non-physical inventions (technical processes, etc) would be allowed only one year from the granting of a patent. The inventor may develop and market the invention himself or license it to another entity, but the patent-holder CANNOT sit on a patent without actively trying to make the invention happen. If the patent expires after this time frame it becomes public domain.
* The inventor must consistently enforce the patent--if someone willfully violates the patent and it is evident that the patent holder knows of this violation they must pursue royalties or other legal action against the violator within a reasonable time frame. There should be protection from "submarine patents" wielded by patent trolls, such as those used against RIM for example. If RIM made improper use of patented technology there was AMPLE time for the patent holder to take issue with it. It seems that the patent holders in this case deliberately waited until RIM had sufficiently deep and full pockets before reaching into those pockets for a settlement. The patent holder should have a cooperative relationship with developers and manufacturers, not a parasitic one. In such a situation the accused patent violator should have the means to have a patent revoked if it is wilfully abused this way.
* If an invention DOES get developed and is marketed publicly, within the specified time frame and is properly enforced by patent holders, then the patent can be held for the full time frame. However, it must be CONTINUOUSLY marketed/licensed during that time. If the patented item ceases to be publicly marketed/used, and/or there are no current licensees to the technology, then the patent should expire early. Although the intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation, they have become a means of SLOWING innovation because so many good ideas sit in patent files gathering dust on shelves. It is perverse that corporations out there apply for patents (or purchase the patent rights) so they can DELIBERATELY shelve them, and sue out of existence any competition that tries to use the ideas covered in them.
Patent law is just another case of what happens when rights are not balanced with responsibilities.
everyone will drop all their "bad" patents at the same time.
If everyone did that, the incredible mass of patent paperwork impacting the earth's surface simultaneously would produce a force so great as to shift the orbit of the planet! If you think CO2 causes climate change, wait'll you see what THAT would do!
Or is it more like the kind of software that walks into their shop and says `Really nice place you have here, pity if it would burn, eh? Luigi here is really disappointed with your negative attitude to us.'
Well, that's the way Microsoft has managed its partnerships with third party software developers for years. Perhaps they have established their Dynamics CRM solution to leverage that expertise.
People like having a physical object to hold, to use, to show off in display cases - whatever.
When people buy a DVD they aren't buying a movie--they are putting down $20 or whatever to buy a cheap, over-packaged plastic disc worth a few cents plus a license granting them permission to private, non-commercial exhibition. The only true reason for physical distribution media under such a business model, in the media industry, is that it is the best, most established practical technology right now for distribution. The technological requirement for physical media has unfortunately given the impression to consumers that they "own a movie" (or even a "copy of a movie") when no regular individual has EVER really "owned" a movie (or music, or whatever)--the best you can hope for is a "perpetual rental agreement".
I think that electronic distribution not only has the potential to make things much more convenient for the consumer, it is also a more true representation of what you are REALLY getting when you purchase media content--the essential product is not (and never has been) a physical thing but rather the right to enjoy (loot at, listen to, etc) multimedia content. The fact that there is no discrete physical item involved in distribution is merely further optimisation (from film to magnetic tape to optical disc to on-line electronic).
and for the foreseeable future, people will continue to prefer to purchase things which have some physical component, rather than one that is entirely computer based.
I think most people would LOVE to free up all that shelf space in ther display cases for other, more attractive keepsakes (I know very few examples of videos being "shown off", unless it is, say, the star wars geek who has a rare original Betamax release of the "Star Wars" trilogy still in shrink-wrap or something like that). People, aside from those rare exceptions like the aforementioned one, actually buy DVDs to *watch the movie*. Furthermore, people buy non-tangible things all the time, especially in the form of services and utilities: I buy electricity to light my house, I buy internet connectivity, I purchase securities with my online broker and so on, and in none of those cases am I expecting some fixed, physical object in return (though as the case with media, there is generally some transitory physical manifestation associated with the use of these non-tangible items). Consumers aren't so unsophisticated that they cannot at least recognise that not everything you have to pay for is tangible in nature.
It looks to me like the lifespan of physical media formats is undergoing geometric decay: 8mm and 16mm Film were the chief consumer distribution formats (mostly in schools but in a few homes too) for, lets say, four decades (1940s to 1970s). Videotape (U-Matic, then Beta and VHS) became widespread in the 1970s and started giving way to DVD in the 1990s--four decades. Standard-definition digital optical media (DVDs) arrived en-force in the late 1990s and are poised to fade in the late 2000s--one decade. It stands to reason that high-definition digital optical media (BD and HD-DVD) could have a five-year lifespan. Beyond that the whole idea of physical media could be obsolete.
Yes, I know my time frames are perhaps too approximate (small-gauge film existed many years before the 1940s, videotape existed earlier and is still sold today, and so on) but I'm talking about the era of a technology's rise and prominence in the consumer market. Movies will be sold on little plastic discs for a long time to come, but I can't see it being the contemporary distribution method in the 2020s.
My chief concern is that as technology advances distribution becomes more efficient and less costly, however the big, old media distributors are still big and old and inefficient, and are fighting tooth and nail to maintain and even inflate the prices they make consumers pay for their content, using a combination of legislation (DMCA) and what I call "false innovation"
Distance to the shops in miles, distance to the sun in kilometers
;-) AND windows in inches
I measure my weight in stones and pounds, but I cook in grams.
Size of my wang in feet (ok, ok inches) size of my windows in cm.
Canada is a mix'n'match too but not the same as in the UK. Our close proximity to the US and more-recent official conversion to metric than many other countires has made us one confused lot:
* we measure distances to places in units of time (there is a Tim's five minutes away from nearly everywhere in Canada, It is 30 minutes to my office, I live three hours from the US border)
* we measure outdoor temperatures in humidex (a dimensionless number invented in Canada) on hot summer days, Celcius on mild days, wind chiill factor on cold winter days, and number of seconds it takes for exposed flash to freeze solid when in Winnipeg or Edmonton.
* we measure our wangs (ok, ok, in feet
However, a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold, because feathers are measured using the avoirdupois system (1 pound = about 453.59 g) while gold uses Troy (1 pound = about 373.24 g).
Hold on a minute--I always thought that a pound was a pound was a pound, and that a "Troy ounce" was different from a "normal ounce" (1/12 of a pound vs 1/16 of a pound). Now, becaus of you and Wikipaedia I now know that not only are the ounces different AND the number of ounces in each pound are Different, but the size of each pound is different too!
Even more perverse--a Troy Oz is HEAVIER than a normal ox, but a Troy pound is LIGHTER than a normal pound!
It's no wonder y'all down there in the US crash your space probes into planets.
Anyone else have experience with popped caps not causing a motherboard to fail?
I have had two of five motherboards reach the end of their useful life due to capacitor failure. On both occasions the computers were still usable but were not reliable. The symptoms were intermittent/inconsistent software crashes that gradually increased in frequency. My old Win2K machine would get BSODs every once in awhile, and it gradually got worse (I suspect as more of the capacitors burst). It wasn't until several failed that I got fed up and took it apart and noticed. What was actually bad Chinese capacitors I had been blaming on crappy Windows! I still think Windows is crappy though--it is a magnet for crackers and too high-maintenance for my tastes, and I switched to Linux on the desktop out of frustration when I replaced the motherboard and Win2k wouldn't boot (even into safe mode or with the recovery floppies) without major OS surgery.
The other capacitor failure was on a PC being used as a Linux server. It would kernel panic and/or spontaneously shut down on random occasions. The noisy CPU fan tricked me into thinking that its cooling ability had degraded and that it was shutting down due to overheating. I replaced it and the problem persisted. When I opened it back up I noticed three burst caps---HIDING UNDER THE HEAT SINK--lying on their sides adjacent to the CPU socket! What a horrible place to put such a component! I also took the opportunity to upgrade there as well. Unlike with Windows, Linux allowed me to swap motherboards and still boot into the OS to reconfigure drivers and the process was much less of a hassle.
Anyways, I think it is highly unlikely that the failure of a single electrolytic capacitor will be immediately noticeable. Firstly, a failed cap (puffed up and/or leaky) usually still has capacitance and might even be good enough to do the job. Second, these giant capacitors are most often are used on voltage supply lines for isolation (to keep the DC signal smooth and free of spikes and dropouts). The exact value of these caps is not critical as long as it is large enough to do the job. Often for simplicity's sake (to reduce the number of different caps needed) the manufacturer will use a much larger cap than required just because there are (for example) three others that need to be that size anyways--the reduction in number of different parts reduces manufacturing costs.
As I said neither machine became completely non-functional, and I suspect from their physical appearance that one or two caps failed long before the others in both cases. It depends on what the capacitor was doing, and how badly it failed. When a capacitor fails that is involved in power conditioning the result could be spikes and dropouts in the power supply connections to your CPU or other critical components. The result, I can attest, is maddening: Kernel panics, what look like memory errors cropping up and memory tests still passing and so on. As such, I applaud any motherboard manufacturer for making systems more reliable by reducing or eliminating less efficient components like electrolytic capacitors. The marketing of it is pretty dubious though--the replacements are "faster"? I didn't know that DC power rails had to be fast, or even COULD be fast! Fast-switching digital circuits are supposed to have the SMALLEST capacitance possible aren't they? I think the point is that solid capacitors are better for over-clockers because of their temperature resistance and better reliability at higher voltages, not because they're "faster".
You should do a little research into Microsoft's motives before you blindly bash.
As I mentioned in my original post, I was not "blindly bashing". I was speaking of Microsoft's long and well-known track record on usability. I also acknowledged that my exposure to the latest Office was too limited to comment definitively and that the presentation I viewed some months ago gave me the impression that they haven't completely learned their lesson (and even asked others if I was wrong--after all you can't say until you've used it if a UI is really user-friendly).
The vast majority of the changes Microsoft implements are the result of user request and feedback.
EXACTLY. That is also the exactly WRONG way to do user interface design. The problem is that in the past users would make requests on HOW as well as WHAT. The problem is that for many years there was not enough usability testing of the resulting product, and guess what? Users are rarely competent at user interface design. They are great for giving feedback on what you have done, but are not good at telling you what to do because they can only work in the context of what they know...and all they know is how the old stuff worked. How the old stuff worked plus some addon is more often than not quite a sub-optimal solution, and often an incremental CHANGE would be a better alternative. No, after so many incremental ADDITIONS MS got to the point where they had to do a drastic, wholesale change from one version to the next.
In short, MS' myopia has bitten them in the ass.
Back in Office 2000, they introduced "adaptive menus", which you (and everyone else) hated. Why did they do it? Because people were bitching about the menus being too big and hard to navigate.
The problem with MS isn't that they haven't acknowledged bloat. The problem is that they did it the wrong way. Users were complaining that the menus were too big and something along the lines of "I never use that...you should get rid of it to make the menus simpler". So MS did like I said above--they "designed by opinion poll" rather than using proper design principles. MS crunched the numbers and they decided...FOR THEMSELVES...which functions deserved to be relegated to hidden status. THAT is what drove people up the wall--that MS was telling users what was best for them. Furthermore, there was nothing significant done to improve navigation--adaptive menus only addressed the size part of the complexity equation.
My point is that Microsoft is not "forcing" anything on the user; they're actually *gasp* trying to help the user, trying to give them what they want.
WRONG...MS---at least in the past--HAS "forced" a lot on the user. If that was not the case why would the O'reilly "annoyances" series even exist, much less be so highly regarded? The default always has been to enable all the hand-holding, MS-knows-best features in Windows and the Office suite. XP has this "adaptive" start menu by default. After some head-scratching, the typical user can switch it to "classic" mode or find out how to "pin" icons to the top-level menu. However, out-of-the-box behaviour is this ever-changing top-level menu with unpredictable behaviour (I still haven't figured it out--it seems to be related to frequence of use, however there are apps that I'll open several times a day that refuse to go on the start menu until I pin them there).
Until recently, Office would also open up with all sorts of annoying junk enabled by default, such as the notorious clippy who tries to guess what you are doing and autocorrecting-this and active-that. Try pasting C or Perl listings into a document with default word behaviour some time, and watch as bracket-and-semicolons get changed into cutsey winky-faces and the slashes and asterisks in comments get interpreted as bold and italic formatting cues, and indenting tabs getting interpreted inconsistently and so on. Perl source can look bad enough as it is---Word turns it into unusable Egyptian heiro
Their "open" XML format for office docs is a prime example of this.
I think Steve Jobs was the one who first said "Microsoft just doesn't get it". Microsoft was probably the very first third-party software developer for the Mac and this was Jobs' reaction to Microsoft's first Mac applications (I think a port of Multiplan--which was re-incarnated into Excel IIRC, and MSBasic). They really WERE "tasteless", ugly and took almost no advantage of the revolutionary GUI interface--their DOSness really showed through--I think in the case of Multiplan the mouse could be used only to jump the cursor to a certain cell and that was it--the rest was all like in DOS.
MS Windows is another example--Microsoft didn't "get it" well enough until the third major release. Now MS is SLOWLY "getting it" with the beneficial characteristics of XML standards. Microsoft's early XML efforts are like Windows 1.0--there is some very rudmentary understanding of the mechanics but not the philosophy of XML, and I wonder if this is why SOAP ended up NOT so simple (given Microsofties were involved in its creation and seemed to be trying to make it a DCOM-in-XML-but-dumber thing). Microsoft's "Version1" XML might look like this: "See? We're using XML and SOAP! We're hip! We're cooool! You can't say we don't play by the rules now!"
Of course, this is an obtuse, opaque and obsfucated way to use XML andtotally NOT in the spirit of interoperability and openness. I won't even go into the nifty XML tools MS has made...nifty to use but they've done a lot to obliterate the S out of SOAP in their crazy output.
OOXML (Opaque and Obsfucated XML) standard is "version 2.0"--they're doing their best to eliminate ambiguity but now we've gone over to hyper-specificity, and the standard is being shared a bit better...problem is that they don't fully describe the interpretation of the standard elements so as to keep its advantage. All they've done is taken every formatting option and mapped it to an XML element--it is monolithic and completely non-extensible. But hey, at least its publicly available and doesn't involve weirdness like encoded-binary-blobs.
In a few years MS will reach version 3.0 of "getting" XML...
and in its place is a steering wheel and foot pedals and a streamlined context-sensitive dash-board control with only a few buttons, but only the buttons that you happen to need at the time
A "context-sensitive dashboard"? What a horrible idea! Another poster very insightfully responded with a comparison to iDrive on BMWs and a few other high-end cars. General consensus is that it is total garbage--annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Why is that? Well, in a car the driver is the primary user of the dashboard and the driver is generally looking at the road ahead. The dashboard should NOT be "context-sensitive" or otherwise dynamic in nature. IT SHOULD BE STATIC. The important functions of a dashboard should ALL be visible, in the same place, ALL THE TIME (even better there should be a tactile element as well--buttons, knobs and such should be raised).
Drivers need to be able to use such an interface using quick glances and/or by feel. iDrive's ever-changing, and largely non-tactile user interface is much too distracting to the driver...it was so poorly conceived that Microsoft had to simplify the interface navigation and make the little knob have better tactile feedback in the next revision because as it was in its introduction it was almost totally unusable unless the driver was able to pull over, and users wanted many iDrive functions to be safely accessible while driving. Add to that the software bugs that caused such things as radio to go on and off at whim, trunks to open spontaneously and so on and iDrive has been a disaster.
I haven't yet tried out these "ribbon" things, though I've on a couple of occasions seen live demonstrations of the user interface. While almost anything could be better than the horrid menu system Office has traditionally had such a drastic change is pretty risky--they didn't even leave the wheel and pedals (to carry on the analogy)--it is more like they replaced the wheel with a joystick and the pedals with thumb-and-trigger buttons. Everything is in different places and WORKS differently--it doesn't matter if some study deems that technical advantages exceed disadvantages or that it is easier to learn--the fact is there are a billion people out there who know the old way of driving.
It is true that a desktop isn't a car and that the analogy isn't TOTALLY valid, however there are some universal principals of designing for usability that MS repeatedly insists on violating. The biggest of these is making things too "automatically dynamic". They've been doing this since sometime not long after NT4 came out: First they hide rarely-used start menu items...AUTOMATICALLY...WITHOUT user's input on how or when to do it. THEN they release XP and hide the old menu items under an added layer...and put FREQUENTLY used items out front...again without much control given to the user. I guess at least they threw us a *little* bone and let us "pin" icons and clear them out totally at will, but they re-appear (or don't) on what seems like a total whim.
Now they have this new MS Office with its "ribbons" and context-sensitivity and reorganisation and my first impression is that they KEEP ON HIDING AND MOVING STUFF for us. Much of the new interface is clever and makes navigation much less cumbersome. However, then they go and mess with your head again with these "dynamic" elements (galleries) and obscurity (putting what are basically file management functions in "another start menu" indicated only by a goofy little "office system" logo). I would've preferred a somewhat different approach--one that allowed a bit more user configure-ability. In any case I'll have a more informed opinion once I actually have to use it rather than sitting and watching a demo of it.
Perhaps someone can confirm to me whether or not my concerns is valid--has MS learned anything or are they still pushing the user around by doing too may user-interface alterations automatically?
The problem isn't with running a low-voltage wire through a high-voltage conduit - the problem is that someone could later run a high-voltage wire through the same conduit.
Although that is a good reason to NOT use high-voltage conduit for low-voltage runs I do NOT believe it is a code violation (it is merely "not recommended"). In the interests of simplicity in large installations it might be easier to use the same kind of conduit for all runs. The remedy to the problem you describe is to MARK THE CONDUIT PROPERLY. I worked for a time in the Physical Plant dept. of a large medical facility and the same kind of conduit and cable trays were used for all sorts of wiring. To meet code/safety requirements the conduit was marked with standard coloured stripes and labeled at regular intervals ("comms", "low voltage", "120/208V", etc).
The electrician/inspector did not have to order the conduit removed--it probably would'vebeen fine to paint a stripe down the side and stencil "comms cable only" at regular intervals...thus it is a suitable candidate for "silly hacks".
...amongst apologists on both sides: short and inaccurate.
You might want to look at who controlled congress in 1994
Well...looking back it seems that the Hollywood Party (R)(TM) (more commonly known as the Democrats) ran the entire show at that point. Yes, 1994 was a pivotal election year, however those elections happen at the END of the year and the new bums didn't throw out the old bums officially until 1995.
Congress writes the laws, the president merely signs them or vetoes them
Which begs the question that if Clinton was such a great president for the 'net and information freedom why he didn't actually USE those veto powers.
So, you've gone and voted out the Oil Party and brought back in the Hollywood Party. Somehow I don't foresee any big sea change in IP law as a result.
Assuming a worst-case scenario of those queries being shoe-horned into a typical 8-hour working day, that equates to an average of 35 queries a second, multiplied by some factor to account for peak usage. I have no experience of MySQL specifically but that doesn't sound like an unreasonable ball-park to me - with a decent server, proper indexing and well-written queries I don't see why you should struggle.
I'd also say from experience that either of the main Free/open source options could handily manage the load you've described here. Besides making sure you have robust hardware there are application design and requirements to consider in the choice of RDBMS as well that relate to "quality and not quantity"
Personally I'd choose PostgreSQL 8.x over MySQL because (again from direct experience) is is head and shoulders above any other Free solution out there when it comes to concurrency and its transactional support is a fair bit more mature than MySQL. The main consideration is how update-heavy your application is. The article poster said that these transactions would be done concurrently with reporting and data analysis. If the transactions are essentially a series of INSERT statements then there wouldn't be much impact on performance in MySQL and I'd say stick with it because it is what you have now (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). The performance gap has closed quite a bit in the last few years, but MySQL still has a bit of an edge when it comes to single-table queries and basic INSERTs. If that is what you are doing most then it is great.
However, if you are doing multi-statement transactions with UPDATEs on one or more existing records, and/or INSERT and UPDATE operations that rely on data retrieved from some moderate to complex SELECT statement and this is within a single transaction then you have to be a fair bit more careful with MySQL than with PostgreSQL to avoid concurrency problems. If one client runs such a transaction on a MySQL database there are more situations where the transaction will lock rows and/or tables and all other clients will e blocked until the transaction is finished. Generally it is good practice (regardless of the RDBMS used) to avoid long-running transactions as much as possible, however at times an expensive transaction may be unavoidable
and that is where PostgreSQL's MVCC handles things much better.
Another consideration is how your business logic is handled. I prefer to make use of the database to make sure business rules are followed as it offers, almost without exception, the best performance by far. It is basically impossible to use tools/languages like PHP, Perl, Ruby or Python to handle ground-floor business logic faster or better than the database can. MySQL's heritage is simplicity and performance and thus there has been little emphasis on data integrity. It is pretty slow and tedious to have to rely on higher-level layers to do things like make sure '0000-00-00' and '2007-02-30' are not accepted as valid dates, or ensure referential integrity, or simulate triggers. If you know the data going into the database is already of high quality (it is validated at a higher-level, or it is acquired through automation such as barcodes or RFIDs or industrial controllers) and you are doing straight SELECTs without processing at the DBMS level then MySQL will present no problems and its performance and small footprint might be worth more than the unused capabilities of a heavier database back-end.
However, if you must validate human-entered data at the DBMS level or need to create queries that do calculations or other data manipulations (aggregate functions, concatenations, getting a timespan from different dates, etc) then MySQL is VERY INFURIATING to a seasoned database admin or programmer. This is because while MySQL behaves consistently, it is often consistently WRONG behaviour (by that I don't mean it spits out 2+2=5 or it works differently from howit was designed--I mean wrong in that it is different from how most people thin
...the original Religious War of personal-computerdom. It has set the pace for later religous wars between PC vs. Mac and Linux/open vs. Windows/proprietary.
The Commodore 64 had the same component video outputs. It used 1 RCA cable for each, whereas the S-Video uses a single cable with 4 wires.
The C64 also wasn't introduced until three years after the Atari 800--the PET and Vic-20 were Commodore's initial offering against the Atari 800 and they were decidedly less capable with video and did not have component video output as the Atari did.
The Commodore actually didn't use one cable for each component--it was like the Atari in that it had a single DIN connector (looks like a giant version of S-video). The cable just split into three RCA-style plugs on the end. The other little 8-bit computer I had with a component video output was the Coleco ADAM, released a year or so after the C64.
Infuriatingly, they all similar connectors but the pinout was different amongst all of them. The 1702 monitor from Commodore had component inputs that worked with the Atari and Coleco...but you needed different cables! To make matters worse, whatever plans Atari and Coleco had to introduce cables (and maybe monitors) where shelved and they never offered such cables, so you had to solder up your own. I went through the trouble and managed to make the Commodore 1702 work with an Atari 800 and a Coleco ADAM just fine.
Oddly enough, the Commodore 64's display on a Commodore 1702 was noticeably less crisp than the Atari's display. Besides being sharper the Atari's colour was much better. Commodore had a selection of 16 hues of a fixed brightness, all over-saturated. Atari 800 had 16 hues with 8 levels of brightness and a much better saturation level. My theory about the crispness was that the whole Atari 800 ran off the colourburst crystal--the processor merely used the colourburst divided by two (just under 1.8 MHz). Commodore's system frequency was just over 1 MHz and didn't divide evenly into the colourburst frequency used by the video circuitry, which maybe made it more prone to interference (NTSC, and even the 1702 monitor, used colourburst as the fundamental frequency of operation).
And thus the rivalry between the systems--they had many similarities (CPU, overall power, size of software library, entertainment-oriented sound and graphics capabilities) and their differences seemed to cancel each other out (C64 had superior sound and better sprites, Atari had better overall graphics and crisper display, Atari had much faster disk drive and peripherals, C64 had much slower disk drive but could store a lot more on each disk, etc).
Thus, no "vintage" collection would be complete without a C64 and an Atari 800 (or derivative like 800XL or maybe even 65XE). The big early personal computer players in North America were Commodore, Tandy/Radioshack, Apple, Atari and Texas Instruments so thatwouldbe quite a complete collection. To cover Europe/UK you cannot ignore Sinclair (Spectrum and ZX81), BBC/Acorn or Amstrad/CPC.
Also, you must include CP/M and S100-bus computers as they are the progenitors of today's open-architecture PC platform. The MITS Altair was the first S100 (it was the inspiration for the platform). Individual S100 vendors were never big players but the CP/M-on-S100 market as a whole was comparable or larger in size than the total market size of the above players. If you want an "interesting" machine within your budget then you might opt for an S100 machine over something as common as a C64 or Atari 800 or Apple IIe. Altairs are much too rare but other specimens from the likes of IMSAI or Cromemco or Processor Technologies might be available very cheaply if you can find them (you might be lucky and find someone who has such equipment and doesn't even know what it is).
As for consoles, I consider vintage anything introduced over 20 years ago (more recent than that id "retro" but I'd say that it is not yet "vintage") so despite some posters here disag
"What's for dinner honey?" - "Caterpillars and worms...
Hey there is hope for the Linux desktop yet! For a few years now Microsoft Windows users have been fed a very steady diet of worms. Lots and lots of worms. Thousands of different kinds of worms. And Windows has been able to serve them up faster than McDoe's could ever hope to serve up a Big Mac!
Really, MS and the Linux desktop are simply leapfrogging over each other...in 2001 we got a prettied up desktop in XP, in 2002 GNOME and KDE leapfrogged over them with a major version, in 2007 MS will bring Vista to the unwashed masses and I imagine in 2008/2009 Linux will get more greatness from GNOME and KDE.
This is a pretty lame indictment of the Free software community if you ask me. The author of the article makes a great deal of noise about there being six or seven years between major releases of GNOME and KDE, and seems to have glossed over the fact that MS went over five years themselves, despite having thousands of developers and billions of dollars to throw at it. Furthermore, calling XP a major release is questionable...it was by and large window-dressing to Win2000 (and technically it WAS a point-release from 5.0 to 5.1 wasn't it? I think the SP2 upgrade was probably almost as significant as 2k-to-XP too...). Really, MS will have gone almost EIGHT years between major releases.
Besides, I question the focus on the numbering system as a measure of progress--I've found that historically Free software products progress faster and have more significant changes between major releases. Nobody would say that from kernel 2.0.x to kernel 2.6.x there has been a lack of progress due to the fact it'll be something over a decade after 2.0 before a 3.x.x release. Projects like the kernel and Apache (and, yes, the desktop environments) have reserved the major release number for very fundamental, architectural overhauls. If Windows was a Free software project I do not think it would be numbered like it was--Windows 2.x would've been 1.x releases, 3.0 through Me would've been 2.x and NT 3.1 through XP would've been 3.x releases. For what its worth, I think that although Apple has been the pacesetter that Linux is still easily out-pacing Microsoft in terms of modernising the desktop overall, despite the whining about lack of "major releases".
And a company thinking they can be fascist about everything risks losing their employees.
Well, if the IT dept. is a bunch of control freaks that lock down things so badly their employees struggle to get their work done it is a problem. However, if you call your employer fascist for using proxy servers, firewalls, VPNs, corporate anti-virus and so on to run a tight shift then you risk losing your employer (and a good reference to use on your hunt for your next job). I think most employers take a dim view of employees who have such a negative view about the company and who consciously try to thwart measures put in place to keep IS infrastructure secure and reliable.
There are two kinds of organisations that can afford to provide luxuries like seamless remote access and multi-gigabyte inboxes in house: Very large, tech-savvy enterprises like Google and Microsoft (who can give such things out like candy) or very small, tech-savvy outfits (such as self-employed consultants or an employee count in the dozens or less) where a mid-range server-class PC has the capacity to provide this and it can be managed by one egghead. The rest of medium to large enterprises with hundreds to thousands of users do have a challenge--especially those businesses that are not in the tech industry and cannot dedicate huge resources to set of a big data centre. Thus, the vast majority of workers have to contend with relatively tiny inboxes and somewhat less-than-integrated systems.
These days, however, I really do NOT see the justification for forwarding corporate email to a public account like gMail or Hotmail. You have a bit of a problem managing your in-box if you need a gigabyte. The vast majority of employers with personnel who need remote access now provide VPNs or otherwise have some secured/encrypted remote accessibility to email and selected other systems too. Furthermore, things like customer contact lists, purchase orders, estimates and so on are fairly private. We wouldn't like to have people send our credit card statements, including the account number and expiry and details of all our purchases, to be sent un-encrypted and without our knowledge of when and where it is going. If personal private info can be afforded this protection why can't businesses have a reasonable level of privacy too?
It seems interesting that there was enough demand for a 2GB mailbox offering for any reason anyhow. I am quite a hobbyist and a one-time self-employed consultant and still have my own email server so I can set my limits however I want--I have set up to accept 256MB attachments and have 40GB of space allocated for use as my mail store/home directory. Despite that I've never received an email message over about 25MB and my inbox has never even reached 1GB much less 2GB. I have IMAP set up and keep things organised in multiple folders and the entire email directory of all folders, with years of messages, is a small fraction of that. If I have large binary attachments the message gets deleted and the file gets put outside mail into the home or shared directories. Given the usage my personal wide-open setup I see even less justification for corporations to dedicate such capacity, so I'd expect that any employee who asks for the ability to forward to gMail or get his own email-gigabox would have to present a convincing case of extraordinarily special needs. More than likely such employees just have a fetish for big fancy technology and want bragging rights. I have only seen in VERY rare cases recently where corporations do not put significant effort into providing for the access needs of their remote employees.
...to understand the concept of a trademark.
They're talking about multiple random outputs - ie - each and every file has a different signature and watermark.
Let me explain a few things about trademarks and the defence that Autodesk is using. I'm not saying it is TOTALLY right, however there IS legal justification.
a) Autodesk's signature/watermark is NOT randomly generated--it is a calculated using a fixed algorithm.
b) A trademark does NOT only cover an EXACT representation of a mark--it never has.
Unless the software is designed to submit each and every signature and watermark that is generated for trademark status, their case basis doesn't hold liquid, gas or solid matter.
You are wrong. Under current trademark law, when applied to traditional (visual, non-digital) marques, a single trademark registration can cover ANY NUMBER of variations that convey the identity of a product or company that is used in trade. For example, a unique or invented word or phrase can be registered as a trademark REGARDLESS of visual representation. The word "Olympic" is a registered trademark for example, and it is valid whether or not it is accompanied by the 5-ring graphical symbol and regardless of the colour it is written in, or the font or the size. There are companies that have been legally challenged for trading using marques such as "Olympic Leather" and "Olympic Meats". The IOC often loses such cases, however the court more often than not places legal restrictions on such uses--for example Olympic Leather couldn't manufacture and sell sporting goods/apparel using the "Olympic" marque, even if they contain their leather, without licensing the trademark from the IOC.
Apple Computer is another example of how trademarks work--they have trademarked the words "Apple" and "MacIntosh" without specific visual representation for the purposes of trading in personal computers. The same goes with iPod for music players (in fact, Apple has gone a bit TOO crazy and tried to make a case that the initial lowercase "i" is their trademark...I think trademarking plain words it pushing it too much let alone a single letter...). Apple also has a registered trademark for the "Apple" graphic for use on personal computers and consumer electronic devices. It doesn't specify the original "mixed up rainbow" colour scheme, nor does the position or presence of the bite matter. Apple Records has also trademarked the use of an apple on audio media and music marketing/distribution materials and even though their respective graphic representations differ it has been a contentious issue over the years (Apple Records had little defense so long as Apple Computer restricted itself to trading in computers, but when Macs were marketed for use in creating music using Midi and digitising, and later when the iPod music player was introduced, the dispute resurfaced).
Obviously then a trademark registration does NOT limit itself to a specific visual definition of a marque. In fact, when you register a trademark legal experts specifically advise you NOT to be overly specific (you should NOT implicitly or explicitly describe the colour, size, font, specific uses and so on unless it is required to make your marque distinctive--it is better to err on the generic side and add specificity if your registration is challenged). This is Autodesk's argument--the FIXED data that makes up some or all of the algorithm represents a distinct marque, and the data in the drawing that combines with it to create the signature represents a variation of that marque. The signature generated by combining your drawing with their watermark/key/algorithm is the legal equivalent to applying colour, shading, decorative typeface or other embellishment to the registered version of the trademark.
I do agree that this is quite a stretch, but these lawyers have obviously carefully examined the law to craft this argument and it sounds quite valid. Perhaps it is a bit evil, and yes I the motive isn't based only on tec
that information and services will be widely available, in widely adopted formats, so that they can be harnessed together in unforeseen ways to create new applications almost in near-real time.
Your description EXACTLY DESCRIBES a scenario in which I have direct knowledge. Where I am, industrial consumers of electricity can get market prices of electricity, both current and historical. This information is "widely available" and provided in "widely adopted" XML format. This data is "harnessed together" by power consumers in ways "unforseen" by electrical utilities to create "new applications" to monitor operational costs "in near real time".
The fact that companies still pay millions to SAP and IBM for system integration on a case-by-case basis is a strong counter argument to your assertion that this vision is already realized.
It does nothing of the sort. It actually is the exact opposite--it strongly SUPPORTS my argument. You don't even have the right idea about my argument--it isn't that the "vision has been realised"--it is that the world is catching onto the vision. Of COURSE it hasn't been realised yet--such a task is gargantuan! The reason companies have to pay for integration on a case-by-case basis is NOT because the end result is different for each company--it is because the STARTING POINT is different. And arcane. And very proprietary. There is also great inertia to overcome and the fact that there is movement at all to change the way of collaborating is a feat in itself.
All this information is already recorded, but only in disparate systems and formats. Wal-Mart (for instance) tracks this sort of information closely, yet you'll be kicked out of their store if you so much as go into a store and write down the prices of goods on the shelves.
You seem to be focusing solely on the business-to-end-consumer part of the supply chain as if the rest of the stuff didn't even exist. You completely ignore the relationship between wal-mart and its suppliers, those suppliers and their suppliers of raw materials, the transportation/distribution/logistic companies and all of the above, etc. The B2C end part of the chain is probably the least developed! You talk about having this "personal agent" doing comparison shopping for you, well Wal-mart themselves ALREADY DOES THAT--they have their own "business intelligence" software that takes data from ALL their suppliers, in a format mandated by wal-mart to their suppliers, and takes inventory data from ALL their stores and churns through it and finds out the lowest cost suppliers for each category, which stores move which merchandise the best, etc, etc. Wal-mart takes that data and uses it to it maximum potential--ruthlessly. If a supplier is not moving goods fast enough or comes out the most expensive or with the lowest profit margin, that supplier is hauled to the carpet and told to get in line or your contract will not be renewed (or it could even be terminated).
You mention "Wal-mart tracks this information closely" and then just leave it at that, like that has nothing to do with the argument. The way wal-mart does this is EXACTLY the philosophy that web service technology follows (whether or not wal-mart implements exactly this technology): Data is widely available (the network of wal-mart stores is MASSIVE and HQ can see EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE) and is in a standard format (mandated by Wal-mart, but in our case mandated by open standards) and used in unforseen ways (walmart-continually improves its business intelligence software, and suppliers never have any idea how the data they provide is used by wal-mart). Everyone is starting to realise the potential of such a philosophy and the importance of it. We are merely at the forefront and in many years that is where things are heading.
The airline industry is constantly bucking legislation requiring them to state upfront the simple total price of a ticket. Same for cell phone companies. The fact is, there is strong resistance to elim
They're arguing that since you don't own the computer the message is stored on, you have no right to privacy. That makes no sense,
If you confess to a murder on the back of a postcard and email it to your brother, and your brother goes to the police with said postcard, or even if the mailman sees it and goes to the police before you brother even reads it, there is nothing stopping the police from charging you with murder. If the police find YOUR bloody gloves in your neighbours' yard the evidence is admissable if the neighbours willingly allowed the search or the police had a warrant to search their premesis.
Don't know where to start with this one. First, when we talk about "public domain," we're talking copyrightable works. The internet isn't copyrightable. Second, the government doesn't own the individual links in the internet backbone.
How about starting here: Search warrants are based upon the location not on the owner or originator of the evidence, so whatever copyright or ownership issues you have really do not matter. If you leave a used condom in a public park after having relations with a prostitute that later turns up dead, should that evidence be inadmissible or require some special warrant before it is examined? Is it an unjustifiable "invasion of privacy" because they can find out about your sex life? OF COURSE NOT! If you are having sex with a prostitute in a public place and don't umm...clean up after yourself, or if you confess on the back of a postcard and send it outside your private domain you cannot expect to be afforded protection of privacy.
Hell, chances are your every move is being recorded as you do your Christmas shopping, and pretty much everywhere you walk on the streets of London in public view...and you expect that sending an UNENCRYPTED transmission through a PUBLIC network to an OUTSIDE computer--without the permission of the recipient I might add--should be protected under some sort of right to privacy? What makes email so much more special than a message on a postcard, or walking down the street with a bullhorn, or skywriting, or beating the sh!t out of Rodney King on a public street whilst being videotaped by a concerned observer behind a bush?
I'm having a hard time seeing why an unsecured communication between two people should be protected when it's a phone conversation taking place over, say, Verizon-owned fiber, but not if it's an email saved on a Verizon-owned hard drive.
You're having a hard time because they AREN'T THE SAME THING. If law enforcement monitored a telephone conversation--or an instant message conversation, or perhaps the packets of data in and out of your PC, in real time, unbeknownst to EITHER party involved in the exchange, then yes, that would be wiretapping and it would require a warrant. If you are a stalker and leave a dirty phone message on some lady's answering machine, and the lady freaks out and brings in the message to the police, then there is no need for a warrant. I think that when some dork mass mails me some penis enlargement advertisement that it is the same as the stalker leaving dirty messages on an answering machine--the only difference is the media.
The only use of the signature is to control access to Autodesk files.
If that is what the court finds then the case will be immediately thrown out, because at that point it is no longer a trademark. The thing is that at this point there is NO RESTRICTION AT ALL on opening and using DWGs that lack the signature. From what I understand, the current version of AutoCAD puts up a warning box to nag you with some FUD around saying it isn't an "official" DWG file and it might crash the system. I think that is a bit over-the-top and I imagine most engineers and draftsmen will probably just scoff at it and disable the warnings.
If I was ruling on such a case (and I probably couldn't make such a ruling but I think it would be the fairest way of handling it) I would give this one to Autodesk, with the proviso that they have to send out a patch that disables the warning box by default (and to keep it disabled in all future Autodesk products) so as not to artificially influence the market for competitors. This would protect AutoCADs trademark and help the consumer with technical assistance if there are problems (AutoCAD support could tell the user to go File->properties or something, and if the drawing didn't have an Autodesk signature they could inform the user to contact customer support for the right product).
the semantic web and web services will never fly. Companies don't want to make their data and services available to each other.
I shake my head that this was modded "insightful". Sounds more like a troll to me but whatever. Either timeOday is a master at trolling or he has his head very far up his arse. I hoe it is the former but fear it may be the latter.
In my career I've seen companies spend a GREAT DEAL of time and money trying to "make their data and services available to one another". They don't do this because it is a fad--they do it because they HAVE to to stay competitive and there is a very convincing cost-benefit-analysis argument to do so. There is a VERY large industry in systems integration and EDI (electronic data interchange). Companies have spent millions on systems based upon SAP and IBM WebSphere and the like to do EXACTLY what you day companies don't want to do! ERP systems are being upgraded to accept orders from customers, to send orders to suppliers, utility billing and monitoring, financial reporting to meet securities regulations, etc...ALL USING WEB SERVICES and related technologies. In fact, manufacturers who deal with large retailers HAVE to do this to survive--you HAVE to have a very close electronic link with Walmart's suppliy-chain management system to even have the privlige of getting shelf space in their stores!
Companies have been trying to share data and otherwise interact electronically for decades, and success has always been limited to some degree. This mostly has to do with the EDI industry being infested with proprietary, single-vendor formats and protocols and the expense associated with implementing and integrating them. Web services demolish nearly all those barriers. It is not only not a fad, the hype is actually giving way to an uptick in actual, real-life implementation of the technology!
I cannot say whether the demise of Google's SOAP API is being done in the name of simplicity but I CAN tell you it has nothing at all to do with the failure of the semantic web, OR web services because they are nto failing at all. However, Google DOES subscribe to the KISS philosophy and has recently redoubled its efforts to keep to that philosophy while it grows its product and service line along with its corporate size. Therefore simplicity probably is the most likely reason. They will have an AJAX API with which to offer their searching service to others without visiting their site, and SOAP really IS overly complex to provide such a function.
All in all, I think it is a sign that the web services space is maturing and becoming more sophisticated. There are well known and better-suited alternatives to SOAP for many applications now so there is no need to support it--not like in earlier times before the rise of AJAX-style apps when it seemed there was this mentality that Web Services meant SOAP over HTTP and that was it.
including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization,
.dwg files are clean from a copyright standpoint but the libraries have the ability to watermark or digitally sign the file--it is the signature in the resulting file generated by the library that is what Autodesk has taken issue with and they have pulled the lawyers out of their legal cesspool..uhhh..I mean department...to block the use of their signatures. Precedent doesn't allow them to block competitors from using the .dwg format itself.
- valve-cover-engine-bling that you can easily fit to your modest little DX for that pimpin' project.
.DWGs properly report what was used to create the file for support purposes anyways. After all, it has ALWAYS annoyed me that Microsoft has always had "mozilla" in their user agent string for all those years as its roots from the original spyglass software gradually withered and died.
That is the key statement in the claim. The code in the libraries that read and generate
The lawyers say that the watermarks and digital signatures are equivalent to a logo and that it is afforded protection under trademark law. The car analogy is pretty apt here: Imagine you want to rice-ify your 1989 Civic--you can get cheap third-pary knockoffs from any company--even those without any affiliation with Honda and those suppliers are legally allowed to make everything from spoilers-big-enough-to-use-as-the-tail-of-a-737 to neon-coloured-ignition-wires-and-matching-chromed
There is next to nothing Honda could do to prevent anyone from making and selling parts with matching bolt patterns, electrical connectors, etc. that interoperate with their cars. Believe me, automakers have tried a few times in the past without success to apply industrial design and patent law without success (and rightly so). What Honda CAN do (and probably should be able to do anyways) is prevent anyone from putting the Honda LOGO on their knockoff parts, or the phrase "Genuine Honda" or similar such markings as it misrepresents the source of the aftermarket parts and leads consumers into making wrong assumptions about the quality, source, warranty, etc. Which is why Honda really doesn't like those fake R stickers and has made some effort to stop them from being made. Of course, those fake Rs are easily produced and distributed do it is a really hard game of whack-a-mole, plus the fakers only have to alter the appearance of their own Rs slightly to get around trademark issues.
Anyways, because of this I don't really have an issue with Autodesk protecting their trademarks--though I think that a digital signature is brushing the line of what constitutes a trademark. If all that is at issue is the idea that a user can open a DWG and look at its properties and it has a "generated by AutoCAD xxxx" property in there when it was NOT generated by AutoCAD then what's the big deal? I think it is probably best that programs that do greate
Where I WOULD have a problem is if Autodesk were to use this signature to prevent interoperability, which would in my mind constitute abuse of a monopoly position. If...at any point and in any way...the absence of a "generated by genuine AutoCAD" signature prevented the file from being FULLY usable in AutoCAD or prevented "genuine autocad" files from being fully used by 3rd party software...then it ceases to be a trademark and becomes an access control mechanism that limits interoperability. Though I imagine then they'd LOVE to pull a DMCA trick....oh well...THAT is the point where Autodesk will have truly moved into the dark side.
...makes me wonder what business outside the US have to do to hold a valid certificate to get the "green light"
Incorporating in my case (1-person business) would mean hiring a lawyer and accountant to file the annual state forms, draw up the stock agreement, and file the taxes in return for a few hundred dollars in tax savings and pretty much no liability protection.
In my case there wasn't much difference either way in terms of operating expenses or tax advantages--it was all a wash, but I incorporated anyways because I figured it put me in a better position should my revenues grow or I was to hire full-time employees.
Anyways, I incorporated in Canada and doing so did NOT require me to hire a lawyer OR an accountant (though you can certainly do so if you want the help--it often is a good idea especially if you are already an established sole proprietor or partnership). The annual corporate return is no more complicated than my personal income taxes (and is actually simpler than my personal taxes have been in some years)--and I've always done my own taxes. Did you really NEED a lawyer and accountant to incorporate a 1-person business in your state or is the paperwork really that complex? I thought the US had LESS red tape than Canada--guess that is a bit of a stereotype. The incorporation forms can be bought at a registry office where I'm at and filing an annual return is the same cost as renewing the registration of your personal vehicle (IIRC--all of these things are done at "authorised registry agencies" where I live--there is no separate "DMV" and you go to the same place to file corporate returns, register vehicles, get drivers licences and ID, marriage licenses, etc).
My first impression was like the grandparent post--basically "it's a bit of a pain in the arse, but not a REAL big deal, so just incorporate and you'll be fine". Well, then I read some of the replies here and really READ the effin' article. It looks like in many foreign countries it is a much bigger hassle and large expense to incorporate (1000s of euros? need a board of 5 directors or more? Seems like overkill bureaucracy to me...). Then in the article they talk about LLCs and S and C and other American-only oddities. These corporate structures/terminologies do not apply in Canada. We have provincial and federal incorporation and different tax rates based on the size/income of the corporation (there is not need to be a special type of corporation to get a lower small-business tax rate). However, Canada also has co-operatives covered under the incorporation act as legal entities distinct from normal corporations that have no exact analogue to a type of corporation in the US. Canadian business trusts are also different than those in the US (Canadian business trusts are more like the way they were in the US when Standard Oil used them as a vehicle to propel themselves to monopoly status--though the taxation advantages are being phased out over the next few years which will bring their status more into line with how they are treated in the US).
Anyways, the unique Canadian situation means that some VERY big, established and/or well-regarded businesses are NOT actually corporations (or LLCs or whatever else) as described in the article. Do these businesses have to establish corporations to get the enhanced certificates? Are these certificates only available from Microsoft (it says these are based on a standard devised by an 18-member consortium so maybe not)? To foreign businesses have to incorporate in the US? THAT would be quite a higher hurdle for smaller, foreign businesses with an established online presence in foreign markets.
I think it'll take awhile to sort out--longer than it will to even see Vista and IE7 to become prominent. So, for a long time all users will see are white bars, with a smattering of yellow and red alerts, and a few green bars--mostly on Microsoft sites or close MS affiliates, or REALLY major sites like ebay or Amazon. So, no I don't think users are stupid enou