Whether a company has any co-rights to an invention is typically dictated by both the job description, as well as their contributions.
For instance, if a software developer is building a website for a client, using tools he paid for himself, then he owns whatever patentable ideas he comes up with. In another instance, if a physicist is hired by a multinational conglomerate to specifically dream up and design an ultra-violet laser, using resources he cannot acquire on his own ($30 million lab), then the company owns the patentable items, but the scientist is allowed a percentage of the revenue / profits / whatever from the invention. If a mechanical engineer, doing his job as he has done for many years, thinks of a new way of doing things, and leaves the company to start a new one, the patent rights on this new way of doing things are his.
A lot of companies are taking an idiot's approach to acquiring intellectual property, by slipping in a clause stating that anything dreamt up while employed by them becomes theirs. Since there is no special consideration for this extra service, these contracts become invalid; additionally so if the company attempts to dictate terms whereby they get the lion's share of any of the profits. Even the Japanese courts, who may be seen as pro-employer by most of the world, has ruled against employers when adequate compensation was not found; I believe the scientist who created the blue laser (or was it the blue LED) ended up being rewarded by the courts after it was found that his compensation was laughable.
Now, it is kind of fuzzy here, as companies are trying to create a boilerplate clause to protect themselves against being sued for patent violations by a former employee if the former employee patents an invention invented using company resources and used in company products. However, a number of business types (not legal types) had a brain fart, and thought that they could hire someone for a low-end job, push them into scenarios where they would be forced to create high-end / patentable solutions, then skim the solutions for themselves. In other words, they pay a chemist to do drudge work, the chemist has to come up with a new process to get the work done on time / various demands, the company swoops in and takes the patent rights to the process; the chemist is paid $50K for his salary, then summarily terminated, while the company walks off with patent rights worth $100M. This is something that the courts frown upon, as from their perspective, it's more important that an inventor be compensated than a company be profitable; they despise the idea of theft, or screwing someone over who actually provides something worthwhile to society.
Meh, with Ballmer, it will hopefully be something lighter -> did he recently get a new sports car? Is he trying to use the lingo / 'words of the younger crowd'? Is his new cellphone some horrible color not normally associated with a man his age (fusion pink, lots of glitter, IDK)? Has he suddenly tried to 'reinvent' himself with a new wardrobe? Has he suddenly changed the way he addresses people? And so on. Only people close to observe him will know definitively; but if it's the case, I'd recommend a sabbatical until he 'finds' himself, preferably on a tropical island, surrounded by scantily clad women, and copious amounts of cigars and alcohol.
Nonsense. My family can't stop dropping hints that I need to lose some weight, that they'd help me pick out a diet, or go 'walking' with me. I do, however, have the advantage of height (tall) and body build (broad shoulders), which prevents me from being thrown into any number of less favourable categories.
Missing a few zeroes there. Even I looked at the Transformer, it's a nice machine. And it's made by a company that has been batting well above average; I've been specc'ing Crosshair motherboards into my machines because the quality is there (well, save the on-board sound cards; those drivers are terrible; however, that's a small price to pay for such capacity, and the problem is easily overcome with a discrete soundcard).
Can't remember why we didn't get the Transformer, I think it needed a few more USB ports...we needed to be able to hookup some external hard drives, something like that.
Now if I could only convince them to release a new AMD motherboard that supports 128 GB of RAM, with PCI-E 3.0...
MS was doing fine with Windows 7, but their fear is now controlling them. They saw Apple create a new market, one which should have been MS's; would have been, had they only refined the technology. Now they're freaking out, because Ballmer thinks he is having a B. Gates moment -> that moment when Gates realized his company was going to be side-swiped by the internet, and needed to change their strategy to survive; he is not, he is actually having a Marketing moment, similar to a mid-life crisis, when you are worried that because you are not considered the industry darling, you must be doing something wrong, so you start doing something, anything, to get some attention to validate your self-worth. It's the same thing that movie stars / record artists go through after they hit their 'peak'; they may still be on top, but since they measure themselves by relative or dynamic amounts (delta), as opposed to absolute amounts, a lack of change seems like they are failing.
If MS wants a new technology to pioneer, let them pair up with John Romero (or whoever it is) that is working on a new virtual glove interface. That's something that Apple hasn't touched yet, and something which even I am interested in. Tactile (smart metal, using a grid in the palm) feedback gloves, using a Bluetooth connection in each glove, to send and receive 3D information, with a mini-USB cable for charging. Like John, I am disturbed at the lack of progress in this realm, and have been considering building a prototype (I have been designing one) since the price for the components has dropped. This is where MS should be looking, especially since one of ID's people is looking into it. Of course, the question will be, if they do pioneer it, can they make a glove that 1.) works well, 2.) is easy to program for, 3.) integrates into Windows / Office, and 4.) is aesthetically pleasing to look at (the Hipster factor / Apple factor). Or will they wait for Apple to adopt it first, before considering it?
Well, it's easy to understand why touch surfaces are now the hotness -> the people promoting them need something, anything to entice customers to buy their latest product; and the people promoting them are not the kinds of people who need to use them for long periods of time to create content.
Indeed. Think about it -> even in economy class on planes, you have more than enough room for a regular laptop.
I can, however, think of one place where a tablet would work better than a laptop, and that's on a peak SEPTA train. Of course, that's also the kind of train where you probably wouldn't want to take out the tablet, for fear of someone spotting an easy mark.
Tell them we will want two things for this increase: 1.) A lot more money than is ordinarily awarded in times past (I mean, a paltry $1 million for this kind of increase? That wouldn't cover one fiftieth of the materials cost alone for all the experiments needed to be run to achieve such a thing), and 2.) A lot of people of kind of wary of giving the military what they want when we've been involved in some, how do I put this lightly, questionable wars in recent years? That's a moral thing, as well as a money thing, and needs to be addressed.
Indeed. I wonder how much more wealthy MS might have been if they had continued working on their previous promises, instead of pursuing the DRM pipedream.
I mean, they have spent a hideous amount of company resources to implement DRM in their main product, the Windows operating system; those resources could have been spent elsewhere on any number of features that really needed the extra attention. Instead, they were spent creating an alien DRM system in Windows, a place where the user (or even the admin) was not in control; what more, no one uses the DRM features.
The SSD is a nice touch, but the RAM is still weak. Remember, developers need RAM, because debugging with symbols and whatnot tends to consume two to ten times more RAM than running the ultimate release. The Core i7 is a step in the right direction (when building software on a machine, more power is better), and a 13" screen isn't me, but does appeal to many developer types because it makes the laptop more portable / lightweight.
For reference, my development laptop has 16GBs of RAM, and I wouldn't mind one with 32 GBs. My main (tower) machine is at 32 GBs, and will be upgraded to whatever the next maximum is, whenever Asus releases a new board which supports more memory.
One thing that could make this laptop 'sweeter', but isn't necessary depending on the specs, would be the FirePro or something similar from Nvidia. That might appeal to CAD engineers and various creative types.
But with regards to the RAM, a 8GB offering is about two generations ago. Hell, if they could stick 64GBs into the laptop, I might have reason to take a much closer look at this laptop (but do they have the weight to demand it from a motherboard company?).
Do you mean net neutrality, or 'Net Neutrality'? One is TCP/IP's 'fight for your life' fair approach, while the other is a political movement that undermines the internet while appearing to serve it, in much the same way that any bill making its way through Congress can be understood by taking the negation of its name.
Indeed, the door is closing, on the entertainment industry employing these types. They've seen how ineffective these firms are, how they've pissed off their customers, how they've gotten nothing but bad PR, how piracy actually increased their bottom line (sans lawsuits), and generally idiotic the entire enterprise has been.
The MPAA (and friends) looks the other way, their wallet is fatter. They do not, and it's thinner. So, why would they pay money for someone to make them poorer? Dumb.
Human morality is so decidedly vague that the human race will only agree on a single set of morals sometime after the natural heat death of the universe.
The machines do not need that kind of madness. Just tell them to choose any scenario according to the following weights: human life = long.Max, property = long.Min. Hell, we can extend that to life = long.Max, property = long.Min when the AIs achieve some absurdly low level of sentience (or just not house them inside the car, which could avoid them having to choose between you or themselves in those annoying edge cases). That way we can avoid the ethical question of whether human life is worth more than an AI life, which, having seen the arguments put forth by various entities, I am in no rush to explore; as with foetal stem-cell research, sometimes the answer is seeing the trap for what it is, and avoiding it entirely (anyone of any intelligence understands that we have limited resources, and are better served in building a simulator for the various protein / gene sequences of the human genetic code, than crudely trying to bio-engineer foetal stem cells to magic (yes, I used that as a verb) cures that will never happen, because, I don't know, we never decoded all the bio-signaling pathways! plus bio-work is inherently slower computer based simulations; let's be honest, the entire line of research has been both interesting, and pointless; people want cures, not wastes of time). But then, anyone looking at the limited understanding humanity has of its own design already knows how idiotic this enterprise has been; and Deity help me, if I hear one more psych major tell me how the human mind can explained through 'both' types of neuro-transmitters, I may set aside my normally non-aggressive principles, and kill someone (you asses, those other neuro-transmitters, like steroids, may be small in quantity, but be the key to any number of important discoveries).
I swear, it's like these people are so desperate for advances, they have no conceptualization of aesthetics. The idea of being a scientist, and doing science through hard work + stroke of brilliance is lost on them; they're just butchers, brute-forcing everything (and I apologize to butchers for that remark). Yes, you are getting science done, the f*cking hard way, at great cost to everyone, with minimal gain. Take a page from Einstein's book, and spend a little more time on those thought experiments before wasting lab resources on hypotheses which, from all appearances, are only being generated to 'pay the bills.'
And it shouldn't be basic business literacy to suspect that the company you bought your new PC from might be scheming to make a little extra money off of you, but it is.
The PC business is not, by its design, one with slim margins. Again, these people have done this to themselves.
If you make a product that is, quite frankly, a photocopy of your nearest competitor, yes, it's going to impact your bottom line. Duh. You want to practice market segmentation not through artificial segmentation, but natural segmentation. You want to offer three levels of product in the desktop world -> a low-end mass version, a medium slightly custom version, and a higher-end pure custom job. The low-end takes care of itself through pure volume, and by choosing the right hardware (stuff that naturally kicks the teeth in of your nearest competitors). Take out a fricking ad if you need to informing customers why your job with a 7200 RPM HD is superior to theirs with a 5400 RPM HD, then laugh as they are stuck with an inventory for HDs that they can't get rid of (sunk capital, and an albatross).
The mid-level people will enjoy that touch of personal service / customization, and the higher-end people expect custom service.
In short, McDonalds, TGI Fridays, and Brasserie Perrier. If you asked for a rare steak at McDonalds, people would call the police ("One of the crazies got out."); if you asked for a hamburger at B-P, they probably do the same ("Probably planning to rob the place.").
Large scale OEMs are trying to offer McDonalds food at B-P prices. No wonder they are feeling the hurt.
"The extra software gives the machine perceived value, incorrect as that may be." -> Indeed, I've noticed a lot of this going around, in all walks of life. Somewhere along the line, it became acceptable to sell people a lie, telling them that a liability was an asset.
Take a look at the various healthcare / phone plans to see what I mean. I need to hire a lawyer to get through some of these.
"2 GB data cap! For all your data needs!" -> Lol, no. "$100 towards visual hardware, once every two years!" -> OMFG, no.
And yet they are perfectly willing to call a tech friend or family member at 3 AM to drive out to the boon-docks to fix a minor browser problem. Repeatedly, actually.
I think it's not fear, but laziness. We've successfully taught people that learning = pain, or is some nerddy exercise, and they are just living up to society's expectations of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether a company has any co-rights to an invention is typically dictated by both the job description, as well as their contributions.
For instance, if a software developer is building a website for a client, using tools he paid for himself, then he owns whatever patentable ideas he comes up with. In another instance, if a physicist is hired by a multinational conglomerate to specifically dream up and design an ultra-violet laser, using resources he cannot acquire on his own ($30 million lab), then the company owns the patentable items, but the scientist is allowed a percentage of the revenue / profits / whatever from the invention. If a mechanical engineer, doing his job as he has done for many years, thinks of a new way of doing things, and leaves the company to start a new one, the patent rights on this new way of doing things are his.
A lot of companies are taking an idiot's approach to acquiring intellectual property, by slipping in a clause stating that anything dreamt up while employed by them becomes theirs. Since there is no special consideration for this extra service, these contracts become invalid; additionally so if the company attempts to dictate terms whereby they get the lion's share of any of the profits. Even the Japanese courts, who may be seen as pro-employer by most of the world, has ruled against employers when adequate compensation was not found; I believe the scientist who created the blue laser (or was it the blue LED) ended up being rewarded by the courts after it was found that his compensation was laughable.
Now, it is kind of fuzzy here, as companies are trying to create a boilerplate clause to protect themselves against being sued for patent violations by a former employee if the former employee patents an invention invented using company resources and used in company products. However, a number of business types (not legal types) had a brain fart, and thought that they could hire someone for a low-end job, push them into scenarios where they would be forced to create high-end / patentable solutions, then skim the solutions for themselves. In other words, they pay a chemist to do drudge work, the chemist has to come up with a new process to get the work done on time / various demands, the company swoops in and takes the patent rights to the process; the chemist is paid $50K for his salary, then summarily terminated, while the company walks off with patent rights worth $100M. This is something that the courts frown upon, as from their perspective, it's more important that an inventor be compensated than a company be profitable; they despise the idea of theft, or screwing someone over who actually provides something worthwhile to society.
Now there's a mental image I did not need.
Meh, with Ballmer, it will hopefully be something lighter -> did he recently get a new sports car? Is he trying to use the lingo / 'words of the younger crowd'? Is his new cellphone some horrible color not normally associated with a man his age (fusion pink, lots of glitter, IDK)? Has he suddenly tried to 'reinvent' himself with a new wardrobe? Has he suddenly changed the way he addresses people? And so on. Only people close to observe him will know definitively; but if it's the case, I'd recommend a sabbatical until he 'finds' himself, preferably on a tropical island, surrounded by scantily clad women, and copious amounts of cigars and alcohol.
Nonsense. My family can't stop dropping hints that I need to lose some weight, that they'd help me pick out a diet, or go 'walking' with me. I do, however, have the advantage of height (tall) and body build (broad shoulders), which prevents me from being thrown into any number of less favourable categories.
Missing a few zeroes there. Even I looked at the Transformer, it's a nice machine. And it's made by a company that has been batting well above average; I've been specc'ing Crosshair motherboards into my machines because the quality is there (well, save the on-board sound cards; those drivers are terrible; however, that's a small price to pay for such capacity, and the problem is easily overcome with a discrete soundcard).
Can't remember why we didn't get the Transformer, I think it needed a few more USB ports...we needed to be able to hookup some external hard drives, something like that.
Now if I could only convince them to release a new AMD motherboard that supports 128 GB of RAM, with PCI-E 3.0...
MS was doing fine with Windows 7, but their fear is now controlling them. They saw Apple create a new market, one which should have been MS's; would have been, had they only refined the technology. Now they're freaking out, because Ballmer thinks he is having a B. Gates moment -> that moment when Gates realized his company was going to be side-swiped by the internet, and needed to change their strategy to survive; he is not, he is actually having a Marketing moment, similar to a mid-life crisis, when you are worried that because you are not considered the industry darling, you must be doing something wrong, so you start doing something, anything, to get some attention to validate your self-worth. It's the same thing that movie stars / record artists go through after they hit their 'peak'; they may still be on top, but since they measure themselves by relative or dynamic amounts (delta), as opposed to absolute amounts, a lack of change seems like they are failing.
If MS wants a new technology to pioneer, let them pair up with John Romero (or whoever it is) that is working on a new virtual glove interface. That's something that Apple hasn't touched yet, and something which even I am interested in. Tactile (smart metal, using a grid in the palm) feedback gloves, using a Bluetooth connection in each glove, to send and receive 3D information, with a mini-USB cable for charging. Like John, I am disturbed at the lack of progress in this realm, and have been considering building a prototype (I have been designing one) since the price for the components has dropped. This is where MS should be looking, especially since one of ID's people is looking into it. Of course, the question will be, if they do pioneer it, can they make a glove that 1.) works well, 2.) is easy to program for, 3.) integrates into Windows / Office, and 4.) is aesthetically pleasing to look at (the Hipster factor / Apple factor). Or will they wait for Apple to adopt it first, before considering it?
Well, it's easy to understand why touch surfaces are now the hotness -> the people promoting them need something, anything to entice customers to buy their latest product; and the people promoting them are not the kinds of people who need to use them for long periods of time to create content.
Indeed. Think about it -> even in economy class on planes, you have more than enough room for a regular laptop.
I can, however, think of one place where a tablet would work better than a laptop, and that's on a peak SEPTA train. Of course, that's also the kind of train where you probably wouldn't want to take out the tablet, for fear of someone spotting an easy mark.
Tell them we will want two things for this increase: 1.) A lot more money than is ordinarily awarded in times past (I mean, a paltry $1 million for this kind of increase? That wouldn't cover one fiftieth of the materials cost alone for all the experiments needed to be run to achieve such a thing), and 2.) A lot of people of kind of wary of giving the military what they want when we've been involved in some, how do I put this lightly, questionable wars in recent years? That's a moral thing, as well as a money thing, and needs to be addressed.
Indeed. I wonder how much more wealthy MS might have been if they had continued working on their previous promises, instead of pursuing the DRM pipedream.
I mean, they have spent a hideous amount of company resources to implement DRM in their main product, the Windows operating system; those resources could have been spent elsewhere on any number of features that really needed the extra attention. Instead, they were spent creating an alien DRM system in Windows, a place where the user (or even the admin) was not in control; what more, no one uses the DRM features.
In short, it was a waste of resources.
The SSD is a nice touch, but the RAM is still weak. Remember, developers need RAM, because debugging with symbols and whatnot tends to consume two to ten times more RAM than running the ultimate release. The Core i7 is a step in the right direction (when building software on a machine, more power is better), and a 13" screen isn't me, but does appeal to many developer types because it makes the laptop more portable / lightweight.
For reference, my development laptop has 16GBs of RAM, and I wouldn't mind one with 32 GBs. My main (tower) machine is at 32 GBs, and will be upgraded to whatever the next maximum is, whenever Asus releases a new board which supports more memory.
One thing that could make this laptop 'sweeter', but isn't necessary depending on the specs, would be the FirePro or something similar from Nvidia. That might appeal to CAD engineers and various creative types.
But with regards to the RAM, a 8GB offering is about two generations ago. Hell, if they could stick 64GBs into the laptop, I might have reason to take a much closer look at this laptop (but do they have the weight to demand it from a motherboard company?).
Indeed. They're incredibly popular, but I do not see why. I must be missing something.
Quick poll (reply to answer), if you had to choose between a Corsair SSD or a OCZ SSD, which one would you choose, and why?
Do you mean net neutrality, or 'Net Neutrality'? One is TCP/IP's 'fight for your life' fair approach, while the other is a political movement that undermines the internet while appearing to serve it, in much the same way that any bill making its way through Congress can be understood by taking the negation of its name.
Remind me again what we call paying more for the same product that everyone else gets a smaller cost?
I wish I were rich enough that a several dollar difference didn't matter.
Indeed, the door is closing, on the entertainment industry employing these types. They've seen how ineffective these firms are, how they've pissed off their customers, how they've gotten nothing but bad PR, how piracy actually increased their bottom line (sans lawsuits), and generally idiotic the entire enterprise has been.
The MPAA (and friends) looks the other way, their wallet is fatter. They do not, and it's thinner. So, why would they pay money for someone to make them poorer? Dumb.
You mean not pissing off the customer / making them jump through loopholes to do what they want can be profitable?
But what about "the precious"? We wants it, we needs it!
Human morality is so decidedly vague that the human race will only agree on a single set of morals sometime after the natural heat death of the universe.
The machines do not need that kind of madness. Just tell them to choose any scenario according to the following weights: human life = long.Max, property = long.Min. Hell, we can extend that to life = long.Max, property = long.Min when the AIs achieve some absurdly low level of sentience (or just not house them inside the car, which could avoid them having to choose between you or themselves in those annoying edge cases). That way we can avoid the ethical question of whether human life is worth more than an AI life, which, having seen the arguments put forth by various entities, I am in no rush to explore; as with foetal stem-cell research, sometimes the answer is seeing the trap for what it is, and avoiding it entirely (anyone of any intelligence understands that we have limited resources, and are better served in building a simulator for the various protein / gene sequences of the human genetic code, than crudely trying to bio-engineer foetal stem cells to magic (yes, I used that as a verb) cures that will never happen, because, I don't know, we never decoded all the bio-signaling pathways! plus bio-work is inherently slower computer based simulations; let's be honest, the entire line of research has been both interesting, and pointless; people want cures, not wastes of time). But then, anyone looking at the limited understanding humanity has of its own design already knows how idiotic this enterprise has been; and Deity help me, if I hear one more psych major tell me how the human mind can explained through 'both' types of neuro-transmitters, I may set aside my normally non-aggressive principles, and kill someone (you asses, those other neuro-transmitters, like steroids, may be small in quantity, but be the key to any number of important discoveries).
I swear, it's like these people are so desperate for advances, they have no conceptualization of aesthetics. The idea of being a scientist, and doing science through hard work + stroke of brilliance is lost on them; they're just butchers, brute-forcing everything (and I apologize to butchers for that remark). Yes, you are getting science done, the f*cking hard way, at great cost to everyone, with minimal gain. Take a page from Einstein's book, and spend a little more time on those thought experiments before wasting lab resources on hypotheses which, from all appearances, are only being generated to 'pay the bills.'
And it shouldn't be basic business literacy to suspect that the company you bought your new PC from might be scheming to make a little extra money off of you, but it is.
Because that all in one job has so much room for all those extra HDs...
8 GB of RAM for a ~$2K machine? Good luck with that.
The PC business is not, by its design, one with slim margins. Again, these people have done this to themselves.
If you make a product that is, quite frankly, a photocopy of your nearest competitor, yes, it's going to impact your bottom line. Duh. You want to practice market segmentation not through artificial segmentation, but natural segmentation. You want to offer three levels of product in the desktop world -> a low-end mass version, a medium slightly custom version, and a higher-end pure custom job. The low-end takes care of itself through pure volume, and by choosing the right hardware (stuff that naturally kicks the teeth in of your nearest competitors). Take out a fricking ad if you need to informing customers why your job with a 7200 RPM HD is superior to theirs with a 5400 RPM HD, then laugh as they are stuck with an inventory for HDs that they can't get rid of (sunk capital, and an albatross).
The mid-level people will enjoy that touch of personal service / customization, and the higher-end people expect custom service.
In short, McDonalds, TGI Fridays, and Brasserie Perrier. If you asked for a rare steak at McDonalds, people would call the police ("One of the crazies got out."); if you asked for a hamburger at B-P, they probably do the same ("Probably planning to rob the place.").
Large scale OEMs are trying to offer McDonalds food at B-P prices. No wonder they are feeling the hurt.
Oh, God, why? Who wants a touch screen, and why? Things are disasters, and murder on the fingers.
Visual Studio.
Find me an IDE running on open source that has a working version of Intellisense. No, Eclipse / NetBeans have crappy versions.
"The extra software gives the machine perceived value, incorrect as that may be." -> Indeed, I've noticed a lot of this going around, in all walks of life. Somewhere along the line, it became acceptable to sell people a lie, telling them that a liability was an asset.
Take a look at the various healthcare / phone plans to see what I mean. I need to hire a lawyer to get through some of these.
"2 GB data cap! For all your data needs!" -> Lol, no.
"$100 towards visual hardware, once every two years!" -> OMFG, no.
And yet we let them drive metal vehicles with sharp pointy edges at high speeds from place to place.
Someone, put together a "My First Build / Computer book," and put it up on Amazon for $5. Will make an excellent stocking stuffer.
And yet they are perfectly willing to call a tech friend or family member at 3 AM to drive out to the boon-docks to fix a minor browser problem. Repeatedly, actually.
I think it's not fear, but laziness. We've successfully taught people that learning = pain, or is some nerddy exercise, and they are just living up to society's expectations of them.