while commuting i do all my writing as txt msgs using my cell phone
who needs all those space wasting keys on a regular keyboard when you can layer several symbols onto each button like they do on my cell phone. fits in my pocket this way!
i am writing this comment using an rs232 hacked cell phone connectd to my pc as the input device!
Testing software is like proofreading/editing a book.
Some programs, small utilities, etc can be *perfect* external testing help. Perhaps a short story (or a slashdot post -- not this one) can be perfect without others participating in creation process.
Then there are massive software solutions that are beyond the capacity of a single skilled developer. For example, Linux. To get something like that right in one lifetime you need a team. Sort of like creating an encyclopedia.
I have no idea why you think copyright is outdated just because it works for books so well. Frankly, it seems to work for software too.
I agree, reasonable idea for attempting to control game access on a PC. But this is making the task of resticting game access to kids more difficult and less reliable than it needs to be.
Here is a relevant fact I just pulled out of my @rse which did not smell too bad:
* Most kids are playing games on gaming consoles. *
That makes sense because game consoles are cheap and plentiful. Look into a home that sees some public assistance and you will probably find a TV and a game console hooked up to it. (You will NOT find a high end PC with Nvidia's latest video card.)
If parents are really concerned about restricting game access to their kids, they should just stick to the game consoles. Why? Games are harder to hack and most of the population cannot download them. Ergo, tigher parent control of game playing for the majority of kids. (The majority of kids do NOT have large coin access to buy their own $15 and $40 games.)
I have never met anyone that expressed a need to specifically add cooling to their hard disk in the first place. Hard disks come factory sealed and if one is overheating it is defective or absorbing heat generated from other sources, like maybe a hot CPU. Cool the CPU.
Or is he overclocking his disk from 7k rpm to 14krpm somehow? Don't get too close to that machine.
Is this guy selling a solution to a frictional problem or a fictional problem? Shheeeez.
Okay, patents create an eco-system that supports companies like yours. Your company would not exist without them. Why is that a better eco-system than one without patents? You say something particularly interesting:
It is this very reason why our company won't even contemplate doing business in Korea or Taiwan. IP is the only thing we have, and those nations are not exactly know for their respect of ownership of IP. IP laws are what keep our business in existence and in the US.
Korea and Taiwan seem to be cranking out real products pretty darn quickly from what I can tell. There seems to be alot of technological inovation saturating Korea. Perhaps it is easier to create real products in those places?
Would you be unemployed without patents to build your business model around? If you are smart, I doubt it. You would find a way to build the deliverable products, or partner with folks that do. It would be a different business model, and perhaps a better one for everybody.
Hard drive password locking today, full system locking tomorrow. Once DRM supporting BIOSes ("trusted computing") hit a critical mass, we will surely see viruses that use that DRM itself to disable the entire hardware, not just one drive or two.
In a way, these "trusted computing" solutions will be more risky than the open systems we have today. A virus on such a system could disallow your hardware to boot from any device and run any software, so even removing an affected drive would not be enough. Users would have to kiss the motherboard goodbye or seek profe$$ional help.
Don't expect to hear anything about this from M$ or any other proponents of trusted computing.
The last existing colony of life in Chile's barren Atacama Desert was located and extinguished today when CMU's robotic rover 'Zoe' sprayed four special dyes on it. However, to the joy of researchers and art lovers, the formerly living mater then took on a pleasing fluorescent glow.
NASA has ordered two for the next Mars mission.
In related news, Vulcan industries has expressed an interest in licensing the technology to disinfect commercial kitchen floors.
industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional
Courts have already ruled that taking real property (ie, realestate) for state projects, such as road construction for the greater good, is constitutional. However they might rule that allowing ideas to be used for the greater good is not? Stop the planet, I'm getting dizzy.
However, Apple has done as much as anyone can to kill firewire. The fact that is not now the ubiquitous connector should not be a surprise. Why?
Apple put a trademark on the name "firewire" and did not let anyone else use that term without paying them money. So other companies came up with their own names (e.g., i-link) or went for the raw standard's name: IEEE 1394. Confusing!
Not nice when the average consumer does not even know what something is called. USB on the other hand was and is USB everywhere. (USB2 naming fiasco does not rise to the same level.)
Also, USB was cheaper to license. Don't know why that is. This is an onion I have never had the time to peel completely.
Sorta like SONY killing Beta by not letting anyone else use it without paying them outrageous financial tribute.
I went to a "real" university. My first boss after graduating was a graduate of DeVry. I learned a lot from him. Very smart dude. Not having those schools in this area at that time, that was my first encounter with the school in any way. I was impressed.
BTW - These 777 guys should consider putting together something for that new Make magazine. http://make.oreilly.com/
Yes, whatever the anecdotal evidence of corporate speak to the contrary, I suspect the Microsoft patent portfolio is at the ready to pave a path over smaller company's innovations.
Trusting people is one thing. You can form an opinion about their character and decide where or how far to trust them.
The character of publicly traded companies is that they are obligated to legally maximize profit. Since using patents in the USA to crush competition is legal, in a way they have an obligation to do that.
Take it for what it's worth...who knows if that's just the official line and the higher-ups have a different plan.
<INTRORAMBLE>
I've worked for more than a few large corporations. Some for several years in various positions. There are probably more than a few others on slashdot that done the same.
</INTRORAMBLE>
<FACT>
All large corporations have their "corporate speak" which is nothing more than what the corporation perceives as politically correct messages. What the executives are willing to do and what they say they want to do have very little correlation to the official company messages.
</FACT>
<OPINION>
It is unlikely a corporation as large as Microsoft would openly say we plan to crush smaller players with our growing patent portfolio. But that is eventually what the shareholders will demand, even if the execs don't already plan it themselves.
</OPINION>
And of course by being outraged you just demonstrate that you are not respectful of others' intellectual properties. You are not a respectable individual. Frankly, you border on having a thief mindset.
This is the thinking that promoters of such obscene restrictions are working hard to make main-stream. They are evidently succeeding.
My gut tells me the most effective way to deal with this kind of bullying is to directly challenge it by brazenly snapping pictures and sharing those pictures. However, that takes bravery and involves risk.
I know a Physics PhD that took a position about 10 years ago with a large IP law firm. He did it for the money. From what he described of his job, it sounded like a paralegal position where his specialty is to look at the science of patent applications. I imagine law firms have a need for specialized paralegal services in other areas too, such as medicine, etc; evidently, software too. Lawyers can't know everything.
In the end, the lawyer moves the paper and puts on the public face. The paralegals do the grunt work and directed research behind the scenes.
As a software developer, all this stuff makes me cringe. Makes me feel like I'm blindly jogging through a land mine field every time I create a new product.
No public school I know of runs for 24 hours a day. What parents choose to monitor, or not, outside of school is an entirely different issue.
they will not have a concept of freedom that we do
There is a danger there. However, children can see how their parents live. For example: Just because kids are not allowed to drive, does not mean they will grow into adults that do not know how to or expect to drive.
"Where are your papers" is a phrase an American adult should ever endure while minding their own business in the USA. And it is no one's business where an American adult goes, except maybe his wife's.
Minors in a school are a different thing altogether; and I don't buy the slippery slope arguments on that point. Kids do leave the schools without authorization. And no, that is never a good or welcome thing. This way school admin has another tool to know where they are, or are not, during school hours.
Some people have different thoughts on this matter. The most reasonable approach might be to assign these cards only parent request.
But when you *clone* something, everyone screams, think about our children, when it is really totally harmless
I don't have any answers, but feel compelled to point out that so far cloning is not known to be harmless. Specifically, as far as I know all cloned mammals have a cell age equivalent to that of the cell donor. The cell age is measured by the length of the cell telemers. (When the telemers become too short, the cell dies. Telemers get shorter with every cell division.)
USB is pretty fundamental, I hope it was just a typo. I would consider buying one of these as long as it includes at least one USB port.
Something else that looked strange: Linare said it will ship "more than 1000 notebooks" to Walmart stores in the US.
We are talking about all of the USA. Doesn't 1000 seem like a rather small number? That is NOT a real Walmart level shipment of product. What is that all about? (Considering the margins are small on this thing, the total profit on that volume would probably not even buy a street legal used car here in the USA.) They might as well have said they will ship more than a dozen notebooks.
I think you are onto something. However, store your cheap/expensive gold/silver/green/blue whatever CDROMs in a dry dark place and don't worry about how much light they absorb.
I wonder if moderate chilling (e.g. a dark refrigerator) would be the best solution of all?
Slashdot Mirror
while commuting i do all my writing as txt msgs using my cell phone
who needs all those space wasting keys on a regular keyboard when you can layer several symbols onto each button like they do on my cell phone. fits in my pocket this way!
i am writing this comment using an rs232 hacked cell phone connectd to my pc as the input device!
This is cr@p!
I did not realize the CIA was making software. Did they advertise it? I would like to buy some before my state outlaws it too.
Testing software is like proofreading/editing a book.
Some programs, small utilities, etc can be *perfect* external testing help. Perhaps a short story (or a slashdot post -- not this one) can be perfect without others participating in creation process.
Then there are massive software solutions that are beyond the capacity of a single skilled developer. For example, Linux. To get something like that right in one lifetime you need a team. Sort of like creating an encyclopedia.
I have no idea why you think copyright is outdated just because it works for books so well. Frankly, it seems to work for software too.
I agree, reasonable idea for attempting to control game access on a PC. But this is making the task of resticting game access to kids more difficult and less reliable than it needs to be.
Here is a relevant fact I just pulled out of my @rse which did not smell too bad:
* Most kids are playing games on gaming consoles. *
That makes sense because game consoles are cheap and plentiful. Look into a home that sees some public assistance and you will probably find a TV and a game console hooked up to it. (You will NOT find a high end PC with Nvidia's latest video card.)
If parents are really concerned about restricting game access to their kids, they should just stick to the game consoles. Why? Games are harder to hack and most of the population cannot download them. Ergo, tigher parent control of game playing for the majority of kids. (The majority of kids do NOT have large coin access to buy their own $15 and $40 games.)
I have never met anyone that expressed a need to specifically add cooling to their hard disk in the first place. Hard disks come factory sealed and if one is overheating it is defective or absorbing heat generated from other sources, like maybe a hot CPU. Cool the CPU.
Or is he overclocking his disk from 7k rpm to 14krpm somehow? Don't get too close to that machine.
Is this guy selling a solution to a frictional problem or a fictional problem? Shheeeez.
Okay, patents create an eco-system that supports companies like yours. Your company would not exist without them. Why is that a better eco-system than one without patents? You say something particularly interesting:
It is this very reason why our company won't even contemplate doing business in Korea or Taiwan. IP is the only thing we have, and those nations are not exactly know for their respect of ownership of IP. IP laws are what keep our business in existence and in the US.
Korea and Taiwan seem to be cranking out real products pretty darn quickly from what I can tell. There seems to be alot of technological inovation saturating Korea. Perhaps it is easier to create real products in those places?
Would you be unemployed without patents to build your business model around? If you are smart, I doubt it. You would find a way to build the deliverable products, or partner with folks that do. It would be a different business model, and perhaps a better one for everybody.
Hard drive password locking today, full system locking tomorrow. Once DRM supporting BIOSes ("trusted computing") hit a critical mass, we will surely see viruses that use that DRM itself to disable the entire hardware, not just one drive or two.
In a way, these "trusted computing" solutions will be more risky than the open systems we have today. A virus on such a system could disallow your hardware to boot from any device and run any software, so even removing an affected drive would not be enough. Users would have to kiss the motherboard goodbye or seek profe$$ional help.
Don't expect to hear anything about this from M$ or any other proponents of trusted computing.
Yahoo.
The last existing colony of life in Chile's barren Atacama Desert was located and extinguished today when CMU's robotic rover 'Zoe' sprayed four special dyes on it. However, to the joy of researchers and art lovers, the formerly living mater then took on a pleasing fluorescent glow.
NASA has ordered two for the next Mars mission.
In related news, Vulcan industries has expressed an interest in licensing the technology to disinfect commercial kitchen floors.
industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional
Courts have already ruled that taking real property (ie, realestate) for state projects, such as road construction for the greater good, is constitutional. However they might rule that allowing ideas to be used for the greater good is not? Stop the planet, I'm getting dizzy.
Firewire is not dead. It is great.
However, Apple has done as much as anyone can to kill firewire. The fact that is not now the ubiquitous connector should not be a surprise. Why?
Apple put a trademark on the name "firewire" and did not let anyone else use that term without paying them money. So other companies came up with their own names (e.g., i-link) or went for the raw standard's name: IEEE 1394. Confusing!
Not nice when the average consumer does not even know what something is called. USB on the other hand was and is USB everywhere. (USB2 naming fiasco does not rise to the same level.)
Also, USB was cheaper to license. Don't know why that is. This is an onion I have never had the time to peel completely.
Sorta like SONY killing Beta by not letting anyone else use it without paying them outrageous financial tribute.
Da** it! I knew they would moderate that post as redundant!
I knew slashdot was going to post that story today. I just new it. Now I know why I knew it. Thank's slashdot!
No need to trash it.
I went to a "real" university. My first boss after graduating was a graduate of DeVry. I learned a lot from him. Very smart dude. Not having those schools in this area at that time, that was my first encounter with the school in any way. I was impressed.
BTW - These 777 guys should consider putting together something for that new Make magazine. http://make.oreilly.com/
Yes, whatever the anecdotal evidence of corporate speak to the contrary, I suspect the Microsoft patent portfolio is at the ready to pave a path over smaller company's innovations.
Trusting people is one thing. You can form an opinion about their character and decide where or how far to trust them.
The character of publicly traded companies is that they are obligated to legally maximize profit. Since using patents in the USA to crush competition is legal, in a way they have an obligation to do that.
Take it for what it's worth...who knows if that's just the official line and the higher-ups have a different plan.
<INTRORAMBLE>
I've worked for more than a few large corporations. Some for several years in various positions. There are probably more than a few others on slashdot that done the same.
</INTRORAMBLE>
<FACT>
All large corporations have their "corporate speak" which is nothing more than what the corporation perceives as politically correct messages. What the executives are willing to do and what they say they want to do have very little correlation to the official company messages.
</FACT>
<OPINION>
It is unlikely a corporation as large as Microsoft would openly say we plan to crush smaller players with our growing patent portfolio. But that is eventually what the shareholders will demand, even if the execs don't already plan it themselves.
</OPINION>
And of course by being outraged you just demonstrate that you are not respectful of others' intellectual properties. You are not a respectable individual. Frankly, you border on having a thief mindset.
This is the thinking that promoters of such obscene restrictions are working hard to make main-stream. They are evidently succeeding.
My gut tells me the most effective way to deal with this kind of bullying is to directly challenge it by brazenly snapping pictures and sharing those pictures. However, that takes bravery and involves risk.
I know a Physics PhD that took a position about 10 years ago with a large IP law firm. He did it for the money. From what he described of his job, it sounded like a paralegal position where his specialty is to look at the science of patent applications. I imagine law firms have a need for specialized paralegal services in other areas too, such as medicine, etc; evidently, software too. Lawyers can't know everything.
In the end, the lawyer moves the paper and puts on the public face. The paralegals do the grunt work and directed research behind the scenes.
As a software developer, all this stuff makes me cringe. Makes me feel like I'm blindly jogging through a land mine field every time I create a new product.
should be monitored constantly 24 hours a day
No public school I know of runs for 24 hours a day. What parents choose to monitor, or not, outside of school is an entirely different issue.
they will not have a concept of freedom that we do
There is a danger there. However, children can see how their parents live. For example: Just because kids are not allowed to drive, does not mean they will grow into adults that do not know how to or expect to drive.
"Where are your papers" is a phrase an American adult should ever endure while minding their own business in the USA. And it is no one's business where an American adult goes, except maybe his wife's.
Minors in a school are a different thing altogether; and I don't buy the slippery slope arguments on that point. Kids do leave the schools without authorization. And no, that is never a good or welcome thing. This way school admin has another tool to know where they are, or are not, during school hours.
Some people have different thoughts on this matter. The most reasonable approach might be to assign these cards only parent request.
But when you *clone* something, everyone screams, think about our children, when it is really totally harmless
I don't have any answers, but feel compelled to point out that so far cloning is not known to be harmless. Specifically, as far as I know all cloned mammals have a cell age equivalent to that of the cell donor. The cell age is measured by the length of the cell telemers. (When the telemers become too short, the cell dies. Telemers get shorter with every cell division.)
The group REM had a hit song long while back that I can imagine being sung like this...
Technical Chorus:
It's the end of the world as we know it;
It's the end of the world as we know it;
It's the end of the world as we know it.
Lawyer Chorus:
And I feel fine!
(Personally I would rather have the lawyers losing their religion.)
USB is pretty fundamental, I hope it was just a typo. I would consider buying one of these as long as it includes at least one USB port.
Something else that looked strange: Linare said it will ship "more than 1000 notebooks" to Walmart stores in the US.
We are talking about all of the USA. Doesn't 1000 seem like a rather small number? That is NOT a real Walmart level shipment of product. What is that all about? (Considering the margins are small on this thing, the total profit on that volume would probably not even buy a street legal used car here in the USA.) They might as well have said they will ship more than a dozen notebooks.
I think you are onto something. However, store your cheap/expensive gold/silver/green/blue whatever CDROMs in a dry dark place and don't worry about how much light they absorb.
I wonder if moderate chilling (e.g. a dark refrigerator) would be the best solution of all?
Knuth is okay. But I prefer google. More pages.