The hippies of the 60's didn't get much right, but one they did was "change the system from within." Included in this bill is a big o' wad of cash so the patent office can hire more patent examiners. These are the people that really make the decisions of what's truly innovative and what's bogus. So... you critics of the system should watch the USPTO's website because they'll soon be hiring a whole lot of new examiners. Get a job there and you can (surreptitiously) reform the system yourselves by simply rejecting bogus patents. No legislation, lobbying, or protesting could make a bigger difference than a diligent and conscientious examiner. Keep your agenda to yourself but once you're in you'll be in the best possible position to change the system from within.
The US could deal a serious if not fatal blow to patent abusers with 'loser pays' laws (particularly in the eastern district of Texas, a hotspot for patent trolls.) Fighting off a troll can easily cost a cool $million. And since trolls are often either lawyers or engage a lawyer on a contingency-fee basis, they have little to lose by suing anybody. They know you're likely to settle. But if they stood to lose what you stood to lose they'd think twice before filing anything but an ironclad suit. I think this would do wonders to clean up this mess. Just my 2cents.
This makes me nauseous. Firefox is free for crying out loud. To claim damages you have to prove you lost something. You can't lose money on something you give away. I've been using firefox for years now. But no more. That's not to say I'm going back to IE. At least I hope not. Now I've got to find a new browser with all the goodies I have in firefox. I wont be a part of this. The taste of sour grapes is turning my stomach.
So... For the newly frightened linux user, could someone bundle this discussion into one post. Namely, answer 2 questions: 1. What, very specifically, do we look for? 2. What, very specifically, do we do?
Keep it in simple, if not noob, terms. This is one for the archives. I've been running Linux since Slackware was on floppies but to be honest I didn't understand half the acronyms or recognize many of the terms used. What's a good (up-to-date) place to learn more?
Let me get this straight. These guys make an LC tank out of the two sides of a transformer and call it something new??? This is ridiculus. It IS induction. You create a fluctuating magnetic flux with the first coil and let that flux pass through a second coil. It unavoidably generates an electromotive force (voltage) and hence current in the second coil as explained by a fellow named Michael Faraday about 100 years ago. It's called a transformer and it most definitely is induction. Using a resonant tank on the two sides is icing on the cake and common in alot of applications. Unless I'm missing something subtle, this is screamingly obvious and decidedly not new. These guys must be the laughingstock of the electrical engineering department. I cant wait till they try to patent this (then again, alot of perpetual motion gizmos have slipped through the patent office.) And 10 MHz will radiate. It'll radiate like hell. Your AM radio works at only a few hundred kHz.
If I'm going to risk millions of dollars and my entire customer base, I'm sure as hell not going to blow it on a company that ranks their customers (who are my customers) second. True, unhappy employees are unproductive employees but you can only take employee satisfaction so far. If all you want are happy employees just pay them to stay home. Fortune Magazines credibility is dropping like George Bush's poll numbers. apchar
Your example is too simple. I crunch equations that stretch across the page. Vectors and matrices abound. Multiple inheritance I can do without. But for us number crunchers, operator overloading would be a godsend. Or let us define new context sensitive operators using unused symbols (#, @,,..). At the very bare minimum Java need an exponential operator.
How could they leave out a law that prohibits groups from the NRA to NARAL from broadcasting "any mention or likeness of a candidate including issues that can be identified with a specific candidate" 30 days before a primary, 60 days before an election. For Petes sake, this is the biggest bite out of the first amendment since the last sedition act.
Do you really think someone is going to through the trouble to get a license and buy/build alot of expensive equipment for a hobby they can only exercise when a disaster occurs? Hams provide not just hardware, but a large collection of trained, practiced volunteers available for emergencies. We do so in exchange for the priviledge of using these frequencies ALL the time.
> The thing you don't seem to grasp is that the basic physics places the burden of proof on the people claiming the absence of detrimental effects.
Uh.. no. You're not the first Chicken Little this world has seen. There's been at least one batch in every generation (for my parents it was Global Cooling in the 70s.) People are still (fortunately) very skeptical of gloom-and-doom scenarios. The burden of proof is very much on you. If public policy were driven by the precautionary principle we'd still be living in caves. You're oversimplifying the mechanisms and ignoring some pesky contradictory evidence, like the fact that radiometric data doesnt show the same temperature rise ground measurements have produced. Speaking of that, the greatest irony in all this is that President Dubya, in a move of blistering boneheadedness, clobbered funding for that portion of NASAs remote sensing program that was providing the aforementioned data. Way to go George! Kill off the most credible source of data that supports your position. Brilliant.
What was it Churchill said: "Never have so many words come from so little thought." Or something like that.
Copps argument boils down to: "The Internet has grown so beautifully fast because it was unregulated, uncontrolled, unfettered. So to keep it that way we (meaning him) must regulate it, control it, and, for good measure, throw in a little fettering."
The tightest bottleneck for 99% (ish) of us is that last 30 feet of wire between the pole and our home/abode/hovel. And for a decade now that bottleneck has remained tighter than a virgin on saltpeter thanx to Howard Sterns arch-nemesis, the FCC.
Have we all forgotten why broadband has been so slow in coming? Franco Charlie Charlie decided years ago that if any of those evil corporate boogeymen put forth the initial capital investment to run a fiber optic line to your house, they had to then provide access for their competitors. The inevitable result was all of those companies standing around your house in a circle each waiting for the other to pony up for that last 20 feet of line! Why shell out billions just so your competitors can have free access, giving them an immediate advantage? Nobody at this friggin agency thinks.
From assinine bureaucrats come assinine policies with assinine results. Lets all pray for wifi to break this logjam once and for all.
I can only speak for the hardware side. I dont know if this is true for software engineers. I used to work for a large technology company. I wont say who they were but they were in "Texas" and made "Instruments". Engineers were stratified by "Job Grade." BSEE's hire in at job grade 24, MSEE's at 26, & PhD's Hire in at 28. From my own experience and talking to others it takes 6 to 8 years to climb from 24 to 28. If you're energetic you can get a PhD in engineering in 4 years. So apparently this company does value education over work experience. I also noticed that PhD's were held in higher esteem. They climbed the ladder faster and got better jobs. Most were doing design. Few were pushed into management. This, I should note, was before the technology sector hit the skids. It probably depends also on the supply of PhD's in your field. Supply and demand rules in the real world. Few hardware engineers bother to go beyond a Bachelors. ---
Cato had a
good column on this notion that deregulation was responsible.
Lets get real here folks. The lights went out because a collection of relays somewhere that were supposed to isolate a load imbalance didn't flip when they should have, not because we dont have enough bureaucrats in Washington.
Since when is 'From each according to his means, to each according to his needs' the "holy grail of capitalism." Adam Smith is spinning in his grave.
Cokes smart machine raises the price of their malted battery acid on hot days simply because of good old supply & demand. The machine has no idea how much you make. And there's another aspect of the information economy he's ignoring that stands between nosy companies & me: price-finders like pricegrabber, travelocity, etc. that provide consumers an anonymous search for the best price. What glop. This is why I stopped reading businessweek years ago. How ironic that a magazine tailored to business should be the most anticapitalist rag this side of The New York Times. Bah!
After all, the wire is private property owned by a private company. How do you justify some sanctimonious twit in parliament (or whatever you canuks have) just stepping in & forcing them to provide a service they'd rather not? Doesn't anyone in that godforsaken ice-pit believe in property rights?
Steve, you have a peculiar definition of need (scholarships??). Tell you what.. Lets take uncle sam back to his original role (police, defense, civil courts) for a decade or so. Pay for it all with a very small flat tax or better yet, a sales tax on durable goods. If you find me 'begging uncle same to take back my money' I promise to shut up about taxes forever. You fucking moron.
Price fixing is defined as a collaborative effort between ostensible competitors to maintain a minimum price. Microsoft is too ornary to collaborate with anyone, legally or otherwise. And monopolies are not illegal, They cant be unless you want to erase all patent and copyright laws (and I know some folks do). Only the abuse of a monopolistic position to suppress competition is illegal. This was a remarkably dumb decision. The Idaho supremes need to lay off the corn whiskey.
during the many other recessions that have occured, CD sales didn't even slowdown
Er.. How many other recessions have there been since CD's appeared in the late 80's ? Answer: one. That was in 91. But it was so mild that people are still arguing over whether it was actually a recession. One data point doesn't make for much of a trend.
It's easy to say he did this, supported that, etc. without backing it up. Cite us some of the original bills that Prince Albert authored for DarpaNet (which grew into the internet). In what speeches did he beseech a reluctant congress to follow him in his bold initiative. The salon piece is just as generous in praise and lacking in proof.
Being one of hundreds of politicians that voted on one of hundreds of spending initiatives gives Gore no special claim on the internet. Just like the economy and Clinton, he was just there when it happened.
Credit the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs for the explosion of what we enjoy today. It would never have happened had it not been so unfettered by governmental planning.
The article is light on details. Anyone see
this in any scientific journal recently?
I wonder what it would take to replicate the
experiment (on a budget) ? How sophisticated
an EEG would it take? How much was done in
hardware & software? That kinda stuff.
I'd sacrifice an hour or two a day
playing video games if it would improve my
concentration. There's a market for this!
Slashdot Mirror
The hippies of the 60's didn't get much right, but one they did was "change the system from within."
Included in this bill is a big o' wad of cash so the patent office can hire more patent examiners. These are the people that really make the decisions of what's truly innovative and what's bogus. So... you critics of the system should watch the USPTO's website because they'll soon be hiring a whole lot of new examiners. Get a job there and you can (surreptitiously) reform the system yourselves by simply rejecting bogus patents. No legislation, lobbying, or protesting could make a bigger difference than a diligent and conscientious examiner. Keep your agenda to yourself but once you're in you'll be in the best possible position to change the system from within.
The US could deal a serious if not fatal blow to patent abusers with 'loser pays' laws (particularly in the eastern district of Texas, a hotspot for patent trolls.) Fighting off a troll can easily cost a cool $million. And since trolls are often either lawyers or engage a lawyer on a contingency-fee basis, they have little to lose by suing anybody. They know you're likely to settle. But if they stood to lose what you stood to lose they'd think twice before filing anything but an ironclad suit. I think this would do wonders to clean up this mess.
Just my 2cents.
This makes me nauseous. Firefox is free for crying out loud. To claim damages you have to prove you lost something. You can't lose money on something you give away.
I've been using firefox for years now. But no more. That's not to say I'm going back to IE. At least I hope not.
Now I've got to find a new browser with all the goodies I have in firefox. I wont be a part of this. The taste of sour grapes is turning my stomach.
So... For the newly frightened linux user, could someone bundle this discussion into one post. Namely, answer 2 questions:
1. What, very specifically, do we look for?
2. What, very specifically, do we do?
Keep it in simple, if not noob, terms. This is one for the archives. I've been running Linux since Slackware was on floppies but to be honest I didn't understand half the acronyms or recognize many of the terms used.
What's a good (up-to-date) place to learn more?
Let me get this straight. These guys make an LC tank out of the two sides of a transformer and call it something new??? This is ridiculus. It IS induction. You create a fluctuating magnetic flux with the first coil and let that flux pass through a second coil. It unavoidably generates an electromotive force (voltage) and hence current in the second coil as explained by a fellow named Michael Faraday about 100 years ago. It's called a transformer and it most definitely is induction. Using a resonant tank on the two sides is icing on the cake and common in alot of applications. Unless I'm missing something subtle, this is screamingly obvious and decidedly not new. These guys must be the laughingstock of the electrical engineering department. I cant wait till they try to patent this (then again, alot of perpetual motion gizmos have slipped through the patent office.)
And 10 MHz will radiate. It'll radiate like hell. Your AM radio works at only a few hundred kHz.
If I'm going to risk millions of dollars and my entire customer base, I'm sure as hell not going to blow it on a company that ranks their customers (who are my customers) second. True, unhappy employees are unproductive employees but you can only take employee satisfaction so far. If all you want are happy employees just pay them to stay home. Fortune Magazines credibility is dropping like George Bush's poll numbers.
apchar
Whats the difference between this and the laser diode found in any CD player or laser pointer?? Laser diodes have been around for 30 years.
Your example is too simple. I crunch equations that stretch across the page. Vectors and matrices abound. Multiple inheritance I can do without. But for us number crunchers, operator overloading would be a godsend. Or let us define new context sensitive operators using unused symbols (#, @, ,..). At the very bare minimum Java need an exponential operator.
How could they leave out a law that prohibits groups from the NRA to NARAL from broadcasting "any mention or likeness of a candidate including issues that can be identified with a specific candidate" 30 days before a primary, 60 days before an election. For Petes sake, this is the biggest bite out of the first amendment since the last sedition act.
Do you really think someone is going to through the trouble to get a license and buy/build alot of expensive equipment for a hobby they can only exercise when a disaster occurs? Hams provide not just hardware, but a large collection of trained, practiced volunteers available for emergencies. We do so in exchange for the priviledge of using these frequencies ALL the time.
> The thing you don't seem to grasp is that the basic physics places the burden of proof on the people claiming the absence of detrimental effects.
Uh.. no. You're not the first Chicken Little this world has seen. There's been at least one batch in every generation (for my parents it was Global Cooling in the 70s.) People are still (fortunately) very skeptical of gloom-and-doom scenarios. The burden of proof is very much on you. If public policy were driven by the precautionary principle we'd still be living in caves.
You're oversimplifying the mechanisms and ignoring some pesky contradictory evidence, like the fact that radiometric data doesnt show the same temperature rise ground measurements have produced.
Speaking of that, the greatest irony in all this is that President Dubya, in a move of blistering boneheadedness, clobbered funding for that portion of NASAs remote sensing program that was providing the aforementioned data. Way to go George! Kill off the most credible source of data that supports your position. Brilliant.
What was it Churchill said: "Never have so many words come from so little thought." Or something like that.
Copps argument boils down to: "The Internet has grown so beautifully fast because it was unregulated, uncontrolled, unfettered. So to keep it that way we (meaning him) must regulate it, control it, and, for good measure, throw in a little fettering."
The tightest bottleneck for 99% (ish) of us is that last 30 feet of wire between the pole and our home/abode/hovel. And for a decade now that bottleneck has remained tighter than a virgin on saltpeter thanx to Howard Sterns arch-nemesis, the FCC.
Have we all forgotten why broadband has been so slow in coming? Franco Charlie Charlie decided years ago that if any of those evil corporate boogeymen put forth the initial capital investment to run a fiber optic line to your house, they had to then provide access for their competitors. The inevitable result was all of those companies standing around your house in a circle each waiting for the other to pony up for that last 20 feet of line! Why shell out billions just so your competitors can have free access, giving them an immediate advantage? Nobody at this friggin agency thinks.
From assinine bureaucrats come assinine policies with assinine results. Lets all pray for wifi to break this logjam once and for all.
I can only speak for the hardware side. I dont know if this is true for software engineers.
I used to work for a large technology company. I wont say who they were but they were in "Texas" and made "Instruments". Engineers were stratified by "Job Grade." BSEE's hire in at job grade 24, MSEE's at 26, & PhD's Hire in at 28. From my own experience and talking to others it takes 6 to 8 years to climb from 24 to 28. If you're energetic you can get a PhD in engineering in 4 years. So apparently this company does value education over work experience.
I also noticed that PhD's were held in higher esteem. They climbed the ladder faster and got better jobs. Most were doing design. Few were pushed into management.
This, I should note, was before the technology sector hit the skids.
It probably depends also on the supply of PhD's in your field. Supply and demand rules in the real world. Few hardware engineers bother to go beyond a Bachelors.
---
Cato had a good column on this notion that deregulation was responsible. Lets get real here folks. The lights went out because a collection of relays somewhere that were supposed to isolate a load imbalance didn't flip when they should have, not because we dont have enough bureaucrats in Washington.
Paint em green and call em PalmOlive.
Altruistic Balderdash! We do it because it's fun, a distinctly selfish sentiment.
Since when is 'From each according to his means, to each according to his needs' the "holy grail of capitalism." Adam Smith is spinning in his grave.
Cokes smart machine raises the price of their malted battery acid on hot days simply because of good old supply & demand. The machine has no idea how much you make.
And there's another aspect of the information economy he's ignoring that stands between nosy companies & me: price-finders like pricegrabber, travelocity, etc. that provide consumers an anonymous search for the best price.
What glop. This is why I stopped reading businessweek years ago. How ironic that a magazine tailored to business should be the most anticapitalist rag this side of The New York Times.
Bah!
After all, the wire is private property owned by a private company. How do you justify some sanctimonious twit in parliament (or whatever you canuks have) just stepping in & forcing them to provide a service they'd rather not?
Doesn't anyone in that godforsaken ice-pit believe in property rights?
Steve, you have a peculiar definition of need (scholarships??). Tell you what.. Lets take uncle sam back to his original role (police, defense, civil courts) for a decade or so. Pay for it all with a very small flat tax or better yet, a sales tax on durable goods. If you find me 'begging uncle same to take back my money' I promise to shut up about taxes forever.
You fucking moron.
I didn't know traffic jams were hard to locate. I have no trouble at all finding them (every damn day.)
Price fixing is defined as a collaborative effort between ostensible competitors to maintain a minimum price. Microsoft is too ornary to collaborate with anyone, legally or otherwise.
And monopolies are not illegal, They cant be unless you want to erase all patent and copyright laws (and I know some folks do). Only the abuse of a monopolistic position to suppress competition is illegal.
This was a remarkably dumb decision. The Idaho supremes need to lay off the corn whiskey.
Er.. How many other recessions have there been since CD's appeared in the late 80's ? Answer: one. That was in 91. But it was so mild that people are still arguing over whether it was actually a recession. One data point doesn't make for much of a trend.
Being one of hundreds of politicians that voted on one of hundreds of spending initiatives gives Gore no special claim on the internet. Just like the economy and Clinton, he was just there when it happened.
Credit the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs for the explosion of what we enjoy today. It would never have happened had it not been so unfettered by governmental planning.
The article is light on details. Anyone see this in any scientific journal recently? I wonder what it would take to replicate the experiment (on a budget) ? How sophisticated an EEG would it take? How much was done in hardware & software? That kinda stuff. I'd sacrifice an hour or two a day playing video games if it would improve my concentration. There's a market for this!