I don't mean to dis MySQL (I use it for many things myself), but the area which NASA changed from Oracle to MySQL was essientially a Mailing List. (not the most Database intensive thing).
I am:
Blowfish Chef
we also got a:
Domesticated Bitmonkey
Master of space and time
Secret Squirrel
just some thoughts.
people make such a big deal about titles, which seems trivial until you start applying for subsequent jobs.
what's different? you state that without any assertions. If you look at patents/yr, there are always revolutions which spurry an enormous amount of patents in a short period. ie. The Telephone, the automobile, the microprocessor, etc. And today is the internet/biotech/whatever. I'd like to hear what you deem is "different." Yes, the technologies are different, but the innovative environment is no different that when Bell invented the telephone. People patenting over people, lots of law suits, etc. By implying that patents were once useful, you prove my point to start with.
The fact remains that if patents did not exist, people would be A LOT lessing willing to disclose how their inventions work to the public. We'd get the same secrecy, etc without any disclosure. Would that really be a better system?
as promised:
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7478
many others, but this is the most recent that I know of. Remember patents don't obey borders (YET), so the chicken and the egg argument that someone suggested would be hard to prove since this is a comparitive study.
I remind you again that there are many instances where people REFUSED to patent their inventions on the basis that the inventions were too valuable to humanity for them to receive a patent on it.
Case in point: Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1929 where he refused to patent it. Unfortunately his humanitarian grounds severely reduced the adoption of penicillin until WWII. Why? Because no one could make money on it. (Reference: Burke's "Patent and Trademarks" pg. 28-29)
I disagree that patents slow innovation. I do think that they have become too legalistic (I'm a firm believer that the US has too many lawyers doing too many things they shouldn't be doing), but everyone has the right to improve on someone else's invention. Too many people including yourself do not know the intention of the Patent system. It's not a monopoly control system. It's a full disclosure system. If you do some reading on IP history, disclosure is significantly better than non-disclosure. How would you like it if a drug company wouldn't tell you what drug you were taking since it was a "trade secret," because they couldn't patent it, and wanted to protect it some how. Additionally, 1st time patenters are the fastest growing inventors sector seeking patents. You aren't exactly enforcing old monopolies for multi-nationals as one person claimed.
Like I've said in previous posts, I like the fundamentals of the patent system. It serves a purpose, promotes innovation (despite what some people have posted, which is contrary to what many economists believe), and promotes the ideal of full disclosure of ideas into a centralized database which can now (admittedly in the past the patent db was quite off limits to anyone not living in Washington) be accessed by anyone with a computer. I do NOT like however patent agression, and patents which come out of patent aggression: trash patens and kitchen sink patents. I cannot and will not defend them, but to eliminate the patent system as some of you would like to do would severely stifle R&D within the country. It's nice to see that many people are still altrusitic and idealistic in the world, but the matter fact is that very few companies would even have R&D depts. if they didn't have the ability to patent the ideas which their employees produced. I wish I had this one book I own at home here, because I'd show you some nice correlations between patents and profit, and GDP per capita and number of patents filed per capita.
I highly doubt I'll convince anyone otherwise, but most of you actually don't understand the reasoning the Patent system was setup in the first place, so please if you have time do a little research.
And for the record you can't patent math, only things which have utility (read an industrial application) can be patented.
will post when i get home from work.
there is a quite strong correlation between companies frequently cited in patent literature and profits. hence some people conclude patents = profits.
I will post the ecnonomists and jazz when I get home from work.
You're missing the point of patents in the first place. Patents give the exclusive right for one to exclude others from using ones work, in exchange for full disclosure on how it works. Would you rather that all sw patents were "kept in the dark." Save rev. engineering something, you'd wouldn't know how things contained in a sw patents work. While, most sw patents that get posted on/. are dumb, there are many that meet all the criteria for patentability:
1) Utility
2) Novel
3) Non-obvious
While I've seen many that miss one or more these requirements, a large proportion of sw patents do meet them. I honestly beleive the problem is w/ the USPTO and not the patent mentality itself. Good examiners are hard to find/attract, and this can be seen by many of the "trash patents" and "kitchen sink" patents let through recently. Whether you like it or not, sw companies would even be less eager (I know some aren't eager already) to disclose standards and such to the public,if they could not patent their ideas. And despite of what some others have said, most economists have concluded that countries/companies which have strong Patent Law/initiatives are more successful.
I assume as usual, some people will rip into me now, but I urge you to learn a little about how the patent system works, and read some good patents before you assume all patents are trash or kitchen sink patents. The patent database itself is a wealth of information, and that's exactly what it's supposed to be.
on the other hand, aren't you really saying that it's the people, not the OS?
being completely objective, I think the above system to be true. It's more often the people who keep their networks secure, and not the OSes.
I honestly think it's more about the track record of the team that people should be basing insurance premiums on, and not the OS.
Why would AOL spend so much money developing a product they have no intention of marketting to their own customers?
I see a AOL-TimeWarner-MS merger in the works.
who are you joking man?
you have to realize that in 10-15 yrs you won't go for a blood test, you'll go for a DNA test. The drug companies today will all be bioinformatics companies in the future.
I work for a smallish drug company out of Canada, and trust me we're already using elementary techniques developed in bioinformatics research for purposes of drug discovery.
On the other hand, I'm very biased. I have a degree in genetics and mathematics, so I fit your skills requirement. The theory maybe hard, but the programming, while not exactly trivial, is within the grasp of most people who know how to code.
While I agree that people should be paid during on-call hrs to some degree, I disagree with your statement. People do things all the time which directly affect how they work. If you get your hair-cut in a mohawk, you might get fired as well, but no one would ever claim that you should get paid to get a good hair-cut.
People don't get paid for stuff they do outside of the office but directly affect how they work. eg. no one gets paid for driving to work, dressing in uniform, etc.
Unfortunately the profession I'm familiar with that requires off-site on-call hrs is a medical doctor. They as far as I know (at least in Canada) do not get paid until they arrive at the hospital. What generally does happen is that they aren't on-call 24/7.
I think it's unfortunate, but I think there's very little you could do. As someone else said employers will always take advantage of the situation.
Often when I hear people's reasons for banning cloning, I hear claims that clones would be considered sub-human etc.
What they fail to realize is that no matter what you ban, people will do it anyways. So what I claim is that instead of bringing out the ban stick they should be bringing out laws which provide the same rights to clones as regular humans.
As I said above, not all VCs have good intentions. If I were to met w/ you today w/ "The Next Big Thing" tm, I could make you sign all the NDAs in the world, and I've seen them fall apart. It's about legal protection, not necessarily legal agression. All I'm saying.
What many of you fail to realize is that patents do to a certain extent have good intentions.
I'll give you a case study to illustrate my point.
Alexander Fleming "invented" (quotations because it was an accident) pennicilin in 1929, but chose that the potential for antibiotics were "too good" and decided to release its potential for both a utility and design patent into the public domain. Most of you are going "yay!", but little do you realize it's this precise move that dampened the affect that penniclin could have had until WWII. Why you ask? Because it was not profitable to produce, and therefore no one produced it.
I will not defend the bad patents, (ie. Amazon, business method patent, etc), but really what do you expect. No corporation would have a research lab if they could not profit from it. Generally most patents are good patents, there are a few bad ones, and a very small percentage of these end up in infringement cases.
Put it this way. You come up w/ a great idea (we'll even say "novel" in this case), although you need a cash sum of 1 million dollars to bring it to market (or even to bring it to completion so you could give away for free). You meet w/ some evil VCs, force them to sign NDAs, but I've seen many times where NDAs don't hold up in court. What other protection can you provide?
Patents do serve a purpose. I don't like the bad patents, but understand why people use them to protect themselves. If you think it's stupid/a waste of money, that's your opinion, but maybe you'll feel different if you're ever in their position. All I want you to understand is that many people don't create such patents with the intention of suing everyone.
I do find it ironic that Carmack was once quoted something to the extent "I refuse to patent anything I deal with." and he ends up in the mess.
I have to say that many people on/. are quick to jump on the anti-patent bagwagon. What you have to realize is that it's necessary in the business world. Often patents are used just to solidify positions when attempting financing, etc. Unfortunately this is something that investors like to see, and rightfully so (if you were to invest your money in a company, wouldn't you like to know that they were looking out for the livelihood of the company).
While I don't condone vague patents, people do it for a reason, and as long as they don't start suing people for infringment, I don't see a problem.
PS. I do realize the purpose of a patent gives the right to exclude, not the right to use, which makes the purpose of obtaining a patent for show pointless, but on the other hand, a patent looks good on paper to business people.
*shrug*
At one point I was looking into writing extensions to ICQ for a project I was working on, and find an ICQ plugin API. This was July 2000. Anyone know if this is all that different?
2% isn't that bad statistically. I've seen studies similar in content that claim 20-30%, and are considered "valid." Someone puts out a study, and no matter how bad the statistics are, the media will pick it up if it scares people.
I'd like to think though that Sun Spots aren't the real *cause* of influenze epidemics. If you look at the patterns in the winter flu season, people get sick more often because they spend more time indoors, because it's cold outside. More time inside = less volume of air => Higher probability of coming in contact w/ the virus. Same pattern applies to Sun spots. I always hear people saying to "stay indoors," etc. Sounds a lot like winter flu season.
it just means that the variance can largely be attributed to the correlation between the two variables. I agree, kind of vague, but that kind of language is common in Health Sciences/Stats/Applied Math.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mean to dis MySQL (I use it for many things myself), but the area which NASA changed from Oracle to MySQL was essientially a Mailing List. (not the most Database intensive thing).
http://www.mysql.com/news/article-51.html
check for yourself.
it costs them power though.
in all reality, it's not your decision to make.
akamai does their dns hosting since they were downed earlier this yr. that'd be why their ms.com dns's are all linux-based.
we can have AOL compost heaps now.
I am:
Blowfish Chef
we also got a:
Domesticated Bitmonkey
Master of space and time
Secret Squirrel
just some thoughts.
people make such a big deal about titles, which seems trivial until you start applying for subsequent jobs.
what's different? you state that without any assertions. If you look at patents/yr, there are always revolutions which spurry an enormous amount of patents in a short period. ie. The Telephone, the automobile, the microprocessor, etc. And today is the internet/biotech/whatever. I'd like to hear what you deem is "different." Yes, the technologies are different, but the innovative environment is no different that when Bell invented the telephone. People patenting over people, lots of law suits, etc. By implying that patents were once useful, you prove my point to start with.
The fact remains that if patents did not exist, people would be A LOT lessing willing to disclose how their inventions work to the public. We'd get the same secrecy, etc without any disclosure. Would that really be a better system?
as promised: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7478 many others, but this is the most recent that I know of. Remember patents don't obey borders (YET), so the chicken and the egg argument that someone suggested would be hard to prove since this is a comparitive study.
see other reply regarding penicillin. I'd argue, yes that society does.
I remind you again that there are many instances where people REFUSED to patent their inventions on the basis that the inventions were too valuable to humanity for them to receive a patent on it.
Case in point: Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1929 where he refused to patent it. Unfortunately his humanitarian grounds severely reduced the adoption of penicillin until WWII. Why? Because no one could make money on it. (Reference: Burke's "Patent and Trademarks" pg. 28-29)
I disagree that patents slow innovation. I do think that they have become too legalistic (I'm a firm believer that the US has too many lawyers doing too many things they shouldn't be doing), but everyone has the right to improve on someone else's invention. Too many people including yourself do not know the intention of the Patent system. It's not a monopoly control system. It's a full disclosure system. If you do some reading on IP history, disclosure is significantly better than non-disclosure. How would you like it if a drug company wouldn't tell you what drug you were taking since it was a "trade secret," because they couldn't patent it, and wanted to protect it some how. Additionally, 1st time patenters are the fastest growing inventors sector seeking patents. You aren't exactly enforcing old monopolies for multi-nationals as one person claimed.
Like I've said in previous posts, I like the fundamentals of the patent system. It serves a purpose, promotes innovation (despite what some people have posted, which is contrary to what many economists believe), and promotes the ideal of full disclosure of ideas into a centralized database which can now (admittedly in the past the patent db was quite off limits to anyone not living in Washington) be accessed by anyone with a computer. I do NOT like however patent agression, and patents which come out of patent aggression: trash patens and kitchen sink patents. I cannot and will not defend them, but to eliminate the patent system as some of you would like to do would severely stifle R&D within the country. It's nice to see that many people are still altrusitic and idealistic in the world, but the matter fact is that very few companies would even have R&D depts. if they didn't have the ability to patent the ideas which their employees produced.
I wish I had this one book I own at home here, because I'd show you some nice correlations between patents and profit, and GDP per capita and number of patents filed per capita.
I highly doubt I'll convince anyone otherwise, but most of you actually don't understand the reasoning the Patent system was setup in the first place, so please if you have time do a little research.
And for the record you can't patent math, only things which have utility (read an industrial application) can be patented.
will post when i get home from work. there is a quite strong correlation between companies frequently cited in patent literature and profits. hence some people conclude patents = profits. I will post the ecnonomists and jazz when I get home from work.
You're missing the point of patents in the first place. Patents give the exclusive right for one to exclude others from using ones work, in exchange for full disclosure on how it works. Would you rather that all sw patents were "kept in the dark." Save rev. engineering something, you'd wouldn't know how things contained in a sw patents work. While, most sw patents that get posted on /. are dumb, there are many that meet all the criteria for patentability:
1) Utility
2) Novel
3) Non-obvious
While I've seen many that miss one or more these requirements, a large proportion of sw patents do meet them. I honestly beleive the problem is w/ the USPTO and not the patent mentality itself. Good examiners are hard to find/attract, and this can be seen by many of the "trash patents" and "kitchen sink" patents let through recently. Whether you like it or not, sw companies would even be less eager (I know some aren't eager already) to disclose standards and such to the public,if they could not patent their ideas. And despite of what some others have said, most economists have concluded that countries/companies which have strong Patent Law/initiatives are more successful.
I assume as usual, some people will rip into me now, but I urge you to learn a little about how the patent system works, and read some good patents before you assume all patents are trash or kitchen sink patents. The patent database itself is a wealth of information, and that's exactly what it's supposed to be.
on the other hand, aren't you really saying that it's the people, not the OS?
being completely objective, I think the above system to be true. It's more often the people who keep their networks secure, and not the OSes.
I honestly think it's more about the track record of the team that people should be basing insurance premiums on, and not the OS.
Why would AOL spend so much money developing a product they have no intention of marketting to their own customers?
I see a AOL-TimeWarner-MS merger in the works.
yeh, especially when you can get a sun E10000 for around that price.
who are you joking man? you have to realize that in 10-15 yrs you won't go for a blood test, you'll go for a DNA test. The drug companies today will all be bioinformatics companies in the future. I work for a smallish drug company out of Canada, and trust me we're already using elementary techniques developed in bioinformatics research for purposes of drug discovery. On the other hand, I'm very biased. I have a degree in genetics and mathematics, so I fit your skills requirement. The theory maybe hard, but the programming, while not exactly trivial, is within the grasp of most people who know how to code.
While I agree that people should be paid during on-call hrs to some degree, I disagree with your statement. People do things all the time which directly affect how they work. If you get your hair-cut in a mohawk, you might get fired as well, but no one would ever claim that you should get paid to get a good hair-cut.
People don't get paid for stuff they do outside of the office but directly affect how they work. eg. no one gets paid for driving to work, dressing in uniform, etc.
Unfortunately the profession I'm familiar with that requires off-site on-call hrs is a medical doctor. They as far as I know (at least in Canada) do not get paid until they arrive at the hospital. What generally does happen is that they aren't on-call 24/7.
I think it's unfortunate, but I think there's very little you could do. As someone else said employers will always take advantage of the situation.
Often when I hear people's reasons for banning cloning, I hear claims that clones would be considered sub-human etc.
What they fail to realize is that no matter what you ban, people will do it anyways. So what I claim is that instead of bringing out the ban stick they should be bringing out laws which provide the same rights to clones as regular humans.
As I said above, not all VCs have good intentions. If I were to met w/ you today w/ "The Next Big Thing" tm, I could make you sign all the NDAs in the world, and I've seen them fall apart. It's about legal protection, not necessarily legal agression. All I'm saying.
What many of you fail to realize is that patents do to a certain extent have good intentions.
I'll give you a case study to illustrate my point.
Alexander Fleming "invented" (quotations because it was an accident) pennicilin in 1929, but chose that the potential for antibiotics were "too good" and decided to release its potential for both a utility and design patent into the public domain. Most of you are going "yay!", but little do you realize it's this precise move that dampened the affect that penniclin could have had until WWII. Why you ask? Because it was not profitable to produce, and therefore no one produced it.
I will not defend the bad patents, (ie. Amazon, business method patent, etc), but really what do you expect. No corporation would have a research lab if they could not profit from it. Generally most patents are good patents, there are a few bad ones, and a very small percentage of these end up in infringement cases.
Put it this way. You come up w/ a great idea (we'll even say "novel" in this case), although you need a cash sum of 1 million dollars to bring it to market (or even to bring it to completion so you could give away for free). You meet w/ some evil VCs, force them to sign NDAs, but I've seen many times where NDAs don't hold up in court. What other protection can you provide?
Patents do serve a purpose. I don't like the bad patents, but understand why people use them to protect themselves. If you think it's stupid/a waste of money, that's your opinion, but maybe you'll feel different if you're ever in their position. All I want you to understand is that many people don't create such patents with the intention of suing everyone.
I do find it ironic that Carmack was once quoted something to the extent "I refuse to patent anything I deal with." and he ends up in the mess.
I have to say that many people on /. are quick to jump on the anti-patent bagwagon. What you have to realize is that it's necessary in the business world. Often patents are used just to solidify positions when attempting financing, etc. Unfortunately this is something that investors like to see, and rightfully so (if you were to invest your money in a company, wouldn't you like to know that they were looking out for the livelihood of the company).
While I don't condone vague patents, people do it for a reason, and as long as they don't start suing people for infringment, I don't see a problem.
PS. I do realize the purpose of a patent gives the right to exclude, not the right to use, which makes the purpose of obtaining a patent for show pointless, but on the other hand, a patent looks good on paper to business people.
*shrug*
This is an option, but I'd recommend the src-tree update. It's more likely to be newer than the binaries you find in the binary install.
At one point I was looking into writing extensions to ICQ for a project I was working on, and find an ICQ plugin API. This was July 2000. Anyone know if this is all that different?
2% isn't that bad statistically. I've seen studies similar in content that claim 20-30%, and are considered "valid." Someone puts out a study, and no matter how bad the statistics are, the media will pick it up if it scares people. I'd like to think though that Sun Spots aren't the real *cause* of influenze epidemics. If you look at the patterns in the winter flu season, people get sick more often because they spend more time indoors, because it's cold outside. More time inside = less volume of air => Higher probability of coming in contact w/ the virus. Same pattern applies to Sun spots. I always hear people saying to "stay indoors," etc. Sounds a lot like winter flu season.
it just means that the variance can largely be attributed to the correlation between the two variables. I agree, kind of vague, but that kind of language is common in Health Sciences/Stats/Applied Math.
Just wait until Webster's dictionary sues Napster for violating its copyright on words in the english language.