Physical invention? Snap-together models? What new physical invention is there? New snap edges? Better bracing design?
Oh, no. Just little cut-outs. The whole real patent is about a business model. Wow, some things are more common than others and they're distributed in booster sets.
Did these people totally miss baseball cards and the rest of human history where people have done every single thing mentioned therein?
Note, patents aren't supposed to cover things you just haven't thought of yet, but things that many people couldn't just come up with on the spur of the moment when asked. An umbrella is (was) patentable because it's a unique physical device to make a rain roof. The idea of taking a newspaper and holding it over your head to stay dry isn't.
What, even microscopic, technological advancement was there in this case?
Punch-out construction pieces have indeed existed well beyond patent lifetimes, as puzzles, mazes, etc. For them to be actual game pieces and come in booster packs. Well, that certainly is patent-worthy...
The problem is that people ask the wrong question to judge obviousness. We ask "Is Z obvious to you?", but "Given the goal of X and constraint Y, what would you do?" is the question we should ask. If something is obvious enough that anyone skilled in the industry can come up with Z and make it work, what exactly do we get from this patent?
This isn't a technology patent in *any* way, it's a business model patent.
And frankly, anyone who has or wants a business model patent should be lynched. For the good of everyone else. "Oh noes, if the government doesn't forbid anyone else doing anything like this, I shall surely be lost!" What a way to rest on the laurels of your one good idea instead of actually trying to compete in an open market.
If patents actually did anything they claimed to keep a little inventor safe it might be different. Instead patents are only of use to patent trolls and companies with a ton. For everyone else it's merely a an impassible minefield. Make an interesting product and get sued for violating six submarine patents on stuff like 1-click (what were cookies for, if this is so novel?), XOR-drawing (Um, how else on B&W displays?), etc, etc.
Not at all true. You don't have to read the GPL to use software (you never have to, copyright law allows looking at copyrighted works even if you didn't come into them by the author's intent). The GPL is to allow you to redistribute the software. That would be like if Jamie had actually hacked a download from MS and offered the modified file to someone else.
All he did was use it and write software to interact with it. The users who download and install his mod are violating their EULAs (not Jamie's) but EULAs aren't binding, and theirs aren't Jamie's problem even if they were. He made a hammer, other people downloaded it and started hammering. Supposedly this was illegal because they don't have hammering rights to something they otherwise own...
But really, the GPL and an EULA are nothing alike. One is supposed to keep you from using software, the other is intended to offer you extra distribution rights in certain cases. One you're forced to read before use, the other you may choose to read if you feel like modifying and redistributing.
There is no Microsoft equivalent to the GPL because you are never allowed to distribute any of their software, even patches, with a few very minor exceptions. (Seriously, the DX9_redist file and a few others are explicitly allowed, their patches are explicitly disallowed and one has to assume that everything that doesn't say is similar. You can copy the patches, but only in as "pushing out patches" to machines you own, not in the sense of putting them on your website in a tutorial, like you could with a GPLed program.)
Um, you missed the point. Microsoft has been _asking_ this guy to stop because they can't make him... Do you understand?
These other companies merely have yet to fully realize this. Also, some of them have contracts with MS that would let MS break them if they stepped out of line. ("You like your volume discount? Want to pay full retail on every PC you sell?")
But really, EULAs have absolutely no force.
1) Copyright law doesn't allow for the prevention of use. If you have a book you're allowed to read it, even if you stole it. The theft would be a crime, but not the unauthorized usage. Ditto software. There are specific copyright statutes in the USA that allow use of software even if such use would require temporary copies to be created.
2) You only see the EULA after you buy or download. At this point you have the product and as above, there's no legal way for them to forbid your use.
3) It's extortion. They sold you a product and try to claim that a hidden contract allows them to take some functionality away and that, unlike ever in the history of contract law, you can be bound to something you've never read, or even seen. Yeah, right.
So, as retarded as this guy was in his blog, there's a reason Microsoft hasn't stopped this guy. Their lawyers know they can't force the issue. All they can do is threaten and slander. This MS project manager is fucking dumb, he actually drank the company kool-aid about how VS Express was "for the good of the people". It's lock-in plain as day. But this guy thinks he actually fought for it and won, "for the user". He must be blind. If Microsoft didn't give a dev environment away they risked losing people to Perl or any other free (and all ways) language.
Seriously, if I were the developer of this extension, I'd be *pissed* that Microsoft was claiming my actions were Illegal (and thus, I a criminal). It's obviously not true because even if EULAs were valid, that would merely revoke his usage license, not make him a criminal. I'd consider lawsuits myself - BillG has paid for this imbecile project manager and his blog which are slandering this guy, and the lawyers to harass him. Bill should cough up a few hundred million. They *know* his actions aren't criminal (or they'd have police involved) but they keep telling people he is.
As for your unwillingness to search for tools, you'll never get the best stuff packaged up and given to you. You simply can't. That you don't realize this says a bit about your skills - spend much time staying current?
TFS is great if there's One Microsoft Way to do everything at your company. If you test in this fashion, and write specs this way, and code in these tools, and put all bug reports into the required format, then it might tie things together nicely. And wow, it automatically draws detailed powerpoint lies about when you'll have some feature done. Wow!
But, what if you code in an agile environment? (ie, real world, where the specs aren't detailed in twenty-seven binders prior to the start of coding.) You may not have "specs" the software will usefully work with. You'll have use cases, which conceptually are similar, but not quite the same enough to survive being shoe-horned into the same tool.
Similarly, you might need to start working in a non-MS Embraced language, Ruby, LISP, etc, and be totally unable to integrate it into your workflow properly because none of the standard tools work.
Few companies require "custom software", but very few are perfectly fit by any given application, even if they commissioned its development. You can settle for 90% in everything and 10% in some things, or get 95% in everything, for a little cost in glue and research. Point to any MS product you can modify easily and Microsoft will be trying to sue you or take that functionality away. Go ahead, make your life easier, they dare you.
You think automatic code refactoring is way cool, where you change one thing and the compiler changes all the redundancies. Imagine programming in a language where you simply didn't repeat yourself so much. Suddenly your IDE seems merely like a low-level Smalltalk hack and also-ran applications bolted to it for lock-in potential.
Well, Microsoft is funding legal attacks on open source software, so really whatever hurts them can only be good... Any company afraid of competing in the marketplace is one I don't support. Crime does pay is all Microsoft proves.
And as for software patents, you're right, they always suck. Like land-mines. But at least they blew up on a supporter like MS rather than some innocent bunch of coders. Maybe this'll persuade MS to change their tune and software patents will die, maybe not.
There's no way Linux, etc, and the culture of free software will go away, but companies may stop putting their name on it for a while. No real change to the users, but it could be the death of a lot of IP-camping companies. Don't invest in buggy-whips.
Did you say you'd be charging her? I could send you a smoking ruin in a box and be shocked you billed me. Did she ask for a replacement? Was there a policy of free replacements?
I recently ordered some stuff off a website, the final page said
"stuff $50" "tax $3" "shipping $0" -- "total $53"
See the shipping $0 line?
Turns out there's fine print a page earlier that says the shipping charge can't be estimated properly until the last step. So rather than saying "Shiiping ??" they say $0. Just easier for them...
I feel ripped off. I signed off on the $53 amount, when it arrives it's $15 higher.
They apparently don't understand the problem with this. Nobody in the whole webstore uses "Total" the way any other human being does. To them it means some intermediate amount, to which something will be added. Nobody said what they call that.
Visa is of course *so* useless. To them this isn't fraud - even if the amount bears no resemblance to what I intended to pay. It'd be fraud if they shipped a brick, but to ship what I want for a different price? That's fine!? Gah, jackasses.
Ideally I'd just write down the Visa rep's name, get their home number, scam them later by offering them a product and then inflate the charges. Either I win and get restitution, or they fight it showing me some secret way to get Visa to stop dealing with known criminals which I apply to the earlier case. Heh.
Anyways, just because her cats pissed on it, she didn't authorize a huge charge to send her a fresh one. If you can't wash the cat piss off, tell her that and ask if she wants a brand new one.
Exactly. There'd only be about half as many IRC users tomorrow if ops were suddenly replaced with a/ignore that really worked. Without someone's ass to kiss, for the power to get people to kiss your ass, most people aren't interested. In my experience these are the people most likely to watch shows like Survivor, Fear Factor, etc.
I wish there was a game that didn't attract these people. The existence of WoWGlider is proof enough that WoW is a crappy game. That Blizzard is so outraged by it shows they know how crappy WoW is and plan on keeping it that way. Proof enough that Blizzard hasn't and won't changed their ways.
I think the idea should be to buy WoWGlider from the guy and integrate it into the default client. Now fill the player's time with something else while they're getting XP. Make the world less bland so that the player can't just assume everything around will be level X +/- 5%. Make the monsters attack back - if a bunch of Orcs go missing send a raiding party. Then let the player watch the show as their character fights until something jumps out that will take an actual human to decide.
Ideally an MMORPG would be designed with an in-client bot, made by a separate dev team. They try to turn as much of the game into Progress Quest as possible while the other dev team tries to defeat the bot, but only with complex systems (ones worthy of a human) where people will want to override because they can, if skilled, do better. The UI would continually evolve to make things easier and automate anything you could describe as wanting automated, while the game would get more complex and interesting so that you don't want to blast through so much.
But that's insane. The one thing it isn't is copyright violation. He presumably bought a legit copy of the game, so he owns it and can look at it as much as he likes, space shifting as desired. (Which is obviously necessary with a non human-readable media.)
They might have a case of contract violation against him for the ongoing monthly use of the online service despite violating the contract. But totally not for copyright reasons.
Why do the supporters of Blizzard (Tivo, etc) go into reality denial mode, where whatever their favorite company says must be true? This is so obviously not copyright, yet you (all) get carried away with your support for "stopping cheaters" and let yourself end up supporting 1984ish black-is-white nonsense.
You don't need a license to read a book. Wake up. You don't need one to use software either. Theoretically someone who entered into an agreement with the vendor might get into trouble for letting you be near a terminal running the software or have access to the media, but not you because you didn't sign anything. You're copyright safe as long as you don't create a lasting duplicate of the work.
Try changing it though. 90% of stuff works, but very frequently options boxes and such won't properly display anymore because their overall dimensions are hardcoded, pushing the buttons and text off the bottom of the screen.
This is why we shouldn't give designers pixel-perfect layout. They always end up requiring it.
Use waste as the metric. Figure out how long you need to do given subtasks, how much faster they are, and how often you have to do those things. Lack of waste doesn't translate into productivity - you could use your new time to slack harder, but it's a good start.
What maximizes shareholder value? Quick investments or actions that have an immediate payoff might not still not be profitable in the long-term. Usually even, the best long-term strategy isn't the best short-term strategy.
Was Google's business policy "Avoid 98% of evil, unless it's really expedient", or "Don't be evil". These are both strategies, but I don't think they're equivalent. I think the wishy-washy one is likely to trade immediate success like access to more markets (India, Pakistan, China, Turkey...) than their competitors for long-term success such as customer loyalty.
In the days when Google was a search engine it was a commodity and so were its customers - faceless masses they profiled. Now, more and more of Google's customers sign in, and thus are more prone to negative loyalty reactions. In other words, they'll leave gmail, gvideo, gmaps, geverything over annoyance of mistrust. This is a registered user, who would be lost by their short-term thinking.
IMHO Google's reputation is all that separates it from MSN. Microsoft has equivalent web apps to most of what Google does, but has a fraction of the users it should with its monopoly positioning. Why? Because nobody expects to ever win in any confrontation with Microsoft.
Microsoft has a reputation of putting the user last - look at the Zune and how it's really just the latest in a series of software and hardware products like it. Overall, Bill's terribly rich so you can't argue with the strategy by saying it'll ruin the company. But if Microsoft had a policy like Google's from the beginning they'd probably have 100% happy lock-in by embracing everything like Google does, but to joyous welcome, not scorn as when Microsoft does it. Even Microsoft's best customers wish it had competition, Google's best customer's used to wish everyone was like it.
As a stock-holder I'd want a longer-term view, and higher eventual profits. Google is doing something that I feel lowers their value. Not their share price, but their intrinsic value. Here I'm seeing an example of Google walking on their smaller business partners (users) for their larger partners (India, China). If I ran a company and provided unreliable service by let's say, renting a reserved item to someone who'd pay more, I'd soon be out of business. The big client would pay a bit more now but nobody would trust me to provide the equipment they needed. The big guy would become my sole customer and start calling the shots. I'd no-longer have anyone else wanting the equipment so they wouldn't pay rush charges anymore... In a similar fashion, Google risks loosing their market differentiation (a company you can trust with your data) if they break too many promises, especially if they use short-term financials as justification.
I've got email and data services with companies I have to trust a bit, despite my best encryption measures, but it's unlikely I'd trust Google here because they bow to censorship and snooping. They're ideally technologically positioned to provide services, but I don't trust them to provide a service for *me* anymore.
Why is it that suddenly when people expect a company to provide a real dependable product they get treated like that expectation is silly - as if quality assurance being expensive is any excuse to not provide a working product. Can you imagine the reaction if I started handing out 10% counterfeit bills, justifying it by saying that it just wasn't worth my time to check better? So why the climate that companies can provide essentially the same?
In Google's case this is eyeballs in trade for service, but it's still a contract and still valid. But Google then takes the service away, as if you didn't just legally pay asking price for it, at someone else's command. What value does a product, a car for instance, have if you can't be sure it'll work at any given time, or indeed could just stop working forever if the dealership wishes.
Who's going to use an online word processor when their documents will probably be locked or deleted if they happen to be critical of the state religion? That's precisely why people would have gone with Google before - to avoid provincial thuggery.
I don't know about you, but I write my webpages so that when the style goes away, the page still views in a basic 1996 kind of style. Put the content first and your index bars and ads last then use CSS to position them first, visibly. This way if a blind user or someone without style sheets sees the site it at least reads in order.
We refer to it that way, but that doesn't make it right - not in a pedantic sense, but in the sense of understanding what parts there are and what they do.
Here's where we'd be better off if there were more cross-kernel distros. You can get Debian/FreeBSD, and if the GNU project hurried up (like Duke Nukem Forever) we'd have HURD, another kernel. Then you could get an almost identical system that differed only in the internals, kind of like choosing a filesystem, and it really would be clear that Linux was just the Kernel.
Now people think "Linux" (the OSes) work on everything from watches to supercomputers. The kernel runs on these machines, but you can't just throw a Debian CD into your MP3 player and start hax0ring the planet. You need a distro that runs on that machine, also called Linux in the vernacular. Bah.
Religion is that shared moral language you mention. One not open for discussion, not up for change. The power structures that grow from it are much more enduring and dangerous than those built on the idea of mutual defense or shared resources. By its nature - enlightened wisdom from the creators - religion can't be matched by works of people. This is an elitist system which further solidifies the power structure.
As for the truthiness of religious people who claim they follow a faith - there are many different interpretations of this obvious divine wisdom. Many claims are contradictory so not everyone can be right. Do the 10-commandments matter, or is Jesus all you need? Was Jesus a nobody? Or a valid prophet, but over-ridden by this other guy? How many gods are there?
As for the objective truth, if thousands of Muslims are strapping bombs to themselves in the name of Islam, it's either not a religion of peace, or maybe they meant "pieces", as in bloody chunks of. The families of these people (and the bombers themselves) feel they're truly religious. Who are you to say they're wrong? Not to imply for a second that I want to pick on Islam, it's just the current joke. "Oh, don't read our holy book, let us explain it." Christianity has enough strange loopholes and contradictory passages to justify anything you'd want.
The problem is that people like you lie to the world, claiming that religion doesn't say these things and doesn't contain these messages. It's obviously false, to anyone who has ever cracked one of these books open. You may be a pacifist, and the books may contain many loving ideas, but there are also sections commanding followers to kill.
Your very freedom to believe one meaning of the books despite their implicit words is exactly what suicide bombers use - different passages, but the same selective reading.
So no, while religion is ultimately just the actions of its participants, it doesn't seem like it's had a net positive effect across the world. Much tragedy has been committed (and worse, accepted) in its name, and what good is done is usually to extend a net around those helped. Missionaries bring help, and religion, to those in need of help. But the worst thing is how bad things (ethnic cleansing, etc) are accepted by people because of religious answers. If religion wasn't black and white, neither would the guilt of the Jews be...
But if I'm greedy I have a harder time getting others to act than if I was religious and used that, spreading religion. Greed wouldn't work as well because they'd want a payout and when it didn't materialize, they'd leave.
Ponzi schemes last days to years, religions last centuries, at least. It seems to me that for a specific lie, from a specific person, the religion one had a larger effect. Some effects were good (charities) but much bad. Not just the wars and hate, but the ignorance and the inability to allow people to examine the world around themselves.
In the same way that a cult/scam like Amway, Scientology, or Herbalife keeps their members in the dark so that they don't learn the lie of the organization, religions promote ignorance of the world. The Catholic church persecuted Galileo for writing about observable facts. Scientologists sue and ostracize members who discover the truth about their teachings.
Same tactics, much longer lifespan. Therefore, religions wins. imho. Bit silly though, to nitpick, because it's certainly a net loss, for the ignorance alone, even if it isn't the worst thing ever.
What kind of web-app are we talking about? Some GUI-based thing that has to have its own hotkeys and such? Then it's probably going to have compatibility problems as you play with CSS to make the GUI, play with Javascript events to handle the hotkeys and tab-order, etc.
If you must present a bondage and domination interface to a user, a native executable is much better. For a point-of-sales app where reliability was king and the user wasn't supposed to do anything else, a native app is great.
However, if I write a simple time-tracking program (like paper time sheets, online) an executable is overkill. I probably won't even bother with any formatting, so why would I care that browsers don't render it properly? If I use Javascript it'll be in a helper roll, where it could verify formatting pre-submit, or could handle a submit seamlessly, but that if it is not, the page still works in an extremely simple CGI fashion.
I've never user a browser that appeared to work and yet wouldn't let me post a reply on Slashdot for instance. Forms and text fields just aren't rocket science and can't really fail to work from browser to browser. Everything past that however... I check all my fields server-side anyways though, so I don't require the Javascript on the client to do it. It just saves a potential resubmit, and doesn't prevent a submit, just warns the syntax might be wrong - if it is wrong, the user can still proceed.
If I run a business I'm not going to want a bunch of moralistic handwaving crap on Microsoft's part, as to why my copies of Windows Vista my staff is using shutdown based on the actions of some guy in Russia.
If there's a kill switch in my software I'll blame the person who put it there, for *all* false positives. I don't give two shits about MS's piracy problem. Not at all.
I really don't get the expectation that I should suffer because Microsoft's business model is broken.
As I see it, a product that terminates itself like that is theft. I paid for something and now for circumstances I don't even know about, it's being taken away. Hell no. That's not a "lost sale" or some theoretical revenue from a non-customer, that's an actual product in my hands that I paid actual money for, being taken away to potentially guard MS against a loss of theoretical profits.
The real rub is that they don't stop any copying, at all, the cracker just generates another number and goes on.
I don't fill in paper warranty cards, and I will not fill in electronic ones, especially if they don't offer me anything I want. I already paid for the right to own the software. This is funny, because I use a fake serial number despite having a legit copy that came with the laptop. My privacy seeking could have already knocked some other user out. This isn't illegal copying, simply choosing to use the copy I bought without going through extraneous and unenforceable extra steps. Microsoft chooses to illegally deactivate Windows for some other legitimate user when I do this and you side with them. Fucked up.
I should get the password generator and try it, trying to generate as many fake keys as possible so that some may overlap legitimate keys and fool Microsoft into disabling the software of a legitimate user. I'm not their customer, I'm not hacking "into" anything, I'm merely using their server (which should require a password if it isn't public) to ask if a given random number looks like a valid windows keys. It's Microsoft who will be freaking out because someone guessed an already guessed number.
You might not think this would be a dangerous threat, as there must be a huge number of possible keys (25^36) and a small number of allocated keys (25 ^ 5, tops). But the birthday paradox (duplicate birthdays in a random group of people, 24(?) required for 50% odds.) suggests that I have far less than the entire keyspace to go before I collide with legitimate users.
Any situation like this where a company builds a remote hidden kill-switch into our products is unacceptable. If people don't notice it just because it doesn't hit many people at first it'll be harder to get rid of later. If everyone with a legit license calls MS to revalidate it every six months their complaints will get it changed quickly.
Try installing Windows XP on a 150GB HD that the BIOS shows as 120(?), with Linux already on some partitions.
Windows XP, when patched to SP2, can see the whole drive, but apparently even when slipstreamed, the installer could not. So I made the partitions in Linux, leaving the first partition, C, primary. I didn't install a boot-loader or anything, just install Linux on the second and remaining partitions. Windows wouldn't see it, even when I checked with Partition Magic that the partition table was correct, Windows still wouldn't use it. When I did format it with Windows, it wiped the rest of the partitions despite saying it wouldn't. Eventually I got Win XP in, on its own now, and got it patched to SP2, partitioned, and installed Linux, which went in like a dream even though it hadn't done the formatting, didn't get primary partitions, etc.
Windows just isn't "made" for the corner cases. It's meant to be installed in the factory. Linux is a bit more complex, but rarely fails because of lack of the tools.
When I install Linux I do so from a LiveCD where I browse the net with my persistent CF-card home directory. If I have any problems I can install apps, during the boot process, to solve the problem, then continue.
When I install Windows I'm in DOS. An 80x40 text screen where it shows me cryptic lists of drives that don't match what the GUIs show. Where I have to know the pathname of the scsi driver I want because I can't just click in a nice GUI.
Do you understand? Installing your Linux OS is done from a DVD-boot live OS with more features than Windows comes with. Windows however is still installed in the same fashion it was before DVDs existed, before the web existed, let alone before you could browse it wirelessly while installing. Sure, once you get through the hard stuff Windows will through a feel-good fake GUI up, where you can view advertising while it copies files. And then, at the end you get a GUI for config just before you finish. Wow. How 1992.
But most people don't install Windows so they blissfully think it's easy. These people become IT managers.
This one pointed out something I wish more people would consider, that the usage patterns aren't the same when we shift apps or OSes.
Windows *is* a pain to install. Just try doing hard stuff (weird drive layouts, SCSI, etc). But nobody sees it, so it's hard to explain to them why the techs say Windows sucks to install. They've tried to install Linux once on weird hardware and have always bought Windows pre-installed on laptops.
When this person is a CTO this gets dangerous.
They expect Linux to be hard to admin because it's "hard to install", but imho Linux boxes used for coding/testing require about a tenth the re-installs and maintenance of Windows boxes - not individually, but in a TCO sort of way.
Ten Linux servers are probably going to require less admin footwork than ten Windows desktops, even though Windows is "easier" for any individual machine.
Anyways, because we're stuck on how Windows is an easier install, nobody allocates resources to actually make it that way (like getting an MSDN license and building slipstreamed install discs). Even Microsoft must believe the lie because their installer doesn't cope with the really hard installs very well at all.
What I, as a Linux user, see when running Windows is a bunch of in-your-face glitzy crap and 20% of my experience is dominated by it. To a Windows user, they've tweaked it and paid that price long ago, and now less than %0.2 of their experience is dominated by it. If I was to blanketly state that glitz is bad I'd be wrong, but my limited data would support me fully.
Whenever the discussion comes up I can't understand how someone ends up trying recompile their Linux kernel right away, and they can't understand why I bitch about getting Windows to install on a drive it didn't format.
Usage testing is supposed to catch this, but everyone is biased as to what a normal user is...
Or, it's like every piece of consumer electronics I've ever bought. The warranty is damn useless because they look at tiny signs of cosmetic damage and refuse to honor it.
I've certainly seen a lot of shoddy products and most of them were along brand or product lines. Three IBM 75GXP drives failed, no other HD I'd used has died in less than two years, if it made it through formatting. No ATI card in the 90s had drivers that wouldn't lock up Windows. Honestly, my first thought when a product doesn't live up to expectations is that the company screwed up somehow. I've had three digital cameras and not broken one, two palm pilots, etc. But some things are just flaky.
I skip all extended warranties and just use the purchase protection I get through buying on Visa. I *love* using it when dealing with annoying companies.
"I'm sorry, it's not our policy to issue refunds."
"Okay, can I get your name name on that for reference? Okay, I'm going to call Visa and tell them we can't reach an agreement and get them to cancel payment for the last month."
"Well, let's see..."
Fido (cellphone) was going to bill me for an extra month because I canceled too close to the end of the month. Heh. No.
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Physical invention? Snap-together models? What new physical invention is there? New snap edges? Better bracing design?
Oh, no. Just little cut-outs. The whole real patent is about a business model. Wow, some things are more common than others and they're distributed in booster sets.
Did these people totally miss baseball cards and the rest of human history where people have done every single thing mentioned therein?
Note, patents aren't supposed to cover things you just haven't thought of yet, but things that many people couldn't just come up with on the spur of the moment when asked. An umbrella is (was) patentable because it's a unique physical device to make a rain roof. The idea of taking a newspaper and holding it over your head to stay dry isn't.
What, even microscopic, technological advancement was there in this case?
Punch-out construction pieces have indeed existed well beyond patent lifetimes, as puzzles, mazes, etc. For them to be actual game pieces and come in booster packs. Well, that certainly is patent-worthy...
The problem is that people ask the wrong question to judge obviousness. We ask "Is Z obvious to you?", but "Given the goal of X and constraint Y, what would you do?" is the question we should ask. If something is obvious enough that anyone skilled in the industry can come up with Z and make it work, what exactly do we get from this patent?
This isn't a technology patent in *any* way, it's a business model patent.
And frankly, anyone who has or wants a business model patent should be lynched. For the good of everyone else. "Oh noes, if the government doesn't forbid anyone else doing anything like this, I shall surely be lost!" What a way to rest on the laurels of your one good idea instead of actually trying to compete in an open market.
If patents actually did anything they claimed to keep a little inventor safe it might be different. Instead patents are only of use to patent trolls and companies with a ton. For everyone else it's merely a an impassible minefield. Make an interesting product and get sued for violating six submarine patents on stuff like 1-click (what were cookies for, if this is so novel?), XOR-drawing (Um, how else on B&W displays?), etc, etc.
Not at all true. You don't have to read the GPL to use software (you never have to, copyright law allows looking at copyrighted works even if you didn't come into them by the author's intent). The GPL is to allow you to redistribute the software. That would be like if Jamie had actually hacked a download from MS and offered the modified file to someone else.
All he did was use it and write software to interact with it. The users who download and install his mod are violating their EULAs (not Jamie's) but EULAs aren't binding, and theirs aren't Jamie's problem even if they were. He made a hammer, other people downloaded it and started hammering. Supposedly this was illegal because they don't have hammering rights to something they otherwise own...
But really, the GPL and an EULA are nothing alike. One is supposed to keep you from using software, the other is intended to offer you extra distribution rights in certain cases. One you're forced to read before use, the other you may choose to read if you feel like modifying and redistributing.
There is no Microsoft equivalent to the GPL because you are never allowed to distribute any of their software, even patches, with a few very minor exceptions. (Seriously, the DX9_redist file and a few others are explicitly allowed, their patches are explicitly disallowed and one has to assume that everything that doesn't say is similar. You can copy the patches, but only in as "pushing out patches" to machines you own, not in the sense of putting them on your website in a tutorial, like you could with a GPLed program.)
Um, you missed the point. Microsoft has been _asking_ this guy to stop because they can't make him... Do you understand?
These other companies merely have yet to fully realize this. Also, some of them have contracts with MS that would let MS break them if they stepped out of line. ("You like your volume discount? Want to pay full retail on every PC you sell?")
But really, EULAs have absolutely no force.
1) Copyright law doesn't allow for the prevention of use. If you have a book you're allowed to read it, even if you stole it. The theft would be a crime, but not the unauthorized usage. Ditto software. There are specific copyright statutes in the USA that allow use of software even if such use would require temporary copies to be created.
2) You only see the EULA after you buy or download. At this point you have the product and as above, there's no legal way for them to forbid your use.
3) It's extortion. They sold you a product and try to claim that a hidden contract allows them to take some functionality away and that, unlike ever in the history of contract law, you can be bound to something you've never read, or even seen. Yeah, right.
So, as retarded as this guy was in his blog, there's a reason Microsoft hasn't stopped this guy. Their lawyers know they can't force the issue. All they can do is threaten and slander. This MS project manager is fucking dumb, he actually drank the company kool-aid about how VS Express was "for the good of the people". It's lock-in plain as day. But this guy thinks he actually fought for it and won, "for the user". He must be blind. If Microsoft didn't give a dev environment away they risked losing people to Perl or any other free (and all ways) language.
Seriously, if I were the developer of this extension, I'd be *pissed* that Microsoft was claiming my actions were Illegal (and thus, I a criminal). It's obviously not true because even if EULAs were valid, that would merely revoke his usage license, not make him a criminal. I'd consider lawsuits myself - BillG has paid for this imbecile project manager and his blog which are slandering this guy, and the lawyers to harass him. Bill should cough up a few hundred million. They *know* his actions aren't criminal (or they'd have police involved) but they keep telling people he is.
As for your unwillingness to search for tools, you'll never get the best stuff packaged up and given to you. You simply can't. That you don't realize this says a bit about your skills - spend much time staying current?
TFS is great if there's One Microsoft Way to do everything at your company. If you test in this fashion, and write specs this way, and code in these tools, and put all bug reports into the required format, then it might tie things together nicely. And wow, it automatically draws detailed powerpoint lies about when you'll have some feature done. Wow!
But, what if you code in an agile environment? (ie, real world, where the specs aren't detailed in twenty-seven binders prior to the start of coding.) You may not have "specs" the software will usefully work with. You'll have use cases, which conceptually are similar, but not quite the same enough to survive being shoe-horned into the same tool.
Similarly, you might need to start working in a non-MS Embraced language, Ruby, LISP, etc, and be totally unable to integrate it into your workflow properly because none of the standard tools work.
Few companies require "custom software", but very few are perfectly fit by any given application, even if they commissioned its development. You can settle for 90% in everything and 10% in some things, or get 95% in everything, for a little cost in glue and research. Point to any MS product you can modify easily and Microsoft will be trying to sue you or take that functionality away. Go ahead, make your life easier, they dare you.
You think automatic code refactoring is way cool, where you change one thing and the compiler changes all the redundancies. Imagine programming in a language where you simply didn't repeat yourself so much. Suddenly your IDE seems merely like a low-level Smalltalk hack and also-ran applications bolted to it for lock-in potential.
Fund a UN peace-keeping operation to take over and pull the US troops home. Unfortunately, you're the enemy there now.
That way the USA could still deal with its monetary role without the Iraqis having to live under imposed foreign rule.
Bush did lie. That does change it - to the rest of the world. He isn't impeached yet, so the USA is guilty by association.
Well, Microsoft is funding legal attacks on open source software, so really whatever hurts them can only be good... Any company afraid of competing in the marketplace is one I don't support. Crime does pay is all Microsoft proves.
And as for software patents, you're right, they always suck. Like land-mines. But at least they blew up on a supporter like MS rather than some innocent bunch of coders. Maybe this'll persuade MS to change their tune and software patents will die, maybe not.
There's no way Linux, etc, and the culture of free software will go away, but companies may stop putting their name on it for a while. No real change to the users, but it could be the death of a lot of IP-camping companies. Don't invest in buggy-whips.
Did you say you'd be charging her? I could send you a smoking ruin in a box and be shocked you billed me. Did she ask for a replacement? Was there a policy of free replacements?
I recently ordered some stuff off a website, the final page said
"stuff $50"
"tax $3"
"shipping $0"
--
"total $53"
See the shipping $0 line?
Turns out there's fine print a page earlier that says the shipping charge can't be estimated properly until the last step. So rather than saying "Shiiping ??" they say $0. Just easier for them...
I feel ripped off. I signed off on the $53 amount, when it arrives it's $15 higher.
They apparently don't understand the problem with this. Nobody in the whole webstore uses "Total" the way any other human being does. To them it means some intermediate amount, to which something will be added. Nobody said what they call that.
Visa is of course *so* useless. To them this isn't fraud - even if the amount bears no resemblance to what I intended to pay. It'd be fraud if they shipped a brick, but to ship what I want for a different price? That's fine!? Gah, jackasses.
Ideally I'd just write down the Visa rep's name, get their home number, scam them later by offering them a product and then inflate the charges. Either I win and get restitution, or they fight it showing me some secret way to get Visa to stop dealing with known criminals which I apply to the earlier case. Heh.
Anyways, just because her cats pissed on it, she didn't authorize a huge charge to send her a fresh one. If you can't wash the cat piss off, tell her that and ask if she wants a brand new one.
The survivors will be stronger for having passed the first of many trials.
Exactly. There'd only be about half as many IRC users tomorrow if ops were suddenly replaced with a /ignore that really worked. Without someone's ass to kiss, for the power to get people to kiss your ass, most people aren't interested. In my experience these are the people most likely to watch shows like Survivor, Fear Factor, etc.
I wish there was a game that didn't attract these people. The existence of WoWGlider is proof enough that WoW is a crappy game. That Blizzard is so outraged by it shows they know how crappy WoW is and plan on keeping it that way. Proof enough that Blizzard hasn't and won't changed their ways.
I think the idea should be to buy WoWGlider from the guy and integrate it into the default client. Now fill the player's time with something else while they're getting XP. Make the world less bland so that the player can't just assume everything around will be level X +/- 5%. Make the monsters attack back - if a bunch of Orcs go missing send a raiding party. Then let the player watch the show as their character fights until something jumps out that will take an actual human to decide.
Ideally an MMORPG would be designed with an in-client bot, made by a separate dev team. They try to turn as much of the game into Progress Quest as possible while the other dev team tries to defeat the bot, but only with complex systems (ones worthy of a human) where people will want to override because they can, if skilled, do better. The UI would continually evolve to make things easier and automate anything you could describe as wanting automated, while the game would get more complex and interesting so that you don't want to blast through so much.
But that's insane. The one thing it isn't is copyright violation. He presumably bought a legit copy of the game, so he owns it and can look at it as much as he likes, space shifting as desired. (Which is obviously necessary with a non human-readable media.)
They might have a case of contract violation against him for the ongoing monthly use of the online service despite violating the contract. But totally not for copyright reasons.
Why do the supporters of Blizzard (Tivo, etc) go into reality denial mode, where whatever their favorite company says must be true? This is so obviously not copyright, yet you (all) get carried away with your support for "stopping cheaters" and let yourself end up supporting 1984ish black-is-white nonsense.
You don't need a license to read a book. Wake up. You don't need one to use software either. Theoretically someone who entered into an agreement with the vendor might get into trouble for letting you be near a terminal running the software or have access to the media, but not you because you didn't sign anything. You're copyright safe as long as you don't create a lasting duplicate of the work.
Try changing it though. 90% of stuff works, but very frequently options boxes and such won't properly display anymore because their overall dimensions are hardcoded, pushing the buttons and text off the bottom of the screen.
This is why we shouldn't give designers pixel-perfect layout. They always end up requiring it.
Use waste as the metric. Figure out how long you need to do given subtasks, how much faster they are, and how often you have to do those things. Lack of waste doesn't translate into productivity - you could use your new time to slack harder, but it's a good start.
What maximizes shareholder value? Quick investments or actions that have an immediate payoff might not still not be profitable in the long-term. Usually even, the best long-term strategy isn't the best short-term strategy.
Was Google's business policy "Avoid 98% of evil, unless it's really expedient", or "Don't be evil". These are both strategies, but I don't think they're equivalent. I think the wishy-washy one is likely to trade immediate success like access to more markets (India, Pakistan, China, Turkey...) than their competitors for long-term success such as customer loyalty.
In the days when Google was a search engine it was a commodity and so were its customers - faceless masses they profiled. Now, more and more of Google's customers sign in, and thus are more prone to negative loyalty reactions. In other words, they'll leave gmail, gvideo, gmaps, geverything over annoyance of mistrust. This is a registered user, who would be lost by their short-term thinking.
IMHO Google's reputation is all that separates it from MSN. Microsoft has equivalent web apps to most of what Google does, but has a fraction of the users it should with its monopoly positioning. Why? Because nobody expects to ever win in any confrontation with Microsoft.
Microsoft has a reputation of putting the user last - look at the Zune and how it's really just the latest in a series of software and hardware products like it. Overall, Bill's terribly rich so you can't argue with the strategy by saying it'll ruin the company. But if Microsoft had a policy like Google's from the beginning they'd probably have 100% happy lock-in by embracing everything like Google does, but to joyous welcome, not scorn as when Microsoft does it. Even Microsoft's best customers wish it had competition, Google's best customer's used to wish everyone was like it.
As a stock-holder I'd want a longer-term view, and higher eventual profits. Google is doing something that I feel lowers their value. Not their share price, but their intrinsic value. Here I'm seeing an example of Google walking on their smaller business partners (users) for their larger partners (India, China). If I ran a company and provided unreliable service by let's say, renting a reserved item to someone who'd pay more, I'd soon be out of business. The big client would pay a bit more now but nobody would trust me to provide the equipment they needed. The big guy would become my sole customer and start calling the shots. I'd no-longer have anyone else wanting the equipment so they wouldn't pay rush charges anymore... In a similar fashion, Google risks loosing their market differentiation (a company you can trust with your data) if they break too many promises, especially if they use short-term financials as justification.
I've got email and data services with companies I have to trust a bit, despite my best encryption measures, but it's unlikely I'd trust Google here because they bow to censorship and snooping. They're ideally technologically positioned to provide services, but I don't trust them to provide a service for *me* anymore.
Why is it that suddenly when people expect a company to provide a real dependable product they get treated like that expectation is silly - as if quality assurance being expensive is any excuse to not provide a working product. Can you imagine the reaction if I started handing out 10% counterfeit bills, justifying it by saying that it just wasn't worth my time to check better? So why the climate that companies can provide essentially the same?
In Google's case this is eyeballs in trade for service, but it's still a contract and still valid. But Google then takes the service away, as if you didn't just legally pay asking price for it, at someone else's command. What value does a product, a car for instance, have if you can't be sure it'll work at any given time, or indeed could just stop working forever if the dealership wishes.
Who's going to use an online word processor when their documents will probably be locked or deleted if they happen to be critical of the state religion? That's precisely why people would have gone with Google before - to avoid provincial thuggery.
I don't know about you, but I write my webpages so that when the style goes away, the page still views in a basic 1996 kind of style. Put the content first and your index bars and ads last then use CSS to position them first, visibly. This way if a blind user or someone without style sheets sees the site it at least reads in order.
Exodus 22:18 - in any English version you'll find, the bible commands followers to kill people of other faiths.
Islam is easier. If you're honest you'll admit that in fact there are many calls for ethnic cleansing and religious war.
Go back and reply to my message again, seriously, without bringing up another strawman. There are many issues in it that you left untouched.
We refer to it that way, but that doesn't make it right - not in a pedantic sense, but in the sense of understanding what parts there are and what they do.
Here's where we'd be better off if there were more cross-kernel distros. You can get Debian/FreeBSD, and if the GNU project hurried up (like Duke Nukem Forever) we'd have HURD, another kernel. Then you could get an almost identical system that differed only in the internals, kind of like choosing a filesystem, and it really would be clear that Linux was just the Kernel.
Now people think "Linux" (the OSes) work on everything from watches to supercomputers. The kernel runs on these machines, but you can't just throw a Debian CD into your MP3 player and start hax0ring the planet. You need a distro that runs on that machine, also called Linux in the vernacular. Bah.
Religion is that shared moral language you mention. One not open for discussion, not up for change. The power structures that grow from it are much more enduring and dangerous than those built on the idea of mutual defense or shared resources. By its nature - enlightened wisdom from the creators - religion can't be matched by works of people. This is an elitist system which further solidifies the power structure.
As for the truthiness of religious people who claim they follow a faith - there are many different interpretations of this obvious divine wisdom. Many claims are contradictory so not everyone can be right. Do the 10-commandments matter, or is Jesus all you need? Was Jesus a nobody? Or a valid prophet, but over-ridden by this other guy? How many gods are there?
As for the objective truth, if thousands of Muslims are strapping bombs to themselves in the name of Islam, it's either not a religion of peace, or maybe they meant "pieces", as in bloody chunks of. The families of these people (and the bombers themselves) feel they're truly religious. Who are you to say they're wrong? Not to imply for a second that I want to pick on Islam, it's just the current joke. "Oh, don't read our holy book, let us explain it." Christianity has enough strange loopholes and contradictory passages to justify anything you'd want.
The problem is that people like you lie to the world, claiming that religion doesn't say these things and doesn't contain these messages. It's obviously false, to anyone who has ever cracked one of these books open. You may be a pacifist, and the books may contain many loving ideas, but there are also sections commanding followers to kill.
Your very freedom to believe one meaning of the books despite their implicit words is exactly what suicide bombers use - different passages, but the same selective reading.
So no, while religion is ultimately just the actions of its participants, it doesn't seem like it's had a net positive effect across the world. Much tragedy has been committed (and worse, accepted) in its name, and what good is done is usually to extend a net around those helped. Missionaries bring help, and religion, to those in need of help. But the worst thing is how bad things (ethnic cleansing, etc) are accepted by people because of religious answers. If religion wasn't black and white, neither would the guilt of the Jews be...
But if I'm greedy I have a harder time getting others to act than if I was religious and used that, spreading religion. Greed wouldn't work as well because they'd want a payout and when it didn't materialize, they'd leave.
Ponzi schemes last days to years, religions last centuries, at least. It seems to me that for a specific lie, from a specific person, the religion one had a larger effect. Some effects were good (charities) but much bad. Not just the wars and hate, but the ignorance and the inability to allow people to examine the world around themselves.
In the same way that a cult/scam like Amway, Scientology, or Herbalife keeps their members in the dark so that they don't learn the lie of the organization, religions promote ignorance of the world. The Catholic church persecuted Galileo for writing about observable facts. Scientologists sue and ostracize members who discover the truth about their teachings.
Same tactics, much longer lifespan. Therefore, religions wins. imho. Bit silly though, to nitpick, because it's certainly a net loss, for the ignorance alone, even if it isn't the worst thing ever.
What kind of web-app are we talking about? Some GUI-based thing that has to have its own hotkeys and such? Then it's probably going to have compatibility problems as you play with CSS to make the GUI, play with Javascript events to handle the hotkeys and tab-order, etc.
If you must present a bondage and domination interface to a user, a native executable is much better. For a point-of-sales app where reliability was king and the user wasn't supposed to do anything else, a native app is great.
However, if I write a simple time-tracking program (like paper time sheets, online) an executable is overkill. I probably won't even bother with any formatting, so why would I care that browsers don't render it properly? If I use Javascript it'll be in a helper roll, where it could verify formatting pre-submit, or could handle a submit seamlessly, but that if it is not, the page still works in an extremely simple CGI fashion.
I've never user a browser that appeared to work and yet wouldn't let me post a reply on Slashdot for instance. Forms and text fields just aren't rocket science and can't really fail to work from browser to browser. Everything past that however... I check all my fields server-side anyways though, so I don't require the Javascript on the client to do it. It just saves a potential resubmit, and doesn't prevent a submit, just warns the syntax might be wrong - if it is wrong, the user can still proceed.
Exactly. Whatever happens in the future, it's Microsoft who sold you an operating system with a remote kill switch. Think about that.
:)
Then think about Microsoft letting *foreign terrorists* disable your computer! Someone want to sell this to FOX with this angle?
If I run a business I'm not going to want a bunch of moralistic handwaving crap on Microsoft's part, as to why my copies of Windows Vista my staff is using shutdown based on the actions of some guy in Russia.
If there's a kill switch in my software I'll blame the person who put it there, for *all* false positives. I don't give two shits about MS's piracy problem. Not at all.
I really don't get the expectation that I should suffer because Microsoft's business model is broken.
As I see it, a product that terminates itself like that is theft. I paid for something and now for circumstances I don't even know about, it's being taken away. Hell no. That's not a "lost sale" or some theoretical revenue from a non-customer, that's an actual product in my hands that I paid actual money for, being taken away to potentially guard MS against a loss of theoretical profits.
The real rub is that they don't stop any copying, at all, the cracker just generates another number and goes on.
I don't fill in paper warranty cards, and I will not fill in electronic ones, especially if they don't offer me anything I want. I already paid for the right to own the software. This is funny, because I use a fake serial number despite having a legit copy that came with the laptop. My privacy seeking could have already knocked some other user out. This isn't illegal copying, simply choosing to use the copy I bought without going through extraneous and unenforceable extra steps. Microsoft chooses to illegally deactivate Windows for some other legitimate user when I do this and you side with them. Fucked up.
I should get the password generator and try it, trying to generate as many fake keys as possible so that some may overlap legitimate keys and fool Microsoft into disabling the software of a legitimate user. I'm not their customer, I'm not hacking "into" anything, I'm merely using their server (which should require a password if it isn't public) to ask if a given random number looks like a valid windows keys. It's Microsoft who will be freaking out because someone guessed an already guessed number.
You might not think this would be a dangerous threat, as there must be a huge number of possible keys (25^36) and a small number of allocated keys (25 ^ 5, tops). But the birthday paradox (duplicate birthdays in a random group of people, 24(?) required for 50% odds.) suggests that I have far less than the entire keyspace to go before I collide with legitimate users.
Any situation like this where a company builds a remote hidden kill-switch into our products is unacceptable. If people don't notice it just because it doesn't hit many people at first it'll be harder to get rid of later. If everyone with a legit license calls MS to revalidate it every six months their complaints will get it changed quickly.
Try installing Windows XP on a 150GB HD that the BIOS shows as 120(?), with Linux already on some partitions.
Windows XP, when patched to SP2, can see the whole drive, but apparently even when slipstreamed, the installer could not. So I made the partitions in Linux, leaving the first partition, C, primary. I didn't install a boot-loader or anything, just install Linux on the second and remaining partitions. Windows wouldn't see it, even when I checked with Partition Magic that the partition table was correct, Windows still wouldn't use it. When I did format it with Windows, it wiped the rest of the partitions despite saying it wouldn't. Eventually I got Win XP in, on its own now, and got it patched to SP2, partitioned, and installed Linux, which went in like a dream even though it hadn't done the formatting, didn't get primary partitions, etc.
Windows just isn't "made" for the corner cases. It's meant to be installed in the factory. Linux is a bit more complex, but rarely fails because of lack of the tools.
When I install Linux I do so from a LiveCD where I browse the net with my persistent CF-card home directory. If I have any problems I can install apps, during the boot process, to solve the problem, then continue.
When I install Windows I'm in DOS. An 80x40 text screen where it shows me cryptic lists of drives that don't match what the GUIs show. Where I have to know the pathname of the scsi driver I want because I can't just click in a nice GUI.
Do you understand? Installing your Linux OS is done from a DVD-boot live OS with more features than Windows comes with. Windows however is still installed in the same fashion it was before DVDs existed, before the web existed, let alone before you could browse it wirelessly while installing. Sure, once you get through the hard stuff Windows will through a feel-good fake GUI up, where you can view advertising while it copies files. And then, at the end you get a GUI for config just before you finish. Wow. How 1992.
But most people don't install Windows so they blissfully think it's easy. These people become IT managers.
This one pointed out something I wish more people would consider, that the usage patterns aren't the same when we shift apps or OSes.
Windows *is* a pain to install. Just try doing hard stuff (weird drive layouts, SCSI, etc). But nobody sees it, so it's hard to explain to them why the techs say Windows sucks to install. They've tried to install Linux once on weird hardware and have always bought Windows pre-installed on laptops.
When this person is a CTO this gets dangerous.
They expect Linux to be hard to admin because it's "hard to install", but imho Linux boxes used for coding/testing require about a tenth the re-installs and maintenance of Windows boxes - not individually, but in a TCO sort of way.
Ten Linux servers are probably going to require less admin footwork than ten Windows desktops, even though Windows is "easier" for any individual machine.
Anyways, because we're stuck on how Windows is an easier install, nobody allocates resources to actually make it that way (like getting an MSDN license and building slipstreamed install discs). Even Microsoft must believe the lie because their installer doesn't cope with the really hard installs very well at all.
What I, as a Linux user, see when running Windows is a bunch of in-your-face glitzy crap and 20% of my experience is dominated by it. To a Windows user, they've tweaked it and paid that price long ago, and now less than %0.2 of their experience is dominated by it. If I was to blanketly state that glitz is bad I'd be wrong, but my limited data would support me fully.
Whenever the discussion comes up I can't understand how someone ends up trying recompile their Linux kernel right away, and they can't understand why I bitch about getting Windows to install on a drive it didn't format.
Usage testing is supposed to catch this, but everyone is biased as to what a normal user is...
Or, it's like every piece of consumer electronics I've ever bought. The warranty is damn useless because they look at tiny signs of cosmetic damage and refuse to honor it.
I've certainly seen a lot of shoddy products and most of them were along brand or product lines. Three IBM 75GXP drives failed, no other HD I'd used has died in less than two years, if it made it through formatting. No ATI card in the 90s had drivers that wouldn't lock up Windows. Honestly, my first thought when a product doesn't live up to expectations is that the company screwed up somehow. I've had three digital cameras and not broken one, two palm pilots, etc. But some things are just flaky.
I skip all extended warranties and just use the purchase protection I get through buying on Visa. I *love* using it when dealing with annoying companies.
"I'm sorry, it's not our policy to issue refunds."
"Okay, can I get your name name on that for reference? Okay, I'm going to call Visa and tell them we can't reach an agreement and get them to cancel payment for the last month."
"Well, let's see..."
Fido (cellphone) was going to bill me for an extra month because I canceled too close to the end of the month. Heh. No.