But you still need anti-islanding. Because having batteries doesn't do anything to address the fact that you're still keeping your end of the line break live. Adding a battery bank doesn't make things cheaper.
For issue1.. Any system that gets installed in any jurisdiction I know of, refuses to pump power to the grid, if the power is out. For just that reason. (yes, it would break the "power yourself in an emergency" that the summary mentioned, but it does keep people from dying, which is good.)
That's right. And the hardware that does that costs about $20,000 - $30,000 to install and certify. It's called "anti-islanding," as I said.
First of all, there are more problems than those listed above.
Issue 1: "anti-islanding." So, a power line leading up to your home or business goes down. The lineman finds the break, and then goes to the nearest transformer to open the circuit, interrupting power to the side of the line break so that he may safely approach the break in the line and repair it. EXCEPT...unbeknownst to him, you have solar panels, and the other side of the line is live also. He is survived by a wife and 2.4 kids. This is the scenario that 'anti-islanding' prevents. Unfortunately, it falls within the realm of technology intended to prevent loss of life, and thus is very expensive because it must. always. work. The majority of cost for a solar panel installation is this technology; the cost of the panels themselves does not at all reflect the actual cost of HAVING solar panels installed. This is a large part of the 'hidden tax' that one of the linked articles refers to, and isn't exactly optional.
Issue 2: Phase synchronization This is less of a problem to the overal grid unless solar and other alternative power sources become more widespread. But it'll nuke your own stuff at home. AC power in your outlets is 60 Hz. But think of it as a wave (which it is). The waves rise and fall not only at the same frequency everywhere on the grid, but in sync as well. Otherwise, you get the kind of situation that takes place when you have waves from one place in a pond, and waves in another place in the pond...and the waves don't overlap perfectly. Instead of an even wave pattern of consistent frequency and amplitude, you get something less orderly. Electronics (and at higher voltages, electrical equipment in substations) don't like that very much. So the systems that generate power from solar panels, etc. must detect the phase frequency (with many, many points of precision...a deviation of.01 Hz is a BAD thing on the power grid) and timing, and match. Otherwise, you'll have nasty strange things go on at home. Remember...when you generate your own power, you become a generation facility. Not as big as a coal-fired plant, but you are a generation entity all the same.
Which leads to the Issue 3: the main reason why Germany (and most countries, really) get these things done so much quicker. Germany is tiny compared to the US, both in terms of grid geography and in terms of grid scale. Overall, their grid is also newer, more modern, and more standardized. All of Germany can be managed by one reliability entity, for example. The US has eight, most of which cover a section of grid that larger than all of what is in Germany. On top of this, add those in Canada, because for all intents and purposes, there is no border between our grid and theirs (as evidenced in 2003, when a fault in Ohio ended up pulling down a lot of Quebec and Ontario along with the US Northeast). Also, control at the local realm is much more decentralized; here, we have PUCs for each community. Those PUCs vary widely in their efficiency and (cough) philosophy about their purpose. Some are quite efficient, some are a total pain in the ass...that's how it goes. In some places, like Washington, DC, getting approval is fairly straightforward because the local PUC is very interested in seeing these technologies tried out and tested. In others, you get pinheads with a power trip (no pun intended) who love playing the goalkeeper. This isn't a problem that exists solely for alternative energies, though...the power companies themselves have the same issue with these kinds of people. A pain in the ass is usually a pain in the ass for everyone, and these solar guys shouldn't take it so personally. It's not about them.
This raises a good point. The SCOTUS' purpose is to assess constitutionality, not morality. The laws, as they are today, are relatively straightforward. Thomas broke the law. You can complain about how the record industry is corrupt and screws artists, and you'd be right. You can complain how the RIAA has used the law to extortionate ends, and you'd be right. You can say that the current model of music creation and management is broken, and you'd be right. You can even say the law is heavy-handed, and you'd be right. But none of these is the same as the law being unconstitutional.
The fact that 2012 XE5 was discovered only a few days before the encounter prompted Minnesota Public Radio to poll its listeners with the following question: If an asteroid were to strike Earth within an hour, would you want to know?"
Hey, he's been called out as a fracking liar, over his fracking conflict of interest. Which is all the more reprehensible since he's a fracking expert. I mean, if we can't trust the fracking experts, who will we turn to when we need fracking information to make fracking decisions, anyways?
Voltage Pictures could hardly have picked a worse country to do this. Canadian privacy laws (which effectively vary by province) are some of the most broad and severe ones I've ever seen. TekSavvy has customers in British Columbia, which means that FOIPPA is in effect. FOIPPA is essentially BC's response to the Patriot Act, in particular to the part of it that states that the US Government may approach any US citizen and demand information from them about another person...and that such a request must be kept secret under pain of imprisonment. Among other things, FOIPPA makes it illegal to divulge private information to an entity under control of a US entity. I know, it sounds like SUCH a blunt instrument that it's hard to believe...but trust me, I've had to deal with it when doing work in BC. It really is that far-reaching and broad.
Where is Voltage Pictures? Los Angeles. Yeah, good luck with that.
Since I'm in that same boat, isn't there some "navigate to site xyz" confirmation? Or does the phone stupidly start running some executable code? Because that would be a really dumb implementation error.
Even if there were...most people wouldn't pay enough attention to notice that they were about to navigate to "www.MakeMyAndroidYourButtmonkey.cn" while they were on their way through the mall to get a Cinnabon. You can see what web address you're about to go to in an email link if you just hover over it, in most email clients (web or not), yet still many people fall for phishing schemes. And that's when you're sitting down at a computer, not walking around in the middle of other things and surrounded by distractions.
SQL is SQL, yes. But Oracle speaks PL-SQL. Microsoft SQL Server speaks T-SQL. MySQL speaks neither. Just look at how SQL injection attacks need to vary based on which database server is on the back end, and you'll get some idea of just how NOT interchangeable "SQL" is in the real world. Being able to spell a 3-letter acronym does not a DBA make, apparently.
Why? Isn't the whole point of a test environment to find out if something has issues? I think that interested parties should put it into a test environment immediately, cause that's why they have a test environment. But yes, wait some time to put it into production.
Actually, most of the time the point of a test environment is to iron out the snags. You usually assume you can fix whatever foibles and quirks there are when you make the effort to build something in a test environment...because even if the software's free, the time ain't. And if you want to cut down on the amount of pioneering you may have to do, you're better off waiting 6 months so that most problems you encounter will have already been solved by someone else. I've never seen someone put something into a test environment, run it, and then just give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. They try to make it work, before they bail on it if it fails.
You're confusing what I'm responding to. I was responding to the person above who claimed, essentially, that it's not that big a deal to be in the top 1%, and that he's basically there as soon as he makes $250K. Nothing in my post mentioned Obama, taxes, subchapter S corporations, or any of the other points you raise.
First of all, $250K a year doesn't get you into the 1%. You need a bit more than that. The top 1% earned an average of $717,000 per year. The lower limit for a "1 percenter" is $386,000/year. And indeed, a large number of these people were indeed born with silver spoons. Many of them may have made relatively small sums right out of college...after all, you don't pay a recent college grad extra money for the same job just because their parents are rich. Looking at what they get paid for their first jobs when they graduate, however, completely ignores the concept of the "silver spoon." It doesn't take into account trust funds, gifts, being supported by their parents, inheritance wealth, or any investment portfolio they may already have at that point in their lives. It just looks at what an inexperienced college grad is worth on the market, which has nothing to do with actual wealth.
And the average college grad who has been working his entire life absolutely does not make it into the 1%. It's just common sense. If working your whole life and going to college, on average, gets you into the top 1% of anything, then that means only 2% of the population went to college and worked their whole life. If you want to stretch it a bit..okay, 3%. A lot more than that percentage of the Americans I know (because that's the population we're talking about here) went to college, and kept in the workforce the whole time.
Obama isn't to blame for this. The OP ignores the fact that the Yucca project has been in trouble long before Obama was on the political landscape.
And you ignore the fact that Obama was the guy who zeroed the funding. The trouble wasn't sufficient to stop the project, so as he promised during his campaign Obama stopped it.
If your dog gets hit by a car and mortally wounded, and your vet gives the dog a shot to humanely end his misery, whose fault is it that the dog died? Same thing. I'm not ignoring anything here; the person above who put the blame on Bush is actually correct. Rather than point fingers, I instead chose to demonstrate that Obama couldn't possibly have been the one who was driving the car that hit the dog, because the dog was hit before Obama got in a car for the first time. It's not like Yucca was on track and about to be put into service in 2008; nothing is further from the truth.
This article was written by the same kind of neoconservative that Penn and Teller represent. Teller is a fellow at The Cato Institute. The author of this article writes for The Weekly Standard. Both of these are very far right organizations and the article, like Bullshit! is overflowing with anti-government bias.
Actually, Penn and Teller are not at all neocons. They're more like libertarians. And they actually supported the government on Yucca in the episode, but instead blamed locals in Nevada for its failure. And truthfully, I'm trying to remember where the antigovernment bias has been in Bullshit!, as they've dealt with the Boy Scouts, the industry of sleep, sex, the lawn industry, manners...almost nothing they ever cover involves government, ever.
Yes, but you can easily make the case that objectively false statements (as were made in this case) on a website intended to guide people in choosing a vendor are inherently malicious. It's not a casual conversation; it's going to a place whose sole purpose is to drive business towards or away vendors, and making untruthful statements. The woman didn't just give her opinion, but make non-subjective statements that were false on a website that she knew was a basis for reputation. That meets the standard for malice in my book.
Obama isn't to blame for this. The OP ignores the fact that the Yucca project has been in trouble long before Obama was on the political landscape. Use of it was initially blocked before anyone even knew who Obama was. Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit! called "Nukes, Hybrids and Lesbians" which called out all years of different tactics that were blocking the use of the site for its intended purpose. That episode aired in 2007, one year before Obama was even elected into office. Penn and Teller pointed to all kinds of NIMBY groups and the complaints they put forth over the years...like the fact that nobody had tested to see how well the site would do in a flood. (Mind you, it's a mountain...in the middle of a desert.) Did it become official on Obama's watch? Sure. But the funeral isn't where the murder took place. Yucca was dead long before now.
Man, let me tell you how hard the current situation is to work with. This one time, I was working on (REDACTED) and then (REDACTED) comes up to me and (REDACTED), "Dude, where are the (REDACTED) on the (REDACTED) flesh-eating (REDACTED)?" To which I had to say, "Well, the problem is that (REDACTED) is all kept over in (REDACTED) so that in the event of (REDACTED) most of the (REDACTED) will be (REDACTED)."
His firing is a surprising move for a party that has been looking for ways to attract younger voters.
Many things the Republican Party is doing are surprising moves, for a party that is looking for ways to attract...well, anyone. It almost seems like the party forgot that the point of democracy is to represent your own people, not try to tell them that you know better than they do what would be good for them.
As a refugee from HP, I have to say that I derive immense joy from the "at least they did better than HP" comment in this story. EXCELLENT! (And yes, I'm hugely into schadenfreude.) Now, I just have to wait a bit before I hit "preview" because it seems that any post that comes before all others is somehow considered inherently suspect, and gets modded down. (I suspect that if Einstein had posted E=MC^2 that way, it would have been modded "Troll," even if it were directly applicable to the topic being discussed.)
But yes...it does seem like this is the Zune all over again. Late to compete against a mature product that defines a market space, and by most accounts inferior to that main competitor...only the Zune was actually price-competitive if I recall correctly. At least with Windows Mobile, they've had multiple products to unsuccesfully compete against over the years...Palm, then Blackberry, then the iPhone.
Okay, it's been 5 minutes...someone MUST have posted SOMETHING by now...(hits 'Preview')
most of the patents in a smartphone are Standards Essential and fairly easy and cheap to license. a few pennies per device per patent owner.
not like you have to spend years in negotiations for tens of thousands of patents
most of these patent articles are just FUD and click bait
And how many startups are there that are creating smartphones? This argument has absolutely no relevance. Many patents relate to core activities. If a startup suddenly has to defend themselves because something essential to their software violates a few super-broad patents, that's money right from their bottom line. But it's also risk, which VCs don't like. It's a distraction, which is the LAST thing people need when they're using all their fingers and toes trying to get a business up off the ground. And if they lose, it's usually catastrophic.
This isn't theoretical; it happens. Patent battles have killed off startups. And they've impacted others. There was a report done by a law professor, Colleen Chien (what an unfortunate last name...at least it's not "Chienne"), which investigates this. A quote (I'd paste the chart in here too, if I could...check it out though):
The following chart from the report more or less speaks for itself: the smaller you are, the much higher the likelihood that a demand from a patent troll (even beyond just a lawsuit) had a "significant" operational impact.
Chien also discovered that patent troll are going after startups more than larger, well-established companies. And that makes sense; a smaller company is an easier target. Go after Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, etc. and you're incurring the wrath of a giant. Sure, you may get paid out big time if you win, BUT you'll have to fight like hell. A little company that is more vulnerable to you than you are to them? Easy money...and a lot more of them, too. So it ends up being like the RIAA's wonderful strategy of going after people en masse...you make money by going after companies in volume.
But buying up startups then killing their work doesn't?
Arguably, no. Why do I say this? Because of two reasons:
One...the fact that the startup got bought out provides incentive for other startups to form. Let's face it...being bought out by Google is a payday. It almost always means you've hit some kind of success, and as a result you are being paid well for the company. Failed startups that are bought as they lay on their death bed are never bought by companies like Google, but rather other smaller companies who want some minor aspect of what the startup still contains.
Two...the fact that the people who started the first startup are now (after a year or so) free to start a new one. And they're MORE able to do so, because they have the experience they gained the first time around, the track record of having done it successfully before (VC's get their part of that buy-out payday too), and their own inherent financial stability now so that they don't have to worry about putting food on their table or paying the rent while they get the next venture up and running. They've made connections, made mistakes, and learned a lot along the way. I know several people who have done multiple startups, and they've all seen their original creation changed in some major way by the company that bought them out, but meh...they go on, and create something new.
Wrong. I called the recruiter, and he said they make no changes, no exceptions. I pointed out that they would be effectively stealing from me, as by this point the book was actually done, and just waiting to hit the printers. No flexibility.
Your copyright exists from the time you type the words on the page. That it had not hit the street in book form yet had no bearing on the case.
So your CURRENT employer may have had a claim against your book, but your prospective employer wouldn't.
If you still had wanted to work for that prospective employer, you would have won any court case. But why the hell would you want to work there?
Bringing it back around to my post to which you were applying, perhaps point 5 should have been:
5) the invention must have been created wholly during your time of employment
I forgot to mention in my post (above) that ALL the rules had to be met for your employer to claim the invention.
It doesn't matter. As soon as I need to debate the point with my own employer, I lose. I lose the money I made writing the book, instead using it to pay a lawyer. I lose a lot of time and energy fighting it. I lose goodwill with the publisher for getting them caught up in it. And I lose headway in my career...because let's face it, suing your own employer is NOT the way to get ahead in business. There's being right, and there's being smart. Relying on the first isn't always being the second.
Oh, and even more importantly...there's the fact that my future employer was being an asshole. Why on earth would I work for them?
Every single R&D employer requires employees to assign all inventions. There is no way that is negotiable. Your pay/commission/whatever for having to do so may be, but there's no way around this requirement in today's employment market.
It's not that big a problem at all...this is simply not the truth, most of the time. I've had things in progress when I joined a company; you tell them about it, explain to them that you would like an exception to the agreement, and they (almost always...see my post above) agree to that with no muss, no fuss. It's not hard, it's not complicated, and it doesn't start a big fight. Hell, it doesn't even make you less desirable; companies want people that innovate, and if you're already doing it on your own before you even show up there, that's an awfully good sign that you'll do it for them too.
I've been through that several times, and it's only been a hassle once...and that, from a corporation that is notorious for being a total cabal of asshats. Every other time was actually a good thing, and once it actually helped me in my salary negotiations.
If you've invented this on your own time, money, and resources there is no way in the shady side of hell that your employer should have any ownership of it. If you did this while being compensated by your employer, the situation is different. If you've used your employer's money and resources, then it is fair.
Well that depends...
Most people can't compartmentalize their lives that completely. This is especially so when engaged in intellectual work (as opposed to factory drone work where you can simply flip a switch in your brain as you walk out the door).
So if I hire you to develop a left handed corner scraper and in the process you create a patentable piece of work, you might claim (truthfully) that the idea came to you while sitting on the throne in your house on a sunday afternoon when you saw the reflection of the light switch in the mirror.
Still, had you not been working for me explicitly on this project, you would, in all probability, never have had that spark of intuition.
Its too easy for you to claim you had the idea after work hours. Every body mulls over work problems at home.
Similarly, if you are employed to handle billing for your company and you stumble upon a totally unrelated idea, say for a new fishhook, on your day off or even on the job, its too easy for the company to claim it.
Fishhooks have nothing to do with billing. Everybody mulls over recreational problems while at work.
So here's an example to draw upon that shows how the compartments still happen, regardless of how steeped in our work we are.
I do cyber security, and I absolutely live, drink and breathe it. Several years back, I had been working on a book under contract. The book was germane to my field of professional expertise. I wrote it on my own time, on my own computer, and the content had nothing to do with my current employer. (Just to make sure that part's clear.) I got bored in my job, having hit a point where things were progressing no further, and gracefully started exiting. I had an offer from a company (let's call them "AC, which is the letters of the company name but rearranged") and was in the process of taking it, even having given notice at my current employer and started helping them look for a successor. Then, I got their intellectual property agreement, which stated that anything I put out was their property...ANYTHING...during my employment with them. I'd seen this before, and had asked at prior jobs...the solution is to tack on an exception for this or that thing, and that's how it's always gone. So no problem, right?
Wrong. I called the recruiter, and he said they make no changes, no exceptions. I pointed out that they would be effectively stealing from me, as by this point the book was actually done, and just waiting to hit the printers. No flexibility. So I declined the job offer after all, and ended up taking a different one...which turned out to be much, much better in the end. Pity, as AC had plans for me to travel to a client and be the centerpiece of a project that was kicking off. They suddenly developed "flexibility for an exception," but by that point, I was past having any desire to interact with them on any level whatsoever, much less steer my career through the middle of that company. I went to work at EDS, and did beautifully. (Until HP bought them, that is...but that's another profanity-laden rant.)
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But you still need anti-islanding. Because having batteries doesn't do anything to address the fact that you're still keeping your end of the line break live. Adding a battery bank doesn't make things cheaper.
For issue1.. Any system that gets installed in any jurisdiction I know of, refuses to pump power to the grid, if the power is out. For just that reason. (yes, it would break the "power yourself in an emergency" that the summary mentioned, but it does keep people from dying, which is good.)
That's right. And the hardware that does that costs about $20,000 - $30,000 to install and certify. It's called "anti-islanding," as I said.
First of all, there are more problems than those listed above.
Issue 1: "anti-islanding."
So, a power line leading up to your home or business goes down. The lineman finds the break, and then goes to the nearest transformer to open the circuit, interrupting power to the side of the line break so that he may safely approach the break in the line and repair it. EXCEPT...unbeknownst to him, you have solar panels, and the other side of the line is live also. He is survived by a wife and 2.4 kids. This is the scenario that 'anti-islanding' prevents. Unfortunately, it falls within the realm of technology intended to prevent loss of life, and thus is very expensive because it must. always. work. The majority of cost for a solar panel installation is this technology; the cost of the panels themselves does not at all reflect the actual cost of HAVING solar panels installed. This is a large part of the 'hidden tax' that one of the linked articles refers to, and isn't exactly optional.
Issue 2: Phase synchronization .01 Hz is a BAD thing on the power grid) and timing, and match. Otherwise, you'll have nasty strange things go on at home. Remember...when you generate your own power, you become a generation facility. Not as big as a coal-fired plant, but you are a generation entity all the same.
This is less of a problem to the overal grid unless solar and other alternative power sources become more widespread. But it'll nuke your own stuff at home. AC power in your outlets is 60 Hz. But think of it as a wave (which it is). The waves rise and fall not only at the same frequency everywhere on the grid, but in sync as well. Otherwise, you get the kind of situation that takes place when you have waves from one place in a pond, and waves in another place in the pond...and the waves don't overlap perfectly. Instead of an even wave pattern of consistent frequency and amplitude, you get something less orderly. Electronics (and at higher voltages, electrical equipment in substations) don't like that very much. So the systems that generate power from solar panels, etc. must detect the phase frequency (with many, many points of precision...a deviation of
Which leads to the Issue 3: the main reason why Germany (and most countries, really) get these things done so much quicker. Germany is tiny compared to the US, both in terms of grid geography and in terms of grid scale. Overall, their grid is also newer, more modern, and more standardized. All of Germany can be managed by one reliability entity, for example. The US has eight, most of which cover a section of grid that larger than all of what is in Germany. On top of this, add those in Canada, because for all intents and purposes, there is no border between our grid and theirs (as evidenced in 2003, when a fault in Ohio ended up pulling down a lot of Quebec and Ontario along with the US Northeast). Also, control at the local realm is much more decentralized; here, we have PUCs for each community. Those PUCs vary widely in their efficiency and (cough) philosophy about their purpose. Some are quite efficient, some are a total pain in the ass...that's how it goes. In some places, like Washington, DC, getting approval is fairly straightforward because the local PUC is very interested in seeing these technologies tried out and tested. In others, you get pinheads with a power trip (no pun intended) who love playing the goalkeeper. This isn't a problem that exists solely for alternative energies, though...the power companies themselves have the same issue with these kinds of people. A pain in the ass is usually a pain in the ass for everyone, and these solar guys shouldn't take it so personally. It's not about them.
This raises a good point. The SCOTUS' purpose is to assess constitutionality, not morality. The laws, as they are today, are relatively straightforward. Thomas broke the law. You can complain about how the record industry is corrupt and screws artists, and you'd be right. You can complain how the RIAA has used the law to extortionate ends, and you'd be right. You can say that the current model of music creation and management is broken, and you'd be right. You can even say the law is heavy-handed, and you'd be right. But none of these is the same as the law being unconstitutional.
Sure! Keira Knightley is smokin' hot!
Hey, he's been called out as a fracking liar, over his fracking conflict of interest. Which is all the more reprehensible since he's a fracking expert. I mean, if we can't trust the fracking experts, who will we turn to when we need fracking information to make fracking decisions, anyways?
Voltage Pictures could hardly have picked a worse country to do this. Canadian privacy laws (which effectively vary by province) are some of the most broad and severe ones I've ever seen. TekSavvy has customers in British Columbia, which means that FOIPPA is in effect. FOIPPA is essentially BC's response to the Patriot Act, in particular to the part of it that states that the US Government may approach any US citizen and demand information from them about another person...and that such a request must be kept secret under pain of imprisonment. Among other things, FOIPPA makes it illegal to divulge private information to an entity under control of a US entity. I know, it sounds like SUCH a blunt instrument that it's hard to believe...but trust me, I've had to deal with it when doing work in BC. It really is that far-reaching and broad.
Where is Voltage Pictures? Los Angeles. Yeah, good luck with that.
Since I'm in that same boat, isn't there some "navigate to site xyz" confirmation? Or does the phone stupidly start running some executable code? Because that would be a really dumb implementation error.
Even if there were...most people wouldn't pay enough attention to notice that they were about to navigate to "www.MakeMyAndroidYourButtmonkey.cn" while they were on their way through the mall to get a Cinnabon. You can see what web address you're about to go to in an email link if you just hover over it, in most email clients (web or not), yet still many people fall for phishing schemes. And that's when you're sitting down at a computer, not walking around in the middle of other things and surrounded by distractions.
SQL is SQL, yes. But Oracle speaks PL-SQL. Microsoft SQL Server speaks T-SQL. MySQL speaks neither. Just look at how SQL injection attacks need to vary based on which database server is on the back end, and you'll get some idea of just how NOT interchangeable "SQL" is in the real world. Being able to spell a 3-letter acronym does not a DBA make, apparently.
Why? Isn't the whole point of a test environment to find out if something has issues? I think that interested parties should put it into a test environment immediately, cause that's why they have a test environment. But yes, wait some time to put it into production.
Actually, most of the time the point of a test environment is to iron out the snags. You usually assume you can fix whatever foibles and quirks there are when you make the effort to build something in a test environment...because even if the software's free, the time ain't. And if you want to cut down on the amount of pioneering you may have to do, you're better off waiting 6 months so that most problems you encounter will have already been solved by someone else. I've never seen someone put something into a test environment, run it, and then just give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. They try to make it work, before they bail on it if it fails.
You're confusing what I'm responding to. I was responding to the person above who claimed, essentially, that it's not that big a deal to be in the top 1%, and that he's basically there as soon as he makes $250K. Nothing in my post mentioned Obama, taxes, subchapter S corporations, or any of the other points you raise.
First of all, $250K a year doesn't get you into the 1%. You need a bit more than that. The top 1% earned an average of $717,000 per year. The lower limit for a "1 percenter" is $386,000/year. And indeed, a large number of these people were indeed born with silver spoons. Many of them may have made relatively small sums right out of college...after all, you don't pay a recent college grad extra money for the same job just because their parents are rich. Looking at what they get paid for their first jobs when they graduate, however, completely ignores the concept of the "silver spoon." It doesn't take into account trust funds, gifts, being supported by their parents, inheritance wealth, or any investment portfolio they may already have at that point in their lives. It just looks at what an inexperienced college grad is worth on the market, which has nothing to do with actual wealth.
And the average college grad who has been working his entire life absolutely does not make it into the 1%. It's just common sense. If working your whole life and going to college, on average, gets you into the top 1% of anything, then that means only 2% of the population went to college and worked their whole life. If you want to stretch it a bit..okay, 3%. A lot more than that percentage of the Americans I know (because that's the population we're talking about here) went to college, and kept in the workforce the whole time.
And you ignore the fact that Obama was the guy who zeroed the funding. The trouble wasn't sufficient to stop the project, so as he promised during his campaign Obama stopped it.
If your dog gets hit by a car and mortally wounded, and your vet gives the dog a shot to humanely end his misery, whose fault is it that the dog died? Same thing. I'm not ignoring anything here; the person above who put the blame on Bush is actually correct. Rather than point fingers, I instead chose to demonstrate that Obama couldn't possibly have been the one who was driving the car that hit the dog, because the dog was hit before Obama got in a car for the first time. It's not like Yucca was on track and about to be put into service in 2008; nothing is further from the truth.
This article was written by the same kind of neoconservative that Penn and Teller represent. Teller is a fellow at The Cato Institute. The author of this article writes for The Weekly Standard. Both of these are very far right organizations and the article, like Bullshit! is overflowing with anti-government bias.
Actually, Penn and Teller are not at all neocons. They're more like libertarians. And they actually supported the government on Yucca in the episode, but instead blamed locals in Nevada for its failure. And truthfully, I'm trying to remember where the antigovernment bias has been in Bullshit!, as they've dealt with the Boy Scouts, the industry of sleep, sex, the lawn industry, manners...almost nothing they ever cover involves government, ever.
Yes, but you can easily make the case that objectively false statements (as were made in this case) on a website intended to guide people in choosing a vendor are inherently malicious. It's not a casual conversation; it's going to a place whose sole purpose is to drive business towards or away vendors, and making untruthful statements. The woman didn't just give her opinion, but make non-subjective statements that were false on a website that she knew was a basis for reputation. That meets the standard for malice in my book.
Obama isn't to blame for this. The OP ignores the fact that the Yucca project has been in trouble long before Obama was on the political landscape. Use of it was initially blocked before anyone even knew who Obama was. Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit! called "Nukes, Hybrids and Lesbians" which called out all years of different tactics that were blocking the use of the site for its intended purpose. That episode aired in 2007, one year before Obama was even elected into office. Penn and Teller pointed to all kinds of NIMBY groups and the complaints they put forth over the years...like the fact that nobody had tested to see how well the site would do in a flood. (Mind you, it's a mountain...in the middle of a desert.) Did it become official on Obama's watch? Sure. But the funeral isn't where the murder took place. Yucca was dead long before now.
Man, let me tell you how hard the current situation is to work with. This one time, I was working on (REDACTED) and then (REDACTED) comes up to me and (REDACTED), "Dude, where are the (REDACTED) on the (REDACTED) flesh-eating (REDACTED)?" To which I had to say, "Well, the problem is that (REDACTED) is all kept over in (REDACTED) so that in the event of (REDACTED) most of the (REDACTED) will be (REDACTED)."
I mean, who here can't identify with that?
From the article:
Many things the Republican Party is doing are surprising moves, for a party that is looking for ways to attract...well, anyone. It almost seems like the party forgot that the point of democracy is to represent your own people, not try to tell them that you know better than they do what would be good for them.
Oh, DAMMIT! Came in first anyways??? Christ.
As a refugee from HP, I have to say that I derive immense joy from the "at least they did better than HP" comment in this story. EXCELLENT! (And yes, I'm hugely into schadenfreude.) Now, I just have to wait a bit before I hit "preview" because it seems that any post that comes before all others is somehow considered inherently suspect, and gets modded down. (I suspect that if Einstein had posted E=MC^2 that way, it would have been modded "Troll," even if it were directly applicable to the topic being discussed.)
But yes...it does seem like this is the Zune all over again. Late to compete against a mature product that defines a market space, and by most accounts inferior to that main competitor...only the Zune was actually price-competitive if I recall correctly. At least with Windows Mobile, they've had multiple products to unsuccesfully compete against over the years...Palm, then Blackberry, then the iPhone.
Okay, it's been 5 minutes...someone MUST have posted SOMETHING by now...(hits 'Preview')
most of the patents in a smartphone are Standards Essential and fairly easy and cheap to license. a few pennies per device per patent owner.
not like you have to spend years in negotiations for tens of thousands of patents
most of these patent articles are just FUD and click bait
And how many startups are there that are creating smartphones? This argument has absolutely no relevance. Many patents relate to core activities. If a startup suddenly has to defend themselves because something essential to their software violates a few super-broad patents, that's money right from their bottom line. But it's also risk, which VCs don't like. It's a distraction, which is the LAST thing people need when they're using all their fingers and toes trying to get a business up off the ground. And if they lose, it's usually catastrophic.
This isn't theoretical; it happens. Patent battles have killed off startups. And they've impacted others. There was a report done by a law professor, Colleen Chien (what an unfortunate last name...at least it's not "Chienne"), which investigates this. A quote (I'd paste the chart in here too, if I could...check it out though):
Chien also discovered that patent troll are going after startups more than larger, well-established companies. And that makes sense; a smaller company is an easier target. Go after Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, etc. and you're incurring the wrath of a giant. Sure, you may get paid out big time if you win, BUT you'll have to fight like hell. A little company that is more vulnerable to you than you are to them? Easy money...and a lot more of them, too. So it ends up being like the RIAA's wonderful strategy of going after people en masse...you make money by going after companies in volume.
But buying up startups then killing their work doesn't?
Arguably, no. Why do I say this? Because of two reasons:
One...the fact that the startup got bought out provides incentive for other startups to form. Let's face it...being bought out by Google is a payday. It almost always means you've hit some kind of success, and as a result you are being paid well for the company. Failed startups that are bought as they lay on their death bed are never bought by companies like Google, but rather other smaller companies who want some minor aspect of what the startup still contains.
Two...the fact that the people who started the first startup are now (after a year or so) free to start a new one. And they're MORE able to do so, because they have the experience they gained the first time around, the track record of having done it successfully before (VC's get their part of that buy-out payday too), and their own inherent financial stability now so that they don't have to worry about putting food on their table or paying the rent while they get the next venture up and running. They've made connections, made mistakes, and learned a lot along the way. I know several people who have done multiple startups, and they've all seen their original creation changed in some major way by the company that bought them out, but meh...they go on, and create something new.
Wrong. I called the recruiter, and he said they make no changes, no exceptions. I pointed out that they would be effectively stealing from me, as by this point the book was actually done, and just waiting to hit the printers. No flexibility.
Your copyright exists from the time you type the words on the page. That it had not hit the street in book form yet had no bearing on the case.
So your CURRENT employer may have had a claim against your book, but your prospective employer wouldn't.
If you still had wanted to work for that prospective employer, you would have won any court case. But why the hell would you want to work there?
Bringing it back around to my post to which you were applying, perhaps point 5 should have been:
5) the invention must have been created wholly during your time of employment
I forgot to mention in my post (above) that ALL the rules had to be met for your employer to claim the invention.
It doesn't matter. As soon as I need to debate the point with my own employer, I lose. I lose the money I made writing the book, instead using it to pay a lawyer. I lose a lot of time and energy fighting it. I lose goodwill with the publisher for getting them caught up in it. And I lose headway in my career...because let's face it, suing your own employer is NOT the way to get ahead in business. There's being right, and there's being smart. Relying on the first isn't always being the second.
Oh, and even more importantly...there's the fact that my future employer was being an asshole. Why on earth would I work for them?
Every single R&D employer requires employees to assign all inventions. There is no way that is negotiable. Your pay/commission/whatever for having to do so may be, but there's no way around this requirement in today's employment market.
It's not that big a problem at all...this is simply not the truth, most of the time. I've had things in progress when I joined a company; you tell them about it, explain to them that you would like an exception to the agreement, and they (almost always...see my post above) agree to that with no muss, no fuss. It's not hard, it's not complicated, and it doesn't start a big fight. Hell, it doesn't even make you less desirable; companies want people that innovate, and if you're already doing it on your own before you even show up there, that's an awfully good sign that you'll do it for them too.
I've been through that several times, and it's only been a hassle once...and that, from a corporation that is notorious for being a total cabal of asshats. Every other time was actually a good thing, and once it actually helped me in my salary negotiations.
If you've invented this on your own time, money, and resources there is no way in the shady side of hell that your employer should have any ownership of it. If you did this while being compensated by your employer, the situation is different. If you've used your employer's money and resources, then it is fair.
Well that depends...
Most people can't compartmentalize their lives that completely. This is especially so when engaged in intellectual work (as opposed to factory drone work where you can simply flip a switch in your brain as you walk out the door).
So if I hire you to develop a left handed corner scraper and in the process you create a patentable piece of work, you might claim (truthfully) that the idea came to you while sitting on the throne in your house on a sunday afternoon when you saw the reflection of the light switch in the mirror.
Still, had you not been working for me explicitly on this project, you would, in all probability, never have had that spark of intuition.
Its too easy for you to claim you had the idea after work hours. Every body mulls over work problems at home.
Similarly, if you are employed to handle billing for your company and you stumble upon a totally unrelated idea, say for a new fishhook, on your day off or even on the job, its too easy for the company to claim it.
Fishhooks have nothing to do with billing. Everybody mulls over recreational problems while at work.
So here's an example to draw upon that shows how the compartments still happen, regardless of how steeped in our work we are.
I do cyber security, and I absolutely live, drink and breathe it. Several years back, I had been working on a book under contract. The book was germane to my field of professional expertise. I wrote it on my own time, on my own computer, and the content had nothing to do with my current employer. (Just to make sure that part's clear.) I got bored in my job, having hit a point where things were progressing no further, and gracefully started exiting. I had an offer from a company (let's call them "AC, which is the letters of the company name but rearranged") and was in the process of taking it, even having given notice at my current employer and started helping them look for a successor. Then, I got their intellectual property agreement, which stated that anything I put out was their property...ANYTHING...during my employment with them. I'd seen this before, and had asked at prior jobs...the solution is to tack on an exception for this or that thing, and that's how it's always gone. So no problem, right?
Wrong. I called the recruiter, and he said they make no changes, no exceptions. I pointed out that they would be effectively stealing from me, as by this point the book was actually done, and just waiting to hit the printers. No flexibility. So I declined the job offer after all, and ended up taking a different one...which turned out to be much, much better in the end. Pity, as AC had plans for me to travel to a client and be the centerpiece of a project that was kicking off. They suddenly developed "flexibility for an exception," but by that point, I was past having any desire to interact with them on any level whatsoever, much less steer my career through the middle of that company. I went to work at EDS, and did beautifully. (Until HP bought them, that is...but that's another profanity-laden rant.)