How much would they have made back if this flood of copycats came immediately after they announced their discovery?
How about how much would they have made if they had reasonable license fees for their technology that allowed a boom of products to come out earlier on?
I'm not opposed to patents. I'm opposed to how many companies use them: to hoard a technology under the illusion that they "own the market". Patent owners are often much better served when they license aggressively and leverage the patent to capture license fees on an expanding marketplace. A $200 Million patent-capped market will not make as much for the patent holder than getting royalties on $10 billion in sales.
BTW - when the patent expires, how many times do we see the original mover totally wiped out by competition? Fax machines anyone?
It's definitely not marketed towards any industrial niche.
The original question is who buys these things... not how are these guy's marketing department failing to hit the broad side of a barn from 10 feet with a loaded scatter gun.
The jail time is not for just "sending email." It's for sending e-mail "related to such things as pornography, illegal or prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms or fireworks" to a child's address *after* that address has been put into the Michigan registry of children's addresses which are not to receive such e-mail.
I don't see how this law can survive intrastate commerce and equal protection challenges.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I also hate power grabs more like this one. Michigan is trying to regulate the whole world... and it is totally destined to fail.
No, most of the media is opinions in a spin to make them look like facts.
Are you posting from North Korea? Seriously - most western newspapers are very well documented and grounded in fact. The issue really is not how they report what happened, it's what they choose not to cover, or what points of view in debate get left out.
Indymedia is somewhere were people can post information regarding grass roots actions
Only if grass roots action == baldface lies. Perhaps you use it that way... but others do not.
Most of the time the poster is the only one who can provide the evidence of the events.
If a story cannot be corraborated, it cannot be trusted. I do agree about taking your media with a grain of salt... and a dash of tabasco... newspring paper tastes better that way.
1) Eliminate Exchange Server. 2) Analyze value of vpn. Is there really a need to connect just like you are in the building? If no, eliminate. 3) Engage managed services firm to handle your application servers. Put them in another NOC only if you have bandwidth to have decent quality of service. 4) Web hosting depends on the size of the site. Most sites can easily be handled by shared hosting like this example. If you need a server, you can get decent linux boxes for $129/mo or less and windows boxes for about $20 more per month. I'm always amazed when I see someone host a website in house when you can host somewhere else for exponentially less money.
Tons of software is so poorly written that you can't use it without admin rights. Many software installers don't handle rigts correctly and shell to the right user to install durring the install process.
LUA is useful in the corporate world, but my dad doesn't want to log in as admin for some things and himself for others.
Whatever window's equivelent to su or sudo is sucks so badly it's borderline useles, and on top of than... one would think you could right click and "run as user..." on an application like say the installer for the new version of Quicken...
Microsoft didn't get it: the reason Firefox is so damn good is that it's a better browser than IE. I think MS marketing looked at the eyecandy (search box, tabs, Live Bookmarks) and thought that this FireFox was more like some of the customized versions of IE that are out there. They totally missed out the power that Gecko, XUL and the amazingly simple extension system bring.
Firefox renders correctly, it's simple to use and extensions are just plain fun and useful. The user has more control and is literally safer than with IE. Sure there are exploits found, but they are generally fixed quickly and users are alerted to upgrade.
Then there's that whole extensible user interface...
Blackberry is used by so many? just recently on slashdot was the first time I and many had heard of it.
Blackberry has not been sold to geeks - it has primary sold to executives and traditional professionals like doctors and lawyers. It's on the radar for geeks because RIM is selling the hell out of Enterprise Servers - which get stuck in the data center.
Personally, I've owned treos, PocketPC phones, and even kyocera smartphones. Nothing comes close to the user experience with BlackBerry - but they could certainly use an open source software community, somehting that isn't going to happen until RIM changes their SDK and application signing terms. I'd go nuts writing software in my spare time if RIM would make it so it doesn't cost me more than I would plan on making off the whole thing (a couple hundred bucks)... I suspect I'm not the only one who isn't coding on the principle of the $200 application signing fee...
Or perhaps go to a school where they allow cameras for photography class... Stare real hard and remember... remember...
It's policies like these that have ensured my kids will go to a private school where I can use the almight buck to make sure that justice is in line with my demented world view that says you need a camera for photography class. God, I must be insane.
That is still something that should be done at home.
This is a cop out.
It is that they use them at forbidden times
Like when, say all day? When I call my daughter she better answer regardless of what the teacher says. I guarantee if I have to call her it is the most important single communication she will have that day, regardless of what the english lit teacher thinks of his/her opinion about Chaucer.
Cell phones are useful this way and parents are often giving them to kids.
Educators need to understand that cell phones are part of our way of life, and they need to teach students how to be responsible and polite users. Why do educators always respond by banning things? (back when I was in school, walkmans were new... and subject to simmilar banning.)
Also - parents really need to think if the risk of allowing their children's life to be ruined is worth it when evaluating sending your child to a private school.
The more that downlink outweighs uplink, the more it prevents home users from starting sites, and leaves the content of the web in the hands of the large companies with the outgoing bandwidth.
It also mitigates damage due to zombie PCs and protects the backbone connection from massive saturation due to user stupidity, p2p file sharing and other taskes.
In this kind of situation the teachers are in the position of enforceing the rules. Whilst inconsitant enforcment of rules tends to lead to poor school discipline even worst is where people who are ment to be enforcing rules encourage breaking them.
This would be nice if in the real world the rules were applied evenly and crueley at every turn. Even the FBI, IRS and BATF have this tool called discression, and it is often a very powerful tool for making justice work in a way that doesn't destroy people.
One thing I learned in the Navy is that just because a rule says I can do sometheing to someone if they break it, I don't have to dole out the max penalty - and in fact in doleing out the max penalty consistently you create an environment of mistrust, disdain and ultimately, failure. With zero tollerance rules for inconsequential items like cellular phones, fingernail clippers and toy guns with extreme life altering penalties, you create an environment dominated by fear and cynicism that has zero resemblence to the real world, with the sole exception of airport security. The good news: our high schools seem to be cranking out candidates for jobs screening passengers at airports by the cruelest form of natural selection.
It's private school for my kids. I'm not going to let some power hungry teacher ruin their life. At least in a private school I have the pay the bill or not veto (which is VERY much like the power we all have in business).
Good, their futures need ruined. I wouldn't hire a person like this, it's what Enrons are made of.
I'd expect this kind of attitude from someone named "OverlordQ". A bad decision at age 16 does not make a lifetime of the worse sort of white collar crime. A mistake at age 16 is the time for a lesson to be taught, but not at the expense of the next 80 years of someone's life.
Am I the only person here that thinks that it is the most flimsy form of chintz that educators use the legal system and literally ruin students futures over something so minor as this...
Wait a minute - the administrators have to show them who's in charge... and having the cops do their enforcement... that'll show them.
As you become more and more specialized, you run the risk of limiting where you are useful.
Actually, this isn't the problem at all. No one is really overspecialized - they happen to not understand that you don't get specialist wages for generalist work.
Slashdot Mirror
How much would they have made back if this flood of copycats came immediately after they announced their discovery?
How about how much would they have made if they had reasonable license fees for their technology that allowed a boom of products to come out earlier on?
I'm not opposed to patents. I'm opposed to how many companies use them: to hoard a technology under the illusion that they "own the market". Patent owners are often much better served when they license aggressively and leverage the patent to capture license fees on an expanding marketplace. A $200 Million patent-capped market will not make as much for the patent holder than getting royalties on $10 billion in sales.
BTW - when the patent expires, how many times do we see the original mover totally wiped out by competition? Fax machines anyone?
Have you been hanging out with sales or something? This is why lunches, golf and a trip to vegas actually get things done from time to time.
It's definitely not marketed towards any industrial niche.
The original question is who buys these things... not how are these guy's marketing department failing to hit the broad side of a barn from 10 feet with a loaded scatter gun.
Torture: 'acceptable in some situations'
Violent video games: leads to violent people
Perhaps these two are related in some legislators minds.
So I'm not sure where it's supposed to compete in the market. Am I supposed to buy it instead of my PDA? Or my notebook?
Wireless ISPs buy webpads. There is also an industrial niche as well.
It is news because it now applies the "accessory", "contributory", and "accomplice" sort of legality to things on the internet.
Not really, there's not much of a difference between a real world accomplice and an online one.
The key isn't whether it CAUSES mass piracy, but that if it is DESIGNED and PROMOTED to cause piracy. Big difference. Read the ruling.
Exactly. Advertising Infringomatic 2000 w/ Wincash Gold plug in has always been a stupid idea. So has working HR for the mafia.
EVERY news outlet got it WRONG in their broadcasts
It pains me to say that Fox News nailed it. Point is that this ruling was completely nothing new. It made no change to the law of the land.
The basic point of the ruling is that you need to be able to have plausible deniability when it comes to promoting illegal actions.
Perhaps more wise would be not to promote illegal actions at all...
Bitorrent, for example, is able to get away with aiding mass piracy because the primary use for it is to disseminate large binary files.
Bitorrent does not cause mass piracy or get away with anything. They provide a file distribution tool that servers a specific purpose.
The court just found that if you run a service designed to help people break the law that you will have some amount of responsibility in the acts.
And how is this news?
but I do think that there is a certain amount of discretion that companies riding the razor's edge ought to employ.
It's far simpler than this: don't promote illegal activities. Recruiting a team to rob a bank is just as criminal as robbing the bank.
The jail time is not for just "sending email." It's for sending e-mail "related to such things as pornography, illegal or prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms or fireworks" to a child's address *after* that address has been put into the Michigan registry of children's addresses which are not to receive such e-mail.
I don't see how this law can survive intrastate commerce and equal protection challenges.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I also hate power grabs more like this one. Michigan is trying to regulate the whole world... and it is totally destined to fail.
The term "WYSIWYG" simply doesn't apply to the web.
Actually, N|VU is WYSIWYG. You are literally editing HTML with a hot rodded browser.
No, most of the media is opinions in a spin to make them look like facts.
Are you posting from North Korea? Seriously - most western newspapers are very well documented and grounded in fact. The issue really is not how they report what happened, it's what they choose not to cover, or what points of view in debate get left out.
Indymedia is somewhere were people can post information regarding grass roots actions
Only if grass roots action == baldface lies. Perhaps you use it that way... but others do not.
Most of the time the poster is the only one who can provide the evidence of the events.
If a story cannot be corraborated, it cannot be trusted. I do agree about taking your media with a grain of salt... and a dash of tabasco... newspring paper tastes better that way.
1) Eliminate Exchange Server.
2) Analyze value of vpn. Is there really a need to connect just like you are in the building? If no, eliminate.
3) Engage managed services firm to handle your application servers. Put them in another NOC only if you have bandwidth to have decent quality of service.
4) Web hosting depends on the size of the site. Most sites can easily be handled by shared hosting like this example. If you need a server, you can get decent linux boxes for $129/mo or less and windows boxes for about $20 more per month. I'm always amazed when I see someone host a website in house when you can host somewhere else for exponentially less money.
Tons of software is so poorly written that you can't use it without admin rights. Many software installers don't handle rigts correctly and shell to the right user to install durring the install process.
LUA is useful in the corporate world, but my dad doesn't want to log in as admin for some things and himself for others.
Whatever window's equivelent to su or sudo is sucks so badly it's borderline useles, and on top of than... one would think you could right click and "run as user..." on an application like say the installer for the new version of Quicken...
Windows is so 1990s...
Microsoft didn't get it: the reason Firefox is so damn good is that it's a better browser than IE. I think MS marketing looked at the eyecandy (search box, tabs, Live Bookmarks) and thought that this FireFox was more like some of the customized versions of IE that are out there. They totally missed out the power that Gecko, XUL and the amazingly simple extension system bring.
Firefox renders correctly, it's simple to use and extensions are just plain fun and useful. The user has more control and is literally safer than with IE. Sure there are exploits found, but they are generally fixed quickly and users are alerted to upgrade.
Then there's that whole extensible user interface...
Blackberry is used by so many? just recently on slashdot was the first time I and many had heard of it.
Blackberry has not been sold to geeks - it has primary sold to executives and traditional professionals like doctors and lawyers. It's on the radar for geeks because RIM is selling the hell out of Enterprise Servers - which get stuck in the data center.
Personally, I've owned treos, PocketPC phones, and even kyocera smartphones. Nothing comes close to the user experience with BlackBerry - but they could certainly use an open source software community, somehting that isn't going to happen until RIM changes their SDK and application signing terms. I'd go nuts writing software in my spare time if RIM would make it so it doesn't cost me more than I would plan on making off the whole thing (a couple hundred bucks)... I suspect I'm not the only one who isn't coding on the principle of the $200 application signing fee...
Then you should get it in writing
Or perhaps go to a school where they allow cameras for photography class... Stare real hard and remember... remember...
It's policies like these that have ensured my kids will go to a private school where I can use the almight buck to make sure that justice is in line with my demented world view that says you need a camera for photography class. God, I must be insane.
That is still something that should be done at home.
This is a cop out.
It is that they use them at forbidden times
Like when, say all day? When I call my daughter she better answer regardless of what the teacher says. I guarantee if I have to call her it is the most important single communication she will have that day, regardless of what the english lit teacher thinks of his/her opinion about Chaucer.
Cell phones are useful this way and parents are often giving them to kids.
Educators need to understand that cell phones are part of our way of life, and they need to teach students how to be responsible and polite users. Why do educators always respond by banning things? (back when I was in school, walkmans were new... and subject to simmilar banning.)
Also - parents really need to think if the risk of allowing their children's life to be ruined is worth it when evaluating sending your child to a private school.
The more that downlink outweighs uplink, the more it prevents home users from starting sites, and leaves the content of the web in the hands of the large companies with the outgoing bandwidth.
It also mitigates damage due to zombie PCs and protects the backbone connection from massive saturation due to user stupidity, p2p file sharing and other taskes.
It might be a better idea, in practice, to disbar criminals from holding office...
What ever happened to "Sir, your debt to society has been repaid in full. Good luck out there."
2,3,4,10,20, 40 years in jail seems like enough punishment. What ever happened to the forgive part?
In this kind of situation the teachers are in the position of enforceing the rules. Whilst inconsitant enforcment of rules tends to lead to poor school discipline even worst is where people who are ment to be enforcing rules encourage breaking them.
This would be nice if in the real world the rules were applied evenly and crueley at every turn. Even the FBI, IRS and BATF have this tool called discression, and it is often a very powerful tool for making justice work in a way that doesn't destroy people.
One thing I learned in the Navy is that just because a rule says I can do sometheing to someone if they break it, I don't have to dole out the max penalty - and in fact in doleing out the max penalty consistently you create an environment of mistrust, disdain and ultimately, failure. With zero tollerance rules for inconsequential items like cellular phones, fingernail clippers and toy guns with extreme life altering penalties, you create an environment dominated by fear and cynicism that has zero resemblence to the real world, with the sole exception of airport security. The good news: our high schools seem to be cranking out candidates for jobs screening passengers at airports by the cruelest form of natural selection.
It's private school for my kids. I'm not going to let some power hungry teacher ruin their life. At least in a private school I have the pay the bill or not veto (which is VERY much like the power we all have in business).
Good, their futures need ruined. I wouldn't hire a person like this, it's what Enrons are made of.
I'd expect this kind of attitude from someone named "OverlordQ". A bad decision at age 16 does not make a lifetime of the worse sort of white collar crime. A mistake at age 16 is the time for a lesson to be taught, but not at the expense of the next 80 years of someone's life.
Am I the only person here that thinks that it is the most flimsy form of chintz that educators use the legal system and literally ruin students futures over something so minor as this...
Wait a minute - the administrators have to show them who's in charge... and having the cops do their enforcement... that'll show them.
As you become more and more specialized, you run the risk of limiting where you are useful.
Actually, this isn't the problem at all. No one is really overspecialized - they happen to not understand that you don't get specialist wages for generalist work.
We should understand by now that no matter where you live on the planet, the gov't(not just the U.S.) owns ALL property.
In America, we were at least supposed to have some illusion that we owned our own property.
So much for unreasonable seizure. Thanks a lot supremes.
Step two, go to Google and search on something
If you are going to charge the end user, then you have to charge the people at google who are trafficing kiddie porn for adsense money.
Wait a minute - the end user can't afford to fight back.