He has gone to explain to Obama that his one click buying patent was sufficiently broadly worded that it covers the voting system and so he wants to discuss license fees...
In two hundred years time the real reason behind the USA's multi-candidate proportional voting system will be forgotten...
It has all been spent on trying to repair the damage wrought by greedy bankers.
But there is more to it than that, Bletchley park has been crying out for money for years and has been ignored over a long time. Very few politicians have a scientific background and don't understand or care about this sort of thing.
What do I mean ? It starts by assuming that you know what ODF is, giving it a name ''the OpenDocument Format'' doesn't really help -- the average Member of Parliament/Senate/Dictatorship/... will not have a clue what you are talking about. All sorts of other buzz words abound, there are names of unknown things like KSpread and Symphony -- who has heard of them ?
I am sympathetic to what they are doing - it is a great idea, unfortunately it won't get much legislator/bureaucrat/... eyeball time because it doesn't explain what it is all about. It needs to be prefixed by a page that explains it all in nice, friendly words that everyone can understand and say that the technical details are on the next pages -- which starts with page 1 of what they have produced.
Show him a picture of a pile of green backs, contrasted with a picture of his wife or Angelina Jolie. I suspect that the green backs would win -- sad, greedy gits!
They see their teacher making a copy of a DVD: ''I need to do that because the MPAA says so''. The conclusion that kids will draw is that it is perfectly fine to make copies of DVD and that this is sanctioned by the MPAA.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the MPAA wants to protect its income stream by getting teachers to train up lots of adults who they can sue. Remember: the MPAA gets money from sueing, the studios loose money through piracy of DVDs.
You know what's really funny? Sailors all over the world use small wind generators to charge their batteries while at anchor.
Yacht marinas tend to be built in windy places, so there is plenty to keep the blades going round. Also the power requirements of a small boat are very modest, much less than that of a typical house - high energy things (like cooking) tend to use gas or something.
If you think about it, the energy that a windmill can extract is going to be proportional to the amount of air that it can interact with - this will be roughly proportional to the sweep area of the blades or proportional to the square of the blade length. You will find that the power generated is roughly length^2 - do the math on the numbers that they quote.
It has always been known that some areas will get colder. The point is that the greenhouse gasses, etc, upset the way climate has been recently. This will change air flow, sea currents, etc. This means that some areas will get warmer and some will get colder. The overall effect is warming.
Another example is the North Atlantic Drift (or Gluf Stream) that gives us a mild climate in England. It is expected that the currents will wane with the result that we will have colder winters.
Don't anyone think ''Ohhh! look, something got colder therefor all of this talk of global warming is rhubarb!''. Unless we take drastic action we are in for some nasty changes.
Failure by Windows 7 to catch on early might also cause headaches for the wider IT market, slowing sales and innovation.
Windows XP, still in use by the vast majority of businesses, was released in 2001â"meaning that it will be a decade old in two years.
There is a difference between what is good for the IT market and what is good for business in general. Us IT crowd want to push the latest new thing, for some this means mark up on s/ware, others it is more consultancy. What a business wants is a stable IT system that does what the business needs in a stable way -- boring, not sexy. Once applications are written they stay written; the will be changed when the business requirements change, not because the computer systems change.
MS is also caught up in the sales/upgrades treadmill - to not do so would badly damage its bottom line. What is in the best interests of MS is not in the best interests of its customers.
Windows XP, still in use by the vast majority of businesses, was released in 2001â"meaning that it will be a decade old in two years.
Linux is based on 35+ years old Unix, I regularly use programs that are essentially unchanged since I wrote them for System V Unix 25 years ago. How old a system is is not an issue unless you need to make money by flogging your customers new versions. In this regard Unix/Linux is a better platform for companies than MS Windows systems.
Seriousy: such indecision is an indication of failing management. OK: we all change our minds when something unforeseen becomes apparent,
but if this happens too often you need to start to ask questions why these things were not discussed in advance.
It is likely that you have lackeys at various levels of management who are more interested in ass licking (keeping their boss happy)
than doing their job properly and, occasionally, pointing out to the boss that their decision might be wrong.
Read at the bottom on the story, there is a link to more major & minor issues where they have changed their minds.
I always wondered who that prolific commenter 'Anonymous Coward' was. Now I know that s/he is acting to expose that bunch of dangerous lunatics: the scientologists -- so s/he has my respect as someone involved in a good fight.
On another note: if Anonymous is going after others who are detrimental to society (eg scientologists) I suppose that we should attach the label vigilante - normally not seen as the right way of going about things. However: the authorities have completely failed to protect us from these murdering crooks (by which I mean scientologists) which is why Anonymous is doing something. What they have done is to make a lot of noise, get up the crooks' noses, etc - all legitimate, so why are they listed here ? -- is it because the govt does not like anything that it cannot control ?
It would be rather like a pacman game, you see the copper coming and run the other way. Although if the display is good enough and you can see if they are coloured red or orange you would know if you need to flee.
That is not the point. It would be if this was about copyright, with a patent you can infringe it if you never heard of it, your programmers came up with the idea and coded it -- it just needs for someone to have submitted a patent application before the idea was published somewhere.
This is why software patents are dreadful -- it simply rewards the guy who filed the patent application first. This is especially true with patents about simple ideas or those that are obvious to someone asked to solve a particular problem -- most software patents fall into this group.
With a technology company its value is made up of:
Intellectual Property - I, stuff that other people cannot use without a license - everything that RH is open source. Some management/internal s/ware might not have been published
Intellectual Property - II, Patents - RH has a few for defensive purposes. I don't know how new owners could use them against other FLOSS users: if they wanted to
Contracts & customer good will, if you piss off your customers this can evaporate quickly
Good staff/employees. In a few months the good ones could leave.
Bank account, buildings, computers, etc.
The most important of the above is the RH staff. If citigroup/... were to buy RH and do the ''wrong'' things the staff would simply decamp, create another company ('BlueBoot'), take a copy of all the source code (its all GPL remember) and the RH customers would follow the staff for their support.
Any clueful potential purchaser would realise the risk that what they bought could just evaporate.
Debian can't be bought, it is not a company with shareholders. You would need to convince the Debian maintainers that they ought to be part of Oracle -- I know some of these guys, hell would freeze over first.
Slashdot Mirror
In two hundred years time the real reason behind the USA's multi-candidate proportional voting system will be forgotten ...
But there is more to it than that, Bletchley park has been crying out for money for years and has been ignored over a long time. Very few politicians have a scientific background and don't understand or care about this sort of thing.
What do I mean ? It starts by assuming that you know what ODF is, giving it a name ''the OpenDocument Format'' doesn't really help -- the average Member of Parliament/Senate/Dictatorship/... will not have a clue what you are talking about. All sorts of other buzz words abound, there are names of unknown things like KSpread and Symphony -- who has heard of them ?
I am sympathetic to what they are doing - it is a great idea, unfortunately it won't get much legislator/bureaucrat/... eyeball time because it doesn't explain what it is all about. It needs to be prefixed by a page that explains it all in nice, friendly words that everyone can understand and say that the technical details are on the next pages -- which starts with page 1 of what they have produced.
Show him a picture of a pile of green backs, contrasted with a picture of his wife or Angelina Jolie. I suspect that the green backs would win -- sad, greedy gits!
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the MPAA wants to protect its income stream by getting teachers to train up lots of adults who they can sue. Remember: the MPAA gets money from sueing, the studios loose money through piracy of DVDs.
Edgar Hernandez is the 5 year old boy who is the earliest confirmed victim of the flu.
Asus 3450 256mb DDR2 looks OK to me, should be able to run Xterm & Firefox -- what else do you really need ?
Probably the same thing it means for OpenOffice. Or Java.
I don't know what that is, though...
Remember: Larry hates Bill. Bill earns a lot of $$ from MS Office. This may result in more funding for OoO.
I reckon that it was the guy's hand that was moving.
If this was really capable of generating energy you would have seen a video of a static setup driving a small dynamo - or something similar.
You know what's really funny? Sailors all over the world use small wind generators to charge their batteries while at anchor.
Yacht marinas tend to be built in windy places, so there is plenty to keep the blades going round. Also the power requirements of a small boat are very modest, much less than that of a typical house - high energy things (like cooking) tend to use gas or something.
If you think about it, the energy that a windmill can extract is going to be proportional to the amount of air that it can interact with - this will be roughly proportional to the sweep area of the blades or proportional to the square of the blade length. You will find that the power generated is roughly length^2 - do the math on the numbers that they quote.
Another example is the North Atlantic Drift (or Gluf Stream) that gives us a mild climate in England. It is expected that the currents will wane with the result that we will have colder winters.
Don't anyone think ''Ohhh! look, something got colder therefor all of this talk of global warming is rhubarb!''. Unless we take drastic action we are in for some nasty changes.
Are cyborgs also banned ?
anywhere, somewhat tarnishes the James Bond image. And did the pond contain piranas ?
They ought to have a heat pipe from the House of Commons -- hot air is just about the only useful thing that is produced there.
Just the excuse that I have been looking for to avoid having to hoover the carpets!
There is a difference between what is good for the IT market and what is good for business in general. Us IT crowd want to push the latest new thing, for some this means mark up on s/ware, others it is more consultancy. What a business wants is a stable IT system that does what the business needs in a stable way -- boring, not sexy. Once applications are written they stay written; the will be changed when the business requirements change, not because the computer systems change.
MS is also caught up in the sales/upgrades treadmill - to not do so would badly damage its bottom line. What is in the best interests of MS is not in the best interests of its customers.
Linux is based on 35+ years old Unix, I regularly use programs that are essentially unchanged since I wrote them for System V Unix 25 years ago. How old a system is is not an issue unless you need to make money by flogging your customers new versions. In this regard Unix/Linux is a better platform for companies than MS Windows systems.
Seriousy: such indecision is an indication of failing management. OK: we all change our minds when something unforeseen becomes apparent, but if this happens too often you need to start to ask questions why these things were not discussed in advance. It is likely that you have lackeys at various levels of management who are more interested in ass licking (keeping their boss happy) than doing their job properly and, occasionally, pointing out to the boss that their decision might be wrong. Read at the bottom on the story, there is a link to more major & minor issues where they have changed their minds.
On another note: if Anonymous is going after others who are detrimental to society (eg scientologists) I suppose that we should attach the label vigilante - normally not seen as the right way of going about things. However: the authorities have completely failed to protect us from these murdering crooks (by which I mean scientologists) which is why Anonymous is doing something. What they have done is to make a lot of noise, get up the crooks' noses, etc - all legitimate, so why are they listed here ? -- is it because the govt does not like anything that it cannot control ?
I notice that there is also A Weakest Link Dr Who Special - not sure about that, I can't stand Anne Robinson.
It would be rather like a pacman game, you see the copper coming and run the other way. Although if the display is good enough and you can see if they are coloured red or orange you would know if you need to flee.
This is why software patents are dreadful -- it simply rewards the guy who filed the patent application first. This is especially true with patents about simple ideas or those that are obvious to someone asked to solve a particular problem -- most software patents fall into this group.
country to imprison people for reasons that people in other countries think are despicable. Try this for example.
''It is a century or two old ?'' -- what does that matter, it depicts a child under the age of 16 at the time?
The most important of the above is the RH staff. If citigroup/... were to buy RH and do the ''wrong'' things the staff would simply decamp, create another company ('BlueBoot'), take a copy of all the source code (its all GPL remember) and the RH customers would follow the staff for their support.
Any clueful potential purchaser would realise the risk that what they bought could just evaporate.
Debian can't be bought, it is not a company with shareholders. You would need to convince the Debian maintainers that they ought to be part of Oracle -- I know some of these guys, hell would freeze over first.