You know... If you didn't immediately return the thing when you found out that it couldn't do what was advertised, something that you would have very probably found out within the first several hours of possession of the laptop, you've only yourself to blame on that score.
Seriously.
Now, if you'd have been griping about just the misleading advertising (Of which everyone using that Intel chipset was very guilty of...) I'd have been right there with you. However...that doesn't seem to be all you're griping about, now is it?
Re:What does that tell you about the patent trolls
on
VP8 Codec Coming To FFmpeg
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, no, it's not prima facie evidence of anything other than the person that filed the application either got a rubber-stamp or was able to out-argue the examiner. Nothing more, nothing less.
As an example thereof, I need only point to any number of Amazon's patents, including the one they just got in this last month.
Having filed for a patent before in the past, I can assure you that while that what you say is supposed to be a requirement, even if you meet the criteria, you can have a protracted paper fight with an examiner that flipped a coin and decided to invalidate your patent- and then go looking for "patents" that "anticipate" your invention's specification, even though the guy/gal didn't do their homework and came back with a rejection that looks like the they were smoking magic mushrooms when they did the examination of your patent.
Patents are nothing of what many make them out to be in this day and age.
But only if Google really have inherited some killer On2 patents as part of their acquisition. I hope they have - it would make sense of their strategy and confidence in VP8 if this kind of thing were going on in the background.
Even though it's speculation, I'm strongly suspecting that you're going to find that this is the case. Combine that very possible reality along with many of the patents not being actually patentable, for varying reasons including in re Bilski being upheld in some fashion, and any delay impairing any ability TO enforce, and you see the picture as we see it.
MPEG-LA members rumbling about patents and doing NOTHING about it, and Google forging forward without any comments about the noise from the "other camp".
The odds are good that many of those patents aren't valid ones- yeah, they got granted and all, but they're not patentable items all the same.
You sue, you lose the patent and any subsequent royalties from the rubes that did pay up. If they sue, they'll be facing off against Google itself. Don't think for a moment that they can't cope with a bit of a protracted patent infringement suit and come through okay in the end if the patents aren't viable.
And then there's the bit about Laches. The clock's ticking on whether they can get any enforcement against VP8 and it's users. The moment it became public, the rights holders for h.264's patents have an obligation to assess and immediately sue if they believe there's an infringement. Not doing so dilutes or removes your ability to enforce against it because delay does cost- just not in the same way with Trademarks. There was a reason that Theora/VP3 was a compelling piece in the discussion- there wasn't going to BE a lawsuit most likely because the window for action from any patent holders with VP3 has long since passed.
Hardware support typically means shader programs, DSP programs and the like.
The bulk of which is completely programmable.
They don't use "dedicated hardware" in the iPhone, Android, or similar- it's a TI DSP that does this work.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon has similar hardware.
Same goes for Samsung's A8 SoCs used in consumer gear.
In truth, the bulk of the stuff out there uses a DSP because it's cheaper than using dedicated silicon because you don't need special silicon for each and every task to decode. You only need a DSP program. And, like most consumer gear it'll either get a DSP program or it won't (You don't see every piece of older gear (which also mostly uses DSPs...) getting h.264 support, right?)- in the end your argument's more of a straw man than anything else.
And do you know WHY it should be able to (I know you do because you brought it up- this is for the crowd that don't get what I'm about to mention here...)?
This is because not a single one of the mobile devices out there with an A8 SoC really use "dedicated hardware" to decode h.264 or any of the other codecs you care to mention for video or audio.
What do they use?
A high-performance DSP chip. Not. Dedicated. Hardware.
The same goes for anything with a Snapdragon or similar SoC. In fact, most devices don't use dedicated anything because you'd ned a bunch of special silicon for MPEG 1/2/4, MP3, WMA, etc. When you think about it, throwing a bunch of DSP muscle at the problem is cheaper than the dedicated hardware for all but a narrow range of applications.
All one has to do write a DSP program for the codec in question and go for most devices.
The "dedicated hardware" line is less of a real argument and more of a straw man argument that keeps getting trotted out every time some competing codec comes along.
Considering that the statement they make only really applies to the stuff acquired via the service, and that they can yank anything they want and INSTALL anything they want with this application that is a problem.
It's a bit bigger of an issue than what you make it out to be- partly because it's difficult to get things in on the app without another 3rd party market, and partly because it's capable going WELL beyond the statement they made to you when you started it up- and if you've never opened the market app, they shouldn't be able to DO what they're able to do because you've not agreed to it; but they CAN.
In the end, it's more along the story of what I'm painting than of the one you're painting. But then, this IS/., now isn't it? Why am I surprised that you missed something important there just to lecture me about missing things? Oh, snap, I'm not.
The same CEO said if anyone except I is causing the problem, to tell him and they will be gone because they are worse than anything for company - no problem makers allowed. Well, he was an old-fashioned corporate dictator, very successful in very successful (huge) company, so you better believe
Knowing what I would do in his position, I would have to say I'd have to believe you there. I know I'd fire damned near anyone that was causing issues needlessly within the ranks. I'd fire damned near anyone selling vapor. That sort of thing.
The company IS a team and relies on teamwork- and "team player" doesn't mean what most of the morons that use the term loosely and often take it to mean.
Actually, IT is both sides of that coin- when you're not producing stuff for anything other than an internal customer, it's still "IT"... And more to the point, you've got release cycles within IT as well... When do you roll out updates and the like- and there's a tighter timeline on getting the stuff right in that segment of it.
It has less to do with that and more to do with people that have no idea what they're managing making decisions they've no business making in the first place.
Oh, it gets called out all right. The problem is that more often than not, if you call it out, they escort you out- it's often times a fine line between pointing out something as being insane and some middle or upper manager feeling you're being insubordinate.
If business would realise that QUALITY has more to do with listening to your people and doing what they tell you is right as it is any of their idiot processes then perhaps it might be a bit better. So long as they believe in the methodology du jour saving their collective asses and believe that process will save them (If you have a repeatable process, wouldn't making mistakes within the context of the same, make you just simply repeat the mistakes over and over again?). This will be a space where a substantive portion of the space will be dominated by insanity, waste, and mediocre quality results.
The biggest problem with your remark would be that IT doesn't HAVE to be "high pressure". If anything, it shouldn't be much of any pressure. Sadly, you have entirely too many people that haven't the foggiest idea whatsoever of what they're actually trying to manage doing the management roles in IT and it ends up being high pressure.
For example...
Do you think it sane or rational to have a four month release cycle and do no work that you know won't fit into that timeframe- or try to desperately wedge things that should be an 8-12 month process into that timeframe when you've no other choice?
IT has a LOT of that in there and it doesn't HAVE to be that way.
However, the research shown in TFA shows something we saw ourselves when I worked within Penson Financial Services Group at Nexa Technologies. The HFT's are up to nasty tricks that try to jam things up enough to get an edge over their other HFT competitors since there's quite a few people trying to make money out of arbitrage out there using whatever computer controlled models to gauge where to work against next.
It may well have been a couple of HFT's taking swipes at each other via dirty, but currently legal, tricks that tumped everything over on the last flash crash.
UAC might be the wrong way. What you propose is even worse, in truth.
You're advocating them owning your machines- even the appliances. Do you think it appropriate that Maytag or Whirlpool owning your clothes washer and dryer? If so, I've got a bunch of things to "sell" you that I want to retain control over and be able to change up or repossess at any time.
If you don't, WHY do you think it appropriate for Google and others to have this same sort of situation?
They've done something that other software companies have been drug into court over and lost hard on. It's not legal for them to DO this in the first place.
THEY DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO UPDATE MY DAMN PHONE WHENEVER THEY WANT TO.
It's not a services offering by Google. It wasn't disclosed as such at the time of purchase. It uses a services offering by Verizon, but that's distinct from the phone.
It's MY device and I paid for it without any statements of Google owning that phone, or the Android system being a services offering.
To do what they're claiming will open them up to a lawsuit as it's illegal for them to do so, regardless of the technical capabilities. If you thought Amazon caught hell over what they did (and the Kindle IS part of a services offering...)- just wait and see what's going to come of this stunt they've pulled and if they try to pull it again.
I don't want them updating my stuff surreptitiously- I want to get it as a regular update notice. I also don't want them yanking just any old thing off my phone without my permission. If they have the ability, it should be like an update notice and ask me if I want them pulling it off my phone.
They'd be keen on getting their hands on the phones- they're making banking apps and the like for them that are less secured in some ways than the web based things because they're thinking the phones are more secure.
They're going to want to PWN those phones for MANY reasons and they'll bother without question- it's just a matter of time.
Actually, the order books don't all magically work at the same speed within the trading systems at the exchanges. Some work faster than others- and you have human lag within the scheme as well. The HFT's are using genetic, neural net, and similar algorithms to guess where the market's going and actually DO arbitrage in most cases. I used to work within the financial services industry at one of the software houses that made one of the trading platform systems for Nasdaq, CBOE, and LSE amongst others. While I wasn't doing the software that was responsible for the book handling, I did do the data collections from the live feeds for archival- and some of our customers were HFT's using that data to "improve their models" and they often discussed of it being more akin to arbitrage than anything else.
All the HFT's are doing is trying to scoop up money via arbitrage- scooping up a smidge here, a smidge there in the noise of trading during the day. There is nothing that supports the claims that they increase liquidity (HOW? Liqidity is cash not bound up in action doing something- nothing more. A penny here, a penny there isn't that.)
Oh, no... Stocks are for daytraders doing legalized gambling these days. Few stocks are for dividends- the only way to make money is to find a bigger fool than yourself and cash out.
Sometimes you see those things without the need to work more than 40 per week. I've seen it happen- sadly, the management didn't have a good handle on the sales and marketing side of things. Superior services offering, could've went somewhere if they'd ditched a few bad ideas for their marketing and sales and maybe started a bit smaller in their data center presence. At least we delivered on our end for 40 hrs/wk and all the extra stuff that made it a cool place to work.
I didn't want to do that when I was significantly younger. Your salary is predicated on a 40 hour work week, typically stated per your employment agreement. If you're working more than that, your pay is getting significantly diluted past about 50 hours/wk. More to the point, if you're doing 60+ hours/wk, there is something fundamentally wrong with the management's goals or in the very planning they're supposed to be doing. They're trying to jam much, much more work than was realistic within the timeframe they alloted or they made some serious misjudgement somewhere. When that sort of overtime ends up happening often or expected more than a rare instance, it's time to look for work elsewhere- they've got you working to just to exist and existing just to work at that point.
And I had that philosophy since out of College some two plus decades ago.
Slashdot Mirror
You know... If you didn't immediately return the thing when you found out that it couldn't do what was advertised, something that you would have very probably found out within the first several hours of possession of the laptop, you've only yourself to blame on that score.
Seriously.
Now, if you'd have been griping about just the misleading advertising (Of which everyone using that Intel chipset was very guilty of...) I'd have been right there with you. However...that doesn't seem to be all you're griping about, now is it?
Actually, no, it's not prima facie evidence of anything other than the person that filed the application either got a rubber-stamp or was able to out-argue the examiner. Nothing more, nothing less.
As an example thereof, I need only point to any number of Amazon's patents, including the one they just got in this last month.
Having filed for a patent before in the past, I can assure you that while that what you say is supposed to be a requirement, even if you meet the criteria, you can have a protracted paper fight with an examiner that flipped a coin and decided to invalidate your patent- and then go looking for "patents" that "anticipate" your invention's specification, even though the guy/gal didn't do their homework and came back with a rejection that looks like the they were smoking magic mushrooms when they did the examination of your patent.
Patents are nothing of what many make them out to be in this day and age.
Even though it's speculation, I'm strongly suspecting that you're going to find that this is the case. Combine that very possible reality along with many of the patents not being actually patentable, for varying reasons including in re Bilski being upheld in some fashion, and any delay impairing any ability TO enforce, and you see the picture as we see it.
MPEG-LA members rumbling about patents and doing NOTHING about it, and Google forging forward without any comments about the noise from the "other camp".
And, they're unlikely to sue...
The odds are good that many of those patents aren't valid ones- yeah, they got granted and all, but they're not patentable items all the same.
You sue, you lose the patent and any subsequent royalties from the rubes that did pay up. If they sue, they'll be facing off against Google itself. Don't think for a moment that they can't cope with a bit of a protracted patent infringement suit and come through okay in the end if the patents aren't viable.
And then there's the bit about Laches. The clock's ticking on whether they can get any enforcement against VP8 and it's users. The moment it became public, the rights holders for h.264's patents have an obligation to assess and immediately sue if they believe there's an infringement. Not doing so dilutes or removes your ability to enforce against it because delay does cost- just not in the same way with Trademarks. There was a reason that Theora/VP3 was a compelling piece in the discussion- there wasn't going to BE a lawsuit most likely because the window for action from any patent holders with VP3 has long since passed.
Hardware support typically means shader programs, DSP programs and the like.
The bulk of which is completely programmable.
They don't use "dedicated hardware" in the iPhone, Android, or similar- it's a TI DSP that does this work.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon has similar hardware.
Same goes for Samsung's A8 SoCs used in consumer gear.
In truth, the bulk of the stuff out there uses a DSP because it's cheaper than using dedicated silicon because you don't need special silicon for each and every task to decode. You only need a DSP program. And, like most consumer gear it'll either get a DSP program or it won't (You don't see every piece of older gear (which also mostly uses DSPs...) getting h.264 support, right?)- in the end your argument's more of a straw man than anything else.
And do you know WHY it should be able to (I know you do because you brought it up- this is for the crowd that don't get what I'm about to mention here...)?
This is because not a single one of the mobile devices out there with an A8 SoC really use "dedicated hardware" to decode h.264 or any of the other codecs you care to mention for video or audio.
What do they use?
A high-performance DSP chip. Not. Dedicated. Hardware.
The same goes for anything with a Snapdragon or similar SoC. In fact, most devices don't use dedicated anything because you'd ned a bunch of special silicon for MPEG 1/2/4, MP3, WMA, etc. When you think about it, throwing a bunch of DSP muscle at the problem is cheaper than the dedicated hardware for all but a narrow range of applications.
All one has to do write a DSP program for the codec in question and go for most devices.
The "dedicated hardware" line is less of a real argument and more of a straw man argument that keeps getting trotted out every time some competing codec comes along.
Considering that the statement they make only really applies to the stuff acquired via the service, and that they can yank anything they want and INSTALL anything they want with this application that is a problem.
It's a bit bigger of an issue than what you make it out to be- partly because it's difficult to get things in on the app without another 3rd party market, and partly because it's capable going WELL beyond the statement they made to you when you started it up- and if you've never opened the market app, they shouldn't be able to DO what they're able to do because you've not agreed to it; but they CAN.
In the end, it's more along the story of what I'm painting than of the one you're painting. But then, this IS /., now isn't it? Why am I surprised that you missed something important there just to lecture me about missing things? Oh, snap, I'm not.
Knowing what I would do in his position, I would have to say I'd have to believe you there. I know I'd fire damned near anyone that was causing issues needlessly within the ranks. I'd fire damned near anyone selling vapor. That sort of thing.
The company IS a team and relies on teamwork- and "team player" doesn't mean what most of the morons that use the term loosely and often take it to mean.
Heh... Sounds like you had fun with THAT switchover.
Actually, IT is both sides of that coin- when you're not producing stuff for anything other than an internal customer, it's still "IT"... And more to the point, you've got release cycles within IT as well... When do you roll out updates and the like- and there's a tighter timeline on getting the stuff right in that segment of it.
It has less to do with that and more to do with people that have no idea what they're managing making decisions they've no business making in the first place.
Oh, it gets called out all right. The problem is that more often than not, if you call it out, they escort you out- it's often times a fine line between pointing out something as being insane and some middle or upper manager feeling you're being insubordinate.
If business would realise that QUALITY has more to do with listening to your people and doing what they tell you is right as it is any of their idiot processes then perhaps it might be a bit better. So long as they believe in the methodology du jour saving their collective asses and believe that process will save them (If you have a repeatable process, wouldn't making mistakes within the context of the same, make you just simply repeat the mistakes over and over again?). This will be a space where a substantive portion of the space will be dominated by insanity, waste, and mediocre quality results.
The biggest problem with your remark would be that IT doesn't HAVE to be "high pressure". If anything, it shouldn't be much of any pressure. Sadly, you have entirely too many people that haven't the foggiest idea whatsoever of what they're actually trying to manage doing the management roles in IT and it ends up being high pressure.
For example...
Do you think it sane or rational to have a four month release cycle and do no work that you know won't fit into that timeframe- or try to desperately wedge things that should be an 8-12 month process into that timeframe when you've no other choice?
IT has a LOT of that in there and it doesn't HAVE to be that way.
Remember my remarks... I worked in that industry.
Your assessment is true...after a fashion.
However, the research shown in TFA shows something we saw ourselves when I worked within Penson Financial Services Group at Nexa Technologies. The HFT's are up to nasty tricks that try to jam things up enough to get an edge over their other HFT competitors since there's quite a few people trying to make money out of arbitrage out there using whatever computer controlled models to gauge where to work against next.
It may well have been a couple of HFT's taking swipes at each other via dirty, but currently legal, tricks that tumped everything over on the last flash crash.
UAC might be the wrong way. What you propose is even worse, in truth.
You're advocating them owning your machines- even the appliances. Do you think it appropriate that Maytag or Whirlpool owning your clothes washer and dryer? If so, I've got a bunch of things to "sell" you that I want to retain control over and be able to change up or repossess at any time.
If you don't, WHY do you think it appropriate for Google and others to have this same sort of situation?
This has little to do with hating Google.
They've done something that other software companies have been drug into court over and lost hard on. It's not legal for them to DO this in the first place.
Excuse me...
THEY DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO UPDATE MY DAMN PHONE WHENEVER THEY WANT TO.
It's not a services offering by Google.
It wasn't disclosed as such at the time of purchase.
It uses a services offering by Verizon, but that's distinct from the phone.
It's MY device and I paid for it without any statements of Google owning that phone, or the Android system being a services offering.
To do what they're claiming will open them up to a lawsuit as it's illegal for them to do so, regardless of the technical capabilities. If you thought Amazon caught hell over what they did (and the Kindle IS part of a services offering...)- just wait and see what's going to come of this stunt they've pulled and if they try to pull it again.
I don't want them updating my stuff surreptitiously- I want to get it as a regular update notice. I also don't want them yanking just any old thing off my phone without my permission. If they have the ability, it should be like an update notice and ask me if I want them pulling it off my phone.
If they've got the Market app installed in the firmware, post install, it does.
Are you kidding?
They'd be keen on getting their hands on the phones- they're making banking apps and the like for them that are less secured in some ways than the web based things because they're thinking the phones are more secure.
They're going to want to PWN those phones for MANY reasons and they'll bother without question- it's just a matter of time.
Actually, the order books don't all magically work at the same speed within the trading systems at the exchanges. Some work faster than others- and you have human lag within the scheme as well. The HFT's are using genetic, neural net, and similar algorithms to guess where the market's going and actually DO arbitrage in most cases. I used to work within the financial services industry at one of the software houses that made one of the trading platform systems for Nasdaq, CBOE, and LSE amongst others. While I wasn't doing the software that was responsible for the book handling, I did do the data collections from the live feeds for archival- and some of our customers were HFT's using that data to "improve their models" and they often discussed of it being more akin to arbitrage than anything else.
All the HFT's are doing is trying to scoop up money via arbitrage- scooping up a smidge here, a smidge there in the noise of trading during the day. There is nothing that supports the claims that they increase liquidity (HOW? Liqidity is cash not bound up in action doing something- nothing more. A penny here, a penny there isn't that.)
Oh, no... Stocks are for daytraders doing legalized gambling these days. Few stocks are for dividends- the only way to make money is to find a bigger fool than yourself and cash out.
Sometimes you see those things without the need to work more than 40 per week. I've seen it happen- sadly, the management
didn't have a good handle on the sales and marketing side of things. Superior services offering, could've went somewhere
if they'd ditched a few bad ideas for their marketing and sales and maybe started a bit smaller in their data center
presence. At least we delivered on our end for 40 hrs/wk and all the extra stuff that made it a cool place to work.
I didn't want to do that when I was significantly younger. Your salary is predicated on a 40 hour work week, typically stated per your employment agreement.
If you're working more than that, your pay is getting significantly diluted past about 50 hours/wk. More to the point, if you're doing 60+ hours/wk, there
is something fundamentally wrong with the management's goals or in the very planning they're supposed to be doing. They're trying to jam
much, much more work than was realistic within the timeframe they alloted or they made some serious misjudgement somewhere. When that sort of overtime
ends up happening often or expected more than a rare instance, it's time to look for work elsewhere- they've got you working to just to exist and existing
just to work at that point.
And I had that philosophy since out of College some two plus decades ago.