It was too late for the Norse in Greenland once they ate their last cow
Actually, it was too late rather earlier than that, when they ate the last bull or cow. They could have had hundreds of cows left, but without a bull, ain't a-gonna be no more cows. Unless they had cows that reproduce by fission.
And to turn a casual joke into a more serious point: it was also too late when their breeding population of cattle dropped below certain critical limits (i.e., the gene pool became too small for long-term survival). "Too late" can actually occur quite early on.
Installing wireless LANs is my side job. For families sometimes, but mostly small businesses - large enough to want them but small enough not to have the in house skills. Wireless is stupidly complex from the point of view of most non-technical users (especially after they've read almost anything about security), so they're happy to pay me to take care of it for them.
Given that many people aren't ultra precision drivers, there would have to be some sort of robotic arm that could connect to the car.
Sounds like a technological hammer to crack a minor nut of a problem. There's a cable wound up in the front of the car (where the radiator would be on an internal combustion vehicle). Pull it out and plug it in. Or don't Americans like to do *anything* that involves physical effort?:)
I believe Canadians already use a system like this (in garages and public parking areas) to keep cars on charge in the bitter cold.
Surely if you turn four corners (assuming one a USA-esque block-oriented street system), you're back where you started? Therefore we've only actually turned numberOfTurns modulo 4 corners...
Actually, it's the Charlatans from Northwich. They were pictured behind the counter at the local chippy when Q Magazine interviewed them. Why do I remember rubbish like this?
Before the deluge... (well, actually after the deluge), may I suggest that the average SlashDotter take a moment to learn how to read a patent.
The key things to look at are the claims. These are generally read in the context of the rest of the patent, but it's the claims that are the most important bit, since it's on these that the patentee claims a monopoly. Let's examine the claims of US6,727,830 (read along here).
Start with claim 1. It has four elements, a, b, c and d. A claim applies in whole, not in part, so for something to infringe, it would have to do all of a, b, c and d. Just doing a, b and c would not infringe. Take a look at the difference between c and d; the key point is that if the button is released after the time limit, the behaviour is different (the previous state is displayed). That's important and (as far as I know) novel. In particular, it's not the same as a double-click.
Similarly, claim 2 is like claim 1, only if the button is released after the time limit, the application starts with a new blank document. Claim 3 is a further variant, etc, etc.
I haven't proceeded to look at every single one of the other claims, but the key point to remember is to read them carefully and exactly, rather than jump to ludicrous conclusions such as "Microsoft Patent Doubleclick". You have eyes to read, and brains to think. Use them.
My brother-in-law runs what I believe the Americans would call a "wholesale liquor supply company". In other words, he sells wine, beer and spirits in very large quantities to pubs and restaurants. I've helped him with his home and business PCs, and am always there on the phone when he needs advice:)
Owing to growing up in Wales (that's the bit sticking out to the left of England, for Americans; and certainly not 'Wales, England'), I did my first Computer Studies courses there in the late 70s/early 80s. Around that time there was a very strong push for equality of Welsh and English, so much so that a Welsh version of BASIC, called BASEG was produced. Sadly, the passage of time seems to have wiped it from the web (though a Google Groups search for 'welsh basic programming' throws up some references).
We were also taught a singularly useless pseudo-assembler language called CESIL (Computer Education Symbolic Instruction Language), and I think there was also a Welsh version of that.
For example, a project I recently worked on hit a performance wall. We had left optimisation for later, always believing that it shouldn't be done until last
I don't think the paper, or for that matter anyone I've read on the subject, advocates leaving all optimisation until last. Performance is affected by design, as by many other aspects of a system, and the design should have included an analysis of how it might affect performance.
The level of optimisation that is better left until later on in development is the tweaking of code to gain performance and remove inefficiency. Programming time is always a limited resource in any software engineering project, and time spent on unnecessary optimisations is time not spent on debugging, testing or useful refactoring. That's the lesson to take away. IMVHO, natch;)
My mum died of heart failure quite suddenly, around five years ago. My dad keeps her email account open (it shares a domain with the rest of the family, so it's no extra cost) because every so often she'll still get an email from some overseas colleague or contact. What she still gets most of, unsurprisingly, is spam; hundreds of messages in a month, to an account that not only never opens email, but hasn't sent anything since she passed away.
I personally don't *want* my computer to simulate a human "Gee, Ratboy, I don't feel like looking up that information right now...". And the worst would be the "sullen, adolescent" version. "..." (that was a lot of silence in answer to my request), or "Why did you crash?" "I don't know. You are ALWAYS picking on me.". I just mentioned that to my wife, who immediately came back with "I never asked to be booted... You treat me like I'm still a microprocessor..." All that and she's not even a geek:)
It does not matter WHAT you have with those people in the way of non-disclosure... the moment you put an improvement in the hands of anyone outside of your company, the clock on the filing date starts ticking because you've revealed it to the world as far as the law is concerned.
Sorry, but that's untrue. If you disclose the details of your invention under non-disclosure agreements, that's neither an enabling disclosure nor putting the invention in the public domain. If MS had appropriately written NDAs in place (and it'd be well worth someone who has a copy of one posting it for analysis), then they haven't necessarily given anything away.
IANAL, but I do work with patents and patent attorneys each and every day.
Everything from government subsidy to "public access" channels has been tried to "improve" the quality and breadth of TV programming. And it hasn't worked.
Erm... the BBC is very heavily subsidised in the UK. And that works very well.
Hopefully this distro will encourage companies like steinberg (cubase) emagic (protools) to make their software available for linux
I doubt it. Certainly it's not going to happen for EMagic. They've just been bought by Apple and are, as of September, about to discontinue their Windows product line. That was about 30% of their market - if Apple will kill 30% of a market, do you think they'd care very much about the tiny %age that might be Linux-based?
On another note - pro audio software is hard. You have to write applications that are used by people who have very, very little interest in the computer except as a tool. They are very used to the interfaces on the leading packages and see any need to learn something new as an obstacle to change. This market is nothing like the typical Linux user. I know; I've been a Linux user and I use audio/music production software daily.
Once they get these babies to HOVER, they will be fantastic. Not that they aren't now.
Minature dirigibles. Better in several respects for some applications. They don't have the speed of these, but they can hover well and can have considerably better fuel/battery efficiency.
Wait a second.. who owns the Ericsson phone business??? Sony! Erm, no. Sony Ericsson is a joint venture that's supposed to combine Sony's expertise in product design with Ericsson's expertise in phone manufacture. And they're doing pretty well, even here in Europe where we're not that impressed with snazzy phones 'cos we've had them for a good while. The business next door to where I work sells phones and these S-E ones and the new Nokia with a built-in camera are just flying out of the door.
I've put quite a few entries in my blog detailing reasons why sharing your connection may be a bad idea.
Essentially it boils down to:
Security: You put a firewall between yourself and the Net and then open up a hole behind it to the world?
Culpability: Someone uses your connection to launch the next Melissa or SQL Worm, or to mailshot the whole of their paedo mailing list with new pictures. The buck stops with your ISP account. The black helicopters will be over your house.
On a friday or saturday night you'll find 10 or 15 guys who are all 30 something years old (like me) up there playing Galaga, Tempest, Centipede, Red Baron, etc.
And, erm, doesn't that say it all? That's the best thing you have to do with your weekend nights: go out and play old video games?
May I suggest that you develop an interest in the opposite sex (or even your own, whatever)...
Very interesting reading, and rather brave to post it and implicitly invite flames from the more rabid and unthinking Linux contingent.
I've recently done the same - up until May, my laptop, desktop and server in my house were running Linux; RedHat on the server, Mandrake on the others. I'd been running Linux in a give-up-Microsoft experiment since mid-2000. And finally, in April, I decided to give it up.
I wish there could be a different conclusion, but that's it. I use my PC, I don't see it as an end in itself and I think that's the key point here. Linux is great fun if what you like to do is mess around with your computer. But if you want to use it as a tool for domestic or desktop computing, MS has all the cards. And the cards are not reliability or the elegance of the OS design. They are market share and the fact that any company anywhere that makes a gadget or applicance to connect to a PC will assume Windows. That's the killer and open-source can't do anything to address that. It's not about the software any more.
Now, unlike Tony (the guy in the article), I am a programmer by training and I've been using Unix systems since I was about 12. I like Unix, I like Linux and it's staying on the server at home. But as for most other domestic and desktop applications, it's just Too Damn Hard.
To draw a parallel with Tony's article - I tried to get my digital cameras (two generations of Kodak) working under Linux. It took days of web searching, DejaNews reading, installing, tweaking and finally I had it. Not nearly so seamless a setup as XP has with digicams, but pretty good - connect the camer, click an icon and all the pics get zapped across. But the effort it took to get that set up.
I could never get any of my games to run satisfactorily even after shelling out for TransGaming's software. X would lock up, or the whole machine (a PIII 900/256) would grind to a virtual halt.
Finally, as many others have said... there are too many things I want to use my PC for that assume I have Windows. So many websites that require IE (and no, if I want to do online grocery shopping I can't choose an alternative, there aren't any). Gadgets like Intel's cool USB microscope. Any decent pro-audio/midi packages.
So I made the decision to switch back. And what I found was this - in the time since Win98/NT, Microsoft have improved. XP has never crashed on me. Once. It runs everything I throw at it. It looks okay. It's faster on the same box that Mandrake was because it takes less memory for the OS than X did.
Much as I dislike MS, we have an NT4 Exchange server that has been running continuously, no reboots needed, since January. Its uptimes match that of the Linux server that is the firewall. Since the NT server is completely firewalled from the Internet (SMTP mail is routed in and out through the Linux box) and runs no Net-addressable services, it needs no security patches for IIS.
The point is that MS can validly claim those uptimes in certain circumstances. Don't ever let your dislike of something blind you to the facts about it. That is bad engineering.
And at 1700BST yesterday the EBone shut down as a result of KPNQWest's collapse. Nobody was found to buy their bunch of "God knows how many routers, lines, Satellite equipment, and other things". It is indeed possible for key companies to collapse and for infrastrauctures to not keep running, especially at this point in the economic cycle, when there aren't a lot of other companies around with the resources to buy Worldcom. Consider also - it might be better value for the receivers to sell off Worldcom's assets at auction than find a buyer for the networks as is.
The only (and I do mean "only") place my mobile phone has had no service in the last year is on the London Underground. But then, I live in the UK...
Actually, the point that I was thinking of is "voice dialling". I love watching these idiots with their voice activated phones - they press a button and say "office". Then a moment later, "office". Then, in a more irritated tone "Office!". They continue to try all variants on how they might possibly pronounce the word, getting more and more annoyed. Meanwhile, other people around them have had time to dial 13-digit international numbers and have long conversations... ben
Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works. For example, if someone comes up with an inertialess drive, nothing that E.E. Smith wrote would invalidate a patent on it. To get a patent you need to disclose your best preferred embodiment; that is, the best way you know of that the invention can be built or made. Prior art, likewise, has to do the same.
It'd be nice to see a better understanding of how the patent system worked, especially amongst those who flame it at every opportunity!
IANAL, but I *do* write technology patents for a living... ben
Slashdot Mirror
It was too late for the Norse in Greenland once they ate their last cow
Actually, it was too late rather earlier than that, when they ate the last bull or cow. They could have had hundreds of cows left, but without a bull, ain't a-gonna be no more cows. Unless they had cows that reproduce by fission.
And to turn a casual joke into a more serious point: it was also too late when their breeding population of cattle dropped below certain critical limits (i.e., the gene pool became too small for long-term survival). "Too late" can actually occur quite early on.
Installing wireless LANs is my side job. For families sometimes, but mostly small businesses - large enough to want them but small enough not to have the in house skills. Wireless is stupidly complex from the point of view of most non-technical users (especially after they've read almost anything about security), so they're happy to pay me to take care of it for them.
Given that many people aren't ultra precision drivers, there would have to be some sort of robotic arm that could connect to the car.
:)
Sounds like a technological hammer to crack a minor nut of a problem. There's a cable wound up in the front of the car (where the radiator would be on an internal combustion vehicle). Pull it out and plug it in. Or don't Americans like to do *anything* that involves physical effort?
I believe Canadians already use a system like this (in garages and public parking areas) to keep cars on charge in the bitter cold.
Surely if you turn four corners (assuming one a USA-esque block-oriented street system), you're back where you started? Therefore we've only actually turned numberOfTurns modulo 4 corners...
b
Actually, Cthulu's island wasn't in the frozen wastes... it was At The Mountains Of Madness>/a> that immediately leapt to my mind. If any pictures show five-pointed foorprints, or teh soundtrack of any video contains an eerie thin piping sound... there may be trouble ahead.
And yes, I know the story's set in the Antarctic...
Actually, it's the Charlatans from Northwich. They were pictured behind the counter at the local chippy when Q Magazine interviewed them.
Why do I remember rubbish like this?
Before the deluge... (well, actually after the deluge), may I suggest that the average SlashDotter take a moment to learn how to read a patent.
The key things to look at are the claims. These are generally read in the context of the rest of the patent, but it's the claims that are the most important bit, since it's on these that the patentee claims a monopoly. Let's examine the claims of US6,727,830 (read along here).
Start with claim 1. It has four elements, a, b, c and d. A claim applies in whole, not in part, so for something to infringe, it would have to do all of a, b, c and d. Just doing a, b and c would not infringe. Take a look at the difference between c and d; the key point is that if the button is released after the time limit, the behaviour is different (the previous state is displayed). That's important and (as far as I know) novel. In particular, it's not the same as a double-click.
Similarly, claim 2 is like claim 1, only if the button is released after the time limit, the application starts with a new blank document. Claim 3 is a further variant, etc, etc.
I haven't proceeded to look at every single one of the other claims, but the key point to remember is to read them carefully and exactly, rather than jump to ludicrous conclusions such as "Microsoft Patent Doubleclick". You have eyes to read, and brains to think. Use them.
My brother-in-law runs what I believe the Americans would call a "wholesale liquor supply company". In other words, he sells wine, beer and spirits in very large quantities to pubs and restaurants. I've helped him with his home and business PCs, and am always there on the phone when he needs advice :)
Owing to growing up in Wales (that's the bit sticking out to the left of England, for Americans; and certainly not 'Wales, England'), I did my first Computer Studies courses there in the late 70s/early 80s. Around that time there was a very strong push for equality of Welsh and English, so much so that a Welsh version of BASIC, called BASEG was produced. Sadly, the passage of time seems to have wiped it from the web (though a Google Groups search for 'welsh basic programming' throws up some references).
We were also taught a singularly useless pseudo-assembler language called CESIL (Computer Education Symbolic Instruction Language), and I think there was also a Welsh version of that.
For example, a project I recently worked on hit a performance wall. We had left optimisation for later, always believing that it shouldn't be done until last
I don't think the paper, or for that matter anyone I've read on the subject, advocates leaving all optimisation until last. Performance is affected by design, as by many other aspects of a system, and the design should have included an analysis of how it might affect performance.
;)
The level of optimisation that is better left until later on in development is the tweaking of code to gain performance and remove inefficiency. Programming time is always a limited resource in any software engineering project, and time spent on unnecessary optimisations is time not spent on debugging, testing or useful refactoring. That's the lesson to take away. IMVHO, natch
My mum died of heart failure quite suddenly, around five years ago. My dad keeps her email account open (it shares a domain with the rest of the family, so it's no extra cost) because every so often she'll still get an email from some overseas colleague or contact. What she still gets most of, unsurprisingly, is spam; hundreds of messages in a month, to an account that not only never opens email, but hasn't sent anything since she passed away.
I personally don't *want* my computer to simulate a human "Gee, Ratboy, I don't feel like looking up that information right now...". And the worst would be the "sullen, adolescent" version. "..." (that was a lot of silence in answer to my request), or "Why did you crash?" "I don't know. You are ALWAYS picking on me.". :)
I just mentioned that to my wife, who immediately came back with "I never asked to be booted... You treat me like I'm still a microprocessor..." All that and she's not even a geek
It does not matter WHAT you have with those people in the way of non-disclosure... the moment you put an improvement in the hands of anyone outside of your company, the clock on the filing date starts ticking because you've revealed it to the world as far as the law is concerned.
Sorry, but that's untrue. If you disclose the details of your invention under non-disclosure agreements, that's neither an enabling disclosure nor putting the invention in the public domain. If MS had appropriately written NDAs in place (and it'd be well worth someone who has a copy of one posting it for analysis), then they haven't necessarily given anything away.
IANAL, but I do work with patents and patent attorneys each and every day.
Everything from government subsidy to "public access" channels has been tried to "improve" the quality and breadth of TV programming. And it hasn't worked.
Erm... the BBC is very heavily subsidised in the UK. And that works very well.
Hopefully this distro will encourage companies like steinberg (cubase) emagic (protools) to make their software available for linux
I doubt it. Certainly it's not going to happen for EMagic. They've just been bought by Apple and are, as of September, about to discontinue their Windows product line. That was about 30% of their market - if Apple will kill 30% of a market, do you think they'd care very much about the tiny %age that might be Linux-based?
On another note - pro audio software is hard. You have to write applications that are used by people who have very, very little interest in the computer except as a tool. They are very used to the interfaces on the leading packages and see any need to learn something new as an obstacle to change. This market is nothing like the typical Linux user. I know; I've been a Linux user and I use audio/music production software daily.
Once they get these babies to HOVER, they will be fantastic. Not that they aren't now.
Minature dirigibles. Better in several respects for some applications. They don't have the speed of these, but they can hover well and can have considerably better fuel/battery efficiency.
Wait a second .. who owns the Ericsson phone business??? Sony!
Erm, no. Sony Ericsson is a joint venture that's supposed to combine Sony's expertise in product design with Ericsson's expertise in phone manufacture. And they're doing pretty well, even here in Europe where we're not that impressed with snazzy phones 'cos we've had them for a good while. The business next door to where I work sells phones and these S-E ones and the new Nokia with a built-in camera are just flying out of the door.
ben_
Essentially it boils down to:
Security: You put a firewall between yourself and the Net and then open up a hole behind it to the world?
Culpability: Someone uses your connection to launch the next Melissa or SQL Worm, or to mailshot the whole of their paedo mailing list with new pictures. The buck stops with your ISP account. The black helicopters will be over your house.
I can't see that it's worth it.
ben_
On a friday or saturday night you'll find 10 or 15 guys who are all 30 something years old (like me) up there playing Galaga, Tempest, Centipede, Red Baron, etc.
And, erm, doesn't that say it all? That's the best thing you have to do with your weekend nights: go out and play old video games?
May I suggest that you develop an interest in the opposite sex (or even your own, whatever)...
sheesh
ben_
Very interesting reading, and rather brave to post it and implicitly invite flames from the more rabid and unthinking Linux contingent.
I've recently done the same - up until May, my laptop, desktop and server in my house were running Linux; RedHat on the server, Mandrake on the others. I'd been running Linux in a give-up-Microsoft experiment since mid-2000. And finally, in April, I decided to give it up.
I wish there could be a different conclusion, but that's it. I use my PC, I don't see it as an end in itself and I think that's the key point here. Linux is great fun if what you like to do is mess around with your computer. But if you want to use it as a tool for domestic or desktop computing, MS has all the cards. And the cards are not reliability or the elegance of the OS design. They are market share and the fact that any company anywhere that makes a gadget or applicance to connect to a PC will assume Windows. That's the killer and open-source can't do anything to address that. It's not about the software any more.
Now, unlike Tony (the guy in the article), I am a programmer by training and I've been using Unix systems since I was about 12. I like Unix, I like Linux and it's staying on the server at home. But as for most other domestic and desktop applications, it's just Too Damn Hard.
To draw a parallel with Tony's article - I tried to get my digital cameras (two generations of Kodak) working under Linux. It took days of web searching, DejaNews reading, installing, tweaking and finally I had it. Not nearly so seamless a setup as XP has with digicams, but pretty good - connect the camer, click an icon and all the pics get zapped across. But the effort it took to get that set up.
I could never get any of my games to run satisfactorily even after shelling out for TransGaming's software. X would lock up, or the whole machine (a PIII 900/256) would grind to a virtual halt.
Finally, as many others have said... there are too many things I want to use my PC for that assume I have Windows. So many websites that require IE (and no, if I want to do online grocery shopping I can't choose an alternative, there aren't any). Gadgets like Intel's cool USB microscope. Any decent pro-audio/midi packages.
So I made the decision to switch back. And what I found was this - in the time since Win98/NT, Microsoft have improved. XP has never crashed on me. Once. It runs everything I throw at it. It looks okay. It's faster on the same box that Mandrake was because it takes less memory for the OS than X did.
So there you have it.
ben_
Much as I dislike MS, we have an NT4 Exchange server that has been running continuously, no reboots needed, since January. Its uptimes match that of the Linux server that is the firewall. Since the NT server is completely firewalled from the Internet (SMTP mail is routed in and out through the Linux box) and runs no Net-addressable services, it needs no security patches for IIS.
The point is that MS can validly claim those uptimes in certain circumstances. Don't ever let your dislike of something blind you to the facts about it. That is bad engineering.
And at 1700BST yesterday the EBone shut down as a result of KPNQWest's collapse. Nobody was found to buy their bunch of "God knows how many routers, lines, Satellite equipment, and other things". It is indeed possible for key companies to collapse and for infrastrauctures to not keep running, especially at this point in the economic cycle, when there aren't a lot of other companies around with the resources to buy Worldcom.
Consider also - it might be better value for the receivers to sell off Worldcom's assets at auction than find a buyer for the networks as is.
The Register also has this story here.
The only (and I do mean "only") place my mobile phone has had no service in the last year is on the London Underground. But then, I live in the UK...
Actually, the point that I was thinking of is "voice dialling". I love watching these idiots with their voice activated phones - they press a button and say "office". Then a moment later, "office". Then, in a more irritated tone "Office!". They continue to try all variants on how they might possibly pronounce the word, getting more and more annoyed. Meanwhile, other people around them have had time to dial 13-digit international numbers and have long conversations...
ben
Seriously (for a moment)...
Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works. For example, if someone comes up with an inertialess drive, nothing that E.E. Smith wrote would invalidate a patent on it. To get a patent you need to disclose your best preferred embodiment; that is, the best way you know of that the invention can be built or made. Prior art, likewise, has to do the same.
It'd be nice to see a better understanding of how the patent system worked, especially amongst those who flame it at every opportunity!
IANAL, but I *do* write technology patents for a living...
ben