It is a nasty game they play. A GPL library will be "Standard" more and more until there really is no alternative. How is this any better than places like Microsoft?
Wow. Last I checked, Microsoft was closed source pure evil in a box with a huge price tag, and you're asking how Free/Open Source GPL'd code is any better than Microsoft?
Somebody needs a whap upside the head with a clue by four.
You're forgetting the other end of the equation. The price of goods and services in a highly automated and unemployed society will fall to whatever the market can bare. Will you care about keeping down a job if your car never needs a repair and it runs off free electricity from sunshine? Will you worry about food and shelter if it is practically free? Yes, free. Because the final end game of a perfectly automated society is that everything will be so cheap and abundant that there will be no real reason to charge for it and no real reason for anyone to work anymore.
And the goal is to trick everyone into giving up their freedoms to government so that we can be "saved" from a problem that isn't real. Watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
Growing up, I used to believe in global warming. Then I started learning about growing crops, solar energy, and the first law of thermodynamics. Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration improves performance of the C3 photosynthesis engine predominately used by most plants. When plants can convert more sunshine to biomass, less sunshine is converting into heat (first law of thermodynamics). This means there is an inherent counteracting force steering us away from run-away global warming. Al Gore, Bill Nye, etc -- these guys PROFIT from people believing their global warming propaganda. Long before humans showed up, the planet had much higher CO2 concentrations than we have today, and that is why C3 photosynthesis was adopted by most plant life compared to CAM and C4 photosynthesis that doesn't benefit as much from high CO2 concentrations. The C3 plants thrived and the planet survived to produce humans.
Plant fruits, nuts, vegetables, shade trees, and solar panels around your house. Forget about global warming and tell the propagandists to go to hell with their pseudo-science crap.
Manufacturing of tech goods is never going to come back to the USA until the patent system is fixed. If you're a manufacturer, you have two options:
A. Make your products in the USA. If patent trolls come along later with patents on your products, you could get stuck with expensive fines and illegal inventory that has to be destroyed. You can not continue to produce your product unless you can negotiate some agreement with the trolls to continue operating your business.
B. Make your product overseas in a country with lax IP rules (such as China). You can freely import those products to sell in the USA up until you're hit by the trolls. After that, you may not be able to bring your product into the USA as easily, but at least you can continue to make and sell your remaining inventory in countries outside the USA.
Option A puts your business completely at the mercy of the patent trolls. Option B means your business may shrink, but at least you aren't shutdown cold. You have a much better bargaining position to work from when trying to negotiate agreements with patent holders if you still have a revenue stream to pay your lawyers with.
Don't try to tell me that manufacturers are stupid to start producing a product encumbered by patents and that they should be able to know about any patents before beginning manufacture. That's total BS. If you know anything about patents, you'll know that fines are lower if you had no prior knowledge of patents existence. That's why lawyers do not recommend you do your own patent search. Plus, it's very difficult to figure out if a patent really does apply, that's why patent lawsuits cost millions of dollars to execute.
AFAIK (and IANAL), patent law does not provide any exemptions for developing the same technique independently, so your step B has no purpose.
Example: Company A works 5 years developing some new whizbang invention. Company B independently has been working on the same invention for the past 5 years and 1 day. Let's say both companies did all the same exact things, spent the same amount of time and money, but because Company B started a hair earlier, they got the patent on the invention.
Company A would now be required to pay to use the invention they just spent 5 years developing themselves because Company B got a patent on the invention before they did.
Yes, I'm pretty sure that was a real ad. I think I remember seeing it on TV several years ago, here in the US. Although, it may not have been exactly the same version, I don't remember the ending screen spelling out that caucasions are too damn tall in big black and white letters like that. I think at the time I had just bought a Sony Vaio laptop and thought the ad was clever. Of course, after the one year warranty ended and every part imaginable started breaking on that Sony laptop, I think otherwise now.
If every company that came up with an idea could get is usurped by someone else it would only be the evil megacorps of the world that could succeed, the little guys would get destoyed before they could get a foothold in the market.
If it takes >$1M to successfully enforce or defend a patent, how can patents possibly help the little guys (besides helping them go bankrupt)? Face it, patents do nothing to help little guys. Patents DO help lawyers make lots of money. Patents CAN help corporations with big money for lawyers keep smaller competitors from entering the market. But patents DO NOT help the little guy.
You jest, but this just might work... The people wouldn't even need to wait the full 20 years for the patent system to meltdown:
Patents expire 20 years after the initial filing date of a patent application. If everyone were to DDoS the patent office with junk patent applications on every little thing imaginable in the world, we could bog down the patent office so much that it would take decades to get a patent reviewed and granted. If it takes 15 years to get a patent reviewed, the patent owner only gets a scant 5 years to enforce their patent against people ("infrigement" before the grant date doesn't count, and anything after the expiration date doesn't count either).
If the enforcement time period is short enough, then the owners will eventually figure out that patents are completely useless.
Okay, so the smaller generic drug makers get an easier time under the dissolved patent system, so what? Both companies will still go on profitting well enough to continue existing for a very long time, look at Pepsi and Coca Cola (and all the other generic Cola makes).
One possible outcome of dissolving patents is that the smaller generic drug makers will finally be able to invest money themselves into researching new drugs.
Why don't they do that now under the existing patent system? Well, for starters, if they invent a new drug or improved drug, they have to spend money not only on inventing the drug, but on researching the existing patents and filing their own patents to keep the big drug companies from litigating them to death.
The patent system practically FORCES small companies to avoid working on new inventions because they don't have resources to spend on patent attorneys. If you're a small company, the best way to guarantee that you don't get sued for patent infringement is to only produce products from expired patents. That way there is definite proof of prior art, no question about it.
You even alluded to this outcome in your first reply, "a little extra investment and they can probably develop a better synthesis too." Better drugs, right now, rather than waiting 20 years for the original patent to finish expiring. And the original company can copy the improvement into their own drugs. Instead of having fields of research locked up for 20 years at a time, we would have incremental improvements happening continuously.
You are implying that the system requires applicants to demonstrate novelty. How novel is numbers enclosed by a box to draw attention to it? hmm?
In actual practice, the system does not do a good job of requiring novelty. Anything is novel if it has not be explicitly written down before. What about things so obvious that no one bothered to write it down? How many people have thought, in their head, of putting a box around some numbers to draw attention to it, but never wrote down that thought?
Re:Take THAT, space science nay-sayers!
on
Glass In Spaaaaace
·
· Score: 1
At Six Flags in California, they have a ride where you sit in a chair that they lift up high. Then they accelerate the chair down to the ground, simulating weigthlessness for a brief period of time.
If research shows some kind of advantage of producing new types of glass under zero g, couldn't companies invest in some kind of apparatus like this and invent a process to produce their zero-g glasses on Earth?
I disagree. The local brick and mortar stores have significant advantages over their online counterparts. Sales tax, with its current bias, helps level the playing field.
People are more inclined to buy from local stores because they don't have to pay for shipping, they get instant gratification, and they can bring the product back in if they have problems. The shipping fee by itself makes up for any sales tax fees.
I think if you taxed online merchants equal with the local stores, it would severely hamper online businesses. May even drive them to extinction. The dot com bubble has already burst, why would be want to try to take out the remaining (somewhat) successful online businesses now?
Because even people who have no intention of defrauding the system have had their PayPal account frozen and balance confiscated. Read some of the stories on NoPayPal.com.
I know most people on campus didn't have inline skates, but a few did, myself included. They totally rock on a large university campus with tons of sidewalk. Didn't need to worry about trying to schedule classes held in buildings close enough together to walk between, only to have the professor declare the meeting room has been moved across campus the day after drop/add week ends.
IMHO, skates are way better than a bike. I always hated bicycles because they take up too much space to carry with you so you have to waste time parking/locking, only to have your bike stolen anyway. You can simply carry your skates with you into class, never lost a pair.
You can't manuever a super crowded sidewalk in a bike very easily, but with inline skates you can (after the first year or so).
If you ever get a relationship going on, skates are a lot of fun too. Imagine trying to hold hands or hold each other close while bicycling? With skates, can do (ok, maybe only after that first year or so and only if your SO is into skating too).
Be sure to include some wrist guards and knee pads for that first year learning period.
I visited Poland a few months ago and their traffic lights are better than ours. Instead of our simple Green, Yellow, Red they have:
Red Yellow - light will become green, get ready Green - go (just like us) Green Yellow - light is about to go yellow Yellow - stop if you can safely (just like us) Red - stop (just like us)
I don't think Red Yellow is a good idea for us. Yeah, let's encourage MORE people to drag race!
However, the Green Yellow is a great idea. It provides the benefits of an extra long yellow, without the possibility of being ambiguous when not all lights are timed the same.
In the US, I find myself using the WALK/DONT WALK light for pedestrians to gauge how much longer a green light far ahead is going to stay green. Then I can decide if I should be slowing down or speeding up to make sure I don't end up in the uncertainty zone.
Not all stop lights have the pedestrian signals. Or, some have a pedestrian light that always stays DONT WALK unless a real pedestrian hits the button to activate it, which is no use for judging how long the green will remain. Or sometimes they just aren't easy to see from the road.
Probably. I have personally seen many accidents where it was apparent that two drivers, one making a left turn were trying to both "beat the light".
This can be a perfect example of the photo-enforcement causing problems because it doesn't take into account the situation at hand.
Let's say I'm the guy sitting in the middle of the intersection waiting for the opposing traffic to die down so that I can safely make my left turn. The light turns yellow and there's a big SUV hurling toward me that may or may not be trying to beat the light. If I wait for the SUV to clear or stop (the safe thing to do), I end up leaving the intersection on a red light and get dinged by the stupid photo-enforcement.
In fact, that SUV trying to make the light may even do so while I end up taking the photo-enforcement ding. He's going at full speed when the yellow light started, while I'm gonna have to accelerate from my full stop to get out of the intersection.
The photo-enforcement isn't making my street safer. It's just making the police dept more money while doing less work.
In an effort to force car makers to develop more efficient cars, they passed laws requiring car makers to meet a minimum MPG rating average for all of the cars they sell. Good idea, right? No...
Car makers didn't bet their business on the hopes of making significant breakthroughs in engine efficiency before the imposed limits went into effect. Instead, they downsized the stationwagon cars into the small compact cars we have today. Then, to cover the market previously served by the large station wagon cars, they made SUVs. SUV were considered a truck and not subject to the MPG rating restrictions imposed by the gov't.
And thus moderately low MPG station wagons were replaced by abysmally low MPG SUVs. Thank you gov't regulation.
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It is a nasty game they play. A GPL library will be "Standard" more and more until there really is no alternative. How is this any better than places like Microsoft?
Wow. Last I checked, Microsoft was closed source pure evil in a box with a huge price tag, and you're asking how Free/Open Source GPL'd code is any better than Microsoft?
Somebody needs a whap upside the head with a clue by four.
LOL!
You're forgetting the other end of the equation. The price of goods and services in a highly automated and unemployed society will fall to whatever the market can bare. Will you care about keeping down a job if your car never needs a repair and it runs off free electricity from sunshine? Will you worry about food and shelter if it is practically free? Yes, free. Because the final end game of a perfectly automated society is that everything will be so cheap and abundant that there will be no real reason to charge for it and no real reason for anyone to work anymore.
And the goal is to trick everyone into giving up their freedoms to government so that we can be "saved" from a problem that isn't real.
Watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
Growing up, I used to believe in global warming. Then I started learning about growing crops, solar energy, and the first law of thermodynamics. Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration improves performance of the C3 photosynthesis engine predominately used by most plants. When plants can convert more sunshine to biomass, less sunshine is converting into heat (first law of thermodynamics). This means there is an inherent counteracting force steering us away from run-away global warming. Al Gore, Bill Nye, etc -- these guys PROFIT from people believing their global warming propaganda. Long before humans showed up, the planet had much higher CO2 concentrations than we have today, and that is why C3 photosynthesis was adopted by most plant life compared to CAM and C4 photosynthesis that doesn't benefit as much from high CO2 concentrations. The C3 plants thrived and the planet survived to produce humans.
Plant fruits, nuts, vegetables, shade trees, and solar panels around your house. Forget about global warming and tell the propagandists to go to hell with their pseudo-science crap.
Manufacturing of tech goods is never going to come back to the USA until the patent system is fixed. If you're a manufacturer, you have two options:
A. Make your products in the USA. If patent trolls come along later with patents on your products, you could get stuck with expensive fines and illegal inventory that has to be destroyed. You can not continue to produce your product unless you can negotiate some agreement with the trolls to continue operating your business.
B. Make your product overseas in a country with lax IP rules (such as China). You can freely import those products to sell in the USA up until you're hit by the trolls. After that, you may not be able to bring your product into the USA as easily, but at least you can continue to make and sell your remaining inventory in countries outside the USA.
Option A puts your business completely at the mercy of the patent trolls. Option B means your business may shrink, but at least you aren't shutdown cold. You have a much better bargaining position to work from when trying to negotiate agreements with patent holders if you still have a revenue stream to pay your lawyers with.
Don't try to tell me that manufacturers are stupid to start producing a product encumbered by patents and that they should be able to know about any patents before beginning manufacture. That's total BS. If you know anything about patents, you'll know that fines are lower if you had no prior knowledge of patents existence. That's why lawyers do not recommend you do your own patent search. Plus, it's very difficult to figure out if a patent really does apply, that's why patent lawsuits cost millions of dollars to execute.
I think the PIC32 line has USB OTG, which is basically a simplified USB host controller.
OMG, a Sony device that still works properly after its short warranty has expired! They sure don't make 'em like they used to.
AFAIK (and IANAL), patent law does not provide any exemptions for developing the same technique independently, so your step B has no purpose.
Example:
Company A works 5 years developing some new whizbang invention.
Company B independently has been working on the same invention for the past 5 years and 1 day.
Let's say both companies did all the same exact things, spent the same amount of time and money, but because Company B started a hair earlier, they got the patent on the invention.
Company A would now be required to pay to use the invention they just spent 5 years developing themselves because Company B got a patent on the invention before they did.
I would nominate Limor Fried (aka ladyada). She makes really cool electronic hacks. Check her out at ladyada.net.
Yes, I'm pretty sure that was a real ad. I think I remember seeing it on TV several years ago, here in the US. Although, it may not have been exactly the same version, I don't remember the ending screen spelling out that caucasions are too damn tall in big black and white letters like that. I think at the time I had just bought a Sony Vaio laptop and thought the ad was clever. Of course, after the one year warranty ended and every part imaginable started breaking on that Sony laptop, I think otherwise now.
If it takes >$1M to successfully enforce or defend a patent, how can patents possibly help the little guys (besides helping them go bankrupt)? Face it, patents do nothing to help little guys. Patents DO help lawyers make lots of money. Patents CAN help corporations with big money for lawyers keep smaller competitors from entering the market. But patents DO NOT help the little guy.
You jest, but this just might work... The people wouldn't even need to wait the full 20 years for the patent system to meltdown:
Patents expire 20 years after the initial filing date of a patent application. If everyone were to DDoS the patent office with junk patent applications on every little thing imaginable in the world, we could bog down the patent office so much that it would take decades to get a patent reviewed and granted. If it takes 15 years to get a patent reviewed, the patent owner only gets a scant 5 years to enforce their patent against people ("infrigement" before the grant date doesn't count, and anything after the expiration date doesn't count either).
If the enforcement time period is short enough, then the owners will eventually figure out that patents are completely useless.
I call bullshit. Show us a link. You probably can't even find a GUS on eBay these days. I bet these babies are practically collectibles. ;-)
Okay, so the smaller generic drug makers get an easier time under the dissolved patent system, so what? Both companies will still go on profitting well enough to continue existing for a very long time, look at Pepsi and Coca Cola (and all the other generic Cola makes).
One possible outcome of dissolving patents is that the smaller generic drug makers will finally be able to invest money themselves into researching new drugs.
Why don't they do that now under the existing patent system? Well, for starters, if they invent a new drug or improved drug, they have to spend money not only on inventing the drug, but on researching the existing patents and filing their own patents to keep the big drug companies from litigating them to death.
The patent system practically FORCES small companies to avoid working on new inventions because they don't have resources to spend on patent attorneys. If you're a small company, the best way to guarantee that you don't get sued for patent infringement is to only produce products from expired patents. That way there is definite proof of prior art, no question about it.
You even alluded to this outcome in your first reply, "a little extra investment and they can probably develop a better synthesis too." Better drugs, right now, rather than waiting 20 years for the original patent to finish expiring. And the original company can copy the improvement into their own drugs. Instead of having fields of research locked up for 20 years at a time, we would have incremental improvements happening continuously.
You are implying that the system requires applicants to demonstrate novelty. How novel is numbers enclosed by a box to draw attention to it? hmm?
In actual practice, the system does not do a good job of requiring novelty. Anything is novel if it has not be explicitly written down before. What about things so obvious that no one bothered to write it down? How many people have thought, in their head, of putting a box around some numbers to draw attention to it, but never wrote down that thought?
At Six Flags in California, they have a ride where you sit in a chair that they lift up high. Then they accelerate the chair down to the ground, simulating weigthlessness for a brief period of time.
If research shows some kind of advantage of producing new types of glass under zero g, couldn't companies invest in some kind of apparatus like this and invent a process to produce their zero-g glasses on Earth?
I disagree. The local brick and mortar stores have significant advantages over their online counterparts. Sales tax, with its current bias, helps level the playing field.
People are more inclined to buy from local stores because they don't have to pay for shipping, they get instant gratification, and they can bring the product back in if they have problems. The shipping fee by itself makes up for any sales tax fees.
I think if you taxed online merchants equal with the local stores, it would severely hamper online businesses. May even drive them to extinction. The dot com bubble has already burst, why would be want to try to take out the remaining (somewhat) successful online businesses now?
Because even people who have no intention of defrauding the system have had their PayPal account frozen and balance confiscated. Read some of the stories on NoPayPal.com.
Prolly an OBDII connector. Checkout the freediag project on Source Forge.
I know most people on campus didn't have inline skates, but a few did, myself included. They totally rock on a large university campus with tons of sidewalk. Didn't need to worry about trying to schedule classes held in buildings close enough together to walk between, only to have the professor declare the meeting room has been moved across campus the day after drop/add week ends.
IMHO, skates are way better than a bike. I always hated bicycles because they take up too much space to carry with you so you have to waste time parking/locking, only to have your bike stolen anyway. You can simply carry your skates with you into class, never lost a pair.
You can't manuever a super crowded sidewalk in a bike very easily, but with inline skates you can (after the first year or so).
If you ever get a relationship going on, skates are a lot of fun too. Imagine trying to hold hands or hold each other close while bicycling? With skates, can do (ok, maybe only after that first year or so and only if your SO is into skating too).
Be sure to include some wrist guards and knee pads for that first year learning period.
I've been hoping someone would do this for quite a long time now. No more playing with slow mirror ftp sites when I want to get my Linux upgrades.
I visited Poland a few months ago and their traffic lights are better than ours. Instead of our simple Green, Yellow, Red they have:
Red Yellow - light will become green, get ready
Green - go (just like us)
Green Yellow - light is about to go yellow
Yellow - stop if you can safely (just like us)
Red - stop (just like us)
I don't think Red Yellow is a good idea for us. Yeah, let's encourage MORE people to drag race!
However, the Green Yellow is a great idea. It provides the benefits of an extra long yellow, without the possibility of being ambiguous when not all lights are timed the same.
In the US, I find myself using the WALK/DONT WALK light for pedestrians to gauge how much longer a green light far ahead is going to stay green. Then I can decide if I should be slowing down or speeding up to make sure I don't end up in the uncertainty zone.
Not all stop lights have the pedestrian signals. Or, some have a pedestrian light that always stays DONT WALK unless a real pedestrian hits the button to activate it, which is no use for judging how long the green will remain. Or sometimes they just aren't easy to see from the road.
Probably. I have personally seen many accidents where it was apparent that two drivers, one making a left turn were trying to both "beat the light".
This can be a perfect example of the photo-enforcement causing problems because it doesn't take into account the situation at hand.
Let's say I'm the guy sitting in the middle of the intersection waiting for the opposing traffic to die down so that I can safely make my left turn. The light turns yellow and there's a big SUV hurling toward me that may or may not be trying to beat the light. If I wait for the SUV to clear or stop (the safe thing to do), I end up leaving the intersection on a red light and get dinged by the stupid photo-enforcement.
In fact, that SUV trying to make the light may even do so while I end up taking the photo-enforcement ding. He's going at full speed when the yellow light started, while I'm gonna have to accelerate from my full stop to get out of the intersection.
The photo-enforcement isn't making my street safer. It's just making the police dept more money while doing less work.
In an effort to force car makers to develop more efficient cars, they passed laws requiring car makers to meet a minimum MPG rating average for all of the cars they sell. Good idea, right? No...
Car makers didn't bet their business on the hopes of making significant breakthroughs in engine efficiency before the imposed limits went into effect. Instead, they downsized the stationwagon cars into the small compact cars we have today. Then, to cover the market previously served by the large station wagon cars, they made SUVs. SUV were considered a truck and not subject to the MPG rating restrictions imposed by the gov't.
And thus moderately low MPG station wagons were replaced by abysmally low MPG SUVs. Thank you gov't regulation.