must disclose all that information in their quaterly reports.
I'm afraid I disagree. Even with publicly traded
companies, interviewers often need to provide
details of non-public product plans or types of
customers in order to explain the sort of job
actually being offered.
NDAs seem like a reasonable preventative there,
assuming that they're well-written, IMHO.
A hearty "Me too." here on Peopleware. I keep
on buying copies of the book for people I've
worked for. (Occasionally it actually helps!)
From memory, some of the major points I've
taken to heart from that book include:
Cubicles are a bad idea.
One of the primary design
goals of software development environments should
be the reduction of destractions, such as other
people talking. Walls keep out
sound better than cubes. Cubes end up being
pennywise, pound-foolish for software development
folk.
Adjustable telephone ringer volume. The
chapter about telephone ringers (section?) is
probably worth the price of the whole book.
Again, this goes to distraction and the cost
of interrupted "flow".
Adjustability and configurability. People
are different, groups and their needs are
different. A usual sales pitch for cubes is
how easy they are to reconfigure, but then
usually admin folk prevent that from ever being
used to make peoples work environments more
effective. If you have cubes, at least use
them to your advantage.
First, the Borg isn't a consipracy. The Borg assimilate, taking enough of the assimilated to further their goals. That's hardly the same thing. Even if it weren't, it's an analogy. Any analogy can be taken too far.
...who do not follow any secret "editorial agenda"...
Oh, of course. You don't need a conspiracy to bend the media to your ends, you only need money. A few key editors making judgements based on potential advertising revenue to damage the perception, and probably the reality, of responsible journalism. For example, were an esteemed organization like the New York Times to suggest that an op-ed writer change their opinions from "Microsoft is a monopolist" to "Microsoft is innovative", one might reasonably assume that ones faith in the independence of the New York Times would be greatly weakened.
I think the most successful attack against a place like this would be EMF type stuff.
Probably more work than a torpedo.
Remember that they're trying to prevent
capture of the data more than trying to prevent
destruction of the data.
That having been said, I'd be
extremely surprised if the
steel reinforcement of the concrete in the
legs of the platform didn't give you
a Faraday cage.
That also makes me wonder if they
plan to shield against Tempest / Van Eck attacks...
Pretty tough unless your close, and again
you have the Faraday cage that I expect the
legs provide. And what would
it get you? A look at the IP traffic most
likely, which you could sample elsewhere,
and some consoles. Remember, the users (and
their display screens) are elsewhere.
Watch the exciting backup
runs! Woohoo! Digging into the contents of
the disks would probably require physical
penetration of the site.
5. Breakup of Microsoft Predicted 4. Death of x86 Architecture Predicted 3. Death of FORTRAN Predicted 2. Year of the Network Predicted (okay, so they finally got one right)
and finally, the #1 headline we've seen too many times in the last 20 years...
Bullshit. What are you going to do, hop in your space ship, fly out there, and check if it's really a black hole? Something like this can't be "proven", even if you have access to all their data.
So, you can't prove it--in some sense you can verify it.
Black holes were postulated many years ago. Various folk (Thorne, Hawking, etc.) then went and said, "well, if there's a black hole, we take our existing physics, and we predict that such and such happens."
Each time later evidence confirms a prediction made from extrapolation of earlier theories, you develop more evidence for that theory. At some point there becomes a consensus that the theory is right, or at least a good approximation. For example, if you'd asked someone in 1900 how things accelerate under gravity you would have heard a theory that was wrong (relativistic effects not having been suggested) but which was correct for practical purposes.
Black holes (if they exist) would have a very distinct effect on the matter surrounding them. For example, it gets accelerated quickly enough towards the black hole to emit certain types of radiation.
What's cool about science is you do the experiement yourself. Someone can get time on the Hubble, point it in the same direction, and see the same things. Screw using the same data, if you used Pons & Fleischman's data you would have seen cold fusion, but the fact that most people haven't been able to replicate those experiments makes most people doubtful of their validity.
Instead, they must rely on expensive drugs made by american companies which of course they cannot afford and thousands die.
Here you're assuming that the drugs in question would exist at all otherwise. There's ample evidence that that isn't the case. In fact, the US system of patents and incentives has clearly been responsible for drugs that treat Crohn's disease, leprosy, Sickle cell anemia, particular types of lymphomia, Tourette syndrome and cystic fibrosis, as well as a lot of the development of the fast-growing genomics industry--an industry which has the opportunity to really change medicine.
In the end, often this comes down to one of the most difficult kinds of moral choices: Do I save 1,000 people today, or 100,000 in ten years. Dump patent protections and you may very well save 1,000 people today, but you may condemn thousands or millions to death in the future who could have been saved by new research. The question is made no easier by the uncertainty in the results of future research, but the trends in genomics are very encouraging.
A real argument can be made for either answer, but make no mistake, the real moral question behind this issue is not so simple as "drug companies kill thousands."
Touchpad hot spots are already a feature of many touchpads in the PC market.
While not in common use in the US, touchpads of various sizes that work with stylii are being sold with Chinese character recognition.
As an example, Synaptics both has a touchpad-based Chinese character recognition system and a touchpad whose standard driver includes configurable hot spots.
You can't tell if a patent is obvious from the title, you need to read the claims. The claims are the only legally binding definition of what is covered by a patent.
In the case of this particular patent, the claims appear to relate to a set of (say) radio-button options with two phases of selection. After action one (e.g., waving your mouse over a button), all the items in the particular exclusive set of radio buttons are modified in appearence to give the user feedback as to the exclusivity of the radio button operation. A second action (e.g., click) is necessary to cause the operation of the buttons.
Not saying it's obvious, not saying it's not. Just saying you're reading too much into the title.
OK, I have a very limited understanding of how US patent law works, but I was under the impression that if other people have done / are doing what you're trying to patent, your patent is rejected. Am I right?
Partially. If other people have done what you are doing before you file the patent, your patent is (or should be) rejected. Patent law does allow you to file a patent, start using the invention you patent, let other people copy the idea you've patented, and then still have the patent issue without regard to the fact that other people have picked up on your idea. This allows companies to start benefiting from their invention quickly and lets them still benefit from their invention if the patent isn't granted.
I am unaware of affiliate or associate programs on the web before Amazon. Moreover, Amazon.com's claims in the patent are more specific than the concept of an associate program, you should probably read them yourself here before deciding whether you think there's prior art for what Amazon is claiming to have invented.
Surely you mean software patents. Have you ever looked at the positive effects of patents on the pharmaceutical industry? Patent law does push research and development in the development of new drugs and treatments that wouldn't happen as quickly elsewhere. There are other examples, but I think this one is particularly clear.
Patents are not intended to quash competitors from implementing a new technology, but instead to ensure monopoly rights on that tech. for a period of time.
Apparently not. Pharmaceutical companies often use patents to block competition, and in that case I think that patents are probably in the general social interest.
With "real-world" tech (for example, an engine that runs on water), this makes sense because it takes time and money (lots) to bring it to reality. Such is not the case with purely software inventions.
Free software not withstanding, most companies that want to create a software product do end up paying a great deal of money to get that product created. Where do you think the Ferrari in my driveway came from?
I believe that the most effective patent law would recognize that software innovation is (as you rightly point out) cheaper and in an industry moving faster than in other areas.
I believe that reducing the patent period for new software patents from 17 (is it 20 now?) years to (say) 12 months after issue would probably be a major step inthe right direction, and there is already prior art for patents having different durations (e.g., design patents). That period should be revisited regularly to balance the harm that patents do against the benefits of clear disclosure of new inventions, which is a good, even in software.
However, what is patented, e.g., protected, is what is listed in the claims. The abstract is an overview but is not legally binding, nor does it typically, in my experience, helpful at telling what aspects of a system are actually protected.
I don't understand it, even the article states, that These "affiliate programs" are commonly used by many sites so it's obviously nothing amazon has innovated. I thought that patents can't be granted for things/processes already in wide use or already published.
Patents can't be granted for things that are in wide use when the patent is applied for. This patent was applied for years ago. I believe that Amazon was the first associates program I ever came across. Your mileage may vary.
I think people generally misunderstand the meaning of these kinds of patents. The patents are not intended to make lots of money from licensing fees. Rather, they are needed for trading with other companies with big patent portfolios.
The trading card view of patents is often correct, but Amazon.com's lawsuit against B&N suggests that it doesn't view its patents as strictly defensive.
Having said that, I think that companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to use the patent system to their best legal advantage. If you want to get rid of software patents (and I do agree that they are a bigger barrier than help to innovation right now in the software industry), change the laws. Pressure on Amazon is likely to just go ignored.
Well, I think it's use as a ficticious company name was popularized by Wyle E. Coyote of Warner Bros. cartoon fame. "ACME high-powered rocket", etc. Certainly this usage seems to be a nod at that.
You are correct, I misspoke (and realized it after I posted.) 15 peta-floating-point instructions, NOT 15-peta-floats/second. Enormous difference, mea maxima culpa. --Joe
You're forgetting that with the nature of the community, most projects start to scratch someone's itch. If I don't like one of the ICQ clients (or mail clients, or whatever) available, I can write my own.
Actually, I think there's an interesting point here. Yes, you can write your own, but, if there are 20 open-source ICQs out there, you could also modify an existing one as well, actually producing something that was on the whole better.
That doesn't happen in part because a lot of open-source software gets written again from scratch. There are a number of reasons for this, ego, not wanting to bother reading someone elses code, and perhaps the most often, just an honest desire to learn how "a program like that might work." There's nothing wrong with any of these reasons.
I am not saying that variety is bad. What I am saying is that it is sometimes coming in part at the cost of more fully-developed applicatons, fully-tested, fully-documented applications. I'd rather have 7 good "foo" applications to choose from -- rather than 20 half-baked ones.
First let me say that I'm fond of awk, perl, and such for the right purposes. As are (custom-written) C/C++ programs.
Spreadsheets are very good at turning around estimation that requires playing with the data and the algorithm (but not too too much of either.) A reasonable number of engineering estimation tasks and accounting tasks fall into these categories.
For example, I'd sum a few numbers with awk (or more likely bc -l), but a lot of my financial planning is done on a spreadsheet. Back five years ago when I was doing serious number crunching, I used C/C++ and hand-coded the inner loop in i860 assembler (letting me throw 15 petaflops or so on neural network training calculations.) The right tool for the right job.
Using a spreadsheet doesn't make one an idiot. Instead, not having one on Linux keeps me from spending time on Linux, and investing in Linux. I end up having to spend more time in front of my Windows NT desktop and less in front of my Linux one, and that means when I do something new that might be useful to a community, it's more likely to be a Windows one than a Linux one.
Good catch, I should've noticed the name change not having been picked up.
I also see that the contact phone numbers are listed as being in the 415 area code. Netscape (err, AOL Mountain View) changed area codes (to 510) some time back.
Slashdot Mirror
must disclose all that information in their quaterly reports.
I'm afraid I disagree. Even with publicly traded companies, interviewers often need to provide details of non-public product plans or types of customers in order to explain the sort of job actually being offered.
NDAs seem like a reasonable preventative there, assuming that they're well-written, IMHO.
--j
A hearty "Me too." here on Peopleware. I keep on buying copies of the book for people I've worked for. (Occasionally it actually helps!)
From memory, some of the major points I've taken to heart from that book include:
- Cubicles are a bad idea.
One of the primary design
goals of software development environments should
be the reduction of destractions, such as other
people talking. Walls keep out
sound better than cubes. Cubes end up being
pennywise, pound-foolish for software development
folk.
- Adjustable telephone ringer volume. The
chapter about telephone ringers (section?) is
probably worth the price of the whole book.
Again, this goes to distraction and the cost
of interrupted "flow".
- Adjustability and configurability. People
are different, groups and their needs are
different. A usual sales pitch for cubes is
how easy they are to reconfigure, but then
usually admin folk prevent that from ever being
used to make peoples work environments more
effective. If you have cubes, at least use
them to your advantage.
There's more. Read the book.--j
The Myth of the Borg
First, the Borg isn't a consipracy. The Borg assimilate, taking enough of the assimilated to further their goals. That's hardly the same thing. Even if it weren't, it's an analogy. Any analogy can be taken too far.
Oh, of course. You don't need a conspiracy to bend the media to your ends, you only need money. A few key editors making judgements based on potential advertising revenue to damage the perception, and probably the reality, of responsible journalism. For example, were an esteemed organization like the New York Times to suggest that an op-ed writer change their opinions from "Microsoft is a monopolist" to "Microsoft is innovative", one might reasonably assume that ones faith in the independence of the New York Times would be greatly weakened.
Oh wait, that already happened: Steve Wozniak Interview at Failure Magazine.
--j
Probably more work than a torpedo. Remember that they're trying to prevent capture of the data more than trying to prevent destruction of the data.
That having been said, I'd be extremely surprised if the steel reinforcement of the concrete in the legs of the platform didn't give you a Faraday cage.
That also makes me wonder if they plan to shield against Tempest / Van Eck attacks...
Pretty tough unless your close, and again you have the Faraday cage that I expect the legs provide. And what would it get you? A look at the IP traffic most likely, which you could sample elsewhere, and some consoles. Remember, the users (and their display screens) are elsewhere. Watch the exciting backup runs! Woohoo! Digging into the contents of the disks would probably require physical penetration of the site.
--j
5. Breakup of Microsoft Predicted
4. Death of x86 Architecture Predicted
3. Death of FORTRAN Predicted
2. Year of the Network Predicted (okay, so they finally got one right)
and finally, the #1 headline we've seen too many times in the last 20 years...
1. Death of Moore's Law Predicted!
--j
Bullshit. What are you going to do, hop in your space ship, fly out there, and check if it's really a black hole? Something like this can't be "proven", even if you have access to all their data.
So, you can't prove it--in some sense you can verify it.
Black holes were postulated many years ago. Various folk (Thorne, Hawking, etc.) then went and said, "well, if there's a black hole, we take our existing physics, and we predict that such and such happens."Each time later evidence confirms a prediction made from extrapolation of earlier theories, you develop more evidence for that theory. At some point there becomes a consensus that the theory is right, or at least a good approximation. For example, if you'd asked someone in 1900 how things accelerate under gravity you would have heard a theory that was wrong (relativistic effects not having been suggested) but which was correct for practical purposes.
Black holes (if they exist) would have a very distinct effect on the matter surrounding them. For example, it gets accelerated quickly enough towards the black hole to emit certain types of radiation.
What's cool about science is you do the experiement yourself. Someone can get time on the Hubble, point it in the same direction, and see the same things. Screw using the same data, if you used Pons & Fleischman's data you would have seen cold fusion, but the fact that most people haven't been able to replicate those experiments makes most people doubtful of their validity.
--j
This is picky, but his proof appeared when he was 19, not 20. His proof is a thing of beauty.
--j
Link in your math library. Try adding -lm to your link line, but this is compiler-dependent of course.
--j
The latter. AFAIK, CD is still incurable.
--j
Instead, they must rely on expensive drugs made by american companies which of course they cannot afford and thousands die.
Here you're assuming that the drugs in question would exist at all otherwise. There's ample evidence that that isn't the case. In fact, the US system of patents and incentives has clearly been responsible for drugs that treat Crohn's disease, leprosy, Sickle cell anemia, particular types of lymphomia, Tourette syndrome and cystic fibrosis, as well as a lot of the development of the fast-growing genomics industry--an industry which has the opportunity to really change medicine.
In the end, often this comes down to one of the most difficult kinds of moral choices: Do I save 1,000 people today, or 100,000 in ten years. Dump patent protections and you may very well save 1,000 people today, but you may condemn thousands or millions to death in the future who could have been saved by new research. The question is made no easier by the uncertainty in the results of future research, but the trends in genomics are very encouraging.
A real argument can be made for either answer, but make no mistake, the real moral question behind this issue is not so simple as "drug companies kill thousands."
--j
--j
While not in common use in the US, touchpads of various sizes that work with stylii are being sold with Chinese character recognition.
As an example, Synaptics both has a touchpad-based Chinese character recognition system and a touchpad whose standard driver includes configurable hot spots.
-j
You can't tell if a patent is obvious from the title, you need to read the claims. The claims are the only legally binding definition of what is covered by a patent.
In the case of this particular patent, the claims appear to relate to a set of (say) radio-button options with two phases of selection. After action one (e.g., waving your mouse over a button), all the items in the particular exclusive set of radio buttons are modified in appearence to give the user feedback as to the exclusivity of the radio button operation. A second action (e.g., click) is necessary to cause the operation of the buttons.
Not saying it's obvious, not saying it's not. Just saying you're reading too much into the title.
Excellent! I stand corrected and better informed. Thanks!
--j
OK, I have a very limited understanding of how US patent law works, but I was under the impression that if other people have done / are doing what you're trying to patent, your patent is rejected. Am I right?
Partially. If other people have done what you are doing before you file the patent, your patent is (or should be) rejected. Patent law does allow you to file a patent, start using the invention you patent, let other people copy the idea you've patented, and then still have the patent issue without regard to the fact that other people have picked up on your idea. This allows companies to start benefiting from their invention quickly and lets them still benefit from their invention if the patent isn't granted.
I am unaware of affiliate or associate programs on the web before Amazon. Moreover, Amazon.com's claims in the patent are more specific than the concept of an associate program, you should probably read them yourself here before deciding whether you think there's prior art for what Amazon is claiming to have invented.
Sounds like a good reason to GET RID OF PATENTS.
Surely you mean software patents. Have you ever looked at the positive effects of patents on the pharmaceutical industry? Patent law does push research and development in the development of new drugs and treatments that wouldn't happen as quickly elsewhere. There are other examples, but I think this one is particularly clear.
Patents are not intended to quash competitors from implementing a new technology, but instead to ensure monopoly rights on that tech. for a period of time.
Apparently not. Pharmaceutical companies often use patents to block competition, and in that case I think that patents are probably in the general social interest.
With "real-world" tech (for example, an engine that runs on water), this makes sense because it takes time and money (lots) to bring it to reality. Such is not the case with purely software inventions.
Free software not withstanding, most companies that want to create a software product do end up paying a great deal of money to get that product created. Where do you think the Ferrari in my driveway came from?
I believe that the most effective patent law would recognize that software innovation is (as you rightly point out) cheaper and in an industry moving faster than in other areas.
I believe that reducing the patent period for new software patents from 17 (is it 20 now?) years to (say) 12 months after issue would probably be a major step inthe right direction, and there is already prior art for patents having different durations (e.g., design patents). That period should be revisited regularly to balance the harm that patents do against the benefits of clear disclosure of new inventions, which is a good, even in software.
IANAL.
However, what is patented, e.g., protected, is what is listed in the claims. The abstract is an overview but is not legally binding, nor does it typically, in my experience, helpful at telling what aspects of a system are actually protected.
I don't understand it, even the article states, that These "affiliate programs" are commonly used by many sites so it's obviously nothing amazon has innovated. I thought that patents can't be granted for things/processes already in wide use or already published.
Patents can't be granted for things that are in wide use when the patent is applied for. This patent was applied for years ago. I believe that Amazon was the first associates program I ever came across. Your mileage may vary.
The trading card view of patents is often correct, but Amazon.com's lawsuit against B&N suggests that it doesn't view its patents as strictly defensive.
Having said that, I think that companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to use the patent system to their best legal advantage. If you want to get rid of software patents (and I do agree that they are a bigger barrier than help to innovation right now in the software industry), change the laws. Pressure on Amazon is likely to just go ignored.
Well, I think it's use as a ficticious company name was popularized by Wyle E. Coyote of Warner Bros. cartoon fame. "ACME high-powered rocket", etc. Certainly this usage seems to be a nod at that.
--j
You are correct, I misspoke (and realized it after I posted.) 15 peta-floating-point instructions, NOT 15-peta-floats/second. Enormous difference, mea maxima culpa. --Joe
You're forgetting that with the nature of the community, most projects start to scratch someone's itch. If I don't like one of the ICQ clients (or mail clients, or whatever) available, I can write my own.
Actually, I think there's an interesting point here. Yes, you can write your own, but, if there are 20 open-source ICQs out there, you could also modify an existing one as well, actually producing something that was on the whole better.
That doesn't happen in part because a lot of open-source software gets written again from scratch. There are a number of reasons for this, ego, not wanting to bother reading someone elses code, and perhaps the most often, just an honest desire to learn how "a program like that might work." There's nothing wrong with any of these reasons.
I am not saying that variety is bad. What I am saying is that it is sometimes coming in part at the cost of more fully-developed applicatons, fully-tested, fully-documented applications. I'd rather have 7 good "foo" applications to choose from -- rather than 20 half-baked ones.
--Joe
Too much is not enough.
I have to disagree with you about spreadsheets.
First let me say that I'm fond of awk, perl, and such for the right purposes. As are (custom-written) C/C++ programs.
Spreadsheets are very good at turning around estimation that requires playing with the data and the algorithm (but not too too much of either.) A reasonable number of engineering estimation tasks and accounting tasks fall into these categories.
For example, I'd sum a few numbers with awk (or more likely bc -l), but a lot of my financial planning is done on a spreadsheet. Back five years ago when I was doing serious number crunching, I used C/C++ and hand-coded the inner loop in i860 assembler (letting me throw 15 petaflops or so on neural network training calculations.) The right tool for the right job.
Using a spreadsheet doesn't make one an idiot. Instead, not having one on Linux keeps me from spending time on Linux, and investing in Linux. I end up having to spend more time in front of my Windows NT desktop and less in front of my Linux one, and that means when I do something new that might be useful to a community, it's more likely to be a Windows one than a Linux one.
That makes me sad -- not stupid.
--Joe
Too much is not enough.Good catch, I should've noticed the name change not having been picked up.
I also see that the contact phone numbers are listed as being in the 415 area code. Netscape (err, AOL Mountain View) changed area codes (to 510) some time back.
--j