Most small businesses (uner 50 employees) don't want to have to have a full-time geek. They may have an office staff of 5, the rest being drivers or factory workers - most actual goods production doesn't take place in offices or cubicles, but on shop floors.
Same with retailers and wholesalers.
For most of them, Windows is something they run on their desktops, and they have NO interest maintaining any sort of server locally. As for the email, they just have to switch to a better provider. Its not like there isn't choice out there.
All they need is a web site, email, and a browser so they can access a few portals where they interact with their suppliers, and that's going to be the trend in the future for larger businesses as well, despite what people pushing dot.net think. Web apps are cheaper to maintain (single point of failure/updates), and easier for the end user to work with.
My bad. An extra 3 there. Of course, so many people consider themselves "computer people" because they can actually send an email (thought they can't find the ones they sent, or where the replies went, and their desktop is full of icons from stuff they downloaded and can't figure ut how to clean up... that ca company of 50 may very well have 33 people who consider themselves "computer people". They are the target for this service.
And when Google get out their web-based document-writing software, look out... that's the market they're really looking at.
If they were serious about eating Exchange's lunch, they would offer Gmail as a self-hosted solution.
The majority of businesses are small businesses lf less than 50 employees. If they have to have 33 "computer people" because they do all their own stuff internally, they're less competitive than their competitor, who has one "local geek" and hires everyone else on an as-needed basis.
A lot of them will look at this and say, "hey, who not?" No more lost email, no more hard time finding it... we're nt talking technical sophisticates here - we're talking ordinary people who thing that "the Internet == the web," and whose web site is 4 pages of "brochure-ware" that hasn't been updated since the dot-com bust. They'll go for this because it makes sense for them.
Now that we've managed to establish our business, we will proceed as follows:
Piss off all of our most loyal customers by selectively giving them worse service
??????
Profit!
Step 2 is obvious and easy. It takes time for peopel to change their habits. In the meantime, their quarterly profit goes up, making them look more profitable than they really are. Step 2 is SELL OUT TO NEW INVESTORS" and let someone else be the bagholder for the accumulated BS.
This is actually quite common in the direct-mail and mail-order business. Stop all advertising for 3 months - your expenses drop tremendously, and your net profits go through the roof, even if your overall volume goes down (you're riding the coat-tails on the previous quarter's advertising). Now you can shop the business around and show phenomenal profit ratios.
Same wiht rental real estate properties. Stop all maintenance for a while, and the building is much more profitable - on paper. Sell. New owners have the headaches, you have the profit.
Right now, when someone is out of wireless coverage range and can't immediately get e-mail access, RIM's service stores incoming messages on computers at one of its two network operations centers, or NOCs. When you come back into coverage range, those e-mails are forwarded to you automatically. "
This is SO obvious that a patent should never have been issued for it. What sort of level of "inventiveness" is required to envision this? Its an obvious consequence of developing ANY email service that, if the person isn't avaliable to receive it, you don't just send it to/dev/null.
Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house.;)
You can't justify a couch and some munchies for your house? Gee, and here I thought I was cheap!
One of the ways companies continue patent protection is by applying for new patents for the existing drug during the protection period.13 An example of this would be tying the drug to another use than what was applied for originally,
IOW, you take an existing drug, say one for high blood pressure, and, befoe the patent runs out, you apply for a patent for the same drug, except now used to grow hair (and turn a bad side effect into a feature while you're at it). No need to change a single atom.
You have to do this while you still hold the existing patent, because once its unprotected, thats it.
He points out the problem is one of the ability for drawing clear property lines, which is difficult with software, but much easier for drugs.
... drugs - another area the patent office is so fucked up on. Anyone who is writing about patent screwups and uses pharmaceuticals as an example of whre the patent office gets it write should have their keyboard unplugged. Take the same drug, find a different didease to treat, change the drugs' name - voila - 20 years more patent protection FOR THE SAME DRUG! No "invention." No "creativity". Its the same BS as adding the words "on the internet" to an existing scheme.
Judge Jackson got into trouble for public comments.
If Kimball and/or Wells had taken control of their courtrooms after the first sloppiness from SCO, the case would have been over by now, and the appeal half-way done as well. Oh, irght - there wouldn't have been an appeal - SCO would have been (even more) bankrupt than they are now, morally, financially, etc.
You can't can't expect actors in a capitalist system not to maximize their rewards. Any system design/reform has to assume that actors will do everything allowed to maximize their rewards, even things which are viewed as "evil" by everyone else.
The guaranteed very best way to maximize rewards under any system of law is to corrupt the system to your benefit. The patent trolls have done that, by flooding the patent office with patents they know are bogus. Sounds evil to me.
and by trolling, GP means, he's never actually read Slate and doesn't know that it's probably one of the highest quality edited online websites you could find, content wise
... which has nothing to do with the fact that the statement made was a piss-poor analogy... and that this is just a "me-too article." Slate was caught with its collective pants down on the whole "patent troll" mess - we've known about it for years. So, yeah, Slate is just trolling for readers because "Blackberry" gets attention from the clueless masses.
Patent trolls affect everything, from the food you eat (patented seeds, etc) to the medicine you take (patented mice for testing, etc) to the air and water you consume (patented anti-pollution devices). Everywhere that someone sets up a patent tollway through a bogus patent that "slipped through the cracks" rather than actually invent something useful, we all end up paying for it. So yeah, they CAN be predictable AND evil, just like meat rotting is predictable and nasty. That's what happens when either the underlying concept has outlived its usefulness or the agency tht was supposed to implement it doesn't do its job. Pick one. But don't tell me that Johnny-come-lately Slate isn't trolling for readers.
Now a company like SCO just has to be Chaotic Evil. Can you predict what they are going to do next?
Oh, that one's easy... file another motion to delay things...
SCO could give most patent trolls a few lessons. Unfortunately, this is what happens when immoral people do things. The legal system didn't envision judges who aren't ready to do a smackdown on lawyers who knowingly abuse the system, and are afraid of having their decision appealed. Where is Judge Roy Bean when you need him?
Patent trolls aren't evil, but rational and predictable, akin to the mold that eventually grows on rotten meat
Why can't they be both evil and predictablel, just as rotten meat is both nasty and predictable? Oh, right - it wouldn't be a flamebait article to get everyone to knee-jerk piss all over it. Must be some stupid site trolling for hits(me checks calendar - yep, Troll Tuesday - figures)
Once you stop drinking like a fish, you start to mature. People who keep hardcore drinking after their college-era stay at ~18 years old in their maturity.
Of course. Alcohol's a preservative. Think "Pickled BrainZ".
I disagree about them staying ~18 in their level of maturity, though - it seems that, as time goes on, they act less and less mature, until they're acting just like a baby - spitting up their food, drooling, puking wherever they want, and pissing themselves. How they think this constitutes a "good time" is beyond me. Maybe what's needed is a study in booze and masochism.
I would refuse to work on the patents, and if that led to quittery/fireditude, then so be it.
Fine with me. I just patented a method and process for "quiting". And method or process for "quiting a job" And method or process for "being fired from a job" And method or process for "quiting a job over the internet"
And this one, which applies to everyone here:
method or process for "being fired from a job because you surfed slashdot too much".
Those must be some really good 'shrooms. Guess you guys are prosecuting the "wr on drugs" justa as effectively as the "war on terror."
WMDs, well first off we knew he had them because we sold them to him. It wasn't a question of weather or not he had them it was weather or not he was still ready to use them and what he was going to do with them. We just had Sadam's #2 state that they did have WMDs as recently as 2002 but they were shipped out as discretly as possible. It wasn't only the US that said they had WMDs either it was pretty much everybody. Of course France and Germany had their heads so far up Sadams ass to get oil that they like to change what they had said. If Sadam didn't have any he was going out of his way to make people think he did.
The WMDs in question had already expired. Nerve gas dosn't keep indefinitely under less-than-ideal storage conditions. As for Saddam's guy saying they still had them, he said it in exchange for $$$$, LOTS OF $$$$. And it WAS only the US that wasy saying they had them - everyone else was saying it wasn't the case. Thats why nobody wanted to invade - there was ZERO credible evidence, and everyone else in the world knew it, and that Bush was a brain-damaged cokehead/alcoholic whose opinions couldn't be trusted. Or don't you think that other countries don't have shrinks on hand to make evaluations of the heads of state of foreign countries and deliver their appraisments? Bush is THE biggest threat to world peace, and people were saying that well before the invasion of Iraq.
Oil? where is this mythical oil that the US is suppose to be getting? Why is Bush saying we need to get rid of our dependancy on oil? Or are you just paroting lies from the other side.
Guess you didn't hear that even with the changes Bush mentioned in his speech, imports are expected to stay at current levels OR INCREASE through to 2025 and beyond. His "cutbacks" are BS. But then again, so is pretty much everything he's said since "winning" that first election.
Pork barrel spending is something that congress does. Bush has attacked it at every point that he can. Congres has been rejecting everything he has suggested because it would kill their little pork projects.
The biggest pork barrel project is Bush's war. He did this because (1) he has an inferiority complex (okay - he does't - he really IS inferior to his predecessors), and (2) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Follow the cash.
I'm still trying to figure out what he's lied about with the wire taps? He seems to be telling congress pretty much everything. He belives he has the right under executive power in a time of war, they think he was wrong and should fill out extra paper work. If you don't want to be wire tapped then don't communicate with terrists. It's really that simple.
Over the last 3 years he has continually "expanded" what he claims are his rights to tapping, as more and more stuff leaked. Until it leaked, he said it was less than 1,800 intercepts, not the millions we now know.
All this and I really don't like Bush. Go figure, I just pay attention.
You've been paying too much attention to US media. Try some of the international stuff. The self-censorship in the USA is just as bad as anything China is making google do.
"What exactly did he lie about with WMDs? Iraq? Deficit, or Wiretapping?
WMDS? Well, first off, the CIA confirmed the WMDs didn't exist, then backed down from squaking loudly about it because of political pressure from Bush. Same with the aluminium tubes. Unlike in the US, the rest of the world got to see the interviews on TV with the inspectors debunking the tubes the day BEFORE Powell went to the UN and knowingly lied through his teeth.
Iraq? That one is easy. There was no reason to invade Iraq. Period. First, it was supposed to be Bin Laden. Then it was WMDs. Then it was "Democracy and peace". It was ALWAYS about oil. That "Those who aren't with us are against us" was the biggest lie going, slandering countries that didn't have their heads up Bush's arses. And the "quick war - 6 months tops - minimum casualties" is really working well - if you don't know how to count.
"To restore confidence in government, [George W. Bush] will...attack pork-barrel spending."
BushCheneyHalliburtonAndCo really fixed that one
"As President, Governor Bush will...pay the debt down to a historically low level."
Instead, the deficit is at an al-time high, and the government is pretty much bankrupt.
Wiretapping? Have you been hiding under a rock this last month over the conflicting stories he's pushed about the true extent of the wiretaps? Or are you afraid that if you write about it, there'll be a knock at your door?
Why not just do like Bush's original science proposal, and send him to Mars. Maybe the WMDs are hidden there - there's no sign of them on this planet...
Nearly all software is licensed, not sold. All MS software is provided under a fairly specific, limited license, so I think your common-law implications of warranty and merchantability (as applied to typical physical goods) don't apply.
Wrong-o. Sale, lease, license, whatever - the vendor is always liable for hidden defects.
It's because the first poster was modded as flamebait for criticizing the excessive use of alphabet soup/acronyms. Not everyone here knows who the EFF and the NSA are - yet:-)
Besides, its Troll Tuesday - we have to have some funonce in a while... we can't just leave it to the GNAA.
Competition. The consoles are not all that expandable, and they're getting $$$_PRICEY_$$$. PCs still have the edge, as general-purpose machines. Todays gaming box will still be usable for something 5 years from now - today's console will be a FUBAR'd piece of obsolete equipment only useful for junking.
Slashdot Mirror
Most small businesses (uner 50 employees) don't want to have to have a full-time geek. They may have an office staff of 5, the rest being drivers or factory workers - most actual goods production doesn't take place in offices or cubicles, but on shop floors.
Same with retailers and wholesalers.
For most of them, Windows is something they run on their desktops, and they have NO interest maintaining any sort of server locally. As for the email, they just have to switch to a better provider. Its not like there isn't choice out there.
All they need is a web site, email, and a browser so they can access a few portals where they interact with their suppliers, and that's going to be the trend in the future for larger businesses as well, despite what people pushing dot.net think. Web apps are cheaper to maintain (single point of failure/updates), and easier for the end user to work with.
My bad. An extra 3 there. Of course, so many people consider themselves "computer people" because they can actually send an email (thought they can't find the ones they sent, or where the replies went, and their desktop is full of icons from stuff they downloaded and can't figure ut how to clean up ... that ca company of 50 may very well have 33 people who consider themselves "computer people". They are the target for this service.
And when Google get out their web-based document-writing software, look out ... that's the market they're really looking at.
A lot of them will look at this and say, "hey, who not?" No more lost email, no more hard time finding it ... we're nt talking technical sophisticates here - we're talking ordinary people who thing that "the Internet == the web," and whose web site is 4 pages of "brochure-ware" that hasn't been updated since the dot-com bust. They'll go for this because it makes sense for them.
Step 2 is obvious and easy. It takes time for peopel to change their habits. In the meantime, their quarterly profit goes up, making them look more profitable than they really are. Step 2 is SELL OUT TO NEW INVESTORS" and let someone else be the bagholder for the accumulated BS.
This is actually quite common in the direct-mail and mail-order business. Stop all advertising for 3 months - your expenses drop tremendously, and your net profits go through the roof, even if your overall volume goes down (you're riding the coat-tails on the previous quarter's advertising). Now you can shop the business around and show phenomenal profit ratios.
Same wiht rental real estate properties. Stop all maintenance for a while, and the building is much more profitable - on paper. Sell. New owners have the headaches, you have the profit.
This is SO obvious that a patent should never have been issued for it. What sort of level of "inventiveness" is required to envision this? Its an obvious consequence of developing ANY email service that, if the person isn't avaliable to receive it, you don't just send it to /dev/null.
c++/cli is NOT descended from c or c++. Its descended from net. Call it net/cli if you want.
You can't justify a couch and some munchies for your house? Gee, and here I thought I was cheap!
http://www.okjolt.org/frame_index.html?/published/ 2003okjoltrev5.html
IOW, you take an existing drug, say one for high blood pressure, and, befoe the patent runs out, you apply for a patent for the same drug, except now used to grow hair (and turn a bad side effect into a feature while you're at it). No need to change a single atom.
You have to do this while you still hold the existing patent, because once its unprotected, thats it.
If Kimball and/or Wells had taken control of their courtrooms after the first sloppiness from SCO, the case would have been over by now, and the appeal half-way done as well. Oh, irght - there wouldn't have been an appeal - SCO would have been (even more) bankrupt than they are now, morally, financially, etc.
The guaranteed very best way to maximize rewards under any system of law is to corrupt the system to your benefit. The patent trolls have done that, by flooding the patent office with patents they know are bogus. Sounds evil to me.
Patent trolls affect everything, from the food you eat (patented seeds, etc) to the medicine you take (patented mice for testing, etc) to the air and water you consume (patented anti-pollution devices). Everywhere that someone sets up a patent tollway through a bogus patent that "slipped through the cracks" rather than actually invent something useful, we all end up paying for it. So yeah, they CAN be predictable AND evil, just like meat rotting is predictable and nasty. That's what happens when either the underlying concept has outlived its usefulness or the agency tht was supposed to implement it doesn't do its job. Pick one. But don't tell me that Johnny-come-lately Slate isn't trolling for readers.
Oh, that one's easy ... file another motion to delay things ...
SCO could give most patent trolls a few lessons. Unfortunately, this is what happens when immoral people do things. The legal system didn't envision judges who aren't ready to do a smackdown on lawyers who knowingly abuse the system, and are afraid of having their decision appealed. Where is Judge Roy Bean when you need him?
Of course. Alcohol's a preservative. Think "Pickled BrainZ".
I disagree about them staying ~18 in their level of maturity, though - it seems that, as time goes on, they act less and less mature, until they're acting just like a baby - spitting up their food, drooling, puking wherever they want, and pissing themselves. How they think this constitutes a "good time" is beyond me. Maybe what's needed is a study in booze and masochism.
Geez, the youngest I've seen a kid "off" their parents was 16 ... you people start 'em off young.
Now, whether that's the most "mature" way to settle an argument is another question.
This snippet of an article really misses the point.
No kidding. I've just added ...
... to myFine with me. I just patented a method and process for "quiting". And method or process for "quiting a job" And method or process for "being fired from a job" And method or process for "quiting a job over the internet"
And this one, which applies to everyone here:
method or process for "being fired from a job because you surfed slashdot too much".
Site licensing, anyone?
The WMDs in question had already expired. Nerve gas dosn't keep indefinitely under less-than-ideal storage conditions. As for Saddam's guy saying they still had them, he said it in exchange for $$$$, LOTS OF $$$$. And it WAS only the US that wasy saying they had them - everyone else was saying it wasn't the case. Thats why nobody wanted to invade - there was ZERO credible evidence, and everyone else in the world knew it, and that Bush was a brain-damaged cokehead/alcoholic whose opinions couldn't be trusted. Or don't you think that other countries don't have shrinks on hand to make evaluations of the heads of state of foreign countries and deliver their appraisments? Bush is THE biggest threat to world peace, and people were saying that well before the invasion of Iraq.
Guess you didn't hear that even with the changes Bush mentioned in his speech, imports are expected to stay at current levels OR INCREASE through to 2025 and beyond. His "cutbacks" are BS. But then again, so is pretty much everything he's said since "winning" that first election.
The biggest pork barrel project is Bush's war. He did this because (1) he has an inferiority complex (okay - he does't - he really IS inferior to his predecessors), and (2) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Follow the cash.
Over the last 3 years he has continually "expanded" what he claims are his rights to tapping, as more and more stuff leaked. Until it leaked, he said it was less than 1,800 intercepts, not the millions we now know.
You've been paying too much attention to US media. Try some of the international stuff. The self-censorship in the USA is just as bad as anything China is making google do.
"What exactly did he lie about with WMDs? Iraq? Deficit, or Wiretapping?
WMDS? Well, first off, the CIA confirmed the WMDs didn't exist, then backed down from squaking loudly about it because of political pressure from Bush. Same with the aluminium tubes. Unlike in the US, the rest of the world got to see the interviews on TV with the inspectors debunking the tubes the day BEFORE Powell went to the UN and knowingly lied through his teeth.
Iraq? That one is easy. There was no reason to invade Iraq. Period. First, it was supposed to be Bin Laden. Then it was WMDs. Then it was "Democracy and peace". It was ALWAYS about oil. That "Those who aren't with us are against us" was the biggest lie going, slandering countries that didn't have their heads up Bush's arses. And the "quick war - 6 months tops - minimum casualties" is really working well - if you don't know how to count.
The deficit? Lets look at the campaign promises:? c=klLWJcP7H&b=137673
BushCheneyHalliburtonAndCo really fixed that one Instead, the deficit is at an al-time high, and the government is pretty much bankrupt.http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp
Wiretapping? Have you been hiding under a rock this last month over the conflicting stories he's pushed about the true extent of the wiretaps? Or are you afraid that if you write about it, there'll be a knock at your door?
Q1. something Bush does bad?
A1. He lies. To everyone. Including himself.
Q2. Why he thinks it is good?
A2: He must think he's good at it, because he keeps on doing it.
Q3. Why you think it is bad? ...
A3: WMDs, Iraq, the deficit, wiretapping
Why not just do like Bush's original science proposal, and send him to Mars. Maybe the WMDs are hidden there - there's no sign of them on this planet ...
Ask your local consumer protection office.
Besides, its Troll Tuesday - we have to have some funonce in a while ... we can't just leave it to the GNAA.
Competition. The consoles are not all that expandable, and they're getting $$$_PRICEY_$$$. PCs still have the edge, as general-purpose machines. Todays gaming box will still be usable for something 5 years from now - today's console will be a FUBAR'd piece of obsolete equipment only useful for junking.