Bullshit. This wasn't a business decision about improving service. This was extortion. Comcast got all the upside (gained revenue from Netflix, plus reduced peering traffic) and Netflix almost broke even (loses payments to Comcast, saves on hosting costs elsewhere).
Customers pay Comcast to be connected to the internet at a given speed. They deserve to get the speed they pay for, regardless of where the traffic comes from.
Actually, Comcast customers pay for a maximum speed with no assurances of actually speed. Yea, it's crap that that is the way it is, and I wish Google would wire my area so I could dump Comcast; but the reality is nothing in my deal with Comcast guarantees me any minimum throughput. Unfortunately, any alternatives such as Dish or Clear are worse.
with Comcast. This allows Netflix to stop paying others for connecting their services to Comcast's network and gives Netflix's servers a direct link to Comcast. Comcast says "Sure, but pay us to do that." Netflix weighs that cost vs current costs and the benefits to them of ensuring faster streaming and says "OK." Sure they would like to do it for free but ultimately decided paying was the best option. Comcast no doubt wants to find ways to make money as streaming becomes more popular than cable and this is one way to do it. Netflix needs to keep customers happy and Comcast has a way to do that, at a price; and as a result that make a deal. It's a simple business decision on both sides.
While it would be nice to have everything streamed at max speed the reality is Comcast (and others) need to manage the network for all users; and if Netflix is a major bandwidth user then throttling them makes sense; even if it means degraded performance. If this agreement allows fast streaming and has less of an impact on other users then the users benefit as well from the deal.
Ironically, NASA has almost certainly killed more people with the space shuttle than have died due to ignition switches.
I haven't the slightest idea why they're going to NASA of all places for an engineering audit, whenever there's a shuttle accident it's always transpired that NASA has intractable compliance and engineering culture problems, and lack the capacity to properly validate a tricycle for safety, let alone a mass-produced motor vehicle. Their incompetence has literally cost the US a manned spaceflight program.
They may be taking a page from Jack in the Box, when JITB hired NASA to completely overhaul their procedures after the salmonella deaths. Given NASA's record it's a miracle JITB burgers didn't all subsequently carry Ebola.
Just because your own organization is flawed doesn't mean you are incapable of identifying similar flaws in another. NASA has, as post-event investigations showed, a lot of people who are very capable of doing good engineering work as well as investigative work despite the culture. I would argue they could also be very good at finding similar issues in other companies and recommending fixes.
This isn't rocket science... why ask any scientist less qualified than an astronaut? GM built the lunar module, so NASA is very qualified to stall a car on the moon..
Ignoring the humor in your post and not being pedantic that the LEM and Rover were two different items, NASA has a lot of experience with finding out what lead to a bad decision that result in significant, or catastrophic, failures and accidents. More to the point, if they used what was learned from investigations into what lead up to Challenger and Columbia they could shed a lot of light on GM's corporate culture and decision making process.
Following French law, I am a fully qualified certified engineer. Membership in a professional organization is just a north american concept closer to mafia and group self-interest preservation than engineering.
There is a little more to it than that if you want to be able to put P.E. after your name. To become a Professional Engineer (P.E.) you need to get a degree from an accredited university, pass an exam to become an Engineer in Training, have four years of experience under a P.E., and then pass a another exam. You can join a professional organization, in most cases, merely by paying dues. However, you do not need to be a P.E. to call yourself an engineer, unless you are performing certain types of engineering work; and many degreed engineers never get a P.E. because they do not need it in their careers.
Engineer has become somewhat of a generic term that can be used in many ways and doesn't represent any assurance of any sort of education level or certification. To your original point, the engineering profession missed the chance to establish a protective and benevolent licensure organization like doctors and lawyers to help them maintain higher salaries and limit competition. Had the done so you'd probably see a lot less offshoring and H1B visa work because they would not meet licensure requirements and the cost for doing so would make the jobs unattractive. Look at Doctors. To get a US license they need to pass an exam, complete a residency, assuming they can get a match, and meet other requirements no matter how long, or well, they have practiced medicine. The result is very few foreign trained doctors actually are able to ultimately practice in the US.
I am presuming that the NTIS does not run with massive profits or have staff with obviously higher salaries than elsewhere. In that case the fees they receive would probably go to cover legitimate work - for example, the work of gathering these papers into one repository. Something being publicly available doesn't mean easily or obviously accessible, and gathering and systematizing it is value-adding legwork. Hence given a choice they would either stop doing that, or increase the price of the remaining 25% of papers massively. I don't have direct knowledge of the situation, but it seems like one where there is potential for unintended consequences.
Exactly. I do not know about NTIS, but there are fee for service gov't agencies that charge other agencies for what they do. They differ from appropriated agencies, who get a fixed amount of money from the budget, in that they need to make enough to cover costs. If they don't, they ultimately need to cut expenses like any private organization. In addition, other agencies do not have to use their services, they can buy them on the open market as well if the cost is less.
From Wikipedia: "Relief from judgment of a United States District Court is governed by Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.[1] The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit noted that a vacated judgment "place[s] the parties in the position of no trial having taken place at all; thus a vacated judgment is of no further force or effect."[2] Thus, vacated judgments have no precedential effect.[3]"
That seems to say that he is now in a legal position as if the trial had never taken place. So can he be taken to court in the proper place now?
INAL, but from my understanding of double jeopardy he could be retried. It appears to be a procedural error which would allow a retrial; in this case in the proper venue.
machines will get Linux to replace XP? I ask that because you will be the "guy who made us switch from MS" and take the rap for every problem that arises. Document mangled? Blame Linux (and your decision to switch). Missed email? That never happened in Outlook, must be Linux' (and the guy who made us switch) fault. I am not saying that such blame would be reasonable or even that you will get blamed, but there is more to switching than just finding a good distro. Ask yourself, "do I have the time and qualifications to take the issue start will arise, train staff, troubleshot problems, find replacement programs for all that we currently use, etc?"
How about this slogan: "The government doesn't give a crap about your well-being, and just wants you to obey. Throw off your Stockholm Syndrome and stop encouraging them to oppress you so we can continue to fleece you."
Aren't the camera videos automatically uploaded when the vehicle returns at the end of shift or when they return to the station? When I was on juries with video evidence they explained how the chain of custody was maintained so we would believe it to be an accurate depiction of events. The video files are kept for a while of evidence, so it would seem to a simple matter to see when an antenna was broken by seeing when the video degraded. As a bonus, some videos are really funny and would be you tube hits or make a great reality series. I mean, you'd think a police force would have at least one person who understands how to run an investigation. Unless, of course, you really don't want to pick a fight with your officers and their union and just want this to go away.
"There are about 10,000 complementary medicine products sold in Australia but most consumers are unaware they are not evaluated by the domestic medicines safety watchdog before they are allowed on the market."
Why on Earth would you ever submit a product to the medicines watchdog when it doesn't contain medicine? You might as well ask them to evaluate the effects of Heinz Tomato Soup as a medicinal recipe. It does bring feelings of well-being and contentment, you know.
You don't precisely because they aren't medicine. If they were, you'd have to prove that they actually have some effect; and if they don't you can't sell them; which breaks your profit model. Instead you let people believe they work and thus sell them. It's similar to the natural supplements market in the US. They can't prove they work and thus don't want the FDA to regulate them, ad fight regulation under the banner "The Government wants to take your vitamins," which is a better slogan then "The government wants to stop you from wasting money on products that don't do what you think they do."
This sort of reaction is nice, but don't forget that it needs gobs and gobs of energy to build those hydrocarbons. Don't forget that the energy you use up by burning that fuel (and some, because of the poor engine efficiency, reaction losses, etc.) had to be "put in" first. No free lunch here...
So yes, maybe a nuclear powered aircraft carrier could be producing jet fuel for its planes, but I don't see this supplanting the fossil fuels any time soon. It would be extremely expensive.
For uses where cost is a secondary consideration this technology would be useful. As for supplanting fossil fuels, this tech represents more of a price ceiling for fossil fuels because at some price pointy it becomes viable; just like any other fossil url sources that are expensive to extract from the ground.The real questions is how many kW are needed to produce fuels equivalent what can be refined from a barrel of crude oil. If say a 2gW nuclear plant could produce enough to be economically viable that would have significant political and economic impact world wide; especially on countries shoe economies are heavily dependent on energy exports.
What I'm wondering is, can they modify this process to produce edible hydrocarbons? Probably not something you'd enjoy eating, but the primary limitation on a nuclear submarine's endurance is the food supply for the crew.
While that is true, it really isn't an issue operationally. You can cram enough food onboard to last a long time, although towards the end powdered eggs get old. Given the space limitations inherent in a submarine it would make little sense to build in a food machine when the space could be better used to store real food.
Another requirement is non-obviousness - 35 USC 103. Under this requirement, you can show that a patent claim is obvious by showing that a combination of prior art references together teach each and every element in the claim and that they could be reasonably combined. So, if the Claim is A+B+C+D and one reference shows A+B and another shows C+D and they could be combined, that shows that the Claim is obvious.
So, for example, if you can find other references that show a hand-held device, continuous movement of an image, and unlocking a device, those combined with this may be enough to show that the Claim is obvious. That should be pretty easy to find.
Do they all have to be in the same medium? For example, could a sliding dead bolt plus sliding an icon on a hand held device be used to demonstrate obviousness?
Personally, while I realize the importance of the patent system I think it has gotten a bit out of hand. Rather than be a way to protect ideas they've become an offensive weapon against competitors; and while they may have always been used as such the current practice of adapting physical models to a digital world has made things worse, IMHO. I am not convinced that allowing patents on concepts that already exist and are in widespread use is a good idea.
Unfortunately I am at a loss as how to fix it. Perhaps rather than jury trials we should establish panels of legal and technical experts that would hear claims and the loser pays the fees; and if the patent holder loses the patent becomes invalid. Maybe adding a requirement that the patent actually be used in products or licensed within the first X years of issue or the patent becomes invalid. Beefing up the USPTO so they could do more in depth reviews would help as well.
Finally, I'm not sure juries could really understand the technical details of a patent to be able to assess prior art and obviousness. I say that because pif my experiences on a jury. We had a simple drunk driving case and the defense argued because roadside sobriety tests have a 30% false positive rate there was reasonable doubt as to guilt. Some of the jurors were buying that until I explained he failed 10 tests in a row and the odds of all of those being false positives were astoundingly low. Ultimately we convicted him; but if no one on the jury understood basic probability he may have walked. If jurors lack basic technical literacy I wonder how they can follow complex patent claims and be swayed by the best argument or emotions or who makes the most persuasive argument in the jury room.
Entry level Indian/Pakistani are still cheaper. What needs to happen is that H1B's should by law have 150% of the median income for the area for that type of job and an additional 50% invested in local education programs
In addition, H1B holders should be free to change companies after say six months without losing their visa. If companies are paying the prevailing wage then that should not cause problems for them; if they aren't then the free market will sort it out for them.
"Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the gap between computer programming skills and a willingness to work on the cheap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap."
It's far cheaper to rent an H1B programmer who you can dump easily once their skills are outdated than to hire someone , train them to keep skills current, and pay based on demand for those skills.
http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html - "Linux's Hit Men -... So far, none of the Free Software Foundation’s targets have decided it is bad for the world and gone to court. This despite the fact that the foundation has $750,000 in the bank and one lawyer who works for free, part time, when he’s not teaching classes at Columbia University. "
That eleven year old article is written from the POV that the FSF is the bad guy for enforcing the GPL and that somehow forcing companies to comply goes against the very idea of free open source software. Forbes has concluded it is bad to attempt to enforce copyrights and license agreements when it would force a large corporation to actually do what the license requires because it would open them up to competition. It complete ignores the option to not use GPL code; except for a passing note about some poor company that estimated it lost $10 million because it they licensed code and then scrapped the project and went to a BSD license when they didn't like the terms of the original license.
It's really simple. If you don't want to share don't use GPL software. Use a BSD style license or develop proprietary code if you are worried about cloners. If your code is so integral to your product that releasing it would allow cloners to capture much of the market you probably shouldn't use the GPL or rethink your product. Apple probably chose the BSD license, in part, because it allowed them to develop an OS that had a stable core without having to open up their OS to cloners. They can share what they feel is appropriate and maintain MacOS unique to Apple. No one is stopping other companies from doing this; and Forbes' claim the FSF is demanding companies "burn down [their] house, or at the very least share it with cloners" is pure FUD. CISCO seemed to survive OK by complying with the GPL after FSF' lawsuit.
Or do you just negotiate out trade in value first, separate from a purchase (and do dealers actually do that?) and then
negotiate the new car purchase price?
Yes, dealers will do that. I do what you suggest, except I negotiate the new car price first, since that is what eh dealer is interested in selling. I simply say no trade, and get a final number for the purchase.
After that, I bring up the trade in. Since I am near a CarMax I get a written quote for what they will pay; which is the floor for what I'll take from the dealer. If the dealer matches or exceeds that I take it; otherwise it is off to CarMax.
Negotiation shouldn't involve you hanging around the dealership for a minimum of 2 hours while the sales staff perform a dog and pony show to make you believe that you are getting a great discount off of a very inflated sticker price (value added services (undercoating) or accessories (a different color pin stripe)). After which you spend another 2 hours before you actually purchase the damn car and leave.
While I agree with you that negotiating a car can be a pain (unless you are an obstinate SOB that enjoys the back and forth) but you have one key weapon - getting up and starting to walk out. They know if you leave you won't be back. Once they have agreed on a price, and I agree that you need to negotiate a bottom line not a price plus, you have the upper hand. Remember, you , the dealer and the sales person are all advisories of each other. The dealer want stye car off the lot and earn a profit, although sometimes losing money on a car means a bigger kickback form the manufacturer. he salesperson needs to sell it above a set price to get a commission. You want to pay as little as possible. If you walk you keep your money and the other two get zero. Also, never combine a trade in with a purchase.
The state laws that prevent direct sales of automobiles should be criminal because it preserves the insane concept of "negotiating" the best price.
What is insane about negotiating a price? Just because a price is posted doesn't mean it cannot be discounted or that at the least you cannot ask for one. The posted price is simply the ceiling for the negotiation.
Netflix has a limited supply of physical disks which means some demand would not be satisfied and some fraction of them will purchase a disk or digital copy. So Netflix' disks do not really compete with purchases to a significant extent; especially for people who want to see it now. Virtual disks would essentially give them the ability to meet an unlimited demand and really impact disk sales.
Netflix can also control expenses with real disks since they purchase a fixed amount, and if they pay studios a cut per rental they can slow down how fast they send them out to limit the total cost per months. Virtual disks, however, have no cap unless Netflix imposes one and that would risk pissing off subscribers. A a series of popular movies in one month could theoretically result in Netflix paying more to studios than planned and cause profits to drop because expenses were higher than planned.
A whole lot of people get cuts from the distribution chain and removing DVDs potentially means they won't make as much money and studios may find movies to be profitable before they had planned resulting in paying money to some poor sucker who got a cut of the net instead of the gross. Hollywood accounting can drive distribution decisions.
"The Apollo artifacts left on the moon remain the property of NASA and by extension the US Government "
Or it could be considered an abandoned ship, so even without a letter of marque it could be considered a prize for the taker.
First of all, a prize applies to the capture of vessels from an enemy during conflict, so it would not be applicable here. As for salvage, state owned vessels are exempt from,maritime salvage conventions unless the state relinquishes its claim; which the US clearly has not. That exemption is why Spain was able to recover coins salvaged from a vessel that sank several centuries ago.
If the company you worked for is large enough to have HR. Even then when they are thinking of hiring you sometimes they ask specifically to speak with the project manager or your former boss. I have factual knowledge of this because in one of the companies I worked for we all worked in an open space office and the CEO quite often answered calls from other companies asking for details on some ex-employee. They were usually quite terse in their replies and only confirmed or dismissed previous work experience. However I remember on other more informal occasions someone in a different company asked my boss about someone and he spilled all the beans. People in the business know each other better than you would think they do.
I realize people know each other; having worked for quite some time I often tell people it is never a good idea to burn bridges because it really is a small world. I know many of the major players in my niche and we talk periodically even though we are competitors. My point was is most companies will do nothing but verify dates of employment to avoid potential lawsuits.
So try lying on your resume and see how far you will get with it. It is not a good idea. I do not lie to people by principle. If you think you can get away with it you probably can. For a while. Just do not count on it working forever. Your income depends on your reputation. If you get a bad reputation do not be surprised that people will stop wanting you to work for them.
I totally agree. Lying is a bad idea overall and certainly bad on a resume. I can deal with incompetence but can't abide lying.
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Bullshit. This wasn't a business decision about improving service. This was extortion. Comcast got all the upside (gained revenue from Netflix, plus reduced peering traffic) and Netflix almost broke even (loses payments to Comcast, saves on hosting costs elsewhere). Customers pay Comcast to be connected to the internet at a given speed. They deserve to get the speed they pay for, regardless of where the traffic comes from.
Actually, Comcast customers pay for a maximum speed with no assurances of actually speed. Yea, it's crap that that is the way it is, and I wish Google would wire my area so I could dump Comcast; but the reality is nothing in my deal with Comcast guarantees me any minimum throughput. Unfortunately, any alternatives such as Dish or Clear are worse.
with Comcast. This allows Netflix to stop paying others for connecting their services to Comcast's network and gives Netflix's servers a direct link to Comcast. Comcast says "Sure, but pay us to do that." Netflix weighs that cost vs current costs and the benefits to them of ensuring faster streaming and says "OK." Sure they would like to do it for free but ultimately decided paying was the best option. Comcast no doubt wants to find ways to make money as streaming becomes more popular than cable and this is one way to do it. Netflix needs to keep customers happy and Comcast has a way to do that, at a price; and as a result that make a deal. It's a simple business decision on both sides.
While it would be nice to have everything streamed at max speed the reality is Comcast (and others) need to manage the network for all users; and if Netflix is a major bandwidth user then throttling them makes sense; even if it means degraded performance. If this agreement allows fast streaming and has less of an impact on other users then the users benefit as well from the deal.
Ironically, NASA has almost certainly killed more people with the space shuttle than have died due to ignition switches.
I haven't the slightest idea why they're going to NASA of all places for an engineering audit, whenever there's a shuttle accident it's always transpired that NASA has intractable compliance and engineering culture problems, and lack the capacity to properly validate a tricycle for safety, let alone a mass-produced motor vehicle. Their incompetence has literally cost the US a manned spaceflight program.
They may be taking a page from Jack in the Box, when JITB hired NASA to completely overhaul their procedures after the salmonella deaths. Given NASA's record it's a miracle JITB burgers didn't all subsequently carry Ebola.
Just because your own organization is flawed doesn't mean you are incapable of identifying similar flaws in another. NASA has, as post-event investigations showed, a lot of people who are very capable of doing good engineering work as well as investigative work despite the culture. I would argue they could also be very good at finding similar issues in other companies and recommending fixes.
This isn't rocket science... why ask any scientist less qualified than an astronaut? GM built the lunar module, so NASA is very qualified to stall a car on the moon..
Ignoring the humor in your post and not being pedantic that the LEM and Rover were two different items, NASA has a lot of experience with finding out what lead to a bad decision that result in significant, or catastrophic, failures and accidents. More to the point, if they used what was learned from investigations into what lead up to Challenger and Columbia they could shed a lot of light on GM's corporate culture and decision making process.
Following French law, I am a fully qualified certified engineer. Membership in a professional organization is just a north american concept closer to mafia and group self-interest preservation than engineering.
There is a little more to it than that if you want to be able to put P.E. after your name. To become a Professional Engineer (P.E.) you need to get a degree from an accredited university, pass an exam to become an Engineer in Training, have four years of experience under a P.E., and then pass a another exam. You can join a professional organization, in most cases, merely by paying dues. However, you do not need to be a P.E. to call yourself an engineer, unless you are performing certain types of engineering work; and many degreed engineers never get a P.E. because they do not need it in their careers.
Engineer has become somewhat of a generic term that can be used in many ways and doesn't represent any assurance of any sort of education level or certification. To your original point, the engineering profession missed the chance to establish a protective and benevolent licensure organization like doctors and lawyers to help them maintain higher salaries and limit competition. Had the done so you'd probably see a lot less offshoring and H1B visa work because they would not meet licensure requirements and the cost for doing so would make the jobs unattractive. Look at Doctors. To get a US license they need to pass an exam, complete a residency, assuming they can get a match, and meet other requirements no matter how long, or well, they have practiced medicine. The result is very few foreign trained doctors actually are able to ultimately practice in the US.
I am presuming that the NTIS does not run with massive profits or have staff with obviously higher salaries than elsewhere. In that case the fees they receive would probably go to cover legitimate work - for example, the work of gathering these papers into one repository. Something being publicly available doesn't mean easily or obviously accessible, and gathering and systematizing it is value-adding legwork. Hence given a choice they would either stop doing that, or increase the price of the remaining 25% of papers massively. I don't have direct knowledge of the situation, but it seems like one where there is potential for unintended consequences.
Exactly. I do not know about NTIS, but there are fee for service gov't agencies that charge other agencies for what they do. They differ from appropriated agencies, who get a fixed amount of money from the budget, in that they need to make enough to cover costs. If they don't, they ultimately need to cut expenses like any private organization. In addition, other agencies do not have to use their services, they can buy them on the open market as well if the cost is less.
From Wikipedia: "Relief from judgment of a United States District Court is governed by Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.[1] The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit noted that a vacated judgment "place[s] the parties in the position of no trial having taken place at all; thus a vacated judgment is of no further force or effect."[2] Thus, vacated judgments have no precedential effect.[3]" That seems to say that he is now in a legal position as if the trial had never taken place. So can he be taken to court in the proper place now?
INAL, but from my understanding of double jeopardy he could be retried. It appears to be a procedural error which would allow a retrial; in this case in the proper venue.
machines will get Linux to replace XP? I ask that because you will be the "guy who made us switch from MS" and take the rap for every problem that arises. Document mangled? Blame Linux (and your decision to switch). Missed email? That never happened in Outlook, must be Linux' (and the guy who made us switch) fault. I am not saying that such blame would be reasonable or even that you will get blamed, but there is more to switching than just finding a good distro. Ask yourself, "do I have the time and qualifications to take the issue start will arise, train staff, troubleshot problems, find replacement programs for all that we currently use, etc?"
Identify gender as female. I wonder what a transgender coder is worth?
How about this slogan: "The government doesn't give a crap about your well-being, and just wants you to obey. Throw off your Stockholm Syndrome and stop encouraging them to oppress you so we can continue to fleece you."
There fixed it for you.
Aren't the camera videos automatically uploaded when the vehicle returns at the end of shift or when they return to the station? When I was on juries with video evidence they explained how the chain of custody was maintained so we would believe it to be an accurate depiction of events. The video files are kept for a while of evidence, so it would seem to a simple matter to see when an antenna was broken by seeing when the video degraded. As a bonus, some videos are really funny and would be you tube hits or make a great reality series. I mean, you'd think a police force would have at least one person who understands how to run an investigation. Unless, of course, you really don't want to pick a fight with your officers and their union and just want this to go away.
"There are about 10,000 complementary medicine products sold in Australia but most consumers are unaware they are not evaluated by the domestic medicines safety watchdog before they are allowed on the market." Why on Earth would you ever submit a product to the medicines watchdog when it doesn't contain medicine? You might as well ask them to evaluate the effects of Heinz Tomato Soup as a medicinal recipe. It does bring feelings of well-being and contentment, you know.
You don't precisely because they aren't medicine. If they were, you'd have to prove that they actually have some effect; and if they don't you can't sell them; which breaks your profit model. Instead you let people believe they work and thus sell them. It's similar to the natural supplements market in the US. They can't prove they work and thus don't want the FDA to regulate them, ad fight regulation under the banner "The Government wants to take your vitamins," which is a better slogan then "The government wants to stop you from wasting money on products that don't do what you think they do."
This sort of reaction is nice, but don't forget that it needs gobs and gobs of energy to build those hydrocarbons. Don't forget that the energy you use up by burning that fuel (and some, because of the poor engine efficiency, reaction losses, etc.) had to be "put in" first. No free lunch here ...
So yes, maybe a nuclear powered aircraft carrier could be producing jet fuel for its planes, but I don't see this supplanting the fossil fuels any time soon. It would be extremely expensive.
For uses where cost is a secondary consideration this technology would be useful. As for supplanting fossil fuels, this tech represents more of a price ceiling for fossil fuels because at some price pointy it becomes viable; just like any other fossil url sources that are expensive to extract from the ground.The real questions is how many kW are needed to produce fuels equivalent what can be refined from a barrel of crude oil. If say a 2gW nuclear plant could produce enough to be economically viable that would have significant political and economic impact world wide; especially on countries shoe economies are heavily dependent on energy exports.
What I'm wondering is, can they modify this process to produce edible hydrocarbons? Probably not something you'd enjoy eating, but the primary limitation on a nuclear submarine's endurance is the food supply for the crew.
While that is true, it really isn't an issue operationally. You can cram enough food onboard to last a long time, although towards the end powdered eggs get old. Given the space limitations inherent in a submarine it would make little sense to build in a food machine when the space could be better used to store real food.
Another requirement is non-obviousness - 35 USC 103. Under this requirement, you can show that a patent claim is obvious by showing that a combination of prior art references together teach each and every element in the claim and that they could be reasonably combined. So, if the Claim is A+B+C+D and one reference shows A+B and another shows C+D and they could be combined, that shows that the Claim is obvious.
So, for example, if you can find other references that show a hand-held device, continuous movement of an image, and unlocking a device, those combined with this may be enough to show that the Claim is obvious. That should be pretty easy to find.
Do they all have to be in the same medium? For example, could a sliding dead bolt plus sliding an icon on a hand held device be used to demonstrate obviousness?
Personally, while I realize the importance of the patent system I think it has gotten a bit out of hand. Rather than be a way to protect ideas they've become an offensive weapon against competitors; and while they may have always been used as such the current practice of adapting physical models to a digital world has made things worse, IMHO. I am not convinced that allowing patents on concepts that already exist and are in widespread use is a good idea.
Unfortunately I am at a loss as how to fix it. Perhaps rather than jury trials we should establish panels of legal and technical experts that would hear claims and the loser pays the fees; and if the patent holder loses the patent becomes invalid. Maybe adding a requirement that the patent actually be used in products or licensed within the first X years of issue or the patent becomes invalid. Beefing up the USPTO so they could do more in depth reviews would help as well.
Finally, I'm not sure juries could really understand the technical details of a patent to be able to assess prior art and obviousness. I say that because pif my experiences on a jury. We had a simple drunk driving case and the defense argued because roadside sobriety tests have a 30% false positive rate there was reasonable doubt as to guilt. Some of the jurors were buying that until I explained he failed 10 tests in a row and the odds of all of those being false positives were astoundingly low. Ultimately we convicted him; but if no one on the jury understood basic probability he may have walked. If jurors lack basic technical literacy I wonder how they can follow complex patent claims and be swayed by the best argument or emotions or who makes the most persuasive argument in the jury room.
Entry level Indian/Pakistani are still cheaper. What needs to happen is that H1B's should by law have 150% of the median income for the area for that type of job and an additional 50% invested in local education programs
In addition, H1B holders should be free to change companies after say six months without losing their visa. If companies are paying the prevailing wage then that should not cause problems for them; if they aren't then the free market will sort it out for them.
"Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the gap between computer programming skills and a willingness to work on the cheap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap."
It's far cheaper to rent an H1B programmer who you can dump easily once their skills are outdated than to hire someone , train them to keep skills current, and pay based on demand for those skills.
http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html - "Linux's Hit Men - ... So far, none of the Free Software Foundation’s targets have decided it is bad for the world and gone to court. This despite the fact that the foundation has $750,000 in the bank and one lawyer who works for free, part time, when he’s not teaching classes at Columbia University. "
That eleven year old article is written from the POV that the FSF is the bad guy for enforcing the GPL and that somehow forcing companies to comply goes against the very idea of free open source software. Forbes has concluded it is bad to attempt to enforce copyrights and license agreements when it would force a large corporation to actually do what the license requires because it would open them up to competition. It complete ignores the option to not use GPL code; except for a passing note about some poor company that estimated it lost $10 million because it they licensed code and then scrapped the project and went to a BSD license when they didn't like the terms of the original license.
It's really simple. If you don't want to share don't use GPL software. Use a BSD style license or develop proprietary code if you are worried about cloners. If your code is so integral to your product that releasing it would allow cloners to capture much of the market you probably shouldn't use the GPL or rethink your product. Apple probably chose the BSD license, in part, because it allowed them to develop an OS that had a stable core without having to open up their OS to cloners. They can share what they feel is appropriate and maintain MacOS unique to Apple. No one is stopping other companies from doing this; and Forbes' claim the FSF is demanding companies "burn down [their] house, or at the very least share it with cloners" is pure FUD. CISCO seemed to survive OK by complying with the GPL after FSF' lawsuit.
Or do you just negotiate out trade in value first, separate from a purchase (and do dealers actually do that?) and then negotiate the new car purchase price?
Yes, dealers will do that. I do what you suggest, except I negotiate the new car price first, since that is what eh dealer is interested in selling. I simply say no trade, and get a final number for the purchase.
After that, I bring up the trade in. Since I am near a CarMax I get a written quote for what they will pay; which is the floor for what I'll take from the dealer. If the dealer matches or exceeds that I take it; otherwise it is off to CarMax.
Noticed how negotiating was in quotes?
Negotiation shouldn't involve you hanging around the dealership for a minimum of 2 hours while the sales staff perform a dog and pony show to make you believe that you are getting a great discount off of a very inflated sticker price (value added services (undercoating) or accessories (a different color pin stripe)). After which you spend another 2 hours before you actually purchase the damn car and leave.
While I agree with you that negotiating a car can be a pain (unless you are an obstinate SOB that enjoys the back and forth) but you have one key weapon - getting up and starting to walk out. They know if you leave you won't be back. Once they have agreed on a price, and I agree that you need to negotiate a bottom line not a price plus, you have the upper hand. Remember, you , the dealer and the sales person are all advisories of each other. The dealer want stye car off the lot and earn a profit, although sometimes losing money on a car means a bigger kickback form the manufacturer. he salesperson needs to sell it above a set price to get a commission. You want to pay as little as possible. If you walk you keep your money and the other two get zero. Also, never combine a trade in with a purchase.
The state laws that prevent direct sales of automobiles should be criminal because it preserves the insane concept of "negotiating" the best price.
What is insane about negotiating a price? Just because a price is posted doesn't mean it cannot be discounted or that at the least you cannot ask for one. The posted price is simply the ceiling for the negotiation.
Netflix has a limited supply of physical disks which means some demand would not be satisfied and some fraction of them will purchase a disk or digital copy. So Netflix' disks do not really compete with purchases to a significant extent; especially for people who want to see it now. Virtual disks would essentially give them the ability to meet an unlimited demand and really impact disk sales.
Netflix can also control expenses with real disks since they purchase a fixed amount, and if they pay studios a cut per rental they can slow down how fast they send them out to limit the total cost per months. Virtual disks, however, have no cap unless Netflix imposes one and that would risk pissing off subscribers. A a series of popular movies in one month could theoretically result in Netflix paying more to studios than planned and cause profits to drop because expenses were higher than planned.
A whole lot of people get cuts from the distribution chain and removing DVDs potentially means they won't make as much money and studios may find movies to be profitable before they had planned resulting in paying money to some poor sucker who got a cut of the net instead of the gross. Hollywood accounting can drive distribution decisions.
"The Apollo artifacts left on the moon remain the property of NASA and by extension the US Government "
Or it could be considered an abandoned ship, so even without a letter of marque it could be considered a prize for the taker.
First of all, a prize applies to the capture of vessels from an enemy during conflict, so it would not be applicable here. As for salvage, state owned vessels are exempt from ,maritime salvage conventions unless the state relinquishes its claim; which the US clearly has not. That exemption is why Spain was able to recover coins salvaged from a vessel that sank several centuries ago.
If the company you worked for is large enough to have HR. Even then when they are thinking of hiring you sometimes they ask specifically to speak with the project manager or your former boss. I have factual knowledge of this because in one of the companies I worked for we all worked in an open space office and the CEO quite often answered calls from other companies asking for details on some ex-employee. They were usually quite terse in their replies and only confirmed or dismissed previous work experience. However I remember on other more informal occasions someone in a different company asked my boss about someone and he spilled all the beans. People in the business know each other better than you would think they do.
I realize people know each other; having worked for quite some time I often tell people it is never a good idea to burn bridges because it really is a small world. I know many of the major players in my niche and we talk periodically even though we are competitors. My point was is most companies will do nothing but verify dates of employment to avoid potential lawsuits.
So try lying on your resume and see how far you will get with it. It is not a good idea. I do not lie to people by principle. If you think you can get away with it you probably can. For a while. Just do not count on it working forever. Your income depends on your reputation. If you get a bad reputation do not be surprised that people will stop wanting you to work for them.
I totally agree. Lying is a bad idea overall and certainly bad on a resume. I can deal with incompetence but can't abide lying.
No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
And any smart one simply refers the request to HR, especially if they fired you. No one ants to open themsvez up to a lawsuit.