Interesting. I also note that some of the restrictions that had previously appeared are no longer there. It still doesn't change the facts that: 1) MS Windows wasn't commercially available in 1983, and 2) the term was already in generic use long before that. But you are right on your intital point, it's getting harder to prove as time goes by.
I'd brag about the fact that I can still easily prove these things because I have paper records (books, periodicals, etc.), but I somehow wonder if that wouldn't raise my risk of a house fire.
Other ideas that spring to mind include building a large ship in space and putting it into an eccentric orbit whose path comes close to Mars and Earth at different times; relatively small amounts of rocket fuel could be used for course adjustments, and then the bulk of the journey could be done ballistically, with shuttles delivering people/resources between the 'regular bus service' ship and the planets.
You might not save as much as you think; anyone that matched orbits with your bus could just coast along and end up the same place that they would have without the bus. Of course, if the bus had a gift shop...
Here is the trademark description: computer programs and manuals sold as a unit; namely, graphical operating environment programs for microcomputers.
That appears to come from TM#74090419, which was filed August 20th, 1990, not back in 1983. Do you happen to have the trademark number or text of the 1983 registration you are aluding to? The only ones I know of that go back that far are ones they bought (and thus don't count).
BTW, Smalltalk was a full system (you booted into it and dealt with it through a graphical user interface). It was the conceptual precursor to the Apple interface. You could run it as a program (much like today's dual boot systems) but it was meant to own the system.
This is actually up to debate...Windows was registered in 1983 when personal computers were still in infancy. You would have to provide concrete evidence that the term was common before then which is not easy.
Nuts. Look, for one example, at Smalltalk-80, published in 1980 and writen / developed in to 1970s. Lots of copies of the book still exist, as do conference proceedings, etc. It only seems hard to prove if the web is your only research tool. The term was in common use in the mainfraim / mini world for ten years before MS tried to trademark it for (IIRC) "an audio / visual device".
Note that even then they did not get an unqualified mark. What they got is basically "Microsoft Windows"
Clearly, something monumental must be going on in the world of computing for these technology titans simultaneously to discover something that is so profound and yet so hard to name.
Yeah. They all bet the farm on maintaining exponetial growth forever, without asking anyone who knew math if it was possible. Now they are tap dancing.
The sound you hear is just a high speed mixture of marketspeak, fear, and tap shoes.
There needs to be some kind of punitive damage for people who attempt to patent things that are not only covered by prior art, but are in the Public Domain, for over 20 years before the application.
Heck, how about nicking the *^a%$# patent examiner who gave them the patent!? AFAIK, they didn't just aply for the patent, they actually got it. If you ask me, somebody at the PTO should be contributing to the unemployment statistics for that.
Funding for welfare, etc, isn't designed to wipe out poverty or mitigate its effects. It's designed to perpetuate poverty, because a permanent underclass of non-producing food tubes dependent upon the government to steal wealth from the producing food-tubes can be relied upon to always support the government.
Alas, no mod points at the moment. The parent post is both ontopic and insightful. While opponents of the space program in general (or the present poposal in specific) may object that it is nothing more than a cynical attempt to swing votes at the taxpayer's expense (heck, I think that and I'm strongly in favour of the space program), it is important to remember that the same is true of other programs, such as wellfare and the millitary.
I have been a subscriber to MIT TR for several years, and in the last year I have considered dumping it for this very reason. The magazine used to be great, but it has degenerate into ad after ad after ad, ad nauseum, with fluffy pseudo-technical reporting.
It's gotten to the point where my wife (the brass rat of the family) get a oh-no-here-it-comes look when she sees me reading her MIT TR.
I wish Caltech would publish a magazine.
*smile* I gather they do, but you have to solve a truely wicked stack to subscribe.
That's why I'll continue to encrypt all important (and unimportant!) conversations. For email I always use GPG (regardless of how important the message is).
-- Begin cyphertext --
rREd hg uyyuyt 56dgvjk 88 yfd rt jgjhgyu i
88 g7jg kjh 9h hlkjghf y6 iu o i9uh fxdtet
hg 66f ibhhkh jtydrs jhb,jbn ui nute45v q
-- End cyphertext --
I'm only familiar with the term "orthogonal" in a math context. What do you mean by the sentence:
"If they represented themselves as police officers then they are guilty of a criminal offense, which is completely orthogonal to the confiscation."
It's the same sense of the word. Consider representing your self as a police officer as a vector (call it RPO) of social/ethical concerns, and likewise confiscation (call it CONF). He's saying that RPO dot CONF equals zero; in other words, that issues raised by one are not raised by the other or--to the extent that they are--the ways in which they are raised cancel out overall.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. A less formal way of looking at it: if you were to change the extent to which they were guilty of either PRO or CONF, the change would have no effect on the magnitude of their guilt with regard to the other offense.
Agreed--that sort of thinking is part of what I call "doing your math/homework". Another contengency that may arise: you may have a personal emergency and need to reduce your holdings. Or (if you are using other stock as part of your margin) they might fall in value. And so forth. But all of these things are understandable and (in many cases) quantifiable; you can (and should) plan your response, hedge, etc. If you do it correctly, long term (value based) is in general just as viable as short term (time-the-market) shorting. And, IMHO, much less risky.
You can't just short a stock and ride it indefinitely, no matter how out of the money your short is until it comes back into the money.
Sure you can, if you do your math up front and make sure you have plenty of room to avoid margin calls. I've held shorts for over a year (for tax reasons) with no problems. But that's because I researched the margin rules and figured out my worst to best case strategies before I ever placed an order.
Making money on the collapse of a bubble is all about timing.
No, it's all about doing the math. You're almost always better off taking the time to do your homework rather than trying to time the market, with the possible exception of no-brainer arbitrage oportunities.
But I recall using the term back in the late 1980s...the sense then was not a synonym for automatically, per se, but rather something that was seamlessly obvious and straightforward to the end-user, courtesy of some very nontrivial work behind the scenes.
I recall it from design meetings where I worked circa 1978 as a rough equivalent of "and then a rather minor miracle occurs", with the connotation of "I won't say it's trivial if you won't say it's impossible."
Things that happened "automagically" from the larger design picture generally required a week or so of head pounding at the-devil-is-in-the-details level; I know, because while I was there the term was also generally shorthand for "we don't know exactly how this will work but we plan to assign it to Markus."
This was my favourite idea for what to do with the Iridium nodes: send up rigs to boost them into a slow (or at least low delta V/sec) orbit to Mars, to set up a communications backbone there. They were pretty much what you'd want for the job, with plenty of capacity to spare.
As a semi-aside, I get irked by the kneejerk reaction to de-orbit everything, when getting it up there is 90% or so of the cost. If there was ever an environment were recycling made sense...
Micro-computers (to use one of his examples) weren't cheaper (for the power), more durable, or faster than big iron. But they came in smaller increments and could serve markets that the big players couldn't...
Simple. The software invents the detail data when downloaded by independent counters. Voters don't bother to verify their votes against the independent counters.
Nuts. They're both looking at the same thing. Even if there were some way to (say) modify the cdrom or cdrom image that they give to person A vs. person B in a way that would make them see something that gave a false-yet-consistent picture of the outcome, it would be trivial for A and B to compare the CDs and see that they were different. Especially when you consider that A and B might both be skeptics working together to catch cheats.
Even if there is a seperate mechanism (as you suggest) to verify independent votes vs. "download" the whole data set, any reasonable person doing a recount in such a system would at least spot check it (if not exhaustively check it) against the individual vote validation system.
Slashdot Mirror
We use separate pipes for drinking water and sewage.
We use separate bags for produce and cleaning suplies.
We have separate tanks for fuel and coolant.
Who on earth thinks that sending power and data on the same lines is a Good Idea?
-- MarkusQ
Reading, when I know I should be playing a videogame?
-- MarkusQ
Was it always this fucked up and we just didn't have pervasive media and communications to know about it?
Yes.
Next question?
-- MarkusQ
Interesting. I also note that some of the restrictions that had previously appeared are no longer there. It still doesn't change the facts that: 1) MS Windows wasn't commercially available in 1983, and 2) the term was already in generic use long before that. But you are right on your intital point, it's getting harder to prove as time goes by.
I'd brag about the fact that I can still easily prove these things because I have paper records (books, periodicals, etc.), but I somehow wonder if that wouldn't raise my risk of a house fire.
-- MarkusQ
Other ideas that spring to mind include building a large ship in space and putting it into an eccentric orbit whose path comes close to Mars and Earth at different times; relatively small amounts of rocket fuel could be used for course adjustments, and then the bulk of the journey could be done ballistically, with shuttles delivering people/resources between the 'regular bus service' ship and the planets.
You might not save as much as you think; anyone that matched orbits with your bus could just coast along and end up the same place that they would have without the bus. Of course, if the bus had a gift shop...
-- MarkusQ
Here is the trademark description: computer programs and manuals sold as a unit; namely, graphical operating environment programs for microcomputers.
That appears to come from TM#74090419, which was filed August 20th, 1990, not back in 1983. Do you happen to have the trademark number or text of the 1983 registration you are aluding to? The only ones I know of that go back that far are ones they bought (and thus don't count).
BTW, Smalltalk was a full system (you booted into it and dealt with it through a graphical user interface). It was the conceptual precursor to the Apple interface. You could run it as a program (much like today's dual boot systems) but it was meant to own the system.
-- MarkusQ
This is actually up to debate...Windows was registered in 1983 when personal computers were still in infancy. You would have to provide concrete evidence that the term was common before then which is not easy.
Nuts. Look, for one example, at Smalltalk-80, published in 1980 and writen / developed in to 1970s. Lots of copies of the book still exist, as do conference proceedings, etc. It only seems hard to prove if the web is your only research tool. The term was in common use in the mainfraim / mini world for ten years before MS tried to trademark it for (IIRC) "an audio / visual device".
Note that even then they did not get an unqualified mark. What they got is basically "Microsoft Windows"
-- MarkusQ
Clearly, something monumental must be going on in the world of computing for these technology titans simultaneously to discover something that is so profound and yet so hard to name.
Yeah. They all bet the farm on maintaining exponetial growth forever, without asking anyone who knew math if it was possible. Now they are tap dancing.
The sound you hear is just a high speed mixture of marketspeak, fear, and tap shoes.
-- MarkusQ
There needs to be some kind of punitive damage for people who attempt to patent things that are not only covered by prior art, but are in the Public Domain, for over 20 years before the application.
Heck, how about nicking the *^a%$# patent examiner who gave them the patent!? AFAIK, they didn't just aply for the patent, they actually got it. If you ask me, somebody at the PTO should be contributing to the unemployment statistics for that.
-- MarkusQ
Funding for welfare, etc, isn't designed to wipe out poverty or mitigate its effects. It's designed to perpetuate poverty, because a permanent underclass of non-producing food tubes dependent upon the government to steal wealth from the producing food-tubes can be relied upon to always support the government.
Alas, no mod points at the moment. The parent post is both ontopic and insightful. While opponents of the space program in general (or the present poposal in specific) may object that it is nothing more than a cynical attempt to swing votes at the taxpayer's expense (heck, I think that and I'm strongly in favour of the space program), it is important to remember that the same is true of other programs, such as wellfare and the millitary.
-- MarkusQ
I find this deeply disturbing. Stupidity does not simply go away just like that.
Do a diff on the staffs. It looks like (to a first aproximation) {old Novell} - {new Novell} -> {new SCO}.
It didn't go away, it just changed its name, which most stupidity does frequently anyway as a simple survival ploy.
-- MarkusQ
It's gotten to the point where my wife (the brass rat of the family) get a oh-no-here-it-comes look when she sees me reading her MIT TR.
*smile* I gather they do, but you have to solve a truely wicked stack to subscribe.-- MarkusQ
You'll spend hours just trying to figure out how the hell everything works.
Uh, they use flash? Why should that take hours to figure out?
-- MarkusQ
That's why I'll continue to encrypt all important (and unimportant!) conversations. For email I always use GPG (regardless of how important the message is).
-- Begin cyphertext -- ,jbn ui nute45v q
rREd hg uyyuyt 56dgvjk 88 yfd rt jgjhgyu i
88 g7jg kjh 9h hlkjghf y6 iu o i9uh fxdtet
hg 66f ibhhkh jtydrs jhb
-- End cyphertext --
-- MarkusQ
I'm only familiar with the term "orthogonal" in a math context. What do you mean by the sentence:
"If they represented themselves as police officers then they are guilty of a criminal offense, which is completely orthogonal to the confiscation."
It's the same sense of the word. Consider representing your self as a police officer as a vector (call it RPO) of social/ethical concerns, and likewise confiscation (call it CONF). He's saying that RPO dot CONF equals zero; in other words, that issues raised by one are not raised by the other or--to the extent that they are--the ways in which they are raised cancel out overall.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. A less formal way of looking at it: if you were to change the extent to which they were guilty of either PRO or CONF, the change would have no effect on the magnitude of their guilt with regard to the other offense.
The important thing is how you lable the CD once you've made it. I would recommend something like: Then you won't have to worry (if you leave it laying around) that someone might stick it in their system not knowing what it was.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you include X you may want to note that as well.
From the article:
pLostBlock?!? This almost sounds as if it's designed to leak!
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Seriously, I think this is a fine idea, if not particularly earth shaking. But the typo was too ironic not to point out.
Later on in January it will be possible to submit entries using a web form.
Assuming, of course, that they don't have a lameness filter.
-- MarkusQ
Agreed--that sort of thinking is part of what I call "doing your math/homework". Another contengency that may arise: you may have a personal emergency and need to reduce your holdings. Or (if you are using other stock as part of your margin) they might fall in value. And so forth. But all of these things are understandable and (in many cases) quantifiable; you can (and should) plan your response, hedge, etc. If you do it correctly, long term (value based) is in general just as viable as short term (time-the-market) shorting. And, IMHO, much less risky.
-- MarkusQ
You can't just short a stock and ride it indefinitely, no matter how out of the money your short is until it comes back into the money.
Sure you can, if you do your math up front and make sure you have plenty of room to avoid margin calls. I've held shorts for over a year (for tax reasons) with no problems. But that's because I researched the margin rules and figured out my worst to best case strategies before I ever placed an order.
Making money on the collapse of a bubble is all about timing.
No, it's all about doing the math. You're almost always better off taking the time to do your homework rather than trying to time the market, with the possible exception of no-brainer arbitrage oportunities.
-- MarkusQ
It's not a meaninglessly cute phrase after all -- it's an honest to goodness cliche!
*laugh* I'll buy that (provided of course that it's lost the connotation of being something I'll personally get stuck implementing).
-- MarkusQ
But I recall using the term back in the late 1980s...the sense then was not a synonym for automatically, per se, but rather something that was seamlessly obvious and straightforward to the end-user, courtesy of some very nontrivial work behind the scenes.
I recall it from design meetings where I worked circa 1978 as a rough equivalent of "and then a rather minor miracle occurs", with the connotation of "I won't say it's trivial if you won't say it's impossible."
Things that happened "automagically" from the larger design picture generally required a week or so of head pounding at the-devil-is-in-the-details level; I know, because while I was there the term was also generally shorthand for "we don't know exactly how this will work but we plan to assign it to Markus."
-- MarkusQ
This was my favourite idea for what to do with the Iridium nodes: send up rigs to boost them into a slow (or at least low delta V/sec) orbit to Mars, to set up a communications backbone there. They were pretty much what you'd want for the job, with plenty of capacity to spare.
As a semi-aside, I get irked by the kneejerk reaction to de-orbit everything, when getting it up there is 90% or so of the cost. If there was ever an environment were recycling made sense...
-- MarkusQ
To capture the market, this stuff has to either be:
1. Cheaper than flash or HDs.
2. More durable than flash or HDs (or even CD/DVDs)
3. Be faster than flash/HDs/optical media.
Nope. Read The innovator's dilemma. All it has to do is:
- Have room for improvement
- Serve a niche market that the others can't
- Improve over time into something they aren't
Micro-computers (to use one of his examples) weren't cheaper (for the power), more durable, or faster than big iron. But they came in smaller increments and could serve markets that the big players couldn't...-- MarkusQ
Simple. The software invents the detail data when downloaded by independent counters. Voters don't bother to verify their votes against the independent counters.
Nuts. They're both looking at the same thing. Even if there were some way to (say) modify the cdrom or cdrom image that they give to person A vs. person B in a way that would make them see something that gave a false-yet-consistent picture of the outcome, it would be trivial for A and B to compare the CDs and see that they were different. Especially when you consider that A and B might both be skeptics working together to catch cheats.
Even if there is a seperate mechanism (as you suggest) to verify independent votes vs. "download" the whole data set, any reasonable person doing a recount in such a system would at least spot check it (if not exhaustively check it) against the individual vote validation system.
-- MarkusQ