It depends on the product. How long is the reasonable life of a washing machine for instance? Do you consider that a consumer product? If the bowl has a seal that lasts 18 months and then fails, how could you be expected to spot that in a few months?
How about a battery that runs out of cycles in normal use after 15 months?
But there isn't a public benefit to the patent system.
There is---or was. Without patents, companies would guard inventions as trade secrets. An example is the obstetric forceps. Kept as a trade secret by one family. If more widely known, many women would not have died in childbirth.
In order to encourage people to release such knowledge into the public domain, patents were developed. The contract is that society grants protection for a limited time and in the end gets the benefit.
If you are not willing to abide by that contract, feel free to keep your invention a secret---at least until someone else invents something similar.
No, film is extremely valuable because there are markets that digital CANNOT operate in at present and are unlikely to operate in in the foreseeable future. Kodak should have worked more in those niches and less in the trashy markets.
But that doomed Kodak to being at best a niche player, and almost certainly a much smaller company.
It was foreseeable (if not at that stage inevitable) that film was doomed in the 1970s when astronomers abandoned film for CCDs.
Once the consumer digital camera was invented (1991, by Kodak!), the doom of film was inevitable. By the mid 1990s, with the rise of consumer grade digital cameras, no reasonable member of the industry could have doubted that film was a niche.
Kodak had somewhere between 20 and 40 years to react. They failed.
I suggest that what they should have done is acknowledge the problem and do something about it. As far as I can see though, they just never admitted that there was a problem.
In my personal experience: I once listened to a not very good blues band played through a cheap stereo. It sounded sort of muffled, but marginally OK. Then I heard it on a decent stereo. It sounded worse. As in, it sounded really bad. My mind had been cleaning up the fuzzy bits, but when I was forced to hear them clearly, it sounded really bad. It's only one data point I admit. It may just be that your $150 speakers are not bad enough to exhibit the problem:)
1. Is the quality of the source material good enough to make a difference? Crap quality audio will sound like crap on any speakers, no matter how expensive.
Actually, crap audio sounds worse on good speakers. The cheap speakers act as a filter, plus the ear/mind compensates so you clean up the sound. It's 'good enough'. Try playing the audio through a good, acoustically neutral sound system and you hear all the crap in the source, and it sounds worse. Of course, if the sound was good at source, playing through a decent system is like a weight got lifted off your head.
As for cables, the only real difference between cheap/expensive cables is how long they last. A cheap cable will most likely not put up with much abuse where as an expensive cable is more robust.
Just what sort of abuse do you inflict on your cables? Mine just sit there passively. I'll grant you the point for mobile cables like headphones, but for speaker cables?
Besides, the idea of patents is to foster the spread of ideas and to reward inventors for their efforts.
Not quite. The idea of patents (and copyright) is just to foster the spread of ideas. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the language of the U.S. Constitution. 'by rewarding inventors' is the implementation detail. The first principle however is the wish to promote the progress of science and useful arts. That is the reason---the only reason---that clause exists.
To put it another way: the clause does not say "In order to reward artists and inventors, a new artificial property right is created..."
1900 is not 1820. 1900 is about two generations later. By 1900 the law had been massively reformed, and policemen had been introduced. The 'Peelers'. With a police presence---the friendly 'Bobby', greater prosperity and reform of many abuses (the sort of thing that Dickens wrote about---and helped change) the crime rate dropped.
If you read on, you'll see that they will in fact be allocating a/64 for the benefit of residential gateways. I.e., this is an interim solution.
Read the statement carefully "For directly connected CPE, we will allocate an individual IPv6 address". I suspect that if you have a switch, and multiple devices behind that, that EACH of them will be given their own address.
What is happening is this: They are using DHCP, in fact, they are insisting upon it. When your device asks for an IP address, it wants just that, an IP address. So, Comcast do that for you. They hand out an IP address. Your device asked for an address---it got one. Start communicating and be happy. Now, if you have multiple devices, Comcast needs to hand out another address to each one. The idea is to support gateways, where they hand out an address block and the gateway then supports DHCP (or SLAAC) and hands out individual addresses to the devices. Makes the ISP's life simpler. Again, for "directly connected CPE", where the customer doesn't have a gateway, the CPE wants just a single address.
To put it another way: Comcast are supporting IPv6. They'll hand out individual IP addresses themselves from the outset, but they won't have support for prefix delegation to gateways until later.
Also, economically, you can only charge a premium for a scarce resource if it is indeed scarce. IPv6 addresses are not a scarce resource.
Handing out a single IPv4 address only works in practice because customers can use IPv4 NAT (NAT44). IPv6 NAT (NAT66) does not exist.
Residential gateways (cf standard TR-124 of Oct 2010) as now being built assume an address block, not a single address.
It would cost the ISPs more to do this than to do the sane, obvious and standards compliant thing, for no likelihood of extra revenue
That's theory...what about practice?
If you hang out on the IETF v6ops list, which representatives of all the world's major ISPs do, you will see that none of them have any intention of offering customers a single/128.
By 1842, the failure of the Chancery courts, wherein the substance of the litigants was entirely consumed by the legal system was recognized, and the system began to be reformed. The situation was dramatized by Charles Dickens in "Bleak House"
Is it not a good thing that such abuses have been eliminated in these modern times?
The summary is typically misleading. She was not arrested for refusing to let her children be scanned. She was arrested for making a disturbance. Disturbing the peace, they call it.
They call it. Exactly, what they charge you with they can't think of anything else. Not being sufficiently docile in the face of authority? That'd be disturbing the peace.
As Harry Harrison put it:
[Petty Chief Office Deathwish Drang] stopped before Bill, who was not shaking quite as much as the others, and scowled. “I don't like your face. One month of Sunday KP.” “Sir” “And a second month—for talking back.”
It's like saying someone was arrested for driving a car when the truth was he was driving a stolen car at 100MPH down a residential street. It is more sensational to read about the guy who was arrested for no apparent reason than to actually say what the reason was.
Except that from TFA there is no way to tell how much of a disturbance she made. It may have been no more than groveling insufficiently in the face of authority, or it may have been substantial. From TFA
Andrea Fornella Abbott yelled and swore at Transportation Security Administration agents
. "YOU DAMN WELL LEAVE HER ALONE" would meet that statement.
Note, I have no more idea than you what she actually did or said, but I suggest that in effect she was arrested for refusing to let her children be scanned---it's just that they actually charged her with something else because that was the best they could come up with.
Microsoft had no real market share with Word on DOS. They killed MultiPlan and then used the Mac as their development platform. Excel was originally an Mac program.
As were Word and PowerPoint.
MS had a fine DOS WP called Word. When they made a WP for the Mac, they called it "Word", but it had nothing else in common with Word for DOS---just the name. It didn't have the same feature set, and it didn't even work (much) alike, mainly because the Mac version was WIMP and the DOS version was text.
When MS decided they needed a WP for Windows, they ported the Mac version of Word (using an emulation layer) rather than adding WIMP features to the DOS version. Subsequently, they converted Word to a Windows native version---and then back-ported that to Mac---with a Windows emulation layer---as the much (and justly) reviled Word 6.0 for Mac.
And that statement was from Nintendo? If not, why should I have to correct anything when you have no actual proof.
I thought you might be willing and able to help with some accurate information. The link I found was http://askville.amazon.com/operating-system-Wii-run/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=371492 which stated "Wii uses a proprietary form of Linux kernel." However, I have done some more research and the best guess so far seems to be (entering "wii operating system", Google responds...) "Best guess for Wii Operating System is Nintendo Wii
Mentioned on at least 5 websites including gameboy-advance.net, ehow.com and answers.com"
A quick Google turned up a statement that it was Linux based. Re-checking I'm no longer sure I trust the authority of that quote. I'm more than happy to be corrected if you can enlighten me.
But the XBOX360 does not dominate games consoles either. The winner in consoles is probably Wii at the moment, which is Linux based. In portable systems it might be iPod Touch/iPhone [iOS], or PSP[proprietary] or GBA[?, not Linux AFAIK]---but it is certainly not Windows.
The desktop does not matter it is only a device on which to run a web browser. The average user spends most of his online time running pages served from linux. Then he goes and sits in front of his tv powered by linux, plays with his phone powered by linux, scrolling through his dvr running linux.
The average user spends most of her [females now outnumber male Internet users] online time running pages served from linux [connected via cable or DSL modem using VxWorks, on core Internet infrastructure using IOS or FreeBSD]. Then she goes and sits in front of her tv powered by linux, plays with her phone powered by Nokia OS [most phones aren't smart phones], scrolling through her dvr running linux. She also listens to her iPod (running iOS) while driving a car containing many embedded microprocessors, which don't run Linux. Nor do the processors in her air conditioner, washing machine, microwave etc..
My point being that computers are now ubiquitous, and most of them don't run Windows, or Linux.
And the last time they did this successfully was...?
By my reckoning, they did it with OS, Office and almost Servers. Almost because their servers never quite achieved the absolute dominance that OS and Office did.
None of the others have dominated. None of the others have made any money. If, as a company, you measure success financially, then I can't think of anything else that they've done that has repaid the initial investment; certainly nothing like the OS/Office cash cow.
In the 11 years since Ballmer became CEO, MSFT has declined from $56 (Jan 14 2000) to $25 (today); over the last 10 years the NASDAQ rose 30%---and MSFT fell 25%. Based on the last ten years of Microsoft's history then, your justification for predicting that they will dominate is...?
Slashdot Mirror
How about a battery that runs out of cycles in normal use after 15 months?
The wenches, rum and singing sound fun, however, as do the cool hats.
Abstain from wine, women, and song; mostly song.
Some other 'forgotten' authors (Seriously, Cherryh and Pohl 'forgotten'?) not mentioned.
Yes, but not the upholstery. http://xkcd.com/508/</obxkcd>
But there isn't a public benefit to the patent system.
There is---or was. Without patents, companies would guard inventions as trade secrets. An example is the obstetric forceps. Kept as a trade secret by one family. If more widely known, many women would not have died in childbirth.
In order to encourage people to release such knowledge into the public domain, patents were developed. The contract is that society grants protection for a limited time and in the end gets the benefit.
If you are not willing to abide by that contract, feel free to keep your invention a secret---at least until someone else invents something similar.
No, film is extremely valuable because there are markets that digital CANNOT operate in at present and are unlikely to operate in in the foreseeable future. Kodak should have worked more in those niches and less in the trashy markets.
But that doomed Kodak to being at best a niche player, and almost certainly a much smaller company.
It was foreseeable (if not at that stage inevitable) that film was doomed in the 1970s when astronomers abandoned film for CCDs.
Once the consumer digital camera was invented (1991, by Kodak!), the doom of film was inevitable. By the mid 1990s, with the rise of consumer grade digital cameras, no reasonable member of the industry could have doubted that film was a niche.
Kodak had somewhere between 20 and 40 years to react. They failed.
I suggest that what they should have done is acknowledge the problem and do something about it. As far as I can see though, they just never admitted that there was a problem.
In my personal experience: I once listened to a not very good blues band played through a cheap stereo. It sounded sort of muffled, but marginally OK. Then I heard it on a decent stereo. It sounded worse. As in, it sounded really bad. My mind had been cleaning up the fuzzy bits, but when I was forced to hear them clearly, it sounded really bad. It's only one data point I admit. It may just be that your $150 speakers are not bad enough to exhibit the problem :)
1. Is the quality of the source material good enough to make a difference? Crap quality audio will sound like crap on any speakers, no matter how expensive.
Actually, crap audio sounds worse on good speakers. The cheap speakers act as a filter, plus the ear/mind compensates so you clean up the sound. It's 'good enough'. Try playing the audio through a good, acoustically neutral sound system and you hear all the crap in the source, and it sounds worse. Of course, if the sound was good at source, playing through a decent system is like a weight got lifted off your head.
As for cables, the only real difference between cheap/expensive cables is how long they last. A cheap cable will most likely not put up with much abuse where as an expensive cable is more robust.
Just what sort of abuse do you inflict on your cables? Mine just sit there passively. I'll grant you the point for mobile cables like headphones, but for speaker cables?
Besides, the idea of patents is to foster the spread of ideas and to reward inventors for their efforts.
Not quite. The idea of patents (and copyright) is just to foster the spread of ideas. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the language of the U.S. Constitution. 'by rewarding inventors' is the implementation detail. The first principle however is the wish to promote the progress of science and useful arts. That is the reason---the only reason---that clause exists.
To put it another way: the clause does not say "In order to reward artists and inventors, a new artificial property right is created..."
1900 is not 1820. 1900 is about two generations later. By 1900 the law had been massively reformed, and policemen had been introduced. The 'Peelers'. With a police presence---the friendly 'Bobby', greater prosperity and reform of many abuses (the sort of thing that Dickens wrote about---and helped change) the crime rate dropped.
And the prisons were indeed terrible places
This did not make for a safer, more law-abiding society.
Seems to me that being a cannibal during a pandemic is likely to be a short term advantage. A very short term advantage.
Derek, or Clive, is that you?
Read the statement carefully "For directly connected CPE, we will allocate an individual IPv6 address". I suspect that if you have a switch, and multiple devices behind that, that EACH of them will be given their own address.
What is happening is this: They are using DHCP, in fact, they are insisting upon it. When your device asks for an IP address, it wants just that, an IP address. So, Comcast do that for you. They hand out an IP address. Your device asked for an address---it got one. Start communicating and be happy. Now, if you have multiple devices, Comcast needs to hand out another address to each one. The idea is to support gateways, where they hand out an address block and the gateway then supports DHCP (or SLAAC) and hands out individual addresses to the devices. Makes the ISP's life simpler. Again, for "directly connected CPE", where the customer doesn't have a gateway, the CPE wants just a single address.
To put it another way: Comcast are supporting IPv6. They'll hand out individual IP addresses themselves from the outset, but they won't have support for prefix delegation to gateways until later.
Can you think of any reason they can't implement exactly the same limits with IPv6 that they currently have with IPv4?
ISPs will give you an address block, not just one address. IPv4/32 --> IPv6/56 (most likely). What you won't get is a /128. And as for why? Well...
That's theory...what about practice?
If you hang out on the IETF v6ops list, which representatives of all the world's major ISPs do, you will see that none of them have any intention of offering customers a single /128.
Is it not a good thing that such abuses have been eliminated in these modern times?
The summary is typically misleading. She was not arrested for refusing to let her children be scanned. She was arrested for making a disturbance. Disturbing the peace, they call it.
They call it. Exactly, what they charge you with they can't think of anything else. Not being sufficiently docile in the face of authority? That'd be disturbing the peace.
As Harry Harrison put it:
It's like saying someone was arrested for driving a car when the truth was he was driving a stolen car at 100MPH down a residential street. It is more sensational to read about the guy who was arrested for no apparent reason than to actually say what the reason was.
Except that from TFA there is no way to tell how much of a disturbance she made. It may have been no more than groveling insufficiently in the face of authority, or it may have been substantial. From TFA
Andrea Fornella Abbott yelled and swore at Transportation Security Administration agents
. "YOU DAMN WELL LEAVE HER ALONE" would meet that statement.
Note, I have no more idea than you what she actually did or said, but I suggest that in effect she was arrested for refusing to let her children be scanned---it's just that they actually charged her with something else because that was the best they could come up with.
Microsoft had no real market share with Word on DOS. They killed MultiPlan and then used the Mac as their development platform. Excel was originally an Mac program.
As were Word and PowerPoint.
MS had a fine DOS WP called Word. When they made a WP for the Mac, they called it "Word", but it had nothing else in common with Word for DOS---just the name. It didn't have the same feature set, and it didn't even work (much) alike, mainly because the Mac version was WIMP and the DOS version was text.
When MS decided they needed a WP for Windows, they ported the Mac version of Word (using an emulation layer) rather than adding WIMP features to the DOS version. Subsequently, they converted Word to a Windows native version---and then back-ported that to Mac---with a Windows emulation layer---as the much (and justly) reviled Word 6.0 for Mac.
PowerPoint was a Mac program that MS liked so much, they bought the company
I have to retract that. A quick search turned up http://askville.amazon.com/operating-system-Wii-run/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=371492 which is what I based my comment on. More diligent searching seems to indicate that it is proprietary. My apologies.
And that statement was from Nintendo? If not, why should I have to correct anything when you have no actual proof.
I thought you might be willing and able to help with some accurate information. The link I found was http://askville.amazon.com/operating-system-Wii-run/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=371492 which stated "Wii uses a proprietary form of Linux kernel." However, I have done some more research and the best guess so far seems to be (entering "wii operating system", Google responds...) "Best guess for Wii Operating System is Nintendo Wii Mentioned on at least 5 websites including gameboy-advance.net, ehow.com and answers.com"
A quick Google turned up a statement that it was Linux based. Re-checking I'm no longer sure I trust the authority of that quote. I'm more than happy to be corrected if you can enlighten me.
I'd say that's significant.
But the XBOX360 does not dominate games consoles either. The winner in consoles is probably Wii at the moment, which is Linux based. In portable systems it might be iPod Touch/iPhone [iOS], or PSP[proprietary] or GBA[?, not Linux AFAIK]---but it is certainly not Windows.
The desktop does not matter it is only a device on which to run a web browser. The average user spends most of his online time running pages served from linux. Then he goes and sits in front of his tv powered by linux, plays with his phone powered by linux, scrolling through his dvr running linux.
The average user spends most of her [females now outnumber male Internet users] online time running pages served from linux [connected via cable or DSL modem using VxWorks, on core Internet infrastructure using IOS or FreeBSD]. Then she goes and sits in front of her tv powered by linux, plays with her phone powered by Nokia OS [most phones aren't smart phones], scrolling through her dvr running linux. She also listens to her iPod (running iOS) while driving a car containing many embedded microprocessors, which don't run Linux. Nor do the processors in her air conditioner, washing machine, microwave etc..
My point being that computers are now ubiquitous, and most of them don't run Windows, or Linux.
By my reckoning, they did it with OS, Office and almost Servers. Almost because their servers never quite achieved the absolute dominance that OS and Office did.
None of the others have dominated. None of the others have made any money. If, as a company, you measure success financially, then I can't think of anything else that they've done that has repaid the initial investment; certainly nothing like the OS/Office cash cow.
In the 11 years since Ballmer became CEO, MSFT has declined from $56 (Jan 14 2000) to $25 (today); over the last 10 years the NASDAQ rose 30%---and MSFT fell 25%. Based on the last ten years of Microsoft's history then, your justification for predicting that they will dominate is...?