That's real brilliant advice, but the problem is there are astonishingly few lawyers who will have the slightest clue how to answer this question.
I would suggest that a techie's best bet is to get as informed as possible before taking this to a lawyer, because it's really treading new ground. Can you tell I've been there?
Slim Devices, and subsequently Logitech, wanted to pursue this kind of license for our firmware, so that we could allow customers to have certain benefits of open source, without enabling competitors to make knock-offs of our hardware products with no effort beyond soldering down the parts.
Ages ago I came up with the Slim Devices Public Source License, which later got rolled into the Logitech Public Source License. Only recently did we actually ship a major firmware product based on it, which is the SqueezeOS platform that underlies the (imminently hackable, linux based) Squeezebox Controller. Customers can see the source code, learn how it works, customize it to their needs, etc, but they are not allow to redistribute without permission. It's not "Open Source" by the official definition, but it's a great compromise IMHO which met our business constraints.
I searched far and wide for lawyers who understood these technicalities, and even at a major multi-B corporation with an awesome legal team, this was new ground. So educate yourself and check out as many examples as possible, and then find a good IP specialist to help you craft a license, but be prepared to prescribe exactly what you want that license to do.
I have been kicking around the idea of doing the Appalachian trail and although I obviously want to get off grid, it would be nice to have a phone in case of life or death emergency. I wonder if this thing is small small and light... in that case, the built-in solar would be just the ticket.
Line everywhere a cable enters or exits a small whole with steal wool. Mice are almost impossible to prevent entering a building, because they can move freely through such small entry points.
Also, fill the ends of conduits with expanding foam, even ones that only run within the building. Just plug the end, don't go overkill because you might need to re-pull them some time.
My neighbor believed this, her husband was dumbfounded, but he and the doctor couldn't convince her otherwise. I had never even heard of it before I had talked to her husband. Kind of sad.
Well neither the husband nor the doctor played much of a role in the child's prenatal development, did they? Put yourself in Mom's position - she has to endure the feelings of guilt and inadequacy, not the sperm donor. As such she will naturally grasp any other explanation for the disorder, be it vaccines, overhead power lines, fluoride in the water, bug spray on her food, etc.
It's the same reason we have these absurdly nebulous diagnoses such as Autism in the first place. We've even got "mild autism" if you can't handle the full euphemism. Maybe it was a meaningful diagnosis when it had a much narrower definition, but now it's used as an umbrella for everything from practically braindead to a little slow to even just "doesn't talk much". It's become like ADD or the "learning disability" they'd have if they were a little older.
I have empathy for these families, but I don't think we're doing them any favors by constantly seeking different labels for everything, or using pseudoscience and finger-pointing to find a scapegoat for poor health, genetics, or luck.
How about if I make the ridiculous claim that "Todd Knarr has sex with farm animals!"?
From here: A number of Supreme Court decisions have made a plaintiff's defamation case more difficult to win. A defamation case can be dismissed if the statements that were made were opinions rather than fact; were true, or are considered "fair comment and criticism." Defamation must also be believable in order to be considered damaging to a person's reputation. In many defamation cases the plaintiff must prove that the defendant deliberately made statement that s/he knew to be false and defamatory
Investors know that sometimes things won't pay out. These are the whiny little 10%-return-no-risk assholes who sue when a CEO doesn't start layoffs ASAP to pump up the stock price.
Microsoft's market cap has steadily declined since 1999, while Google and Apple have skyrocketed. Clearly their competitors are getting a better return on their R&D investments, so at this point it's not even a question of "long term vs short term", as whether that R&D budget is buying sh-t worth of anything any more. You seem to be suggesting that a dollar spent on R&D will eventually pay off the same the same no matter how it's spent or who spends it, but that's nonsense. It is entirely easier to squander R&D than to figure out how to turn it into profitable products.
The problem at Microsoft is that by an accident of computer history (or clever move on Mr Gates' part - whatever) they have raked in a spectacular stream of software revenue for a couple decades, despite the fact that their product quality has decayed to the bottom of the barrel. The trouble is, if those profits never get squeezed, you just keep accumulating dead weight until your engineering team is completely incompetent and unproductive... and there they are. The only meaningful round of layoffs Microsoft has ever done was just this year. They've never cleaned house, they've just kept accumulating these "long term" research projects with nobody at the wheel figuring out how to maintain a viable business in case their "Windows lock-in" revenue ever dries up.
At this point I think an "investor", whatever you think that word means, would be pretty foolish to expect any long-term upside from them. Maybe if they start cranking out some reasonable products that people actually want, I'd change my mind.
You're talking about what a USB host is required to provide to a device... but your information is wrong. Or at least, incomplete. 100mA is the _minimum_ that a host must be prepared to supply before a negotiation can take place where it can then ask for up to 1 amp.
But again, that's just about what a PC is required to deliver per the specification. There is nothing to prevent, say, a cell phone maker from including their own charger that can deliver a couple amps more. As long as it's not going to put out more than 5V it's not going to hurt anything, and the device would still be able to charge just fine, albeit at a slower rate, from a standard port.
POE is a different story. At 48VDC it is designed to power things like security cameras and IP phones at distances of a couple hundred feet. It wouldn't be suitable for charging a cell phone because it would require more expensive (and less efficient) power supplies, and the RJ45 connector is not designed for rugged, repeated cycling consumer use.
...will become a standard power connector with or without these clowns. It's just about perfect for powering and/or charging just about any handheld device, and with Apple leading the way I expect that USB connectors will start showing up in airplanes, cars, and other such places very soon.
Whatever genius MBA thought that manufacturers would gleefuly license some special connector/protocol just to be able to charge their own products should be taken out back and shot. The language on their web site is absurdly disingenuous in stating the the device-side stuff is free. What benefit is that to the device manufacturer? Do they expect major device manufacturers to promote their proprietary chargers out of the goodness of their heart? What a crock.
Their digital revenue may be up, but their overall sales are way down once again, because almost nobody buys CDs anymore, and that was their main gravy train.
Of course, who wants CDs when they could have something digital instead?
Seriously, can anyone tell me ANYTHING whatsoever that the 4th amendment does now?
And just in case anyone out there is still Hoping for Change starting next week: sorry, the New Boss supports this shit too - and he's a "constitutional scholar"!
Every last one of these sons of bitches should be in jail.
It isn't half as many amps, it is only a 15% reduction since 208V is used in the US for data centers. The benefit (albeit at the expense of fault current) is eliminating one AC:AC transition in the process.
What "transition" are you talking about? Do you have any idea whatsoever how electrical distribution works?
Well, if you didn't see this coming a mile off, you probably shouldn't be in the market at all.
No shit, but to what degree was this priced in already? Sure we'll see a kneejerk tomorrow, but Apple is already trading at a historically very low PE. And this is in the noise relative to the general consumer spending fears.
However, earnings are next week, so it's easy to imagine that this announcement was carefully timed so that it could be immediately offset by a stronger-than-expected Christmas Q.
Half as many amps == half as many power strips, half as many UPS devices, half as much wire, etc.
In the split-single-phase arrangement that is used in the USA, the only difference is whether there's a neutral wire in the conduit. For a given wire gauge you don't get any more power from a 240V circuit, because they're fundamentally the same thing, just one has kind of a "center tap". That copper is a very marginal savings (3 conductors vs 4) when you figure all the labor, conduit, breakers etc that's going to be put in anyway. And if you're dealing with 3-phase it's even less (4 vs 5 conductors).
In a colo environment it would be smarter to run 120 (with shared neutral) so people can use the normal plugs and cables that they have on hand, although in a single-customer datacenter where all your equipment is sure to have modern power supplies, fine, go with 240. But it's not hard to wire 240V outlets as needed (eg for a high density unit like a blade chassis or cisco gear).
You don't use any fewer power strips because you still need a plug per computer regardless of the voltage, and you still need to same amount of UPS equipment because your VA and WH would be the same for a 120 vs 240v UPS of a given price or physical size. It may surprise you that 120V and 240V UPSes generally have the same internals, the only difference is the plugs and cables that they're outfitted with on the back panel. Try measuring the voltage across two hots on different plugs of a "120V" UPS - you'll probably see 240V.
This article is absolute blithering bullshit. They're talking about the interface / file systems' _addressable_ size. Compared to actually achieving higher storage densities, that's about as hard as pulling a number out of the air. It has absolutely nothing to do with the technology needed to fit 2TB or any other number of bytes into whatever little card.
And oooh theyre making a 64GB card but "working on" a 2TB card? Yeah right, so only a 30-fold increase in density left to go!
Then he goes on to discuss throughput as if that has anything to do with it....
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
I recall people complaining a lot louder when they lost their floppy drives, LPT ports, RS232, ADB/PS2, etc. Nobody's stopping you from keeping your old laptop, getting one on ebay etc.
I have the previous gen 17" MBP and have never needed to remove the battery except to upgrade RAM/HD. I'd happily trade the feature in exchange for more internal charge capacity.
Your assuming that the cable is rigid... most designs for this that I have seen are usually a ribbon/cable that can flex in either one or two dimensions. This would mean that you could not push it, only pull.
Actually I'm assuming precisely the opposite - nothing could be considered rigid at this scale. I'm further assuming that the wavelength of the vibrations is vastly shorter than the length of the cable. The cable has very high tensile strength and is under constant tension by centripetal force - this gives it a low enough mechanical impedance to be able to transmit meaningful force.
Also, we are having enough trouble creating a cable that can withstand the incredible force required for a simple tether... now they want to add vibration on purpose? This has disaster written all over it.
This does not necessarily introduce transverse oscillation, which would indeed be a problem. The net added tension on the cable would be zero, we're only talking an incredibly tiny variance in comparison.
I think you need to give this some more consideration before dismissing it. We don't know much from TFA how much research has gone into this, but I'd venture a guess that the inventor spent more time thinking about this than the few minutes you've had to noodle the idea since it made slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed a word there. I added it for you.
No I didn't, smartass. Amazon does not have a monopoly on books, and nobody's forcing you to buy their reader.
Ironically, the purpose of the script is to make the Kindle more useful to its users."
I'm sure that their motive has nothing to do with whether it makes the kindle "more useful". This threatens their market for the books.
I must say I had been quite pleased with my Kindle and generally impressed with Amazon... until just now. Perhaps I'll return it.
This vile proposal threatens to sacrifice shareholder value on the altar of the progress of the useful arts!
Shareholders benefit because their money isn't going into lawyers pockets, and being lost to the invisible, incalculable cost of hindered progress.
(yes I know you were being sarcastic. Sadly, that is actually the majority sentiment on this issue.)
Fixed that for you.
I preferred the granparent's clever play on words to your hamfisted "fix".
Perhaps the servers can't take the load, or perhaps they simply don't have enough well-placed bandwidth.
That's what they want you to think. Next thing you know, they'll heroically solve the problem by offering you a free "upgrade" to Octoshape.
I'll bet dollars to donuts it's just "a patchy" apache. This raises the question as to how netcraft should determine speciation...
Dude... you absolutely rock, I love my duet and will be buying a boom soon. A very happy customer
Kind words, thank you! :)
um, like, hire a real lawyer. really, dude.
That's real brilliant advice, but the problem is there are astonishingly few lawyers who will have the slightest clue how to answer this question.
I would suggest that a techie's best bet is to get as informed as possible before taking this to a lawyer, because it's really treading new ground. Can you tell I've been there?
Slim Devices, and subsequently Logitech, wanted to pursue this kind of license for our firmware, so that we could allow customers to have certain benefits of open source, without enabling competitors to make knock-offs of our hardware products with no effort beyond soldering down the parts.
Ages ago I came up with the Slim Devices Public Source License, which later got rolled into the Logitech Public Source License. Only recently did we actually ship a major firmware product based on it, which is the SqueezeOS platform that underlies the (imminently hackable, linux based) Squeezebox Controller. Customers can see the source code, learn how it works, customize it to their needs, etc, but they are not allow to redistribute without permission. It's not "Open Source" by the official definition, but it's a great compromise IMHO which met our business constraints.
I searched far and wide for lawyers who understood these technicalities, and even at a major multi-B corporation with an awesome legal team, this was new ground. So educate yourself and check out as many examples as possible, and then find a good IP specialist to help you craft a license, but be prepared to prescribe exactly what you want that license to do.
I have been kicking around the idea of doing the Appalachian trail and although I obviously want to get off grid, it would be nice to have a phone in case of life or death emergency. I wonder if this thing is small small and light... in that case, the built-in solar would be just the ticket.
Line everywhere a cable enters or exits a small whole with steal wool. Mice are almost impossible to prevent entering a building, because they can move freely through such small entry points.
Also, fill the ends of conduits with expanding foam, even ones that only run within the building. Just plug the end, don't go overkill because you might need to re-pull them some time.
Yeah. Other than supplying half the baby, the husband/father had nothing to do with it.
I said "prenatal development", not conception.
My neighbor believed this, her husband was dumbfounded, but he and the doctor couldn't convince her otherwise. I had never even heard of it before I had talked to her husband. Kind of sad.
Well neither the husband nor the doctor played much of a role in the child's prenatal development, did they? Put yourself in Mom's position - she has to endure the feelings of guilt and inadequacy, not the sperm donor. As such she will naturally grasp any other explanation for the disorder, be it vaccines, overhead power lines, fluoride in the water, bug spray on her food, etc.
It's the same reason we have these absurdly nebulous diagnoses such as Autism in the first place. We've even got "mild autism" if you can't handle the full euphemism. Maybe it was a meaningful diagnosis when it had a much narrower definition, but now it's used as an umbrella for everything from practically braindead to a little slow to even just "doesn't talk much". It's become like ADD or the "learning disability" they'd have if they were a little older.
I have empathy for these families, but I don't think we're doing them any favors by constantly seeking different labels for everything, or using pseudoscience and finger-pointing to find a scapegoat for poor health, genetics, or luck.
it's a hugely problematic problem
As problems tend to be...
How about if I make the ridiculous claim that "Todd Knarr has sex with farm animals!"?
From here:
A number of Supreme Court decisions have made a plaintiff's defamation case more difficult to win. A defamation case can be dismissed if the statements that were made were opinions rather than fact; were true, or are considered "fair comment and criticism." Defamation must also be believable in order to be considered damaging to a person's reputation. In many defamation cases the plaintiff must prove that the defendant deliberately made statement that s/he knew to be false and defamatory
Investors know that sometimes things won't pay out. These are the whiny little 10%-return-no-risk assholes who sue when a CEO doesn't start layoffs ASAP to pump up the stock price.
Microsoft's market cap has steadily declined since 1999, while Google and Apple have skyrocketed. Clearly their competitors are getting a better return on their R&D investments, so at this point it's not even a question of "long term vs short term", as whether that R&D budget is buying sh-t worth of anything any more. You seem to be suggesting that a dollar spent on R&D will eventually pay off the same the same no matter how it's spent or who spends it, but that's nonsense. It is entirely easier to squander R&D than to figure out how to turn it into profitable products.
The problem at Microsoft is that by an accident of computer history (or clever move on Mr Gates' part - whatever) they have raked in a spectacular stream of software revenue for a couple decades, despite the fact that their product quality has decayed to the bottom of the barrel. The trouble is, if those profits never get squeezed, you just keep accumulating dead weight until your engineering team is completely incompetent and unproductive... and there they are. The only meaningful round of layoffs Microsoft has ever done was just this year. They've never cleaned house, they've just kept accumulating these "long term" research projects with nobody at the wheel figuring out how to maintain a viable business in case their "Windows lock-in" revenue ever dries up.
At this point I think an "investor", whatever you think that word means, would be pretty foolish to expect any long-term upside from them. Maybe if they start cranking out some reasonable products that people actually want, I'd change my mind.
You're talking about what a USB host is required to provide to a device... but your information is wrong. Or at least, incomplete. 100mA is the _minimum_ that a host must be prepared to supply before a negotiation can take place where it can then ask for up to 1 amp.
But again, that's just about what a PC is required to deliver per the specification. There is nothing to prevent, say, a cell phone maker from including their own charger that can deliver a couple amps more. As long as it's not going to put out more than 5V it's not going to hurt anything, and the device would still be able to charge just fine, albeit at a slower rate, from a standard port.
POE is a different story. At 48VDC it is designed to power things like security cameras and IP phones at distances of a couple hundred feet. It wouldn't be suitable for charging a cell phone because it would require more expensive (and less efficient) power supplies, and the RJ45 connector is not designed for rugged, repeated cycling consumer use.
...will become a standard power connector with or without these clowns. It's just about perfect for powering and/or charging just about any handheld device, and with Apple leading the way I expect that USB connectors will start showing up in airplanes, cars, and other such places very soon.
Whatever genius MBA thought that manufacturers would gleefuly license some special connector/protocol just to be able to charge their own products should be taken out back and shot. The language on their web site is absurdly disingenuous in stating the the device-side stuff is free. What benefit is that to the device manufacturer? Do they expect major device manufacturers to promote their proprietary chargers out of the goodness of their heart? What a crock.
Their digital revenue may be up, but their overall sales are way down once again, because almost nobody buys CDs anymore, and that was their main gravy train.
Of course, who wants CDs when they could have something digital instead?
This right on the heels of a god damned act of treason by
Supreme Court just yesterday: http://www.freep.com/article/20090115/NEWS07/90115015
Seriously, can anyone tell me ANYTHING whatsoever that the 4th amendment does now?
And just in case anyone out there is still Hoping for Change starting next week: sorry, the New Boss supports this shit too - and he's a "constitutional scholar"!
Every last one of these sons of bitches should be in jail.
It isn't half as many amps, it is only a 15% reduction since 208V is used in the US for data centers. The benefit (albeit at the expense of fault current) is eliminating one AC:AC transition in the process.
What "transition" are you talking about? Do you have any idea whatsoever how electrical distribution works?
Well, if you didn't see this coming a mile off, you probably shouldn't be in the market at all.
No shit, but to what degree was this priced in already? Sure we'll see a kneejerk tomorrow, but Apple is already trading at a historically very low PE. And this is in the noise relative to the general consumer spending fears.
However, earnings are next week, so it's easy to imagine that this announcement was carefully timed so that it could be immediately offset by a stronger-than-expected Christmas Q.
Half as many amps == half as many power strips, half as many UPS devices, half as much wire, etc.
In the split-single-phase arrangement that is used in the USA, the only difference is whether there's a neutral wire in the conduit. For a given wire gauge you don't get any more power from a 240V circuit, because they're fundamentally the same thing, just one has kind of a "center tap". That copper is a very marginal savings (3 conductors vs 4) when you figure all the labor, conduit, breakers etc that's going to be put in anyway. And if you're dealing with 3-phase it's even less (4 vs 5 conductors).
In a colo environment it would be smarter to run 120 (with shared neutral) so people can use the normal plugs and cables that they have on hand, although in a single-customer datacenter where all your equipment is sure to have modern power supplies, fine, go with 240. But it's not hard to wire 240V outlets as needed (eg for a high density unit like a blade chassis or cisco gear).
You don't use any fewer power strips because you still need a plug per computer regardless of the voltage, and you still need to same amount of UPS equipment because your VA and WH would be the same for a 120 vs 240v UPS of a given price or physical size. It may surprise you that 120V and 240V UPSes generally have the same internals, the only difference is the plugs and cables that they're outfitted with on the back panel. Try measuring the voltage across two hots on different plugs of a "120V" UPS - you'll probably see 240V.
This article is absolute blithering bullshit. They're talking about the interface / file systems' _addressable_ size. Compared to actually achieving higher storage densities, that's about as hard as pulling a number out of the air. It has absolutely nothing to do with the technology needed to fit 2TB or any other number of bytes into whatever little card.
And oooh theyre making a 64GB card but "working on" a 2TB card? Yeah right, so only a 30-fold increase in density left to go!
Then he goes on to discuss throughput as if that has anything to do with it....
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
I recall people complaining a lot louder when they lost their floppy drives, LPT ports, RS232, ADB/PS2, etc. Nobody's stopping you from keeping your old laptop, getting one on ebay etc.
I have the previous gen 17" MBP and have never needed to remove the battery except to upgrade RAM/HD. I'd happily trade the feature in exchange for more internal charge capacity.
Your assuming that the cable is rigid... most designs for this that I have seen are usually a ribbon/cable that can flex in either one or two dimensions. This would mean that you could not push it, only pull.
Actually I'm assuming precisely the opposite - nothing could be considered rigid at this scale. I'm further assuming that the wavelength of the vibrations is vastly shorter than the length of the cable. The cable has very high tensile strength and is under constant tension by centripetal force - this gives it a low enough mechanical impedance to be able to transmit meaningful force.
Also, we are having enough trouble creating a cable that can withstand the incredible force required for a simple tether... now they want to add vibration on purpose? This has disaster written all over it.
This does not necessarily introduce transverse oscillation, which would indeed be a problem. The net added tension on the cable would be zero, we're only talking an incredibly tiny variance in comparison.
I think you need to give this some more consideration before dismissing it. We don't know much from TFA how much research has gone into this, but I'd venture a guess that the inventor spent more time thinking about this than the few minutes you've had to noodle the idea since it made slashdot.