Very few patents are for actual original innovations that warrant a 21 year monopoly. Let me give you an example
No let *ME* give you an example. I bought an Aten UC-232A (which BTW gives me BSoD in Win7 when lots of data comes through) USB serial converter. It has patent D436924 attached to it. The claim, I kid you not is "The ornamental design for computer cord connector, as shown and described." Really?! They can spend money on patents for the molding shape of the connector but not on non-flaky drivers. .
OK, just stick a CMUX outside of town - that's what they do here in Oz. The rural region I live in has CMUX's serving ADSL and ADSL2 to villages and the like and if you can't get that there's subsidised WiMax and if you're really stuck subsidised two way satellite and of course 3G at 900MHz and 850MHz which can be received just fine at 100km if you whack a yagi on the roof. The UK should rename their telco to Spivtel. The current federal govt. is tripping over themselves to supply 100Mbit optic fibre to just about everyone. The sun set on the UK as a poweranything a long, long time ago.
What do they consider rural in the UK? Is there any truly rural space left in the British Isles? I hate to think what large swathes of Australia, Canada and the USA where plenty of people live might be considered.
It sounds to me like you 'Merkins are taking what's said literally, as usual, and not seeing the humourous subtext in what he's saying. It seems to me virtualisation holds no real fascination for Linus but he's not against it either. I think he likes to throw some flamebait around for fun to get the slobbering masses frothing on forums like Slashdot. And you all fell for it like the Nazis you are.
Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!
I agree. My i7 laptop came with Windows 7 and since I bought it I have stayed on Planet Windows having dicked around with KDE and Kubuntu for so long on my old PC. I think Aero uses the right amount of eye candy to make using a GUI nice and smooth without getting in the way with BS like wobbly windows. That said, with Firefox, putty, cygwin, mingw, winscp, TortoiseGit/SVN, etc etc etc all working very nicely for me in Win7 I am not compelled to boot into *buntu any more and deal with Gnome shit or KDE shit any more.
There are craploads of M2M terminals in Australia at least which rely on GPRS or SMS to convey data. These terminals are the portable credit and bank payment terminals used in every taxi and by mobile merchants and heaps and heaps of embedded telemetry systems. The carriers here are loathe to shut down the GSM/GPRS network because of the probably millions of embedded systems that rely on the GSM/GPRS network - the cost or replacement or redesign of these terminals is insanely expensive and will only be phased out by natural attrition over the next 5-10 years.
I like what Profs. Brian Cox and Jim al Khalili are fronting. I just wish they'd tone down on the hyperbole and loud metro shirts (looking at you Jim) as according to Jim everything that Feynman/Einstein/DeBrogli/Heisenberg/Dirac did was, like, simply the best thing since sliced bread ever, and and offer some harder science as it occasionally slips into Cosmology for Dummies. I care not for the Dummies.
They can't be bumped, are hard to get keys copied for, can take a hell of a lot of physical abuse and so on, yet only cost about $200-300.
You are going to roll out a $1000 lock it need to at least give you the same kind of security you'd get from one of those. They may not be perfect, but you can't stick a wire in them to get by them at least.
Oh come one, do you know just how EXPENSIVE the cost of living is in Switzerland compared to the USA? The Swiss get in trouble if the pop over the border to Germany and buy cheaper petrol and groceries!
I have the same programming pedigree as you. For my work at least I have never had to use anything higher level than C due to embedded projects. I worked with a young bright self taught programmer for whom higher level languages was his only experience and took the view of the computer as a mysterious black box. He appreciated that there was low level stuff going on in this thing but he couldn't really get at it with.NET. A good example of things going pear shaped was the insane amount of time the.NET application took on an eeePC when writing large amounts of data to serialised XML form.
Coder types, buy a CRO (like the cheapie but terrific Rigol 1052E), buy an Arduino board and use the AVRStudio4 to start hacking. Learn how to use digital I/O pins to measure the time it takes functions to run and try do some realtime stuff. I'll be making my daughter an electronic drum kit next week using an Arduino, some piezos and her eeePC to receive MIDI over a USB/serial to generate the sounds. A simple project to be sure but it'll get me up to speed with the Atmega1280.
I inherited an 8051 (spit - fucked if I know why anyone likes this CPU) project at my old work. I asked why they didn't turn the C optimiser on, the answer was the optimiser is broken as the code wouldn't run which sounded like BS to me. The owner with 30 years of embedded eperience was satisfied with this explanation. I got it working by putting the volatile keyword on some globals that were shared between main() loop functions and interrupts and bugger me if the application didn't start working with the optimiser on! My respect for the owner and his company began it's downhill slide that day. So even grumpy old codgers with years in the field like my old boss can be total n00bs too.
I haven't RTFA but such hyperbole immediate made me think of Adam Clarke and His Platform. We all know how that worked out. http://www.adamsplatform.com.au/
Well, right, I had a similar "all your base are belong to us" clause in my contract and I changed it to only cover work items I did at work for work. Anything else was mine. Seeing as my projects had nothing to do with what the employers line of business was there would be no confusion if there ever was a problem.
Big Engineering doesn't isn't kind to poor engineering and management practices - it just leads to Big Disasters. It's a hard lesson to learn and if you watch shows like Engineering Disasters there are plenty in the West who still don't get this. It'll be interesting to see down the track how the mega dams on the Yellow River hold up.
Slashdot Mirror
That should push one or two over the precipice.
Yes. I saw a doco on a homeopathic emergency ward recently...
It's not about efficiency rather safety. Edison already proved that AC kills elephants. Betcha didn't know that!
Or stabbed in the face.
UV kills bacteria. But I don't think the iPhone makes UV. Hey, that gives me an idea... iSolarium! I'll be rich!
Doh! Well, the HTML standard needs a FACEPLANT tag now, doesn't it? I am now schooled.
Very few patents are for actual original innovations that warrant a 21 year monopoly. Let me give you an example
No let *ME* give you an example. I bought an Aten UC-232A (which BTW gives me BSoD in Win7 when lots of data comes through) USB serial converter. It has patent D436924 attached to it. The claim, I kid you not is "The ornamental design for computer cord connector, as shown and described." Really?! They can spend money on patents for the molding shape of the connector but not on non-flaky drivers. .
OK, just stick a CMUX outside of town - that's what they do here in Oz. The rural region I live in has CMUX's serving ADSL and ADSL2 to villages and the like and if you can't get that there's subsidised WiMax and if you're really stuck subsidised two way satellite and of course 3G at 900MHz and 850MHz which can be received just fine at 100km if you whack a yagi on the roof. The UK should rename their telco to Spivtel. The current federal govt. is tripping over themselves to supply 100Mbit optic fibre to just about everyone. The sun set on the UK as a poweranything a long, long time ago.
What do they consider rural in the UK? Is there any truly rural space left in the British Isles? I hate to think what large swathes of Australia, Canada and the USA where plenty of people live might be considered.
And the Tomorrow People can also claim prior art on the skivvy jumper, bouffant hair and condescending face iPad accessories.
It sounds to me like you 'Merkins are taking what's said literally, as usual, and not seeing the humourous subtext in what he's saying. It seems to me virtualisation holds no real fascination for Linus but he's not against it either. I think he likes to throw some flamebait around for fun to get the slobbering masses frothing on forums like Slashdot. And you all fell for it like the Nazis you are.
Is it w00t or woot?
"There's always things when you look back that you wish you would have had a little more time to finish or polish."
Well really, just how long does it take to polish a turd?
>
Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!
I agree. My i7 laptop came with Windows 7 and since I bought it I have stayed on Planet Windows having dicked around with KDE and Kubuntu for so long on my old PC. I think Aero uses the right amount of eye candy to make using a GUI nice and smooth without getting in the way with BS like wobbly windows. That said, with Firefox, putty, cygwin, mingw, winscp, TortoiseGit/SVN, etc etc etc all working very nicely for me in Win7 I am not compelled to boot into *buntu any more and deal with Gnome shit or KDE shit any more.
A new application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
There are craploads of M2M terminals in Australia at least which rely on GPRS or SMS to convey data. These terminals are the portable credit and bank payment terminals used in every taxi and by mobile merchants and heaps and heaps of embedded telemetry systems. The carriers here are loathe to shut down the GSM/GPRS network because of the probably millions of embedded systems that rely on the GSM/GPRS network - the cost or replacement or redesign of these terminals is insanely expensive and will only be phased out by natural attrition over the next 5-10 years.
I like what Profs. Brian Cox and Jim al Khalili are fronting. I just wish they'd tone down on the hyperbole and loud metro shirts (looking at you Jim) as according to Jim everything that Feynman/Einstein/DeBrogli/Heisenberg/Dirac did was, like, simply the best thing since sliced bread ever, and and offer some harder science as it occasionally slips into Cosmology for Dummies. I care not for the Dummies.
Yeah. And Contact was a hokey turd. There, I said it. Deal.
They can't be bumped, are hard to get keys copied for, can take a hell of a lot of physical abuse and so on, yet only cost about $200-300.
You are going to roll out a $1000 lock it need to at least give you the same kind of security you'd get from one of those. They may not be perfect, but you can't stick a wire in them to get by them at least.
Oh come one, do you know just how EXPENSIVE the cost of living is in Switzerland compared to the USA? The Swiss get in trouble if the pop over the border to Germany and buy cheaper petrol and groceries!
I have the same programming pedigree as you. For my work at least I have never had to use anything higher level than C due to embedded projects. I worked with a young bright self taught programmer for whom higher level languages was his only experience and took the view of the computer as a mysterious black box. He appreciated that there was low level stuff going on in this thing but he couldn't really get at it with .NET. A good example of things going pear shaped was the insane amount of time the.NET application took on an eeePC when writing large amounts of data to serialised XML form.
I inherited an 8051 (spit - fucked if I know why anyone likes this CPU) project at my old work. I asked why they didn't turn the C optimiser on, the answer was the optimiser is broken as the code wouldn't run which sounded like BS to me. The owner with 30 years of embedded eperience was satisfied with this explanation. I got it working by putting the volatile keyword on some globals that were shared between main() loop functions and interrupts and bugger me if the application didn't start working with the optimiser on! My respect for the owner and his company began it's downhill slide that day. So even grumpy old codgers with years in the field like my old boss can be total n00bs too.
U*F*O? The fecker ain't flying so it's just a UO, along with the gazillions of other UOs seen with sonar on the seabed..
I haven't RTFA but such hyperbole immediate made me think of Adam Clarke and His Platform. We all know how that worked out. http://www.adamsplatform.com.au/
Well, right, I had a similar "all your base are belong to us" clause in my contract and I changed it to only cover work items I did at work for work. Anything else was mine. Seeing as my projects had nothing to do with what the employers line of business was there would be no confusion if there ever was a problem.
Big Engineering doesn't isn't kind to poor engineering and management practices - it just leads to Big Disasters. It's a hard lesson to learn and if you watch shows like Engineering Disasters there are plenty in the West who still don't get this. It'll be interesting to see down the track how the mega dams on the Yellow River hold up.