Don't get rid of table based layout - use tables for broad layout (columns, for example) and use CSS for styling and minor presentation details (indetation, spacing within your columns, etc). It's more cross platform compatible, it's more flexible, it renders faster on all common browsers, and it maintains at least the broad layout of your page in pre-CSS browsers. Maybe when CSS3 is finally around and supported it'll be suitable for full-page layout. CSS as it stands (and especially the pratical state of it's implementation) makes it very difficult to proper full page layout, unless you're willing to lock yourself down to specific pixel sizes.
While it will (eventually) exhaust memory on a Windows system (unless you set policy limits), the system remains responsive and as soon as you kill the system everything else goes right back up to speed. Crap like this is a solved problem, memory managers and schedulers know how to handle it.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I believe that processes should not be patentable, but rather implentation of that process. Guard the process itself via trade secret status if you want to. In most cases, though, the process is tied to the engineering of the device, and creating a device that operated differently but resulted in the same process is sufficently difficult that it shoulnd't infringe.
This is especially notable in software, where there are many ways of implementing the same process.
As an aside, what you're referring to as a Utility Patent is a fairly new idea, since they weren't permitted until the 70s (early 60s maybe?). Utility or process patents are NOT part of the basic definition of a patent.
The "public domain" refers to copyrights. As far as I'm aware, there is no similiar concept for patents, except for just agreeing to not enforce it (which, of course, is no protection, since you can change your mind any time you want).
Design by contract is really only interesting (or, imo, worth using) when it's implemented as a language feature (or at least a compiler one). The whole point is that pre- and post-conditions are checked for you automatically, if you have to do it yourself you may as well do it with assert macros everywhere. It's an old idea, of course, the whole point of it being "design by contract" instead of "use lots of asserts to ensure validity" is that you define the conditions and the checks are handled automatically. It's kinda like how you can implement virtual functions manually in C if you want, but the whole point of them in C++ is that the compiler handles it for you.
As an aside, the Digital Mars C++ compiler apparently has design by contract support (I'm not sure if it's the same standard as aspectC++ or not, though)
I want more than my fair use rights back if we're going to have taxes on the creation and distribution of creative works (thats essentially what such a tax would be). Reducing the restrictions of copyright and expanding fair use, both in law and in the current interpertation of that law would be a good start.
Of course, that tax money would actually have to get to content creators, not mere amalgamaters like record companies (which is what happens now).
I'll refer you to the eolas patent. I'm not going to look up the number because I've read it myself and you can do the research if you want. The eolas patent is, specifically, on using mime types passed from a web server to choose which a helper plugin to run, and then to run that plugin, automatically, with the browser frame.
The patent, of course, requires the infrastructure of computing to be in place - hardware to run on (although the hardware required is not specified), a network, a server on the other end, etc. These elements are NOT defined with any detail. There are no implementation details in the patent whatsoever - it's a patent on the PROCESS of embedding plugings.
Now, as anyone who's ever written an app thats extendable by plugins knows, figuring out what plugin to run is pretty trivial. The hard part is things like defining an interface specification and all the other plumbing that lets third party code interface seamlessly with yours. None of this is present in the eolas patent.
Once upon a time, you could only patent actual inventions. In the 70s they expanded that to include abstracts like genomes, algorithms, and buisness processes.
The "garage inventory" thing is a load of hooey - the deck is stacked against the garage inventory from the start. Pretty much the only way the "little guy" makes money off of patents is by submarining them, not because someone ripped you off. The fact that Joe Inventor can't run off 100 million units is precisely why he doesn't benefit that much from patent protection - he's got a limited ability to enter the market already. There have probably been a few cases where a no name guy really did get ripped off and he really did manage to get his day in court and he really did win. On the other hand, there have been cases where cutting your arm off with a dull knife was a good idea - it doesn't make it benefical in general.
Getting rid of this bullshit about process patents and only allowing patents on things that you've actually created and work would be a really good start.
I know it suprises some people, but you can have liberal (in the non-politcal sense of the word) policies as an employer, and give charity to worthy causes and still be a right winger or a republican:P
I'd have to disagree with this - for example, giving someone your address doesn't mean that you explicitly want to get mail from them. Lots of people want an email address for a logon ID, for example (to do confirmation emails, for example) and while thats fine, thats as far as I want it to go. Giving you my email means I'm willing to accept email from you ONCE, or for a specific purpose, it doesn't mean I just signed up for your mailing list.
a couple hundred years ago some dumbfuck lawyers agreed that to meet a legal standard of "emphasized" or "clear", something had to be in ALL CAPS, and now our generation suffers for it.
I've never seen a PDA that advertised this. Tablet PCs are a different market and don't have anything in common with PDAs. And even if you're going to call them a PDA, a "PDA" thats binary compatible with a desktop OS isn't a memory limited environment - they're the same hardware as laptops.
I've been blacklisted, and thats exactly what I thought. So there you go.
You have exactly as much RIGHT to send and recieve email as I do - which is none. If you don't like the way the existing email network is working, you're more than free to set up your own, and I bet that you'll get no compaints at all from the people who run and use blocklists. Note how this is different than facism.
Now, exactly what kind of regulation should we be looking at here? Should you be required by law to accept any and all email? Seriously, I'm interested in seeing how you think email should work. Maybe the dissemination of information about spammers should be illegal.
For our last exercise of the day, go look up the word "embargo" in the dictionary.
Well, see, thats where alot of this bad feeling comes from. Just because I do buisness with you doesn't mean I want your email. My PERSONAL definition of spam is anything I don't want and that I didn't ask for. I suspect most people have a similiar mental filing system. Because I know thats not really a fair generic standard to judge by, I'm willing to accept a less stringent definition, though.
Try this one: SPAM is non-personal (read: bulk), unsolicited email. Note the total lack of qualifying clauses like "unless they bought something from me recently" and "unless I bought thier name from someone else". Just because I'm your customer doesn't give you the right to send me email, unless it's a) directly related to the specific buisness I've done or am doing with you, UNLESS I specifically indicate my willingness to recieve it.
On the other hand, I've noticed a fair amount of companies prefer to define SPAM as "Unsoliceited bulk email except the kind that we send", which is fairly annoying.
The word you're looking for is "embargo". You know, like the thing that we do to countries that do things we don't like, to try to pressure thier leaders by ruining the standard of living for the citizens.
Oh, and you'll find that it's neither a crime nor (generally) considered bad behavior to ask gas stations to stop selling gas to people in Ford trucks. You'll even find that it's not illegal for a gas station to obey that request and refuse service to people in Ford trucks.
On a related note, while sure it's not a "god-given right" for me to send and recieve email. It sure as hell oughtn't be YOUR right, god-given or otherwise to decide from whom I may recieve it!
See, thats where you're wrong. If your mail is coming over MY pipe then I have every right in the world to decide whether or not I'm going to deliver it. This ain't public property we're talking about. If you're listed in SPEWS and you've got customers you have to contact, why don't you just get a dedicated leased line direct to them?
You're laboring under a mistaken assumption here, which is that the Internet (and specifically email) is there for your benefit and that you've got some sort of right to access it. This is false - it's an organic collective of people who've agreed to work together. In this case, a broad section of this informal collective have decided that they're going to enforce community standards by not letting people they don't approve of play. It's kinda like a neighborhood association (I know, people bitch about those, too).
The difference in the case of the Post Office, of course, is that the controlling party there has decided that it doesn't mind being a carrier for junk mail (and in fact goes out of its way to support it).
Oh, and it's not illegal to "interfere with interstate commerce".
One last point - there has never been such a thing as "only be[ing] acceptable to target Military and Government personell". Civilians have always been targets in war, for as long as theres been war.
Why isn't it your ISPs job (who presumably is communicating with SPEWs, and handling the various abuse and spam complaints they're getting) to contact you?
What SPEWS is doing is the same thing as announcing a boycott. Note, again, that SPEWS does not block mail. Mail admins who don't want spam block your mail. You're also pretty heavily out of the loop if you think your IP block can get listed on SPEWS because there a spammer "once" used the same IP. If you don't want to be blocked, change your ISP or pressure them to deal firmly with spam complaints. It's not a hard concept.
Oh, and who the hell are you to think that you've got any right to send any mail at all? Email only works at all because theres a community of people who agree to transfer traffic between each other, and if you aren't interested in being a responsible member of that community they don't want you.
Some people have brought up interesting comparisons between this and the Diebold case. After some thought, I've figured out why the one bothers me and the other doesn't:
One, from all indications this was ongoing - it's hard to claim any sort of moral superiority when you repeatedly intrude like that.
Two, if these memos had been found/revealed by some third party organization, it wouldn't have bothered me - of course, thats exactly what the Republicans did, is leak them to a third party. So I'm a little confused there.
Third, while this sheds some light on the degree to which advocacy groups affect politics, and how politics isn't nearly as pure as we'd like, theres nothing groundbreaking or earthshattering here - there's no releveations about improper use of funds, or abuse of power, or spying on your oponents, or end-running around legislation on voting machines. It's pretty low-grade dirt, and the sort of thing that I don't really care about but makes for good rhetoric.
And thats also true, but it comes at a performance and maintainability cost (the codes more complex and therefore more bug prone, you've got the overhead of maintaing the page file, etc, etc, etc). It's like saying you can emulate a 32bit address space with 16bit pointers, which you can, but it's hardly preferable to having a flat 32bit address space.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get rid of table based layout - use tables for broad layout (columns, for example) and use CSS for styling and minor presentation details (indetation, spacing within your columns, etc). It's more cross platform compatible, it's more flexible, it renders faster on all common browsers, and it maintains at least the broad layout of your page in pre-CSS browsers. Maybe when CSS3 is finally around and supported it'll be suitable for full-page layout. CSS as it stands (and especially the pratical state of it's implementation) makes it very difficult to proper full page layout, unless you're willing to lock yourself down to specific pixel sizes.
While it will (eventually) exhaust memory on a Windows system (unless you set policy limits), the system remains responsive and as soon as you kill the system everything else goes right back up to speed. Crap like this is a solved problem, memory managers and schedulers know how to handle it.
Why don't you go ahead and give use an exact quote and a section reference there, buddy?
This is especially notable in software, where there are many ways of implementing the same process.
As an aside, what you're referring to as a Utility Patent is a fairly new idea, since they weren't permitted until the 70s (early 60s maybe?). Utility or process patents are NOT part of the basic definition of a patent.
The "public domain" refers to copyrights. As far as I'm aware, there is no similiar concept for patents, except for just agreeing to not enforce it (which, of course, is no protection, since you can change your mind any time you want).
As an aside, the Digital Mars C++ compiler apparently has design by contract support (I'm not sure if it's the same standard as aspectC++ or not, though)
Of course, that tax money would actually have to get to content creators, not mere amalgamaters like record companies (which is what happens now).
The patent, of course, requires the infrastructure of computing to be in place - hardware to run on (although the hardware required is not specified), a network, a server on the other end, etc. These elements are NOT defined with any detail. There are no implementation details in the patent whatsoever - it's a patent on the PROCESS of embedding plugings.
Now, as anyone who's ever written an app thats extendable by plugins knows, figuring out what plugin to run is pretty trivial. The hard part is things like defining an interface specification and all the other plumbing that lets third party code interface seamlessly with yours. None of this is present in the eolas patent.
Once upon a time, you could only patent actual inventions. In the 70s they expanded that to include abstracts like genomes, algorithms, and buisness processes.
Getting rid of this bullshit about process patents and only allowing patents on things that you've actually created and work would be a really good start.
I know it suprises some people, but you can have liberal (in the non-politcal sense of the word) policies as an employer, and give charity to worthy causes and still be a right winger or a republican :P
I'd have to disagree with this - for example, giving someone your address doesn't mean that you explicitly want to get mail from them. Lots of people want an email address for a logon ID, for example (to do confirmation emails, for example) and while thats fine, thats as far as I want it to go. Giving you my email means I'm willing to accept email from you ONCE, or for a specific purpose, it doesn't mean I just signed up for your mailing list.
a couple hundred years ago some dumbfuck lawyers agreed that to meet a legal standard of "emphasized" or "clear", something had to be in ALL CAPS, and now our generation suffers for it.
I've never seen a PDA that advertised this. Tablet PCs are a different market and don't have anything in common with PDAs. And even if you're going to call them a PDA, a "PDA" thats binary compatible with a desktop OS isn't a memory limited environment - they're the same hardware as laptops.
You have exactly as much RIGHT to send and recieve email as I do - which is none. If you don't like the way the existing email network is working, you're more than free to set up your own, and I bet that you'll get no compaints at all from the people who run and use blocklists. Note how this is different than facism.
Now, exactly what kind of regulation should we be looking at here? Should you be required by law to accept any and all email? Seriously, I'm interested in seeing how you think email should work. Maybe the dissemination of information about spammers should be illegal.
For our last exercise of the day, go look up the word "embargo" in the dictionary.
Try this one: SPAM is non-personal (read: bulk), unsolicited email. Note the total lack of qualifying clauses like "unless they bought something from me recently" and "unless I bought thier name from someone else". Just because I'm your customer doesn't give you the right to send me email, unless it's a) directly related to the specific buisness I've done or am doing with you, UNLESS I specifically indicate my willingness to recieve it.
On the other hand, I've noticed a fair amount of companies prefer to define SPAM as "Unsoliceited bulk email except the kind that we send", which is fairly annoying.
Oh, and you'll find that it's neither a crime nor (generally) considered bad behavior to ask gas stations to stop selling gas to people in Ford trucks. You'll even find that it's not illegal for a gas station to obey that request and refuse service to people in Ford trucks.
See, thats where you're wrong. If your mail is coming over MY pipe then I have every right in the world to decide whether or not I'm going to deliver it. This ain't public property we're talking about. If you're listed in SPEWS and you've got customers you have to contact, why don't you just get a dedicated leased line direct to them?
The difference in the case of the Post Office, of course, is that the controlling party there has decided that it doesn't mind being a carrier for junk mail (and in fact goes out of its way to support it).
Oh, and it's not illegal to "interfere with interstate commerce".
One last point - there has never been such a thing as "only be[ing] acceptable to target Military and Government personell". Civilians have always been targets in war, for as long as theres been war.
What SPEWS is doing is the same thing as announcing a boycott. Note, again, that SPEWS does not block mail. Mail admins who don't want spam block your mail. You're also pretty heavily out of the loop if you think your IP block can get listed on SPEWS because there a spammer "once" used the same IP. If you don't want to be blocked, change your ISP or pressure them to deal firmly with spam complaints. It's not a hard concept.
Oh, and who the hell are you to think that you've got any right to send any mail at all? Email only works at all because theres a community of people who agree to transfer traffic between each other, and if you aren't interested in being a responsible member of that community they don't want you.
You'll find that the situation you describe is 100% protected speech under the first amendment, and no, you didn't tell them to do anything.
If you'd actually read the article in the slashdot post I presume you're referring to, you'll note that SCO got an honorable mention ;)
If you've got 2 threads for every concurrent connection you've got some scaling issues beyond address space, though. Especially for a web server.
One, from all indications this was ongoing - it's hard to claim any sort of moral superiority when you repeatedly intrude like that.
Two, if these memos had been found/revealed by some third party organization, it wouldn't have bothered me - of course, thats exactly what the Republicans did, is leak them to a third party. So I'm a little confused there.
Third, while this sheds some light on the degree to which advocacy groups affect politics, and how politics isn't nearly as pure as we'd like, theres nothing groundbreaking or earthshattering here - there's no releveations about improper use of funds, or abuse of power, or spying on your oponents, or end-running around legislation on voting machines. It's pretty low-grade dirt, and the sort of thing that I don't really care about but makes for good rhetoric.
http://www.opensecrets.org/softmoney/softcomp1.asp ?txtName=Microsoft
And thats also true, but it comes at a performance and maintainability cost (the codes more complex and therefore more bug prone, you've got the overhead of maintaing the page file, etc, etc, etc). It's like saying you can emulate a 32bit address space with 16bit pointers, which you can, but it's hardly preferable to having a flat 32bit address space.