Ok, for the record I am happy they are offline, but the devil's advocate in me does make me wonder about impact of this on net-neutrality.
Consider this, a bandwidth provider cuts off certain traffic because it disproves of this traffic and feels most of it is illegal and it is bad for their business.
Is it Pacific Internet Exchange cutting off access to Intercage because they believe most of the sites (70+ %) involves spam or some other illegal acvitivy?
Or is it Comcast cutting off access to P2P protocols because they believe most of it (98+ %) involves copyright infringement or some other illegal activity?
I am all for getting rid of the spam and malware, but something about this method is setting off red flags.
The holy grail of course would be being able to run it on the PS3 or the Xbox 360, either of which could handle HD content. The Xbox will actually do 720p or 1080i and XBMC will probably produce video at these resolutions but you can't feed it data fast enough (that is, the Xbox's 733MHz Coppermine Celeron can't process a HD stream) so it won't help you.
I am not sure if 360 or PS3 are really that attractive anymore. You could pick up a used modded Xbox for $100-$150 - now THAT was worthwhile, but at the cost of PS3 and X360, its actually cheaper to buy PC - and no hacking or mod-chipping required.
Its a moot point to prod MS with a stick or not. Truth of the matter is that XBox (remember this is XBox, not Xbox 360) is a dead platform and has been dead for a while.
That is why I am so excited that they took XBMC and opened it up to larger platforms. The nice thing about the Xbox was that you get a mini-pc in a tight, cheap package, but the power of it's been lacking these days (sub-Ghz celeron with next to no memory only goes so far) so with new platform support maybe we'll finally get HD, DVR and other extra hardware-based capabilities.
-Em
I'd assume it's a legal grey area - does anyone actually know whether the idea that the EULA of a compiler can limit the distribution of binaries that it outputs has ever been tested in court?
The fact that the XBMC team don't want to prod MS with a stick and blindly hope that they aren't bankrupted by defensive legal costs, of course, is entirely understandable, but I'd still think that they've got something of a case; it's not like the makers of any other tool get a say in how you use it or what you do with the product you produce with it.
The developers haven't legally licensed the Xbox XDK, and so they can't legally distribute binaries. So you'll have to find them somewhere illegitimate.
Even if you own the SDK, which, I think, average joe CAN buy, distributing binaries is disallowed under SDK EULA without MS's blessing, which they will not give for XBMC. This is pretty much same problem as iPhone developers have, except unlike iPhone there are no alternative ways to compile code for XBOX - you HAVE to use the MS SDK and as such MS can sue for distribution of compiled binaries (which then have to be distributed along side of other illegal material like movies and music and thus looks just as illegal).
On the flip side, at least there is no Apple "Fight Club" rules for MS SDK - you ARE allowed to talk about it without getting sued.
So would you prefer a wrong answer over "I am not a C programmer"?
Yes. Because if someone can think but does not know something - it is easily fixed - but if someone is not willing to think - that is unfixable and next time they come across something that IS their job and they don't know they will not be able to handle it.
I consider myself a fairly competent programmer, but my guess on the answer to that question was simply wrong. And why? Because, understanding how the post-increment operator works, I didn't realize there was an exception in the standard thanks to optimization details. So does that make it a good answer, because I applied existing knowledge to a new problem, or a bad answer because I assumed certain behaviour?
Its neither good nor bad ANSWER. But it shows if you have somewhat in-depth understanding of what you are looking at, even if you don't know everything (no one does, and expecting them to is unreasonable). It also shows, once the answer is discussed, if you are capable of understanding what you did not know before and learn from it and, even more importantly, if you are interested in doing so. Believe me, having interviewed MANY people, more that 75% of applicants our there WOULD NOT GET THAT FAR.
I'm sorry, but questions like that are simply ridiculous. In the end they're simply pointless bits of minutiae, trivia that tell you nothing about the real skill level of the employee. I'd much rather have a developer who understood proper software architecture, design, and test, over one who knows a few clever facts about C, and those traits *can* be tested for in a way that doesn't involve nifty little programming riddles and tricky gotchas.
Its not about clever facts about anything. Its not about answering the riddle. Its about finding out if you are capable of thinking on your feet or if you are just another button-pusher that will just sit there and go "DUHHH, I DUNNO" next time they will run into a weird language quirk - because if you are ever doing any serious work, you probably will be running into some quirks.
Most of these sort of "gotcha questions" I ask are the questions that got ME in the course of doing that job - and some of those took a while to resolve. I certainly do not expect my interviewee to know the answer of-hand nor really even solve it without some hints on my part. And if they do happen to "just know" the answer - I move on, because that makes the question useless for my purposes.
Firstly, nobody would ever write a line of code like that. Secondly, it's just a bit of C trivia. Knowing when the ++ operator pre and post increments is rarely going to matter. If it does cause a problem then a decent programmer will grab a debugger and find out why his value isn't what he was expecting.
This is the point that everyone is missing. It is NOT and is almost NEVER about trivia or knowing or not knowing the answer. Its about seeing HOW someone would think in a an unusual, difficult situation. In this day and age, Google will return any bit of reference you may need, but it is its knowing what to look for and even more importantly knowing what you know and what you don't that is important. I would respect someone saying "I don't know, but here is my guess" a heck of a lot more than "I am not a C programmer".
You'll no doubt be shocked to learn that even though you might empty your Recycle Bin there are some thing that anyone with physical access to your computer MAY be able to recover.
Thank you, that's the point. I DO know that about files *I* create and *I* delete and I can delete them securely if I choose to. What I did NOT know is that something is capturing screenshots of what I am doing and saving them without my knowledge. Generally this sort of a behavior is reserved for spyware, rootkits and other malware. I realize it is not intended as such, but neither was the Sony DRM rootkit a while back. I would guess most people would have an issue to have a keylogger installed on their computers. This is no different..
(the word may is in all caps for the imbeciles reading, and because some of us are unable to detect when we are being patronizing)
Ok, but there MAY be something vaguely self-referential about that....
Sounds like yet another sensationalist (and completely inaccurate) headline pointing to a non-story. Unless some pervert is hits the home button while trying to take a (crappy, borderline-useless unless it's being done in full daylight) picture of himself raping a kid, AND law enforcement not only knows to look for this cached file, I don't really see this being an issue. I suppose it could possibly be used as supplemental evidence when a case is being built up, but the actual AIM chat logs, sent emails, phone call history (all of which are far more accessible) and such would be far more potentially incriminating.
While sensationalist and somewhat misleading, it is not entirely inaccurate. Truth is that while it is not a screenshot of everything, there are some things that anyone with physical access to your iPhone MAY be able to recover.
As a not so far-fetched example, if you happend to hit Home while viewing your encrypted data in an encrypted password/data storage app (like 1passwd), your encrypted data - which may be passwords to other locations - is now stored unencrypted on your hard drive without your knowledge and thus may be recovered.
Why bother with such a useless thing? It's never saved to Flash; it's created in RAM. Law enforcement must be damn good if they can recover such an image from RAM, so damn good they must be making shit up.
Errr, it's not phoning these screenshots home. You must have a problem with.bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
In all fairness, if his account password "alpine" is posted all over the internet, looking into his.bash_history IS a pretty damn good way of spying on him. (Granted, there are bigger issues in this scenario.)
It's pragmatic to not press the home button when doing home invasions or killing people, I guess.
Although you are probably technically right, unless you are killing them with a scathing email, or nasty AC troll post - it is not likely that the home button will matter. It captures the screenshot of what is on your screen - not from the camera. (unless you happend to have the camera app on at the moment of course)
When you get a big company interested, they will pay for it to be patented and share the revenue with you.
And NDA's, unlike patents, do not expire.
Why do people like you keep pulling the same lame old excuse? Hell, this patent didn't bring in enough money to pay for a renewal, so the little inventor with patents is STILL screwed.
So if he's already screwed by BigCorp, why worry about a change that will screw the little inventor? It's no change from the current situation.
I don't think you understand what NDAs are. NDAs are for protecting people from exposing KNOWN private data. The only people that ever sign those are employees and sometimes companies when they share personal data between themselves (like client lists, financial transactions, etc).
No company in their right mind would EVER sign a blind NDA for a pitch from an inventor. And if they do, they should fire their entire legal and management team, because they are clueless.
NDA has NOTHING to do with this.
Plus if you keep it a secret, why waste time and money inventing something you will never be able to benefit from?
Then what is the point of granting patents?
If individual inventors can't create it, what they've "invented."
I wouldn't mind if they could obtain a pending patent until they produce a prototype, but no produce no patent (or unless you can license it to 20% of the products in your market segment.)
Here is a definition of a patent - a patent is NOT about building something, it is about preventing others from doing so without your permission while still contributing the knowledge of your invention to the community.
There are plenty of reasons to get a patent before you can actually build it - not the least if those is so that you can safely raise money for your venture or find someone who can implement it while compensating you. NDAs are a joke and these days no one would actually sign one anyway. Provisional patents are not the answer either. They only last a year and so there is no way you can find someone to pay for your idea if they know that in less than a year they can just do it for free and cut you out completely. You can argue for extending provisional to be longer, but all that does is lowers the bar for the stupid things people will patent since requirements for provisional patents are much more relaxed.
So..explain to me how this patent was granted? I was under the impression that in order for a patent to be granted, a prototype has to be built. I wasn't aware flash drives even existed back in 1979.
If that is the case, how then, can business method and software patents even exist? (I agree with you, however, that this is how it *should* be).
Requirement to build a prototype would favor large corporations and put individual inventor in a huge disadvantage. A lot of modern inventions, especially in electronics industry, would take a very large amount of money to prototype.
Of course there have been solid state chips that stored sounds before ipod - I mean you could buy one in Rat Shack in the 80's for a few bucks. Does this really make this guy an inventor of iPod? I don't think so. Its like crediting the guy who invented the wheel with creation of the Prius.
on the other hand (from the article):
Kramer isn't resting on his laurels, though. He is currently working on a new device which will record telephone calls and send the audio file via email. The device is expected to be used for business meetings and interviews.
I believe this is something that has been offered by most teleconference bridges and corp voice mail systems for at least 10 years. I know I was getting WAV files of my voice mail via email back in 1999.... not to mention "visual voice mail" on iPhones.
we store all our important details in a seperate UNIX user account, whose password we don't divulge to sys-admins, so good luck stealing our documents...
in most cases IT has root- and/or physical access to the servers which means your password is merely gonna hold any determined sysadmin back for a few minutes.
Unless you're using additional measures (certain methods of encryption for example) the "security measures" you desribe arent worth a thing
IM and bluetooth are not minor things for a smartphone.
You missed the point - the title of the article is completely misleading. Android will have IM AND Bluetooth, just not IM-over-BLUETOOTH-using-dedicated-api. Assuming there is another way of getting a functional IP stack to the world - is a really a minor thing and will not affect anything.
And also, please don't compare iPhone to a smartphone. iPhone is "a pretty but significantly mentally chalenged" phone.
If Congress really wanted to even-out the playing field - they'd be investing money into inner-city schools - like a mile a way from them in DC - which are literally falling apart - and more like prisons than schools. Turn these into places that foster excitement in learning, science and engineering, and are an oasis inside these inner-city slum areas - and you'll see those kids go off to college and become candidates.
Short of doing that - nothing else will ever work. You can give them a billion dollars in college grant money - but if their schools are gang, crime and filth ridden places where they just get locked-up for a few hours a day - then no quota system on the place of the planet will ever balance that out.
Amen to that. I have to say people only look at the situation in the "present" and say, well the ratios are not right, it must be discrimination! People are not willing to deal with the fact that this "discrimination", no matter where it was originated, now deeply rooted in the people's own cultures. But its much easier to pretend to "fix" things via quotas than to say you want to change other people's culture. And thus oppressed become their own oppressors and with all the talk about "equal rights" - no one is actually willing to touch the real problem with a 10 foot pole.
When I was in college, my engineering school class had a 10:1 ratio - pretty average for quite a few years prior. but my freshman year we got a new, female dean - who believed that there should be more women engineers and insisted on quotas. Next year, the freshman class was 1:1 - unheard of before. Guess what, the next year after that, the same class was close to 8:1 and by graduation it was back to 10:1 - all those women dropped out because they weren't really interested enough in the subjects and were not willing to put in the insane amount of work required. Mind you, this was a very competitive school (top 3 in US) and all of the students of both genders had the grades to be there - it was the lack of interest that led to high dropout rate.
Now in a less competitive school I imagine there will be more people staying in and while the number of women engineers will rise, the overall quality of those uninterested engineers will plummet and this will become a liability to the real female engineers.
If you really want to change that ratio - you can't just do quotas. You have to start in kindergarten and change the entire culture from then on. You got to make people WANT to do it, not just push them into the field.
However, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that the RIAA had any part in this. On the whole, it sounds like someone just made a bad decision in terms of how to configure certain sound cards. If someone can provide any evidence that the RIAA actually had a role in this, we'll post an update, but there's no reason to jump to conclusions without any evidence. That's what the RIAA does.
Yep, plenty of facts! Can't get more conclusive than that! RIAA is caught red-handed.
Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
Basically we are talking about Dell screwing up one driver to which people are ascribing various conspiracy theories. If you are actually read any of the blogs they are all just speculating and pointing to each other. Some of the more serious blogs outright say it is just random speculation, but that does not stop them from spreading the FUD. Something tells me if Dell made some secret deal, this would affect ALL of their computers, not just ones based on specific chipset. They wouldn't be selling alternative audiocards, and they would not be posting workarounds all over the place.I think that old variation of Occam's razor applies - "don't attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity." Its not the first driver Dell screwed up - its not going to be the last. This one just happened to somewhat fit into a conspiracy theory.
You're exactly the kind of shit who will use a BB as a leash "to make sure the job gets done." Guess what, shitbird -- in these days of "at will employees", it ain't that fucking easy to tell your over-prick to shove it. If I have a family to support in this economy, I can't easily get real choosy about how I support them. Sure, if someone is a top gun star who can stop in the lobby on the way out of the building, make one phone call and hang up having gotten an even higher-paying job, that's fine. But you'd cower if that kind of person told you to twist your PDA back up your ass.
But anyone without that kind of star power is just a pissant standing in your way and you'd stomp on him.
Fuck you and all the other soulless bastards like you.
So to summarize this insult-laden diatribe: Your social skills are limited to either Miltonesque grumbling under your breath and posting anonymously on/. or telling your boss to "shove it" and quitting your job. And you cannot do latter because you are too uncertain of your competence.
Well, Milton, I do feel sorry for you. Life does not have to suck that bad. Before you go postal on your office, learn some social skills and TALK to your boss. Don't hide from him or tell him to "shove it" - TALK. You know, like a human being to a human being. Make sure that both of your expectations are known. Most of the time that step alone will be a huge improvement in quality of life for both of you. You will respect yourself and your boss will respect you. And if your boss is not capable of it, well that should tell you enough. PDA or no PDA - you life will suck as long as you are there - so do something about it and start looking for a new job. In these days, if you are half way competent, you CAN find a job without a problem. Its not like it was 6-8 years ago. - I don't know a single person right now who wants a job and does not have it. (there were plenty in 2001/2002)
And for the record, I have never used anything to "leash" anyone nor have I ever been "leashed". If someone needs to be leashed, either the employee or the manager is clearly not doing their job right.
As for your "top gun star" - no real "top gun star" would ever tell anyone to "shove it". I don't care how good you might think you are, if you don't have integrity or social skills to talk to people - you are worse than useless - go be a pain in someone else's ass. On the other hand if you have integrity and say "no" to something you cannot or don't want to commit to - I will totally respect that, and I expect my bosses to do the same. Hell, I've learned integrity the hard way and these days say "no" to plenty of work where I think the expectations are unreasonable - and guess what, I never have to tell anyone to "shove it" nor have I ever been hurting for work and my life is so much better now.
Its not about being a star, its about having a sense of responsibility and integrity. I don't need to my work to give me a PDA, I own one and guess what, I only answer my mail when I choose to or when I commit to do so. The rest of the time, I don't. Yes, it is THAT simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, for the record I am happy they are offline, but the devil's advocate in me does make me wonder about impact of this on net-neutrality.
Consider this, a bandwidth provider cuts off certain traffic because it disproves of this traffic and feels most of it is illegal and it is bad for their business.
Is it Pacific Internet Exchange cutting off access to Intercage because they believe most of the sites (70+ %) involves spam or some other illegal acvitivy?
Or is it Comcast cutting off access to P2P protocols because they believe most of it (98+ %) involves copyright infringement or some other illegal activity?
I am all for getting rid of the spam and malware, but something about this method is setting off red flags.
Or maybe I am over-thinking it.
Euh, the XBOX 360 is $199, how wouldn't it be interesting if you could run an HD capable XBMC on there?
Heh, Shows what I know. I was still thinking $400-$500 range. $200 is getting back into realm of reasonable.
-Em
The holy grail of course would be being able to run it on the PS3 or the Xbox 360, either of which could handle HD content. The Xbox will actually do 720p or 1080i and XBMC will probably produce video at these resolutions but you can't feed it data fast enough (that is, the Xbox's 733MHz Coppermine Celeron can't process a HD stream) so it won't help you.
I am not sure if 360 or PS3 are really that attractive anymore. You could pick up a used modded Xbox for $100-$150 - now THAT was worthwhile, but at the cost of PS3 and X360, its actually cheaper to buy PC - and no hacking or mod-chipping required.
-Em
Its a moot point to prod MS with a stick or not. Truth of the matter is that XBox (remember this is XBox, not Xbox 360) is a dead platform and has been dead for a while.
That is why I am so excited that they took XBMC and opened it up to larger platforms. The nice thing about the Xbox was that you get a mini-pc in a tight, cheap package, but the power of it's been lacking these days (sub-Ghz celeron with next to no memory only goes so far) so with new platform support maybe we'll finally get HD, DVR and other extra hardware-based capabilities.
-Em
I'd assume it's a legal grey area - does anyone actually know whether the idea that the EULA of a compiler can limit the distribution of binaries that it outputs has ever been tested in court?
The fact that the XBMC team don't want to prod MS with a stick and blindly hope that they aren't bankrupted by defensive legal costs, of course, is entirely understandable, but I'd still think that they've got something of a case; it's not like the makers of any other tool get a say in how you use it or what you do with the product you produce with it.
The developers haven't legally licensed the Xbox XDK, and so they can't legally distribute binaries. So you'll have to find them somewhere illegitimate.
Even if you own the SDK, which, I think, average joe CAN buy, distributing binaries is disallowed under SDK EULA without MS's blessing, which they will not give for XBMC. This is pretty much same problem as iPhone developers have, except unlike iPhone there are no alternative ways to compile code for XBOX - you HAVE to use the MS SDK and as such MS can sue for distribution of compiled binaries (which then have to be distributed along side of other illegal material like movies and music and thus looks just as illegal).
On the flip side, at least there is no Apple "Fight Club" rules for MS SDK - you ARE allowed to talk about it without getting sued.
-Em
So would you prefer a wrong answer over "I am not a C programmer"?
Yes. Because if someone can think but does not know something - it is easily fixed - but if someone is not willing to think - that is unfixable and next time they come across something that IS their job and they don't know they will not be able to handle it.
I consider myself a fairly competent programmer, but my guess on the answer to that question was simply wrong. And why? Because, understanding how the post-increment operator works, I didn't realize there was an exception in the standard thanks to optimization details. So does that make it a good answer, because I applied existing knowledge to a new problem, or a bad answer because I assumed certain behaviour?
Its neither good nor bad ANSWER. But it shows if you have somewhat in-depth understanding of what you are looking at, even if you don't know everything (no one does, and expecting them to is unreasonable). It also shows, once the answer is discussed, if you are capable of understanding what you did not know before and learn from it and, even more importantly, if you are interested in doing so. Believe me, having interviewed MANY people, more that 75% of applicants our there WOULD NOT GET THAT FAR.
I'm sorry, but questions like that are simply ridiculous. In the end they're simply pointless bits of minutiae, trivia that tell you nothing about the real skill level of the employee. I'd much rather have a developer who understood proper software architecture, design, and test, over one who knows a few clever facts about C, and those traits *can* be tested for in a way that doesn't involve nifty little programming riddles and tricky gotchas.
Its not about clever facts about anything. Its not about answering the riddle. Its about finding out if you are capable of thinking on your feet or if you are just another button-pusher that will just sit there and go "DUHHH, I DUNNO" next time they will run into a weird language quirk - because if you are ever doing any serious work, you probably will be running into some quirks.
Most of these sort of "gotcha questions" I ask are the questions that got ME in the course of doing that job - and some of those took a while to resolve. I certainly do not expect my interviewee to know the answer of-hand nor really even solve it without some hints on my part. And if they do happen to "just know" the answer - I move on, because that makes the question useless for my purposes.
-Em
That's the sort of question I hate.
Firstly, nobody would ever write a line of code like that. Secondly, it's just a bit of C trivia. Knowing when the ++ operator pre and post increments is rarely going to matter. If it does cause a problem then a decent programmer will grab a debugger and find out why his value isn't what he was expecting.
This is the point that everyone is missing. It is NOT and is almost NEVER about trivia or knowing or not knowing the answer. Its about seeing HOW someone would think in a an unusual, difficult situation. In this day and age, Google will return any bit of reference you may need, but it is its knowing what to look for and even more importantly knowing what you know and what you don't that is important. I would respect someone saying "I don't know, but here is my guess" a heck of a lot more than "I am not a C programmer".
-Em
You'll no doubt be shocked to learn that even though you might empty your Recycle Bin there are some thing that anyone with physical access to your computer MAY be able to recover.
Thank you, that's the point. I DO know that about files *I* create and *I* delete and I can delete them securely if I choose to. What I did NOT know is that something is capturing screenshots of what I am doing and saving them without my knowledge. Generally this sort of a behavior is reserved for spyware, rootkits and other malware. I realize it is not intended as such, but neither was the Sony DRM rootkit a while back.
I would guess most people would have an issue to have a keylogger installed on their computers. This is no different..
(the word may is in all caps for the imbeciles reading, and because some of us are unable to detect when we are being patronizing)
Ok, but there MAY be something vaguely self-referential about that....
-Em
Sounds like yet another sensationalist (and completely inaccurate) headline pointing to a
non-story. Unless some pervert is hits the home button while trying to take a (crappy, borderline-useless unless it's being done in full daylight) picture of himself raping a kid, AND law enforcement not only knows to look for this cached file, I don't really see this being an issue. I suppose it could possibly be used as supplemental evidence when a case is being built up, but the actual AIM chat logs, sent emails, phone call history (all of which are far more accessible) and such would be far more potentially incriminating.
While sensationalist and somewhat misleading, it is not entirely inaccurate. Truth is that while it is not a screenshot of everything, there are some things that anyone with physical access to your iPhone MAY be able to recover.
As a not so far-fetched example, if you happend to hit Home while viewing your encrypted data in an encrypted password/data storage app (like 1passwd), your encrypted data - which may be passwords to other locations - is now stored unencrypted on your hard drive without your knowledge and thus may be recovered.
Not a non-story.
-Em
Why bother with such a useless thing? It's never saved to Flash; it's created in RAM. Law enforcement must be damn good if they can recover such an image from RAM, so damn good they must be making shit up.
TFA says you are wrong. Maybe you should read it.
-Em
Errr, it's not phoning these screenshots home. You must have a problem with .bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
In all fairness, if his account password "alpine" is posted all over the internet, looking into his .bash_history IS a pretty damn good way of spying on him. (Granted, there are bigger issues in this scenario.)
-Em
It's pragmatic to not press the home button when doing home invasions or killing people, I guess.
Although you are probably technically right, unless you are killing them with a scathing email, or nasty AC troll post - it is not likely that the home button will matter. It captures the screenshot of what is on your screen - not from the camera. (unless you happend to have the camera app on at the moment of course)
-Em
and keep it a secret.
When you get a big company interested, they will pay for it to be patented and share the revenue with you.
And NDA's, unlike patents, do not expire.
Why do people like you keep pulling the same lame old excuse? Hell, this patent didn't bring in enough money to pay for a renewal, so the little inventor with patents is STILL screwed.
So if he's already screwed by BigCorp, why worry about a change that will screw the little inventor? It's no change from the current situation.
I don't think you understand what NDAs are. NDAs are for protecting people from exposing KNOWN private data. The only people that ever sign those are employees and sometimes companies when they share personal data between themselves (like client lists, financial transactions, etc).
No company in their right mind would EVER sign a blind NDA for a pitch from an inventor. And if they do, they should fire their entire legal and management team, because they are clueless.
NDA has NOTHING to do with this.
Plus if you keep it a secret, why waste time and money inventing something you will never be able to benefit from?
-Em
Then what is the point of granting patents?
If individual inventors can't create it, what they've "invented."
I wouldn't mind if they could obtain a pending patent until they produce a prototype, but no produce no patent (or unless you can license it to 20% of the products in your market segment.)
Here is a definition of a patent - a patent is NOT about building something, it is about preventing others from doing so without your permission while still contributing the knowledge of your invention to the community.
There are plenty of reasons to get a patent before you can actually build it - not the least if those is so that you can safely raise money for your venture or find someone who can implement it while compensating you. NDAs are a joke and these days no one would actually sign one anyway. Provisional patents are not the answer either. They only last a year and so there is no way you can find someone to pay for your idea if they know that in less than a year they can just do it for free and cut you out completely. You can argue for extending provisional to be longer, but all that does is lowers the bar for the stupid things people will patent since requirements for provisional patents are much more relaxed.
-Em
If that is the case, how then, can business method and software patents even exist? (I agree with you, however, that this is how it *should* be).
Requirement to build a prototype would favor large corporations and put individual inventor in a huge disadvantage. A lot of modern inventions, especially in electronics industry, would take a very large amount of money to prototype.
-Em
Of course there have been solid state chips that stored sounds before ipod - I mean you could buy one in Rat Shack in the 80's for a few bucks. Does this really make this guy an inventor of iPod? I don't think so. Its like crediting the guy who invented the wheel with creation of the Prius.
on the other hand (from the article):
Kramer isn't resting on his laurels, though. He is currently working on a new device which will record telephone calls and send the audio file via email. The device is expected to be used for business meetings and interviews.
I believe this is something that has been offered by most teleconference bridges and corp voice mail systems for at least 10 years. I know I was getting WAV files of my voice mail via email back in 1999.... not to mention "visual voice mail" on iPhones.
-Em
we store all our important details in a seperate UNIX user account, whose password we don't divulge to sys-admins, so good luck stealing our documents...
in most cases IT has root- and/or physical access to the servers which means your password is merely gonna hold any determined sysadmin back for a few minutes.
Unless you're using additional measures (certain methods of encryption for example) the "security measures" you desribe arent worth a thing
I think someone missed the joke.
IM and bluetooth are not minor things for a smartphone.
You missed the point - the title of the article is completely misleading. Android will have IM AND Bluetooth, just not IM-over-BLUETOOTH-using-dedicated-api. Assuming there is another way of getting a functional IP stack to the world - is a really a minor thing and will not affect anything.
And also, please don't compare iPhone to a smartphone. iPhone is "a pretty but significantly mentally chalenged" phone.
-Em
It's still redundant. The purpose of moderation is to improve the discussion.
Where are my mod points so that I can mod both of these as "offtopic".... as well as this post....
-Em
Followed soon by presidents
Hmm, unless the other 50% are same, 50% of a President being female might prove to be... messy....
If Congress really wanted to even-out the playing field - they'd be investing money into inner-city schools - like a mile a way from them in DC - which are literally falling apart - and more like prisons than schools. Turn these into places that foster excitement in learning, science and engineering, and are an oasis inside these inner-city slum areas - and you'll see those kids go off to college and become candidates.
Short of doing that - nothing else will ever work. You can give them a billion dollars in college grant money - but if their schools are gang, crime and filth ridden places where they just get locked-up for a few hours a day - then no quota system on the place of the planet will ever balance that out.
Amen to that. I have to say people only look at the situation in the "present" and say, well the ratios are not right, it must be discrimination! People are not willing to deal with the fact that this "discrimination", no matter where it was originated, now deeply rooted in the people's own cultures. But its much easier to pretend to "fix" things via quotas than to say you want to change other people's culture. And thus oppressed become their own oppressors and with all the talk about "equal rights" - no one is actually willing to touch the real problem with a 10 foot pole.
-Em
When I was in college, my engineering school class had a 10:1 ratio - pretty average for quite a few years prior. but my freshman year we got a new, female dean - who believed that there should be more women engineers and insisted on quotas. Next year, the freshman class was 1:1 - unheard of before. Guess what, the next year after that, the same class was close to 8:1 and by graduation it was back to 10:1 - all those women dropped out because they weren't really interested enough in the subjects and were not willing to put in the insane amount of work required. Mind you, this was a very competitive school (top 3 in US) and all of the students of both genders had the grades to be there - it was the lack of interest that led to high dropout rate.
Now in a less competitive school I imagine there will be more people staying in and while the number of women engineers will rise, the overall quality of those uninterested engineers will plummet and this will become a liability to the real female engineers.
If you really want to change that ratio - you can't just do quotas. You have to start in kindergarten and change the entire culture from then on. You got to make people WANT to do it, not just push them into the field.
-Em
From the techdirt link posted above:
However, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that the RIAA had any part in this. On the whole, it sounds like someone just made a bad decision in terms of how to configure certain sound cards. If someone can provide any evidence that the RIAA actually had a role in this, we'll post an update, but there's no reason to jump to conclusions without any evidence. That's what the RIAA does.
Yep, plenty of facts! Can't get more conclusive than that! RIAA is caught red-handed.
I guess FUD works both ways.
-Em
Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
Basically we are talking about Dell screwing up one driver to which people are ascribing various conspiracy theories. If you are actually read any of the blogs they are all just speculating and pointing to each other. Some of the more serious blogs outright say it is just random speculation, but that does not stop them from spreading the FUD. Something tells me if Dell made some secret deal, this would affect ALL of their computers, not just ones based on specific chipset. They wouldn't be selling alternative audiocards, and they would not be posting workarounds all over the place.I think that old variation of Occam's razor applies - "don't attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity." Its not the first driver Dell screwed up - its not going to be the last. This one just happened to somewhat fit into a conspiracy theory.
-Em
You're exactly the kind of shit who will use a BB as a leash "to make sure the job gets done." Guess what, shitbird -- in these days of "at will employees", it ain't that fucking easy to tell your over-prick to shove it. If I have a family to support in this economy, I can't easily get real choosy about how I support them. Sure, if someone is a top gun star who can stop in the lobby on the way out of the building, make one phone call and hang up having gotten an even higher-paying job, that's fine. But you'd cower if that kind of person told you to twist your PDA back up your ass.
But anyone without that kind of star power is just a pissant standing in your way and you'd stomp on him.
Fuck you and all the other soulless bastards like you.
So to summarize this insult-laden diatribe: Your social skills are limited to either Miltonesque grumbling under your breath and posting anonymously on /. or telling your boss to "shove it" and quitting your job. And you cannot do latter because you are too uncertain of your competence.
Well, Milton, I do feel sorry for you. Life does not have to suck that bad. Before you go postal on your office, learn some social skills and TALK to your boss. Don't hide from him or tell him to "shove it" - TALK. You know, like a human being to a human being. Make sure that both of your expectations are known. Most of the time that step alone will be a huge improvement in quality of life for both of you. You will respect yourself and your boss will respect you. And if your boss is not capable of it, well that should tell you enough. PDA or no PDA - you life will suck as long as you are there - so do something about it and start looking for a new job. In these days, if you are half way competent, you CAN find a job without a problem. Its not like it was 6-8 years ago. - I don't know a single person right now who wants a job and does not have it. (there were plenty in 2001/2002)
And for the record, I have never used anything to "leash" anyone nor have I ever been "leashed". If someone needs to be leashed, either the employee or the manager is clearly not doing their job right.
As for your "top gun star" - no real "top gun star" would ever tell anyone to "shove it". I don't care how good you might think you are, if you don't have integrity or social skills to talk to people - you are worse than useless - go be a pain in someone else's ass. On the other hand if you have integrity and say "no" to something you cannot or don't want to commit to - I will totally respect that, and I expect my bosses to do the same. Hell, I've learned integrity the hard way and these days say "no" to plenty of work where I think the expectations are unreasonable - and guess what, I never have to tell anyone to "shove it" nor have I ever been hurting for work and my life is so much better now.
Its not about being a star, its about having a sense of responsibility and integrity. I don't need to my work to give me a PDA, I own one and guess what, I only answer my mail when I choose to or when I commit to do so. The rest of the time, I don't. Yes, it is THAT simple.
-Em