Given that the Indian government till date is very selective about who they release map data to, I would guess that any Google Maps for India is a long time away. I know people would say that Google can just buy satellite images from an independent source, however, they would need to do a lot of work on these basic images, since basic GIS data for India is not freely available from a central place. Large patches of road, street addresses, establishments, etc. have not yet been mapped and digitized. I would guess that Google Maps India for main metros to be 1-2 years away, while the same for the whole country to be at least 4-5 years away.
I am sure that visiting tourists to India have felt the lack of good local maps a trile annoying....
yes, my proposed system will not work in this case. But it will work in getting rid of the 99.5% of bogus patents. Maybe we can ask people who ask for more than the 20 times return on investment, say 1000 times in the case of PostIt, to justify this as an exception with a court before the patent is granted itself. Real lateral thinking, actually few in number, can be protected this way.
Also, in an increasingly connected world - the internet was probably not a reality when PostIt was invented, the "blinding flash of obvious truth" may occur to many people at the same time. It is not fair that only the person who filed it first prosper. After all, one-click would have have been blindingly obvious to a lot of people. All knowledge is based on previous processing of information and in a connected world information is literally flowing at the speed of light.
Here is an idea for patent reform.
The person/organization that applies for a patent has to also submit evidence of the amount of resources (time and money) spent on the invention. In return, patent law, will grant them patent protection for upto 20 times the investment. Either they earn 20 times the money spent or they have protection of 20 times the number of hours spent . The number "20" is just something off the top of my head for now.
Thus Jeff Bezos, after proving that it really took him all of 1 week only focussing on coming up with the 1-click process will have patent protection for 20 weeks, while a big drug company spending $1 billion on a new drug will have patent protection till it earns $20 billion on the same. If the drug company spent 4 years on developing the drug, they may also get protection for 80 years in case the $20 billion in royalties is not reached before that.
In a fast changing world, 20 years of blanket patent protection for every small idea is simply too much.
People complaining that the hack is really not worth voiding the warranty are missing the whole point. It is just the coolness factor out here. Somebody, somewhere figured out that by setting those specific tiny little jumpers (I still can't believe how tiny they are), the Mac Mini could be overclocked and shared this info with the whole wide world. Appreciate that and just think about what *you* have figured out lately. Losers.
The original report said that the kernel potentially (since they are non-court validated) infringes an estimated 283 patents. And now Ballmer is sure that all of the issued patents are actually valid.
Where they designate a phone belonging to either one of Series40. Series60, Series80, etc. Within a "series", one can be assured of similar display, keypad, etc. Seems to work for them and the developers. Developers can now target a SeriesXX platform knowing that the code will make sense on all phones of that platform.
You are right. It is a privacy issue. But, here, in India, traditionally, the entire spreadsheet of all students is put up in a public place in the institute (college, school, board, wherever) for all to see. Therefore, it is not a big issue for somebody who has grown up here.
Bangalore has been experimenting with such solar powered road studs for the last couple of years. They have been installed on a few of the major roads here as a road divider, i.e., they demarcate the traffic going in opposite directions. The authorities in their infinite wisdom have decided to set it to a flashing mode, i.e., the markers charge up during the daytime and automatically go into blink mode at night. I find the whole thing very irritating - a line of blinking lights - like one of those web pages where a lot of the content is in flashing text !
Goes by the name of "gobar gas". "gobar" means "animal shit" in Hindi. Was pretty big in the early eighties when the government planned this as a way of electrifying villages. Still used in places, but guess it does not meet increasing energy demands for pumpsets (irrigation), crop threshers, etc. Electrifying all of rural India is still an unfinished task.
It just enforces yet another false identity and is directly responsible for many of the conflicts in today's world. The only thing the commies got right was the banning of religion. But I guess, most of the people are so weak/stupid/lazy that they need artificial crutches in order to find answers in this world. Actually they just want to believe whatever is packaged and dished out to them. Sort of like the Disneyland/Vegas experiences.
Two countries that simply refuse to be bullied by anybody. Watch out for Linux development heading eastwards - patents or no patents. China, as we have seen went out of their way to develop an alternative DVD standard just to get around patent crap. And they almost went their own way on WiFi too. I wonder what the terms of settlement between Intel and China amounts too.
Japan too, for their consumer electronics industry adopting Linux in a big way. NTT DoCoMo's reference platform for the next generation phones is based on Linux.
At times I wonder if people have become so desensitized to people in positions of power lying to them that they no longer care. People have to accept wrong behaviour from politicians, businessmen, the media and everybody else. It does not matter if George Bush lies, or Bill Gates bullies his way through or Wall Street analysts pump up a stock - this type of behaviour does not shock or surprise - it is expected of them.
Heck, after 6+ hours it turns out that Neo was just an anti-virus program (a human program nonetheless).
Anyways, if the Architect had used Linus as an OS instead of some crappy Windows 2500 OS, maybe the movie would never have happened. It is all about choices.
The choice the architect made in selecting the OS.
Globalization is inevitable with the advances in networking and human communication. It is beyond laws to stop it. Shut down all H1B's and L1s? So, what? All you need is an excellent video conferencing link to get the work done. Having said that, the effect will be a gradual levelling of the standard of living around the world. Though it is a good thing for the lesser developed countries, it is NOT a good thing for the developed countries, who will be seeing their investments in social welfare over the past few decades strained by lack of money today. The solution, as any economist, will tell you is that people will develop newer skills and newer markets will develop.
For the US specifically, I had thought that in the long run, with both manufacturing and services outsourced to other countries, the only hope would have been in Intellectual Property (entertainment, movies, music, real high tech) and tourism (the US has some great natural beauty) and maybe even agriculture given the size of farms here. For tourism to succeed, i.e., getting the newly rich from other countries to spend their money here, the tourist Visa scheme has to be a lot easier. After 9-11 that does not seem to be so.
Anyways, do other people have ideas w.r.t., the newer industries developing in the Western countries with the offshoring of both manufacturing and services ?
How can we lobby these Foundations to give grants to leading open source people like Larry Wall or Linus ? People who are much more than just good programmers but visionaries in their own right.
ACCESS is the company behind the micro browser on most of NTT Docomo's mobile phones. This is what gave them the huge break in the nineties. Else they were just yet another embedded software systems company.
In my experience I have faced a few problems with the following vendors - Microsoft, Netscape, SUN, SCO. The problems NEVER got solved. We had to finally find a workaround ourselves which was usually pretty crappy.
On the other hand Google has never ever failed me for Linux support.....
Slashdot Mirror
Check out www.coraid.com - they use ATA commands over Ethernet for a cheap and scalable storage solution.
Given that the Indian government till date is very selective about who they release map data to, I would guess that any Google Maps for India is a long time away. I know people would say that Google can just buy satellite images from an independent source, however, they would need to do a lot of work on these basic images, since basic GIS data for India is not freely available from a central place. Large patches of road, street addresses, establishments, etc. have not yet been mapped and digitized. I would guess that Google Maps India for main metros to be 1-2 years away, while the same for the whole country to be at least 4-5 years away. I am sure that visiting tourists to India have felt the lack of good local maps a trile annoying....
yes, my proposed system will not work in this case. But it will work in getting rid of the 99.5% of bogus patents. Maybe we can ask people who ask for more than the 20 times return on investment, say 1000 times in the case of PostIt, to justify this as an exception with a court before the patent is granted itself. Real lateral thinking, actually few in number, can be protected this way. Also, in an increasingly connected world - the internet was probably not a reality when PostIt was invented, the "blinding flash of obvious truth" may occur to many people at the same time. It is not fair that only the person who filed it first prosper. After all, one-click would have have been blindingly obvious to a lot of people. All knowledge is based on previous processing of information and in a connected world information is literally flowing at the speed of light.
Here is an idea for patent reform. The person/organization that applies for a patent has to also submit evidence of the amount of resources (time and money) spent on the invention. In return, patent law, will grant them patent protection for upto 20 times the investment. Either they earn 20 times the money spent or they have protection of 20 times the number of hours spent . The number "20" is just something off the top of my head for now. Thus Jeff Bezos, after proving that it really took him all of 1 week only focussing on coming up with the 1-click process will have patent protection for 20 weeks, while a big drug company spending $1 billion on a new drug will have patent protection till it earns $20 billion on the same. If the drug company spent 4 years on developing the drug, they may also get protection for 80 years in case the $20 billion in royalties is not reached before that. In a fast changing world, 20 years of blanket patent protection for every small idea is simply too much.
People complaining that the hack is really not worth voiding the warranty are missing the whole point. It is just the coolness factor out here. Somebody, somewhere figured out that by setting those specific tiny little jumpers (I still can't believe how tiny they are), the Mac Mini could be overclocked and shared this info with the whole wide world. Appreciate that and just think about what *you* have figured out lately. Losers.
The original report said that the kernel potentially (since they are non-court validated) infringes an estimated 283 patents. And now Ballmer is sure that all of the issued patents are actually valid.
This sort of MBA doublespeak makes my blood boil!
Where they designate a phone belonging to either one of Series40. Series60, Series80, etc. Within a "series", one can be assured of similar display, keypad, etc. Seems to work for them and the developers. Developers can now target a SeriesXX platform knowing that the code will make sense on all phones of that platform.
Jesus was a robot from the future!
A Linux environment, to some extent, forces you to know and understand it. It isn't all point-n-click.
You are right. It is a privacy issue. But, here, in India, traditionally, the entire spreadsheet of all students is put up in a public place in the institute (college, school, board, wherever) for all to see. Therefore, it is not a big issue for somebody who has grown up here.
Pretty much randomly. I guess because each of them switches on at a different time.
Bangalore has been experimenting with such solar powered road studs for the last couple of years. They have been installed on a few of the major roads here as a road divider, i.e., they demarcate the traffic going in opposite directions. The authorities in their infinite wisdom have decided to set it to a flashing mode, i.e., the markers charge up during the daytime and automatically go into blink mode at night. I find the whole thing very irritating - a line of blinking lights - like one of those web pages where a lot of the content is in flashing text !
Goes by the name of "gobar gas". "gobar" means "animal shit" in Hindi. Was pretty big in the early eighties when the government planned this as a way of electrifying villages. Still used in places, but guess it does not meet increasing energy demands for pumpsets (irrigation), crop threshers, etc. Electrifying all of rural India is still an unfinished task.
It just enforces yet another false identity and is directly responsible for many of the conflicts in today's world. The only thing the commies got right was the banning of religion. But I guess, most of the people are so weak/stupid/lazy that they need artificial crutches in order to find answers in this world. Actually they just want to believe whatever is packaged and dished out to them. Sort of like the Disneyland/Vegas experiences.
Two countries that simply refuse to be bullied by anybody. Watch out for Linux development heading eastwards - patents or no patents. China, as we have seen went out of their way to develop an alternative DVD standard just to get around patent crap. And they almost went their own way on WiFi too. I wonder what the terms of settlement between Intel and China amounts too. Japan too, for their consumer electronics industry adopting Linux in a big way. NTT DoCoMo's reference platform for the next generation phones is based on Linux.
....and is going to be OpenOffice's lunch. Only it doesn't know it yet ( and hence the smile). :-)
At times I wonder if people have become so desensitized to people in positions of power lying to them that they no longer care. People have to accept wrong behaviour from politicians, businessmen, the media and everybody else. It does not matter if George Bush lies, or Bill Gates bullies his way through or Wall Street analysts pump up a stock - this type of behaviour does not shock or surprise - it is expected of them.
Heck, after 6+ hours it turns out that Neo was just an anti-virus program (a human program nonetheless). Anyways, if the Architect had used Linus as an OS instead of some crappy Windows 2500 OS, maybe the movie would never have happened. It is all about choices. The choice the architect made in selecting the OS.
Globalization is inevitable with the advances in networking and human communication. It is beyond laws to stop it. Shut down all H1B's and L1s? So, what? All you need is an excellent video conferencing link to get the work done. Having said that, the effect will be a gradual levelling of the standard of living around the world. Though it is a good thing for the lesser developed countries, it is NOT a good thing for the developed countries, who will be seeing their investments in social welfare over the past few decades strained by lack of money today. The solution, as any economist, will tell you is that people will develop newer skills and newer markets will develop. For the US specifically, I had thought that in the long run, with both manufacturing and services outsourced to other countries, the only hope would have been in Intellectual Property (entertainment, movies, music, real high tech) and tourism (the US has some great natural beauty) and maybe even agriculture given the size of farms here. For tourism to succeed, i.e., getting the newly rich from other countries to spend their money here, the tourist Visa scheme has to be a lot easier. After 9-11 that does not seem to be so. Anyways, do other people have ideas w.r.t., the newer industries developing in the Western countries with the offshoring of both manufacturing and services ?
How can we lobby these Foundations to give grants to leading open source people like Larry Wall or Linus ? People who are much more than just good programmers but visionaries in their own right.
ACCESS is the company behind the micro browser on most of NTT Docomo's mobile phones. This is what gave them the huge break in the nineties. Else they were just yet another embedded software systems company.
In my experience I have faced a few problems with the following vendors - Microsoft, Netscape, SUN, SCO. The problems NEVER got solved. We had to finally find a workaround ourselves which was usually pretty crappy. On the other hand Google has never ever failed me for Linux support.....