I've got a Sony 615, and can attest to the fact that even though it has "true 16-bit color", I get really bad color seperation. So bad, that my old 8-bit color IIIc gives superior color. Even my friend's m130 (the device that you're knocking) gives better color. This is normal for a 615. (So why hasn't Sony been knocked about this?)
Don't put any faith at all in any PDA screen from any manufactuer. You really have to check it out yourself.
"If an individual wishes to file for a patent, they hold workshops all the time on how to get through effieciently, and ultimately this will mean that you get to pay the least."
As long as this means that an individual doing it all themselves, can still get all the initial filing stuff done for $500, I'm all for it.
I'd like to see instead the government CHARGING for these extra years. This is exactly what is done for patents. If the public doesn't get the works, then at least the government gets a cut of the money.
Let Disney extend their copyrights for another 20 years. Just charge them $1B/year to do it...
I would 2nd (3rd?) getting the book "Patent It Yourself". I filed 4 PPAs (Provisional Patent Applications) and 2 patent applications myself because of the information in this book. It's also published by Nolo Press, who really is tops in publishing self-help legal books by far. Many lawyers use their books to "get to the meat" of a subject quicker.
Some advice: file a PPA quickly. You can easily do this yourself, and even if you screw it all up, you'll just lose your early filing date. (The Patent Office ignores a PPA until you file a RPA, and then bases your patentabilty solely on your RPA. The PPA allows you to lock in an earlier filing date. Besides, it's cheap.)
With a PPA filed, take your time doing the RPA yourself. *DON'T* depend on a lawyer to do it. They don't know the technical domain, and will likely mess something up (or chew up a huge number of hours/$$$ getting it right). If you want to, have a lawyer review it before you send it out. If you follow the above book, you shouldn't be charged more than 2 hours for the review.
Don't go hog-wild looking for prior art. Looking some is important, but you also need plausible deniability... Remember, a good patent will have multiple claims, so even if you overlap some, you probably won't overlap on all. Plus it costs the other party money to get a patent overturned.
Finally, keep in mind that the great majority of patents have lost money for the filers (especially individuals). Only a small number turn into any kind of success.
Do you find that the more intelligent that a person is, the easier it is for them to rationalize doing what they really want to do, even if it is wrong?
Normal programmers can sustain 55 hour weeks for quite a while without serious problems. Over that, and they start dropping in code quality (but not quantity) pretty fast.
Some programmers with aspergers can literally do 90+ hour weeks on end without any real drop.
And then there are idiot managers who belive that 15 hour/day "sprints" can be sustained for years...
Added to those are the truely evil managers who force 15 hour/day working times because they know that when you burn out they can replace you easily right now...
Idiot managers won't start to believe you until they have a few failures. Evil ones will make examples of those who speak out. If you have one of these, it's time to polish up the old resume.
The head start you get is a lot less than you think.
There are asian companies that can produce and start selling a knock off product in less than 3 months. Then by using their greater $$$ and marketshare in other areas, they push you (the inventor) off the store shelves.
Most of them can make good money like this even on patented things during the time between the inventor's product is released, and the time the patent is awarded.
No patent, and the inventor won't even last long enough on the store shelves to break even.
Master of Magic had so may problems it wasn't even funny. The first versions were so buggy they were unplayable. Super stacks and killer heroes ruined the idea of empire building. Diplomacy? Even on the hardest levels, a good player could win most of the time with a single city.
Master of Orion and X-COM were the true Microprose classics. I'd be willing to pay $40 for a new version of X-COM with it's turn based movement style.
First of all, those nifty extras on a CD/DVD are not "service", they are "product". They'll be copied just like everything else.
Second, selling service and giving the product away for free is a terrible business model in most cases. Why? In order to sell more service, you have to have a more difficult to use program, and vice versa. This is called a WIN-LOSE situation.
Selling the product and giving away service means that you must make the product as easy and powerful as possible, in order to reduce the service costs. This is called a WIN-WIN situation.
Why was this parent thread marked as +5 insightful?
Time on your own plane of reference doesn't slow down as you reach the speed of light. You'll still age at the same rate. More time will have passed on slower planes of reference.
There's this one scientist (can't remember his name) who recently thought up a theoretical way to travel in time. He's reportedly started work on his machine. This isn't a joke, it's the real deal. This was something he discovered a while back, but left it as an intellectual curiosity until he saw the experiments in slowing down light.
Unfortunately, his time machine won't be able to handle anything bigger than a subatomic particle...
To make sure that you don't violate the 20 second rule, rip your resume in half. Then ask yourself if that half is good enough to get the recruiter to read the second half.
Re:Keep your chin up, make your own path
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 1
Definitely true.
I got my BS EE in '91, and finding a job was harder back then than it currently is. I survived.
(This is not to say that it still can't get worse...)
For those who don't know about it, look up "Ask the Headhunter" at www.eetimes.com. Read ALL the back articles.
2 guys were involved in the actual VHDL '87 writeup, Paul Menchini and I can't remember the name of the other. Paul did about the whole '93 version himself. He told me that he felt that many of the problems with the '87 version were directly attributable to merging the work from two people instead of having one person's "whole concept" (something like that). (Of course that might just be his ego talking...)
Slashdot Mirror
The day that many people get these things implanted into their heads, is the day I finally become a hacker.
I've got a Sony 615, and can attest to the fact that even though it has "true 16-bit color", I get really bad color seperation. So bad, that my old 8-bit color IIIc gives superior color. Even my friend's m130 (the device that you're knocking) gives better color. This is normal for a 615. (So why hasn't Sony been knocked about this?)
Don't put any faith at all in any PDA screen from any manufactuer. You really have to check it out yourself.
"If an individual wishes to file for a patent, they hold workshops all the time on how to get through effieciently, and ultimately this will mean that you get to pay the least."
As long as this means that an individual doing it all themselves, can still get all the initial filing stuff done for $500, I'm all for it.
I'd like to see instead the government CHARGING for these extra years. This is exactly what is done for patents. If the public doesn't get the works, then at least the government gets a cut of the money.
Let Disney extend their copyrights for another 20 years. Just charge them $1B/year to do it...
I would 2nd (3rd?) getting the book "Patent It Yourself". I filed 4 PPAs (Provisional Patent Applications) and 2 patent applications myself because of the information in this book. It's also published by Nolo Press, who really is tops in publishing self-help legal books by far. Many lawyers use their books to "get to the meat" of a subject quicker.
Some advice: file a PPA quickly. You can easily do this yourself, and even if you screw it all up, you'll just lose your early filing date. (The Patent Office ignores a PPA until you file a RPA, and then bases your patentabilty solely on your RPA. The PPA allows you to lock in an earlier filing date. Besides, it's cheap.)
With a PPA filed, take your time doing the RPA yourself. *DON'T* depend on a lawyer to do it. They don't know the technical domain, and will likely mess something up (or chew up a huge number of hours/$$$ getting it right). If you want to, have a lawyer review it before you send it out. If you follow the above book, you shouldn't be charged more than 2 hours for the review.
Don't go hog-wild looking for prior art. Looking some is important, but you also need plausible deniability... Remember, a good patent will have multiple claims, so even if you overlap some, you probably won't overlap on all. Plus it costs the other party money to get a patent overturned.
Finally, keep in mind that the great majority of patents have lost money for the filers (especially individuals). Only a small number turn into any kind of success.
What if instead Yoda wanted to be the next Emp, and lost out?
Do you find that the more intelligent that a person is, the easier it is for them to rationalize doing what they really want to do, even if it is wrong?
Palm never advertised the screen refresh rate. And it had already be noted in many reviews that the refresh was terrible.
If you can afford $200+ for a Palm, then you can afford $15 for a game. You just know that you can get away with not paying for the software is all.
NO Palm game developers are getting rich. The very best are just breaking even. Nearly all of them are losing money.
And here you feel that it's acceptable to not pay despite the fact that these developers really need the money in order to pay the bills.
Normal programmers can sustain 55 hour weeks for quite a while without serious problems. Over that, and they start dropping in code quality (but not quantity) pretty fast.
Some programmers with aspergers can literally do 90+ hour weeks on end without any real drop.
And then there are idiot managers who belive that 15 hour/day "sprints" can be sustained for years...
Added to those are the truely evil managers who force 15 hour/day working times because they know that when you burn out they can replace you easily right now...
Idiot managers won't start to believe you until they have a few failures. Evil ones will make examples of those who speak out. If you have one of these, it's time to polish up the old resume.
The head start you get is a lot less than you think.
There are asian companies that can produce and start selling a knock off product in less than 3 months. Then by using their greater $$$ and marketshare in other areas, they push you (the inventor) off the store shelves.
Most of them can make good money like this even on patented things during the time between the inventor's product is released, and the time the patent is awarded.
No patent, and the inventor won't even last long enough on the store shelves to break even.
Master of Magic had so may problems it wasn't even funny. The first versions were so buggy they were unplayable. Super stacks and killer heroes ruined the idea of empire building. Diplomacy? Even on the hardest levels, a good player could win most of the time with a single city.
Master of Orion and X-COM were the true Microprose classics. I'd be willing to pay $40 for a new version of X-COM with it's turn based movement style.
"Fall 2001 Ken Lay needs to provide something he wholly owns as loan collatoral, Cheney disappears, Coincidence?"
+10 Funny!
First of all, those nifty extras on a CD/DVD are not "service", they are "product". They'll be copied just like everything else.
Second, selling service and giving the product away for free is a terrible business model in most cases. Why? In order to sell more service, you have to have a more difficult to use program, and vice versa. This is called a WIN-LOSE situation.
Selling the product and giving away service means that you must make the product as easy and powerful as possible, in order to reduce the service costs. This is called a WIN-WIN situation.
Why was this parent thread marked as +5 insightful?
Time on your own plane of reference doesn't slow down as you reach the speed of light. You'll still age at the same rate. More time will have passed on slower planes of reference.
There's this one scientist (can't remember his name) who recently thought up a theoretical way to travel in time. He's reportedly started work on his machine. This isn't a joke, it's the real deal. This was something he discovered a while back, but left it as an intellectual curiosity until he saw the experiments in slowing down light.
Unfortunately, his time machine won't be able to handle anything bigger than a subatomic particle...
(Maybe combine it with teleportation?)
To make sure that you don't violate the 20 second rule, rip your resume in half. Then ask yourself if that half is good enough to get the recruiter to read the second half.
Definitely true.
I got my BS EE in '91, and finding a job was harder back then than it currently is. I survived.
(This is not to say that it still can't get worse...)
For those who don't know about it, look up "Ask the Headhunter" at www.eetimes.com. Read ALL the back articles.
2 guys were involved in the actual VHDL '87 writeup, Paul Menchini and I can't remember the name of the other. Paul did about the whole '93 version himself. He told me that he felt that many of the problems with the '87 version were directly attributable to merging the work from two people instead of having one person's "whole concept" (something like that). (Of course that might just be his ego talking...)