My girlfriend's brother (whom I am also good friends with) recently started working at the US Patent Office. I can now tell you all, without a doubt, what the problem is. It's not stupid people - I know her brother is really a very intelligent guy (electrical engineer with mba and good GPA). It's _quotas_!
Yes, that's right. You have to approve or reject x number of patents every two weeks (where x is something like 5, I think) or be fired. So, if you've got a few time-consuming ones at first, you're under a lot of pressure to just do _something_ with the last couple of them, especially if time is about to run out. I would not be surprised at all if some patents were not investigated as thoroughly as they should be (read: not at all) in the interests of the reviewer not being fired. That is perhaps what happened here: quick check to make sure no patent doing the same thing has been issued, and then approval without doing any outside research.
So, really, the problem is not really US patent law. It's the fact that the USPO is understaffed and overworked and cannot adequately review patent submissions. I hope that gives a better perspective on the issue rather than "the US(PO) sucks and is staffed by idiots".
Actually, the first thing I thought of would be to do a "Minority Report"-esque control system for X where you could move windows with the flick of your hand. Not sure exactly how you would do that code-wise (I'm no X11 guru), but it seems to have potential:-).
I like WineX, but I honestly don't see buying games for an OS I don't own as a very good use of my money. I'd love to support a company which brought out Linux native versions of those games:-).
Insane racist dictator turns down genetically-engineered corn in starving country because the Europeans won't buy it, and it's the US's fault. I wonder if I'm not the only one who gets tired of everyone blaming all the ills of the world on the US?
"You evil jerks! Give us $25 million more so we can use the corn!" Hello? The US doesn't owe you anything! Get it from your European friends who refuse to import GE corn! We were nice, we gave you free corn - but
I think people have lost sight of what "charity" is - it's voluntary. And if we give you $75 million, please don't come running back and act as though it's your birthright to get $100 million. We didn't screw your country up - European colonialists did.
This is either Europe or Mugabe's fault. It is certainly not the US's.
Interesting idea: combine open 802.11b network with local hard drive full of multimedia content connected to it.
Imagine having a spare hour to kill waiting for class. You walk on over to the nearest dorm, boot up your slick PDA / laptop and check the ether for some movies to keep you busy. Seems like it would have some potential.
It strikes me that people have generally ignored a very valuable tool of hacking: social engineering. Kevin Mitnick proved its prowess, and we've all heard of him, no? A DC is technically feasible, but falls short on the social engineering front.
So, I propose that instead of using a relatively conspicuous DC, or even a laptop, you buy a TINI computer: http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/hardware/in dex.html And then modify it into an old Cisco plastic shell. Write something like, "Cisco Network Load Balancer" or something (in a believable fashion), slap it in as close to the server room as you can.
The issue here is not "can I crack people's networks from the inside?" but, rather, "can I _keep_ cracking the network for more than a couple weeks?" You think to look at a laptop or DC for a network spy, but who bothers to look at some random piece of Cisco hardware in a corner? I'd say the risk of discovery becomes far lower - and with TINI, you could theoretically put together a "button" that would wipe the contents of the device if it was moved.
You're proposing what's really a basic economic principle for business: charge people what they can afford at maximum for a product. Many companies (MS and RedHat are two that come to mind) do this, and are succeeding pretty well. They combine that with bundling, but it's essentially the same.
Microsoft has student discounts. They've got "home" and "professional" versions of their OS's. They make their money by milking you as much as they can - they've just understood that a sale of $100 to a person that can afford $100 and a sale of $200 to a person who can afford $200 makes more sense than just selling it at $200 and crossing their fingers.
RedHat is similar. They let you buy normal or Advanced Server - but also give you the option of downloading ISOs.
The simple answer is to negotiate with companies and get student discounts going. You charge students what they can afford, everyone wins. In MS's case, this is usually a sizable discount (Visual Studio's price is quite good, for example), and RedHat lets you download whatever you want (except AS) for free.
Actually, 3DS Max is a poster-boy for what you're advocating. Didn't they release a free, stripped-down version of their software for mod authors? It's a very good idea, and Lightwave should give some thought to a similar thing.
Unfortunately, you then go and ruin your whole argument with the typical piracy justification. It might not be worth $2000 to you, but it's apparently worth _something_ to you (since you went to the trouble of downloading it), and you've taken that from the company.
Or, more simply put, you can't steal something because you can't afford it, even its loss wouldn't affect the owner. Stealing a couple grand from Bill Gates might be totally un-noticable to him, but it's stealing nonetheless.
You are stealing intellectual property by warezing, no matter who you are. You can rationalize all day and night, but at the end of the day, it's illegal here in the USA to do that. If companies want to give software for free to beginners, that's great and probably sensible, but you're not giving them the option if you just go and warez it.
Anecdote: If you steal a Stratus from my car dealership, use it to earn money and buy a Viper, and return the Viper to me in exchange for the Stratus two years later, you've still committed a crime, whether or not the Viper is worth more and is a fair trade. Maybe I would have agreed to a deal (Stratus for Viper in two years) - but you have to give me the option, first.
Maybe I'm naive (probably, in fact), but how did your co-workers get hired in the first place? Did they lie effectively in the interview? Are they truly idiots at coding? This is a fairly important thing to figure out, because if they're crap coders, throwing them out on their asses is not the worst thing in the world for your firm.
You need to _talk_ to them and find out what's wrong, not just assume they're idiots. Perhaps they're not so hot at DSP programming, or don't have much experience at C. I know I find it much more difficult to code in C than C++ (ie, function-oriented vs. object-oriented) not because I'm stupid, but because I got taught in school to think of programs in terms of objects. I _can_ program in C - I just don't enjoy it as much and am not as good at it.
In other words, find out what your programmers are really thinking.
Good question, the answer is no. This is mostly due to the fact that you're still scrolling up and down like normal, and moving that particular scrollbar serves no purpose. I'd think it would be confusing, even - every other app has it on the right, why should it switch when it hits a Hebrew page?
Actually, I've had really good luck with Hebrew support in Linux, much more so than Windows. I don't visit all too many Hebrew sites, but it seems to me everything's been rendering fine for a while now. The spacing is a little dodgy, though, and that could be what was fixed. That'd be nice.
In case any of you are paticularly interested in seeing an example (even if ya can't read it), check out: http://www.haaretz.co.il
Conversely, a good check of Arabic support is at: http://www.wafa.pna.net/AraText/arabic.htm
I can see that using Moz 1.0rc1, some of that Arabic is _definitely_ not rendering correctly. I'm not a speaker of the language, but it's pretty obvious some stuff is being rendered incorrectly.
I linked both an Israeli web site and a Palestinian web site to keep accusations of political bias away. It seems there's always _someone_ who would complain if I just gave an Israeli website in both Arabic and Hebrew. Everyone happy?
He's simply saying that if a world court is created, it might lead to prosecution of citizens for things they do in one country that break the laws of another. If I were to have a big web page of praises for the Nazi party on a US web server, I've broken no US law, but the Germans might not like it much. Theoretically, they could go through the ill-defined laws of the world court and find something to prosecute me on.
It's a shame that the only places that sell laptops/notebooks pre-loaded with Linux charge an arm and a leg for them - I mean, there's nothing under $2000 at EmperorLinux.com. You'd think there would be some money in buying some less-expensive laptops sans OS at wholesale (from Asus, perhaps) and then undercutting the competition by saving money on the OS. Even if this means no (win)modem, I don't see it as a huge deal.
I just see some money in the ~500mhz for $600 market. Desktops really started to take off at that price point - perhaps laptops will do the same, even at the reduced performance?
Because MS would never license Windows to them if they tried doing a dual boot. It might work as a "value-added" solution in theory, but MS has killed that avenue fairly effectively.
However, Sam's Club _does_ sell computers with Linux. Sam Walton owns Sam's Club, so I'd be surprised if Linux computers weren't going to be coming to Walmart sometime soon.
I actually haven't noticed any problems using Opera. In fact, I can't remember the last time it failed to render a page correctly while I was using it. Ditto for Moz 1.0, although I don't use that as much.
I think the problem really lies with IE being so forgiving of mistakes, and Moz being so standards-compliant. Bad code that works with IE is just assumed to work with Netscape because the web designer is too lazy to check.
Example: my mom is professional web designer. She spent like 5 hours looking for a mistake the other day that caused her page to not work correctly in Netscape browsers (recent ones, like 6). The mistake? She forgot to put a period in front of something. IE just guessed and moved on, Netscape interpreted it properly and didn't work.
At the end of the story, she finishes by saying, "So that's why Netscape wasn't doing things properly." I corrected her back: "No, you mean that's why IE was doing things improperly. Netscape was doing exactly what it should have done." I think she got the point. It'd be better if other people got the same point, too.
Unfortunately, the issue is self-propogating. I was writing some pages a while back, and they needed to convert text help files to HTML. There's a perfect tag for this (pre, which is deprecated but still should be supported by w3c-compliant browsers), but neither IE nor Opera supported it, so I was forced to a more computationally expensive hack to fix things. I would have loved to just give the finger to everyone using IE, since I was technically right, but that just wasn't an option.
Slashdot Mirror
Old Man Murray? I think they did it.
-Erwos
My girlfriend's brother (whom I am also good friends with) recently started working at the US Patent Office. I can now tell you all, without a doubt, what the problem is. It's not stupid people - I know her brother is really a very intelligent guy (electrical engineer with mba and good GPA). It's _quotas_!
Yes, that's right. You have to approve or reject x number of patents every two weeks (where x is something like 5, I think) or be fired. So, if you've got a few time-consuming ones at first, you're under a lot of pressure to just do _something_ with the last couple of them, especially if time is about to run out. I would not be surprised at all if some patents were not investigated as thoroughly as they should be (read: not at all) in the interests of the reviewer not being fired. That is perhaps what happened here: quick check to make sure no patent doing the same thing has been issued, and then approval without doing any outside research.
So, really, the problem is not really US patent law. It's the fact that the USPO is understaffed and overworked and cannot adequately review patent submissions. I hope that gives a better perspective on the issue rather than "the US(PO) sucks and is staffed by idiots".
-Erwos
Actually, the first thing I thought of would be to do a "Minority Report"-esque control system for X where you could move windows with the flick of your hand. Not sure exactly how you would do that code-wise (I'm no X11 guru), but it seems to have potential :-).
-Erwos
I like WineX, but I honestly don't see buying games for an OS I don't own as a very good use of my money. I'd love to support a company which brought out Linux native versions of those games :-).
-Erwos
See? Not everyone horribly abuses the DMCA. I don't think it was a good idea, but it's nice to see that not everyone is using it like a club.
Good going HP - my next printer will be from you.
-Erwos
Insane racist dictator turns down genetically-engineered corn in starving country because the Europeans won't buy it, and it's the US's fault. I wonder if I'm not the only one who gets tired of everyone blaming all the ills of the world on the US?
"You evil jerks! Give us $25 million more so we can use the corn!" Hello? The US doesn't owe you anything! Get it from your European friends who refuse to import GE corn! We were nice, we gave you free corn - but
I think people have lost sight of what "charity" is - it's voluntary. And if we give you $75 million, please don't come running back and act as though it's your birthright to get $100 million. We didn't screw your country up - European colonialists did.
This is either Europe or Mugabe's fault. It is certainly not the US's.
-Erwos
Interesting idea: combine open 802.11b network with local hard drive full of multimedia content connected to it.
Imagine having a spare hour to kill waiting for class. You walk on over to the nearest dorm, boot up your slick PDA / laptop and check the ether for some movies to keep you busy. Seems like it would have some potential.
-Erwos
It strikes me that people have generally ignored a very valuable tool of hacking: social engineering. Kevin Mitnick proved its prowess, and we've all heard of him, no? A DC is technically feasible, but falls short on the social engineering front.
n dex.html
So, I propose that instead of using a relatively conspicuous DC, or even a laptop, you buy a TINI computer:
http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/hardware/i
And then modify it into an old Cisco plastic shell. Write something like, "Cisco Network Load Balancer" or something (in a believable fashion), slap it in as close to the server room as you can.
The issue here is not "can I crack people's networks from the inside?" but, rather, "can I _keep_ cracking the network for more than a couple weeks?" You think to look at a laptop or DC for a network spy, but who bothers to look at some random piece of Cisco hardware in a corner? I'd say the risk of discovery becomes far lower - and with TINI, you could theoretically put together a "button" that would wipe the contents of the device if it was moved.
Just an idea.
-Erwos
Didn't it already? Bill is from Arkansas, Dubya is from Texas. Those damn southerners are running the country! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! *cries in a corner*
-Erwos
"...but for the vast majority of desktop users, CPUs in the GHz range and 256MB of memory are more than enough."
Just like 640kb of RAM was enough for _anyone for anything_, right? What you've stated has been debunked every time someone has said it.
If there is a good enough application for something, it'll be bought. That's the only constant I've ever seen in the computer industry.
-Erwos
You're proposing what's really a basic economic principle for business: charge people what they can afford at maximum for a product. Many companies (MS and RedHat are two that come to mind) do this, and are succeeding pretty well. They combine that with bundling, but it's essentially the same.
Microsoft has student discounts. They've got "home" and "professional" versions of their OS's. They make their money by milking you as much as they can - they've just understood that a sale of $100 to a person that can afford $100 and a sale of $200 to a person who can afford $200 makes more sense than just selling it at $200 and crossing their fingers.
RedHat is similar. They let you buy normal or Advanced Server - but also give you the option of downloading ISOs.
The simple answer is to negotiate with companies and get student discounts going. You charge students what they can afford, everyone wins. In MS's case, this is usually a sizable discount (Visual Studio's price is quite good, for example), and RedHat lets you download whatever you want (except AS) for free.
-Erwos
Actually, 3DS Max is a poster-boy for what you're advocating. Didn't they release a free, stripped-down version of their software for mod authors? It's a very good idea, and Lightwave should give some thought to a similar thing.
Unfortunately, you then go and ruin your whole argument with the typical piracy justification. It might not be worth $2000 to you, but it's apparently worth _something_ to you (since you went to the trouble of downloading it), and you've taken that from the company.
Or, more simply put, you can't steal something because you can't afford it, even its loss wouldn't affect the owner. Stealing a couple grand from Bill Gates might be totally un-noticable to him, but it's stealing nonetheless.
-Erwos
You are stealing intellectual property by warezing, no matter who you are. You can rationalize all day and night, but at the end of the day, it's illegal here in the USA to do that. If companies want to give software for free to beginners, that's great and probably sensible, but you're not giving them the option if you just go and warez it.
Anecdote:
If you steal a Stratus from my car dealership, use it to earn money and buy a Viper, and return the Viper to me in exchange for the Stratus two years later, you've still committed a crime, whether or not the Viper is worth more and is a fair trade. Maybe I would have agreed to a deal (Stratus for Viper in two years) - but you have to give me the option, first.
-Erwos
Maybe I'm naive (probably, in fact), but how did your co-workers get hired in the first place? Did they lie effectively in the interview? Are they truly idiots at coding? This is a fairly important thing to figure out, because if they're crap coders, throwing them out on their asses is not the worst thing in the world for your firm.
You need to _talk_ to them and find out what's wrong, not just assume they're idiots. Perhaps they're not so hot at DSP programming, or don't have much experience at C. I know I find it much more difficult to code in C than C++ (ie, function-oriented vs. object-oriented) not because I'm stupid, but because I got taught in school to think of programs in terms of objects. I _can_ program in C - I just don't enjoy it as much and am not as good at it.
In other words, find out what your programmers are really thinking.
-Erwos
Of course, PreCrime did prevent all murders, you know...
-Erwos
Good question, the answer is no. This is mostly due to the fact that you're still scrolling up and down like normal, and moving that particular scrollbar serves no purpose. I'd think it would be confusing, even - every other app has it on the right, why should it switch when it hits a Hebrew page?
-Erwos
Notably, I'm not Israeli. Go troll somewhere else.
-Erwos
Actually, I've had really good luck with Hebrew support in Linux, much more so than Windows. I don't visit all too many Hebrew sites, but it seems to me everything's been rendering fine for a while now. The spacing is a little dodgy, though, and that could be what was fixed. That'd be nice.
In case any of you are paticularly interested in seeing an example (even if ya can't read it), check out:
http://www.haaretz.co.il
Conversely, a good check of Arabic support is at:
http://www.wafa.pna.net/AraText/arabic.htm
I can see that using Moz 1.0rc1, some of that Arabic is _definitely_ not rendering correctly. I'm not a speaker of the language, but it's pretty obvious some stuff is being rendered incorrectly.
I linked both an Israeli web site and a Palestinian web site to keep accusations of political bias away. It seems there's always _someone_ who would complain if I just gave an Israeli website in both Arabic and Hebrew. Everyone happy?
-Erwos
He's simply saying that if a world court is created, it might lead to prosecution of citizens for things they do in one country that break the laws of another. If I were to have a big web page of praises for the Nazi party on a US web server, I've broken no US law, but the Germans might not like it much. Theoretically, they could go through the ill-defined laws of the world court and find something to prosecute me on.
-Erwos
It's a shame that the only places that sell laptops/notebooks pre-loaded with Linux charge an arm and a leg for them - I mean, there's nothing under $2000 at EmperorLinux.com. You'd think there would be some money in buying some less-expensive laptops sans OS at wholesale (from Asus, perhaps) and then undercutting the competition by saving money on the OS. Even if this means no (win)modem, I don't see it as a huge deal.
I just see some money in the ~500mhz for $600 market. Desktops really started to take off at that price point - perhaps laptops will do the same, even at the reduced performance?
-Erwos
Because MS would never license Windows to them if they tried doing a dual boot. It might work as a "value-added" solution in theory, but MS has killed that avenue fairly effectively.
-Erwos
Bzzt, fatal flaw in argument: it does cost them something. If they offer 10 distros, they need to have support to deal with all 10 of them.
I wonder why they didn't go with RedHat, though - of all Linux distros, I would say that has the most name-brand recognition here in the USA.
-Erwos
However, Sam's Club _does_ sell computers with Linux. Sam Walton owns Sam's Club, so I'd be surprised if Linux computers weren't going to be coming to Walmart sometime soon.
-Erwos
"... and many Christians are persecuted by ... Jews ..."
I think someone has his facts slightly reversed.
-Erwos
I actually haven't noticed any problems using Opera. In fact, I can't remember the last time it failed to render a page correctly while I was using it. Ditto for Moz 1.0, although I don't use that as much.
I think the problem really lies with IE being so forgiving of mistakes, and Moz being so standards-compliant. Bad code that works with IE is just assumed to work with Netscape because the web designer is too lazy to check.
Example: my mom is professional web designer. She spent like 5 hours looking for a mistake the other day that caused her page to not work correctly in Netscape browsers (recent ones, like 6). The mistake? She forgot to put a period in front of something. IE just guessed and moved on, Netscape interpreted it properly and didn't work.
At the end of the story, she finishes by saying, "So that's why Netscape wasn't doing things properly." I corrected her back: "No, you mean that's why IE was doing things improperly. Netscape was doing exactly what it should have done." I think she got the point. It'd be better if other people got the same point, too.
Unfortunately, the issue is self-propogating. I was writing some pages a while back, and they needed to convert text help files to HTML. There's a perfect tag for this (pre, which is deprecated but still should be supported by w3c-compliant browsers), but neither IE nor Opera supported it, so I was forced to a more computationally expensive hack to fix things. I would have loved to just give the finger to everyone using IE, since I was technically right, but that just wasn't an option.
-Erwos