Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything;)
SB
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about;)
It's useless and it accomplishes nothing.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever,
SB
But perhaps it should be brought up again. We all have so much time to waste, after all. Love is gonna cure us. Really.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything;)
if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything;)
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about;)
if you can read this, you've surfed usenet. But if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything;)
That will only work for toy inventions. It takes 3 to 5 years to simply build a 1.0 product. By the time the product is out the door, you have only 2 to 4 years to make any profit.
Good, then limiting patent times would encourage efficiency as well. Good call!:)
Say goodbye to a lot of software inventions. Why should other fields of technology enjoy patent protection, but not software?
That is a bullshit argument. You give no reasoning nor evidence why software invention would suffer, you just assume it.
I rather suspect that people would focus more on improving their products so they can sell the next generation if they knew they could only profit off of their work for seven years or less.
Or at least 10% of the returns of a patent must go the inventor. That's a whole lot better than the $1,000 to $3,000 inventors make today.
Every damned penny should go to the inventor. If he or she wants his product - assuming it's a physical one - produced, that's a different contract and between seducer and seduced;)
"Companies" don't invent things. People do. The concept of companies or corporations having the legal status of an individual was thought up by, lobbied for and passed by people who could be best thought of as modern con men. Like the asshats who ran SCO into the ground, they have no scruples nor conscience, and think nothing of screwing people over in order to fund their fantasy realities.
I'd actually go a step further, and say that patents cannot be bought not sold, period, not at all, no exceptions. When the patent (or the inventor *g*) expires, the patent automatically passes into the public domain. 7 years sounds about right, and it has a mystical significance, as well - gotta appeal the superstitious amongst us, y'know.
That would, hopefully, put the kibosh on most of the patent trolls. Y'know, people who don't do any work, but like to profit off of other people's work.
Perhaps this country should have a "War On Greed". Hell, we've declared war on everything else... oh, wait, aren't we starting one now? Another Media Event... details at 11.
Patents are a ridiculous idea in this modern age, anyway. With global communications a reality, it's nearly a given that any idea out there will be rapidly assimilated, reverse engineered and eventually done better than the inventor. This is a good thing. It benefits everybody.
The patent system as it stands is an obstruction to the overall development of the human species and should be abolished. If we're going to be the world's policemen, than we damned well should be it's benefactors, as well.
You just advocated some kind of genocide or something...
That's not what he was advocating at all.
Survival of the species in general dictates that we have to remove those elements capable of damaging it. Especially now, with technology, where a few nuts can kill millions of people with a weapon that will fit in the trunk of a car.
He has a point. It's not a very practical point, but...
MORE humane and 'normal' in my thinking than I ever was before
By whose measure? Yours? Nihilism is kind of the anti-thesis of "normal thinking" - there is no norm:)
Same here. When I was little I felt the same way about seeing images from the Mariners, Vikings, Pioneer and Voyager probes. Wow!
Now we're actually starting to image stars, and not all that much later, really. A couple generations.
What wonders will we see in another quarter century? Imagine what we could do with large scopes in Sol orbit, baselines on the order of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, adaptive optics and modern software...
Why don't you do some research, write a proposal and submit it to the NOAA if you find some such method of getting such a picture? I imagine they'd be thrilled.
b) COBOL is far from dead, in that many applications running today are written in it. Believe it or not, it makes more sense to continue to run that old code than to rewrite from scratch in the latest shiny because they already know *it works*.
That's because those boxes had thousands of people working on them over the years.
Don't confuse good codebase with millions of hours of effort. That's comparing fruits to vegetables...
So says my brother, anyway, who made a fortune off of fixing non-Y2K compliant machines.
Me, I was fixing windows home boxes at the time, and just laughed. Mostly.;)
That was my thought, too. That's pretty impressive. If it's true, whoever coordinated the move really knew what they were doing. Maybe we should elect them to the highest office in 2012;)
I don't think they should drop any service, tho. But then I've never understood why Sundays were considered a "day off", even. It's just another day, no matter what religious people or anyone else consider it to be. The sun rises, the sun sets, there's nothing to differentiate it from any other day, outside of some superstitious people who happen to have had influence.
Hey, it's a capitalistic society we live in, right? We should all be working 24/7/365+1/4, right? For the greater good?
Pardon my sarcasm. Or don't. I do my penance on my days off. Like today. Penance being doing laundry, housework, cleaning out the cat boxes, working on the peace treaty with my SO, fixing odds and ends, etc. It's enough. Tomorrow will be another twelve hours of busting my ass saving people from the errors of their ways*.;)
*I speak literally, there. I make most of my money being a maintenance person for apartment buildings.
Because we still waste too much money fighting each other over whose god has the biggest dick, and too little of those resources into getting ourselves off this planet and ensuring the survival of our ecology?
The day the human race grows up and learns that it's real enemy is the universe - entropy - will be the day that we climb out of the cradle and learn what it means to grow up.
Not likely any of us mortals at this point in time will see it.
Cats are going to run the world after we kill ourselves off.
They've been plotting it for thousands of years, just waiting. We had the opposable thumbs, we built this technological syphilization, and when we're gone, they'll just take over.
It's likely they'll do a lot better job at it than we do, too.
Our male, 20 year old tomcat had the same behavior wrt bringing home "food" for us. Not so long ago he dragged home a large rabbit he'd killed, and deposited it in front of the cupboard in the kitchen where the cookware was housed. Then he sat by it and talked until we noticed.
We figured that he wanted us to cook it up and eat it....
We lost him a couple months ago. Our lives are bleak without him - he was more intelligent than most humans, and had a very low sense of humor - is humor a mark of intelligence? We miss him terribly.
Cats are at least as intelligent as humans are. Possibly more so.
Just because humans have developed technology and the ability to destroy ourselves does not make us more sapient than anything else.
It's likely a mark against us that we can't recognize the other intelligent species on this planet we live with.
But that's just my opinion. No, I am not a member of PETA, although I do think they make some good points, mostly wrt we can't consider ourselves civilized until we stop treating even the members of our own species as objects rather than as people.
Of course it could be that I'm getting old and bitter and pissed off...
Slashdot Mirror
The debate goes on.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
SB
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about ;)
It's useless and it accomplishes nothing.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever,
SB
But perhaps it should be brought up again. We all have so much time to waste, after all. Love is gonna cure us. Really.
Who the Frak Cares? whether or not it's top, bottom, interspersed, footnoted, or whatever, if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
I've avoided this subject for so long it hurts to think about ;)
if you can read this, you've surfed usenet. But if the reader can't figure out where the reply is, no set of rules about where and how to post is going to change anything ;)
Meh.
SB
That will only work for toy inventions. It takes 3 to 5 years to simply build a 1.0 product. By the time the product is out the door, you have only 2 to 4 years to make any profit.
Good, then limiting patent times would encourage efficiency as well. Good call! :)
Say goodbye to a lot of software inventions. Why should other fields of technology enjoy patent protection, but not software?
That is a bullshit argument. You give no reasoning nor evidence why software invention would suffer, you just assume it.
I rather suspect that people would focus more on improving their products so they can sell the next generation if they knew they could only profit off of their work for seven years or less.
Or at least 10% of the returns of a patent must go the inventor. That's a whole lot better than the $1,000 to $3,000 inventors make today.
Every damned penny should go to the inventor. If he or she wants his product - assuming it's a physical one - produced, that's a different contract and between seducer and seduced ;)
SB
"Companies" don't invent things. People do. The concept of companies or corporations having the legal status of an individual was thought up by, lobbied for and passed by people who could be best thought of as modern con men. Like the asshats who ran SCO into the ground, they have no scruples nor conscience, and think nothing of screwing people over in order to fund their fantasy realities.
I'd actually go a step further, and say that patents cannot be bought not sold, period, not at all, no exceptions. When the patent (or the inventor *g*) expires, the patent automatically passes into the public domain. 7 years sounds about right, and it has a mystical significance, as well - gotta appeal the superstitious amongst us, y'know.
That would, hopefully, put the kibosh on most of the patent trolls. Y'know, people who don't do any work, but like to profit off of other people's work.
Perhaps this country should have a "War On Greed". Hell, we've declared war on everything else... oh, wait, aren't we starting one now? Another Media Event... details at 11.
Patents are a ridiculous idea in this modern age, anyway. With global communications a reality, it's nearly a given that any idea out there will be rapidly assimilated, reverse engineered and eventually done better than the inventor. This is a good thing. It benefits everybody.
The patent system as it stands is an obstruction to the overall development of the human species and should be abolished. If we're going to be the world's policemen, than we damned well should be it's benefactors, as well.
SB
They were developed by companies that definitely wouldn't have done it if it weren't for the IP rewards.
You state that as if it were a provable, incontrovertible fact. How do you know? Please, share your wisdom with us ;)
SB
You could save even more if they were cremated first ;)
Maybe enough to guarantee solar orbit...
SB
You just advocated some kind of genocide or something...
That's not what he was advocating at all.
Survival of the species in general dictates that we have to remove those elements capable of damaging it. Especially now, with technology, where a few nuts can kill millions of people with a weapon that will fit in the trunk of a car.
He has a point. It's not a very practical point, but...
MORE humane and 'normal' in my thinking than I ever was before
By whose measure? Yours? Nihilism is kind of the anti-thesis of "normal thinking" - there is no norm :)
SB
Same here. When I was little I felt the same way about seeing images from the Mariners, Vikings, Pioneer and Voyager probes. Wow!
Now we're actually starting to image stars, and not all that much later, really. A couple generations.
What wonders will we see in another quarter century? Imagine what we could do with large scopes in Sol orbit, baselines on the order of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, adaptive optics and modern software...
SB
It's like a technological iridium layer ;)
SB
Don't assume that all vegetarians are peace loving stoned hippies, sir.
Or democrats, for that matter... :)
SB
Why don't you do some research, write a proposal and submit it to the NOAA if you find some such method of getting such a picture? I imagine they'd be thrilled.
SB
If a powerful minority of people continue to act selfishly, we will fail
Fixed that fer ya ;)
SB
When will everyone come to their senses and start making fraudulent patent applications criminal offenses with crippling fines and jail time?
Probably about the same time that the patent system gets fixed...
SB
It's the people with your attitude that made it so.
Some of us work for a living. Some of us... don't want to.
I know which side of the fence I live on, and it ain't the leisure side.
Fuke you and the steed you pranced in on.
SB
Figure it out for yourself. I had to.
SB
Believe me, I know. I couldn't have formed the sarcasm I did if I wasn't aware of the last couple centuries worth of history ;)
Anyone who lacks a sense of humor can take from my post what they wanted to....
SB
Then maybe there is something to be said about having a uniform code of law, on a global basis.
Not that it's likely to happen in our lifetimes.
While we're at it, we could put caps on damage awards, too.
You do realize that my comment was meant in jest?
SB
b) COBOL is far from dead, in that many applications running today are written in it. Believe it or not, it makes more sense to continue to run that old code than to rewrite from scratch in the latest shiny because they already know *it works*.
That's because those boxes had thousands of people working on them over the years.
Don't confuse good codebase with millions of hours of effort. That's comparing fruits to vegetables...
So says my brother, anyway, who made a fortune off of fixing non-Y2K compliant machines.
Me, I was fixing windows home boxes at the time, and just laughed. Mostly. ;)
SB
That was my thought, too. That's pretty impressive. If it's true, whoever coordinated the move really knew what they were doing. Maybe we should elect them to the highest office in 2012 ;)
I don't think they should drop any service, tho. But then I've never understood why Sundays were considered a "day off", even. It's just another day, no matter what religious people or anyone else consider it to be. The sun rises, the sun sets, there's nothing to differentiate it from any other day, outside of some superstitious people who happen to have had influence.
Hey, it's a capitalistic society we live in, right? We should all be working 24/7/365+1/4, right? For the greater good?
Pardon my sarcasm. Or don't. I do my penance on my days off. Like today. Penance being doing laundry, housework, cleaning out the cat boxes, working on the peace treaty with my SO, fixing odds and ends, etc. It's enough. Tomorrow will be another twelve hours of busting my ass saving people from the errors of their ways*. ;)
*I speak literally, there. I make most of my money being a maintenance person for apartment buildings.
SB
How much money has that town made off of that particular bit of random fame?
I'll bet it is a helluva lot more than the fine.
(How much did they spend on pursuing the claim... *g*)
Humans are, for the most part, fucking idiots.
(I have karma to burn, so go ahead and mod me down if you feel you have to. Ask me if I care, fools.)
SB
"Troll"?
Message for you: Is the subject of the Mona Lisa really happy, or just smiling for the hours/days-long portrait?
You be the judge.
Or was it my use of profanity that offended you?
Either way... you just reaffirmed my belief that the human species is, in the most part, stupid. So Be It.
SB
Milestones. "licks finger, chalks imaginary blackboard"
Way to go, SpaceX. Kudos to the team.
SB
squabbling over which marble is prettier.
Grow the fuck up. There are more pressing problems facing us.
And no, I didn't RTFA.
"Look at it this way... in a hundred years, who's gonna care?" - waitress from Terminator.
SB
That's an easy one...
Because we still waste too much money fighting each other over whose god has the biggest dick, and too little of those resources into getting ourselves off this planet and ensuring the survival of our ecology?
The day the human race grows up and learns that it's real enemy is the universe - entropy - will be the day that we climb out of the cradle and learn what it means to grow up.
Not likely any of us mortals at this point in time will see it.
SB
That's an easy one.
Cats are going to run the world after we kill ourselves off.
They've been plotting it for thousands of years, just waiting. We had the opposable thumbs, we built this technological syphilization, and when we're gone, they'll just take over.
It's likely they'll do a lot better job at it than we do, too.
Long term planning...
SB
Our male, 20 year old tomcat had the same behavior wrt bringing home "food" for us. Not so long ago he dragged home a large rabbit he'd killed, and deposited it in front of the cupboard in the kitchen where the cookware was housed. Then he sat by it and talked until we noticed.
We figured that he wanted us to cook it up and eat it. ...
We lost him a couple months ago. Our lives are bleak without him - he was more intelligent than most humans, and had a very low sense of humor - is humor a mark of intelligence? We miss him terribly.
Cats are at least as intelligent as humans are. Possibly more so.
Just because humans have developed technology and the ability to destroy ourselves does not make us more sapient than anything else.
It's likely a mark against us that we can't recognize the other intelligent species on this planet we live with.
But that's just my opinion. No, I am not a member of PETA, although I do think they make some good points, mostly wrt we can't consider ourselves civilized until we stop treating even the members of our own species as objects rather than as people.
Of course it could be that I'm getting old and bitter and pissed off...
SB