There seems to be a lack of understanding about the original purpose of the patent system. The the distant past, knowledge was transferred from artisan to apprentice and through guilds. Back then, as now, people were very protective of their intellectual property, as it was their livelihood, so it would not be stored anywhere. If the person were to die without passing on the knowledge, it would be lost forever (like Damascus steel). To try and stop knowledge from being lost, governments introduced a patent system (first patent recorded in 1449) so that the creator of the knowledge would still get a fair financial reward for the item.
IMHO there are 2 problems with the existing patent system implementations. 1) As the technology becomes more complicated, those who verify patents are not skilled enough to accurately judge their validity. 2) The time limit of patents is too inflexible. Many technology patents should have valid lengths of 5-10 years.
I've seen many companies that grossly misuse their IP address allocation. They allocate a static IP per dial-up user; they allocate a static IP in apache for thousands of virtual web-hosting clients.
The point is that where an IP address is needed, like for _public_ ftp servers and for SSL servers, they should be allocated.
It's the people that waste because they can that are in the wrong.
The problem is policing it, of course. Everyone wants contiguous blocks so they'll ask for more than they'll ever need.
I fail to see how the new currency will change anything. In the end, I may want to buy a Snapple at the supermarket down the road and they'll only take local currency. I might also want to pay my staff, who could also have a fancy for the local currency. So at some point, I'll need to convert from eQuids to local, and I'll still take the exchange-rate risk AND there have now been 2 exchange commissions instead of 1.
This issue is far more tricky than some of you believe. I've worked through agents, and they are best described here .
The point is that it is not feasible for companies to have someone who understands the tech and thus necessarily costing too much money, perusing the thousands of CV's that come in. Most don't even come close. So to cut down the load, they use cheap buzzword searches. Now you know it, put the buzzwords in! Don't be shy! Have a Skills section thats full of the buzzwords. My current position is the result of a successful buzzword hit.
There may be far more jobs than _suitable_ applicants, but remember that there are always way more applications than jobs. Like everything, you need to learn to play the game
An ex-newspaper journalist, now net-journalist once explained to me the biggest difference between the media. In newspapers, you always write to the lowest common denominator, the stupidest reader that would be likely to read the piece. On the web, you could write at the level that was most applicable for the article. This is still the case with TV. The TV execs haven't yet realised that although its great to get as many people as possible watching your show for the exposure of advertising, it would be just as useful to target a smaller, smarter, more economically active segment of the population. Thats why TV sucks. Its targeted at the moron next door.
There has been a drive towards the paperless office for many years now, yet the statistics show that we're using more paper per person than ever before? I propose that the reason for this is that older, management-type people who have been working for the past 20 years have a mental block against non-paper goods. They feel secure with a piece of paper, it means that their work is not going away anywhere. This has been confirmed by almost all the paper-carriers I have asked. A slightly darker angle to this is that people who are not contributing any value to an organisation (and we all know people like that, now don't we?) feel that by surrounding themselves by paper, there is a quantifiable display that they are being productive and that they should keep their jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
There seems to be a lack of understanding about the original purpose of the patent system. The the distant past, knowledge was transferred from artisan to apprentice and through guilds. Back then, as now, people were very protective of their intellectual property, as it was their livelihood, so it would not be stored anywhere. If the person were to die without passing on the knowledge, it would be lost forever (like Damascus steel).
To try and stop knowledge from being lost, governments introduced a patent system (first patent recorded in 1449) so that the creator of the knowledge would still get a fair financial reward for the item.
IMHO there are 2 problems with the existing patent system implementations.
1) As the technology becomes more complicated, those who verify patents are not skilled enough to accurately judge their validity.
2) The time limit of patents is too inflexible. Many technology patents should have valid lengths of 5-10 years.
Lucky's description of why he did it
--
"Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!"
I've seen many companies that grossly misuse their IP address allocation. They allocate a static IP per dial-up user; they allocate a static IP in apache for thousands of virtual web-hosting clients.
The point is that where an IP address is needed, like for _public_ ftp servers and for SSL servers, they should be allocated.
It's the people that waste because they can that are in the wrong.
The problem is policing it, of course. Everyone wants contiguous blocks so they'll ask for more than they'll ever need.
I fail to see how the new currency will change anything. In the end, I may want to buy a Snapple at the supermarket down the road and they'll only take local currency. I might also want to pay my staff, who could also have a fancy for the local currency.
So at some point, I'll need to convert from eQuids to local, and I'll still take the exchange-rate risk AND there have now been 2 exchange commissions instead of 1.
This issue is far more tricky than some of you believe. I've worked through agents, and they are best described here .
The point is that it is not feasible for companies to have someone who understands the tech and thus necessarily costing too much money, perusing the thousands of CV's that come in. Most don't even come close. So to cut down the load, they use cheap buzzword searches. Now you know it, put the buzzwords in! Don't be shy! Have a Skills section thats full of the buzzwords. My current position is the result of a successful buzzword hit.
There may be far more jobs than _suitable_ applicants, but remember that there are always way more applications than jobs. Like everything, you need to learn to play the game
An ex-newspaper journalist, now net-journalist once explained to me the biggest difference between the media. In newspapers, you always write to the lowest common denominator, the stupidest reader that would be likely to read the piece. On the web, you could write at the level that was most applicable for the article.
This is still the case with TV. The TV execs haven't yet realised that although its great to get as many people as possible watching your show for the exposure of advertising, it would be just as useful to target a smaller, smarter, more economically active segment of the population.
Thats why TV sucks. Its targeted at the moron next door.
There has been a drive towards the paperless office for many years now, yet the statistics show that we're using more paper per person than ever before? I propose that the reason for this is that older, management-type people who have been working for the past 20 years have a mental block against non-paper goods. They feel secure with a piece of paper, it means that their work is not going away anywhere. This has been confirmed by almost all the paper-carriers I have asked.
A slightly darker angle to this is that people who are not contributing any value to an organisation (and we all know people like that, now don't we?) feel that by surrounding themselves by paper, there is a quantifiable display that they are being productive and that they should keep their jobs.