Excellent example of what I'm talking about. And think how much easier your search for prior art would have been if there existed a database of that which had already been found, and an infrastructure to get worldwide help in finding any more that might exist. The mind boggles.;)
One more point I'd like to make regarding this. While you chose not to patent your morphing process, (admirable, btw, if it was to allow free use), a prior art database would be just as useful to those seeking to obtain a patent as it would to those fighting one. Wouldn't it be nice to know before you spend untold time and money on r&d that someone else had been there done that? About the only people it would hurt would be those who seek to patent a proven process and ride the royalty gravy train (and the number of firms in the U.S. doing this is staggering). I think we can all agree that plowing them under could only be a good thing.
1) Publish your idea. You personally have one year from that date to file for a patent. No one else can (legally) obtain one by filing after that date. If someone has filed for one before that date, or published prior to you and files within a year of that, all bets are off.
2) People keep suggesting this sort of thing, but I have to wonder if they really understand how expensive it is to maintain a patent portfolio. Defending a patent portfolio can cost millions per year. If said foundation has a patent that Microsoft wants, do you really think they're going to negotiate cross-licensing when they can just file a couple of suits, bankrupt you, and use the patented processes with impunity?
I believe there is a better idea. It's said that there is nothing new under the sun; ie, if you've thought of something there is a very high probability that you weren't the first. Use the power of open source to find the prior art. Maintain a database of it. Whenever a patent that seems ludicrous is filed, or whenever a company uses one that seems so, get in the prior art database and find out where it's been done before. I've seen several estimates that >80% of all granted patents are invalid on the grounds of prior art; it's just that most of the time, nobody's trying very hard to find it. Set the hundreds of thousands of eyes (and brains) of the open source community on the problem, and you'll find that pretty soon a piece of software will have to be special indeed to receive patent protection.
They can be funny - no doubt about it. And most people I hear these stories from have no ill intent. However, I think that many people are missing the fact that they are just as clueless in a nearly infinite number of subjects. Sticking your head into the big blue room every so often will give some perspective.
Interestingly, one of the largest lists of these stories I ever saw came from Dell's tech help dept. Customer service indeed. The amount of cluelessness involved in releasing that document with Dell's name on it is easily an order of magnitude larger than anything in it.
But for Compaq to pull the plug on Alpha on NT just before Microsoft ships Windows 2000 seems like strange timing, the source added. "NT on Alpha was like a Cadillac running at half-speed. But the Alpha was really going to be able to take advantage of its 64-bitness once Microsoft shipped Windows 2000 and especially the Datacenter version."
Golly Beav, why would Compaq, a company that is having some financial turbulence, want to concentrate on providing the resources they have available now instead of waiting on another company to provide a product (64 bit NT; stay with me here) that many people are saying they may never ship?
Gee Wally, I dunno; maybe there are some things we just aren't meant to know.
First let me say that I've never read Suck before. Several people have said that they exist to be negative. I can believe that from the tone of the article. Doesn't change the fact that they're dead on the money.
It also doesn't mean that's the whole story. The one thing I've heard over and over since I started using Linux (about three years now) is that it's a fundamentally different beast. This was true then, it's true now. What that means in the current context is that while all that Suck said is true (and it is; don't delude yourself), Linux is in the unique situation of being able to maintain infinite alternate realities.
As an example - I go to LinuxWorld. I talk to many people. We discuss who uses what. Most people seem to run RedHat or Debian (I was in the Debian booth, so that may be skewed). On this, most run WindowMaker or E with KDE or GNOME (in order of popularity). These are the hot new things, many being driven by some of these new forces at play. Myself? I run a version of AfterStep 1.0 that I've done some hacking on (and I'm not even a programmer; I'm a hardware guy). Do these guys have functionality I don't? Not really. Themeing, but I don't consider that important, and I can get most of that functionality other ways. Some stuff like drag n' drop in KDE or GNOME, but I don't use that.
And there my friends, is the big difference. All these new things are available, becoming part of the system, and I don't have to use them. It's all optional. As long as the source remains available, there will be versions of Linux out there driven purely by the motives it has always been driven by. It's every bit as sure as the fact that versions and products will appear that are driven purely by greed. They're both human nature.
...this survey tells us nothing about the real marketshare (measured in number of machines weighted by their purpose) of Linux, but a lot about the mindshare...
So true, but as Microsoft has shown us so effectively in the past, in the business world mindshare is the real battle. Whether that's a battle we need to concern ourselves with is left as an exercise for the reader.
Well, sure. And Bill Gates is just an average rich kid who happened to start a software company; I'm with ya here. Anyone could have done it. Hell, I bet you have a couple of times on rainy weekends.
And I guess I'll call my car an "assorted nuts and bolts" sedan, 'cause lord knows that's the largest number of pieces in it (and let's face it - where would it be without them?), and my computer is an SIS computer 'cause that's what most of the chips in it say on 'em (cpu's doin' nothin' without the chipset, credit where credit's due I say), and my motorcycle is of course a Snap-On motorcycle 'cause those are the tools I use on it (not goin' anywhere if I can't work on it), cool, that makes perfect sense.
On a slightly more serious note, it really doesn't take much rational thought to see that Linus' contribution to computing has a) been very significant and b) almost nothing to do with writing code.
Yes, well, let's all keep in mind that Andrew Carnegie gave all that money away in an attempt to help history forget all the lives he destroyed while he made it.
While Gates can't begin to qualify as being as bad as Carnegie in absolute terms, I suppose relative to the times and his industry he hasn't done badly; maybe your comparison is apt.
I remember telling my wife some time ago (admittedly half in jest) that Bill Gates is going to be seriously p.o.'ed when he finds that the "great visionary of personal computing" mantle he's been lobbying for most of his career went to Linus Torvalds instead. This tickles the hell out of me.
Having said that, I hope we all realize that for either of these gentlemen to win this award would not say pretty things about where we put our priorities.
"Linux is a redesign. Many ideas have been rethought using current thinking...It isn't surprising that fresh minds can do better - one would hope that we have learned something in 20 years." - Larry McVoy, former systems architect for Sun and SGI Full quote here
No, it wasn't the biodome. The people in the biodome stayed in for a year or more IIRC, and were later found to have had outside help in that time. The NASA project kept a 4 person team completely self contained for 3 months; it is actually a proof of concept for a manned Mars mission (if they ever raise that kind of money).
...but that's more Carter's fault than Reagan's...
Ok, that's fair. I spent most of the Carter administration overseas, and remember the pain of trying to buy a house when we got back. Reagan was president at the time, but hadn't been long, and I suppose he was handed a messy house when he took over.
OTOH, by the late 80's, we also were well into a recession big enough that many wanted to classify it as a depression, including one of the largest stock market crashes in history. I wasn't really trying to say he was a worthless president (I voted for him myself), but his economic policy traded short term gains for long term problems; while it tended to benefit those with money, it hurt just about everyone else in the long term, and the overall economy with it.
Last I heard, when Reagan lowered tax rates in the 80's, the revenues went *up*.
Hmmm. Now, I was paying taxes in the '80's, and that's not quite how I remember it. I know that Reagan passed a huge tax increase (adjusted for inflation, it's still the largest increase in American history), and that the vast majority of that increase was paid by people whose income was less than $50k/year (and the majority of that hit people making less that $35k).
IIRC, he did lower capital gains taxes (a couple of times), and also lowered the maximum tax rate. Both of these changes primarily benefitted people whose income was in excess of $100k/year.
His brilliant economic policy also gave us 21% inflation, 18% mortgage rates, sent the budget deficit and national debt through the roof, created the largest economic gap between the rich and the poor that we've seen this century, and guaranteed that minimum wage could not be a "living wage" (it's whole purpose for existing).
I would not hold him up as the poster child for the right way to run an economy.
...do American patent laws differ that much from elsewhere?
No, American patent laws aren't that radically different. It's just that somewhere along the way the patent office forgot it's supposed to be following them.
Reminds me of an interview I saw with a law professor during the whole Lewinski thing. The reviewer pointed out that it's illegal to release any grand jury testimony to the general public, as congress had done with Clinton's.
The law professor stated that as congress had passed the law, they could make an exception to it any time they wanted. If that don't send shivers down your spine...
If you go follow the link and read the bill, this is expressly allowed. It just says that your employer can't "encourage" you to do it; you have to ask them.
...Project Monterey, which is poised to become the industry's leading commercial UNIX... - emphasis mine.
Dunno 'bout you, but the fact that they bothered to differentiate says worlds to me about the current state of the corporate mindset. As far as things have come for Linux (and open software in general) in the last 18 months or so, every now and then I have to wonder if I really know the half of it.
A small electronics repair shop I worked for several years ago (and I do mean small; I was the only employee) used to play a radio station that was owned by a friend of the shop's owner. ASCAP sued him for $50,000. He settled with them for about 20k.
I've never understood how this works, legally speaking. The radio station pays a licensing fee to broadcast the music, and if I'm in a commercial environment, I have to pay a fee for receiving it?
I guess maybe now I know where Microsoft got some of their ideas for their licensing practices from.;)
Yep, I've got kids. Nope, they don't watch South Park and they're not going to anytime soon. But then again, my oldest is eight. Were he 16, I might rethink that.
Every person the same age has the same amount of experience, regardless of intellect. That is to say, that unless they are brain-damaged or suffer from mental illness, a 22yaer-old CEO has the same amount of practical, real-world survival experience as a 22-year old drummer in a garage band. They may excel at different disciplines, but overall they are on the same level.
If you really believe that, you've had an easy life. Congratulations; not everyone is so lucky. Whether you are willing to believe it or not, there are many 16 year olds out there who have far more 'life experience' than you do; many of them even have time to see the occasional movie. I don't think that's the point though.
While South Park is definitely full of what you might call 'low-brow' humor, it's also shot through with fairly biting social commentary. The two are frequently inseparable. Many will see the violence that befalls Kenny (for instance) and revel in their self-righteous indignation at the playing of violence against children for laughs. Others will look a little deeper and realize that it's no accident that the 'poor kid' dies in every episode. This type of thing will go right over the head of most pre-adolescent children. It will go over the head of far too many adults. It will go over the head of many teenagers; but not all. So who should decide? As you pointed out, it should be their parents, who one would hope knows them best.
I agree with your comments on the need for parents to take responsibility for their children. However, I would hope that by the time a child is 16 that the process of transferring that responsibility to him or her is well under way. If not, the extra two years on the way to 18 aren't going to help much.
Which came first, the movie or the society?
on
South Park The Movie
·
· Score: 4
I saw a review of this the other day wherein the reviewer (don't remember his name) described the movie scene, then went on to rail about how that's exactly what will happen, and that the movie was evidence of and a catalyst for our ongoing societal corruption because (sin of sins) it portrayed children swearing.
It was either the funniest piece of self-reference I've seen in a while or (more likely, unfortunately) proof positive that the reviewer (and probably most of his audience) needs a serious thwack with the clue stick.
Slashdot Mirror
One more point I'd like to make regarding this. While you chose not to patent your morphing process, (admirable, btw, if it was to allow free use), a prior art database would be just as useful to those seeking to obtain a patent as it would to those fighting one. Wouldn't it be nice to know before you spend untold time and money on r&d that someone else had been there done that? About the only people it would hurt would be those who seek to patent a proven process and ride the royalty gravy train (and the number of firms in the U.S. doing this is staggering). I think we can all agree that plowing them under could only be a good thing.
1) Publish your idea. You personally have one year from that date to file for a patent. No one else can (legally) obtain one by filing after that date. If someone has filed for one before that date, or published prior to you and files within a year of that, all bets are off.
2) People keep suggesting this sort of thing, but I have to wonder if they really understand how expensive it is to maintain a patent portfolio. Defending a patent portfolio can cost millions per year. If said foundation has a patent that Microsoft wants, do you really think they're going to negotiate cross-licensing when they can just file a couple of suits, bankrupt you, and use the patented processes with impunity?
I believe there is a better idea. It's said that there is nothing new under the sun; ie, if you've thought of something there is a very high probability that you weren't the first. Use the power of open source to find the prior art. Maintain a database of it. Whenever a patent that seems ludicrous is filed, or whenever a company uses one that seems so, get in the prior art database and find out where it's been done before. I've seen several estimates that >80% of all granted patents are invalid on the grounds of prior art; it's just that most of the time, nobody's trying very hard to find it. Set the hundreds of thousands of eyes (and brains) of the open source community on the problem, and you'll find that pretty soon a piece of software will have to be special indeed to receive patent protection.
Interestingly, one of the largest lists of these stories I ever saw came from Dell's tech help dept. Customer service indeed. The amount of cluelessness involved in releasing that document with Dell's name on it is easily an order of magnitude larger than anything in it.
Golly Beav, why would Compaq, a company that is having some financial turbulence, want to concentrate on providing the resources they have available now instead of waiting on another company to provide a product (64 bit NT; stay with me here) that many people are saying they may never ship?
Gee Wally, I dunno; maybe there are some things we just aren't meant to know.
It also doesn't mean that's the whole story. The one thing I've heard over and over since I started using Linux (about three years now) is that it's a fundamentally different beast. This was true then, it's true now. What that means in the current context is that while all that Suck said is true (and it is; don't delude yourself), Linux is in the unique situation of being able to maintain infinite alternate realities.
As an example - I go to LinuxWorld. I talk to many people. We discuss who uses what. Most people seem to run RedHat or Debian (I was in the Debian booth, so that may be skewed). On this, most run WindowMaker or E with KDE or GNOME (in order of popularity). These are the hot new things, many being driven by some of these new forces at play. Myself? I run a version of AfterStep 1.0 that I've done some hacking on (and I'm not even a programmer; I'm a hardware guy). Do these guys have functionality I don't? Not really. Themeing, but I don't consider that important, and I can get most of that functionality other ways. Some stuff like drag n' drop in KDE or GNOME, but I don't use that.
And there my friends, is the big difference. All these new things are available, becoming part of the system, and I don't have to use them. It's all optional. As long as the source remains available, there will be versions of Linux out there driven purely by the motives it has always been driven by. It's every bit as sure as the fact that versions and products will appear that are driven purely by greed. They're both human nature.
So true, but as Microsoft has shown us so effectively in the past, in the business world mindshare is the real battle. Whether that's a battle we need to concern ourselves with is left as an exercise for the reader.
And I guess I'll call my car an "assorted nuts and bolts" sedan, 'cause lord knows that's the largest number of pieces in it (and let's face it - where would it be without them?), and my computer is an SIS computer 'cause that's what most of the chips in it say on 'em (cpu's doin' nothin' without the chipset, credit where credit's due I say), and my motorcycle is of course a Snap-On motorcycle 'cause those are the tools I use on it (not goin' anywhere if I can't work on it), cool, that makes perfect sense.
On a slightly more serious note, it really doesn't take much rational thought to see that Linus' contribution to computing has a) been very significant and b) almost nothing to do with writing code.
While Gates can't begin to qualify as being as bad as Carnegie in absolute terms, I suppose relative to the times and his industry he hasn't done badly; maybe your comparison is apt.
Having said that, I hope we all realize that for either of these gentlemen to win this award would not say pretty things about where we put our priorities.
Full quote here
You were saying?
Other old computing technologies -
- Windowing GUIs
- Mouse
- Ethernet(!)
- Object oriented programming
- C programming language
And speaking of old computing technology, have you checked to see what's running under Win98 lately?General technologies older than 30 years -
- Telephone
- Internal combustion engine
- Jet aircraft
- Light bulb
- Electricity
- Radio and television
- Indoor plumbing
Can I assume you don't lower yourself to using these old, outmoded technologies either?No, it wasn't the biodome. The people in the biodome stayed in for a year or more IIRC, and were later found to have had outside help in that time. The NASA project kept a 4 person team completely self contained for 3 months; it is actually a proof of concept for a manned Mars mission (if they ever raise that kind of money).
Ok, that's fair. I spent most of the Carter administration overseas, and remember the pain of trying to buy a house when we got back. Reagan was president at the time, but hadn't been long, and I suppose he was handed a messy house when he took over.
OTOH, by the late 80's, we also were well into a recession big enough that many wanted to classify it as a depression, including one of the largest stock market crashes in history. I wasn't really trying to say he was a worthless president (I voted for him myself), but his economic policy traded short term gains for long term problems; while it tended to benefit those with money, it hurt just about everyone else in the long term, and the overall economy with it.
Hmmm. Now, I was paying taxes in the '80's, and that's not quite how I remember it. I know that Reagan passed a huge tax increase (adjusted for inflation, it's still the largest increase in American history), and that the vast majority of that increase was paid by people whose income was less than $50k/year (and the majority of that hit people making less that $35k).
IIRC, he did lower capital gains taxes (a couple of times), and also lowered the maximum tax rate. Both of these changes primarily benefitted people whose income was in excess of $100k/year.
His brilliant economic policy also gave us 21% inflation, 18% mortgage rates, sent the budget deficit and national debt through the roof, created the largest economic gap between the rich and the poor that we've seen this century, and guaranteed that minimum wage could not be a "living wage" (it's whole purpose for existing).
I would not hold him up as the poster child for the right way to run an economy.
They have, with other manufacturers. It's apparently a standard part of the Windows licensing agreement.
No, American patent laws aren't that radically different. It's just that somewhere along the way the patent office forgot it's supposed to be following them.
The law professor stated that as congress had passed the law, they could make an exception to it any time they wanted. If that don't send shivers down your spine...
If you go follow the link and read the bill, this is expressly allowed. It just says that your employer can't "encourage" you to do it; you have to ask them.
Dunno 'bout you, but the fact that they bothered to differentiate says worlds to me about the current state of the corporate mindset. As far as things have come for Linux (and open software in general) in the last 18 months or so, every now and then I have to wonder if I really know the half of it.
Also, somewhere in there he specifically says he won't program for Windows any more since it's gotten to be such a PITA to do so.
And remember, figures don't lie, but liars can figure. ;)
"Does that mean the phone company really did kill Kennedy?"
I've never understood how this works, legally speaking. The radio station pays a licensing fee to broadcast the music, and if I'm in a commercial environment, I have to pay a fee for receiving it?
I guess maybe now I know where Microsoft got some of their ideas for their licensing practices from. ;)
Every person the same age has the same amount of experience, regardless of intellect.
That is to say, that unless they are brain-damaged or suffer from mental illness, a 22yaer-old CEO has the same amount of practical, real-world survival experience as a 22-year old drummer in a garage band. They may excel at different disciplines, but overall they are on the same level.
If you really believe that, you've had an easy life. Congratulations; not everyone is so lucky. Whether you are willing to believe it or not, there are many 16 year olds out there who have far more 'life experience' than you do; many of them even have time to see the occasional movie. I don't think that's the point though.
While South Park is definitely full of what you might call 'low-brow' humor, it's also shot through with fairly biting social commentary. The two are frequently inseparable. Many will see the violence that befalls Kenny (for instance) and revel in their self-righteous indignation at the playing of violence against children for laughs. Others will look a little deeper and realize that it's no accident that the 'poor kid' dies in every episode. This type of thing will go right over the head of most pre-adolescent children. It will go over the head of far too many adults. It will go over the head of many teenagers; but not all. So who should decide? As you pointed out, it should be their parents, who one would hope knows them best.
I agree with your comments on the need for parents to take responsibility for their children. However, I would hope that by the time a child is 16 that the process of transferring that responsibility to him or her is well under way. If not, the extra two years on the way to 18 aren't going to help much.
It was either the funniest piece of self-reference I've seen in a while or (more likely, unfortunately) proof positive that the reviewer (and probably most of his audience) needs a serious thwack with the clue stick.