"German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
I was a little bothered by this too until I realized he's not actually being racist. The point is, when you exclude a group of university professors based on some arbitrary criterion -- assuming it doesn't relate to their ability -- then you necessarily harm the higher education system. Imagine what would happen if America suddenly decided that all left-handed university professors should leave the country. This would have an adverse impact on our schools, not because there's something special about being left-handed, but because there's something special about being a professor. So Graham is not being racist; he's simply saying that when Germany's Jewish professors (emphasis on "professor") left the country, the quality of their universities fell.
Software is instructions to hardware. Instructions should not be patentable. Hardware should be patentable - though there may not be a business case to make it worthwhile.
But software is only a list of instructions when it exists in RAM. It is possible to translate any software algorithm into a physical hardware implementation. For instance, I could develop an ASIC that implements, say, a sort routine entirely in hardware. If, as you say, such a chip is patentable, then the software version of that sort routine should also be patentable. And that is the point Graham is making: A software patent is not a patent on a specific list of instructions; it's a patent on an algorithm, and algorithms can be implemented either in software or in hardware. Therefore, software patents should also be patentable.
The otehr day I had to give directions to a picnic to a group of soccer players. There's really only one reasonable way to get from where they were to where they'd be going. What if someone had patented the description of how to get from Point A to Point B, that is how to get some hardware from one state to another? Does anyone think it logical that I would have to pay a royalty for telling this bunch of 13-yr olds (well, their parents) directions to get to their picnic? No? Then why are a set of directions to a collection of hardware patentable?
This is a straw man argument. You're talking about a trivial, obvious algorithm for which "prior art" already exists. A correct analogy would involve a new, non-obvious algorithm on something that's never been done before. You're going overboard in suggesting that algorithms implemented in software (patentable ones, at least) are just as simple and obvious as directions on how to get to a picnic.
Did I say it didn't? Money is of course something to consider, but it should not be the first -- and certainly not the only -- item on your list when deciding whether to pursue a Ph.D. And yet, this is what the original poster was suggesting.
As I have noted on slashdot before, as of right now, there is no reason for an American to pursue a PhD in science or engineering. The same person will make much more money as a doctor or lawyer, for example.
Deciding on a career based on how much money you expect make is just wrong. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who got into the field so he could live in a big house? Would you want to be defended by a lawyer who crammed for the bar exam so he could buy himself a sports car? Like so many others, I chose to get a Ph.D. in computer engineering not because of money -- indeed, there is little difference between Master's and Ph.D. graduates when it comes to salary -- but because I love learning about computers and want to become an expert in my field. We need more scientific experts in this country, not fewer, and discouraging people from pursuing higher education is the wrong thing to do.
A 10-week, continuous, off-campus research internship at a DHS-designated facility will be required during the summer between your first and second year of tenure.
You must indicate a willingness to accept, after graduation, competitive employment offers from DHS, state and local security offices, DHS-affiliated Federal laboratories, or DHS-related university faculty or research staff positions.
The best bit -- a cursory glance indicates about half are freeware.
Don't jump to conclusions. Some of those "freeware" widgets are simply companions to shareware applications that require paid registration in order to work. Like this one, for instance.
This "news item" sounds a bit like a thinly veiled advertisement for the submitter's site. Why no mention of the other Dashboard sites that have sprung up recently, like Dashboard Exchange and DashboardWidgets?
I don't know if I would call it awful, but it's definitely not all it's cracked up to be. Everyone here seems to be chanting, "Xcode, Xcode..." but I wonder how many of them have actually used Xcode on a project or if they are just echoing the conventional wisdom. ("It's free! And it's from Apple!")
Now, I haven't tried Xcode 2.0 in Tiger, but I have certainly made some sincere efforts to use Xcode 1.5 for my C++ and Java projects, and each time I've given up and gone back to a plain old programmer's editor and the command line. Although I loved the debugger, trying to set Xcode's compiler options and other parameters is a nightmare. Everything seems buried in different places for no apparent reason, special buttons have to be clicked in order to switch to a certain mode that will uncover hidden settings, etc. It's just not very easy to use, and it takes quite a bit of getting used to. It's definitely not a shining example of usability, especially given Apple's reputation.
There shouldn't be any problem running 10.3 binaries on Tiger, and if not, Fink always gives you the option to build your own Tiger-specific binaries from source.
I was going to say basically the same thing, but in a very informative and polite way. This post is so much better; somebody mod up as funny! I'm still LOL...
There is a great deal of coercion that does in fact go on in the plea bargaining process, to the point that innocent people have plea-bargained despite their innocence to avoid what they see as an inevitable worse outcome, and to the point where people have given false evidence in order to get off more lightly.
If Apple's sole purpose was to extract money from an innocent individual, or if they never had any intention of going to court, then I would agree with you. However, as you pointed out in your original post, this does not appear to be the situation here. This man violated the NDA, Apple believed the damage done by this violation to be worth $500,000, and they went to court to collect it. I see no coercion here. Consider this: What if Apple never offered a settlement, and the court eventually sided with Apple and ordered the man to pay $500,000? Would you still call this coercion? If so, then we are no longer debating the semantics of coercion and are instead discussing the quality of our justice system, for it would then be a court of law doing the coercion you speak of.
You are overextending the definition of "coercion". By this logic, you are saying that all of the plea bargaining that goes on in the justice system every day is mere "coercion". But most people would not use this word to describe a situation where a prosecutor wants to guarantee a conviction, so she offers the defendant a reduced sentence in exchange for a guilty plea.
What if a murderer chooses to plead guilty to a life sentence to avoid the possibility of the death penalty? Is that person being coerced? Your argument says yes, and that we should shut down all the American courts because they are no better than the Gulag.
Slashdot Mirror
What effort? He wrote the password on the side of the ream. :)
Citation, please?
Who are you and how the hell did you know about my affair in the Bahamas?
"German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
I was a little bothered by this too until I realized he's not actually being racist. The point is, when you exclude a group of university professors based on some arbitrary criterion -- assuming it doesn't relate to their ability -- then you necessarily harm the higher education system. Imagine what would happen if America suddenly decided that all left-handed university professors should leave the country. This would have an adverse impact on our schools, not because there's something special about being left-handed, but because there's something special about being a professor. So Graham is not being racist; he's simply saying that when Germany's Jewish professors (emphasis on "professor") left the country, the quality of their universities fell.
Software is instructions to hardware. Instructions should not be patentable. Hardware should be patentable - though there may not be a business case to make it worthwhile.
But software is only a list of instructions when it exists in RAM. It is possible to translate any software algorithm into a physical hardware implementation. For instance, I could develop an ASIC that implements, say, a sort routine entirely in hardware. If, as you say, such a chip is patentable, then the software version of that sort routine should also be patentable. And that is the point Graham is making: A software patent is not a patent on a specific list of instructions; it's a patent on an algorithm, and algorithms can be implemented either in software or in hardware. Therefore, software patents should also be patentable.The otehr day I had to give directions to a picnic to a group of soccer players. There's really only one reasonable way to get from where they were to where they'd be going. What if someone had patented the description of how to get from Point A to Point B, that is how to get some hardware from one state to another? Does anyone think it logical that I would have to pay a royalty for telling this bunch of 13-yr olds (well, their parents) directions to get to their picnic? No? Then why are a set of directions to a collection of hardware patentable?
This is a straw man argument. You're talking about a trivial, obvious algorithm for which "prior art" already exists. A correct analogy would involve a new, non-obvious algorithm on something that's never been done before. You're going overboard in suggesting that algorithms implemented in software (patentable ones, at least) are just as simple and obvious as directions on how to get to a picnic.
+1 to Tivo for manipulating the system.
Don't you mean "thumbs-up"? ;)
Delicious Library works great for this. It stores all of its data in an XML file, which is open enough for me.
Uh, you didn't even spell your sig right.
Pro cycling at it's worst --> Pro cycling at its worstSomeone comes along and enters something illegal: how to be a sniper
Illegal? I don't think so.
according to it's subtitle --> according to its subtitle
guiding Java into it's current incarnation --> guiding Java into its current incarnation
Who says you can't copyright noise?
Welcome to real life. Money matters.
Did I say it didn't? Money is of course something to consider, but it should not be the first -- and certainly not the only -- item on your list when deciding whether to pursue a Ph.D. And yet, this is what the original poster was suggesting.
As I have noted on slashdot before, as of right now, there is no reason for an American to pursue a PhD in science or engineering. The same person will make much more money as a doctor or lawyer, for example.
Deciding on a career based on how much money you expect make is just wrong. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who got into the field so he could live in a big house? Would you want to be defended by a lawyer who crammed for the bar exam so he could buy himself a sports car? Like so many others, I chose to get a Ph.D. in computer engineering not because of money -- indeed, there is little difference between Master's and Ph.D. graduates when it comes to salary -- but because I love learning about computers and want to become an expert in my field. We need more scientific experts in this country, not fewer, and discouraging people from pursuing higher education is the wrong thing to do.
Indentured servitude is illegal in this country.
Yes, but the government can always bend the rules:
DHS Graduate Fellowship requirements:
if Apple get's it's own chipset
ERROR: unnecessary apostrophe overflow
coalesce it's disparate services -->
coalesce its disparate services
released it's new personalized homepage service -->
released its new personalized homepage service
The best bit -- a cursory glance indicates about half are freeware.
Don't jump to conclusions. Some of those "freeware" widgets are simply companions to shareware applications that require paid registration in order to work. Like this one, for instance.
...that this incident will probably give Apple and Steve Jobs more bad publicity than the book alone ever would have.
It even showed up on CNN's main page.
This "news item" sounds a bit like a thinly veiled advertisement for the submitter's site. Why no mention of the other Dashboard sites that have sprung up recently, like Dashboard Exchange and DashboardWidgets?
I don't know if I would call it awful, but it's definitely not all it's cracked up to be. Everyone here seems to be chanting, "Xcode, Xcode..." but I wonder how many of them have actually used Xcode on a project or if they are just echoing the conventional wisdom. ("It's free! And it's from Apple!")
Now, I haven't tried Xcode 2.0 in Tiger, but I have certainly made some sincere efforts to use Xcode 1.5 for my C++ and Java projects, and each time I've given up and gone back to a plain old programmer's editor and the command line. Although I loved the debugger, trying to set Xcode's compiler options and other parameters is a nightmare. Everything seems buried in different places for no apparent reason, special buttons have to be clicked in order to switch to a certain mode that will uncover hidden settings, etc. It's just not very easy to use, and it takes quite a bit of getting used to. It's definitely not a shining example of usability, especially given Apple's reputation.
There shouldn't be any problem running 10.3 binaries on Tiger, and if not, Fink always gives you the option to build your own Tiger-specific binaries from source.
I was going to say basically the same thing, but in a very informative and polite way. This post is so much better; somebody mod up as funny! I'm still LOL...
There is a great deal of coercion that does in fact go on in the plea bargaining process, to the point that innocent people have plea-bargained despite their innocence to avoid what they see as an inevitable worse outcome, and to the point where people have given false evidence in order to get off more lightly.
If Apple's sole purpose was to extract money from an innocent individual, or if they never had any intention of going to court, then I would agree with you. However, as you pointed out in your original post, this does not appear to be the situation here. This man violated the NDA, Apple believed the damage done by this violation to be worth $500,000, and they went to court to collect it. I see no coercion here. Consider this: What if Apple never offered a settlement, and the court eventually sided with Apple and ordered the man to pay $500,000? Would you still call this coercion? If so, then we are no longer debating the semantics of coercion and are instead discussing the quality of our justice system, for it would then be a court of law doing the coercion you speak of.
You are overextending the definition of "coercion". By this logic, you are saying that all of the plea bargaining that goes on in the justice system every day is mere "coercion". But most people would not use this word to describe a situation where a prosecutor wants to guarantee a conviction, so she offers the defendant a reduced sentence in exchange for a guilty plea.
What if a murderer chooses to plead guilty to a life sentence to avoid the possibility of the death penalty? Is that person being coerced? Your argument says yes, and that we should shut down all the American courts because they are no better than the Gulag.