I checked the local news for Princeton NJ (which is equidisant between NYC and Philly; many Princeton residents think of themselves as living in an exurb of NYC).
Most of the "lcoal" news was for Philadelphia, none at all for New York.
The issue here: each user needs to be allowed to draw a map of what that listener thinks is "local".
- Precision Blogger.
This "solution" assumes that somehow, someone will be able to track WHO bought every song and what watermark was assigned to them. This is a great added cost, if it's even practical. The number of bits required to embed in one song, to make sure each watermark is unique, might be too great to fit in three minutes. (Movies are longer and more expensive AND sell fewer copies, so my arguments do not really apply to them.)
- Systems Curmudgeon, AKA Precison Blogger
"The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist..."
No that is NOT how flame wars start, you $@&@)%^)^ idiot-like $^()@^$!
But what if a house is designed by GOOD software developers? There are lots of advantages, including the bathroom Class, the fridge that uses hashcoding and compression, and the ability to resize and move your windows. Check it out here.
You have to pay to read the original study, but the overview says they hypothesized (in conformnce with a crackpot theory) that engineers would have more boys and Then they did the study and "proved" it.
It's very unlikely this will hold up, such a variation in sex by profession would have been noticed before.
It's a small world and you never know when you're going to run into the same people again. It's worth almost every decent effort to be cooperative and helpful, to try to end your current job with a good conscience.
Confronting your boss is very risky. There's only one way I would recommend if you have to - insist on a meeting with your boss AND his boss to plan how you will best use your remaining time (and while you're at it, make your case that you're being a good employee).
Bear in mind that as a departing employee, you are actually providing your company the service of being able to blame things on you rather than look in the mirror. As a consultant I've faced this a lot, and I just regard it as one of the things I'm paid for (see below). Don't let it get to you.
NEXT time you change jobs, here are some pieces of advice:
(1) Don't tell anyone at work about your new job until you start it and decide how you like it.
(2) Give as little notice as you decently can, rarely more than two weeks. Longer notice opens you up as a longterm target.
(3) Think about negotiating a "reciprocal notice" clause, something I've managed to do for 20 years. The idea is that the amount of notice you are required to give the company is the same that they are require to give you, be it one hour, two weeks or whatever; the more security they give you, the more you give them.
(4) Since we always sign agreements about proprietary property (which tend to be vaguely written in favor of the employer), it's a good idea when you change jobs to change to a somewhat different field, to avoid charges you are taking knowledge with you. Your boss of course has no right to withhold your paycheck for any grounds whatsoever. If you're worried about a real problem here, get copies of all relevant company policy BEFORE your last day. It will be much harder after you leave the company. Make it gently clear to the company president, if they actually try to withhold your paycheck, that you will be contacting your senator, a lawyer, and the relevant state regulatory boards (even though such boards probably do not exist) and that the time they spend dealing with you will be a much greater waste than paying you. E.g., "If you
try to illegally withhold my paycheck, you're going to wind up spending an awful lot of time responding to queries by the government and all the relevant regulatory agencies I find. Heck I might even have to get a lawyer if we part on bad terms, I'd to do that. Why not pay me now instead of wasting all that precious time?"
If they try to make you sign something before you leave, you almost have to insist that you show it to an intellectual property lawyer before you sign; believe me, the stakes will be too high. If they are offering your $50,000 or more, take it or leave it, to sign without a lawyer, it might be worth
it.
Finally, here's an example of how I was paid to be the "dumped on" person in one job. My main responsibility was to write the user documentation telling the customer how to operate the system. For years after I left this job, I ran into people who knew I had "failed" in this. The reason I wrote no user documentation at all was that there were no specs for this system, it never got out of the design phase, there was no running software, and no one could tell me what the user screens were going to look like! When told I failed to document this system, I just smile.
Hi, your informative email is not what the current motion is about, but let that pass. you wrote:
"In such a pre-trial summary judgement motion, the rules are heavily biased in favor of Caldera/SCO; they only have to show a tiny bit of evidence to defeat the motion...."
It may seem easy to produce a 'tiny bit of evidence', but SCO has already sworn that no such evidence exists. In discovery they were required to provide IBM with such info and they averred that there is none, refusing even at the judge's demand to produce it.
If SCO produces that 'tiny bit of info' now, it will be inadmissible, and someone will go to jail for defying to, and lying to, the judge.
The stated goal of Metafor is to state requirements, not specs or algorithms. In the case of cooking, an requirement might be:
"The recipe is intended for amateurs; it must be designed so that it will produce good results even if the the oven is 30 degrees too hot or too cool."
The recipe you give above would meet the requirement by an adjustment of the ratio of solids to liquids, and carefully chosen temperature and cooking time.
It's not clear that there would be any utility in stating this requirement in an object-oriented form. The requirement cuts right across the details of the recipe design and implementation.
Of the six reasons adduced for project failure, these cannot be accurately applied post facto:
Use of an inappropriate methodology: Had they used a different methodology, they might have simply stumbled on different "gotcha's".
Lack of formal project management practices: This reason means they know a number of issues got out of control. They do not know how much more those issues would have been controlled, nor how much additional control might have slowed progress.
In addition, the "Requirements volatility" category begs a big question: requirements DO change over time; how is this category different from "Lack of formal project management practices" that would have planned for requirements changes?
A product that was poorly marketed in the late 1970's was called the "Bone Phone." It was a walkman-style audio player intended for runners, and you heard the music through your bones (no earpiece). I believe it was invented by a Princetonian.
If any patents are claimed on this, there is prior art!
- systems curmudgeon, AKA:
The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
Check out the first five books of the Old testament (especially Exodus) for detailed descriptions of how to construct a shrine (the Mikdash) from materials that fit together beautifully and are easily assembled and disasembled.
(1) Sharing a computer in a cubicle with three other people. Doesn't sound tooo bad, but the cubicle was only 5 by 7.5 feet.
(2) Installing a computer in a computer room that was still under construction. Had to wear a hard hat to be safe from welding flmes from above.
(3) Office was a halway, 3' wide and 40' long with no electrical plugs. I did have a desktop computer though.
Obviously, we send systems to Mars, and the Martians then do a good job of protecting their privacy. There's only one thing to do:
Send in the naval fleet!
Dear friend, You may be surprised to receive this letter from me since you do not know me personally, although I am sure you know me by reputation. I am William Gates, "Bill" to many, and as you know, a recent refugee from the company Mi*ft.
I got your contact through network online hence decided to write you. Before my flight from the United States to Swaziland I had accumulated tens of billions of dollars which I secreted in several private security companies, foreseeing the looming dangers and my own personal risks in the U.S. This money was deposited in a few boxes in the form of compile-and-run ".net" modules to avoid much demurrage from the Security Companies. This amount was meant for the purchase of new machines and chemicals for the Farms and establishment of new farms in Swaziland. But I have traveled to the Netherlands and I am currently staying in the Netherlands where I am seeking political asylum and more so have decided to transfer my money to a more reliable foreign account.
Since the law of Europe prohibits a refugee (asylum seeker) to open any bank account or to be involved in any financial transaction throughout the territorial zone of European Union. As the richest child of my father, I am saddled with the responsibility of seeking a genuine foreign account where this money could converted to cash and transferred without the knowledge of my government who are bent on taking everything we have got. The South African government seems to be playing along with them. I am faced with the dilemma of moving this amount of money through the Netherlands for fear of going through the same experience in future. Both countries have similar political history. I am seeking for a partner who I have to entrust my future and that of my family in his hands, I must let you know that this transaction is risk free.
If you accept to assist me and my family, all I want you to do for me is to make arrangements with the security companies to clear the Consignment (funds) from their affiliate office here in the Netherlands as I have already given directives for the consignment to be brought to the Netherlands from South Africa. But before then all modalities will have to be put in place like change of ownership to the consignment. I have three options for you. Firstly you can choose to have certain percentage of the money for nominating your account for this transaction. Secondly I can share with you the backdoor login and password to the Passport system. Thirdly you can go into partnership with me for the proper profitable investment of the money in your country. Whichever the option you want, feel free to notify me. I have also mapped out 2% of this money for all kinds of expenses incurred in the process of this transaction. If you do not prefer a partnership I am willing to give you 10% of the money while the remaining 88% will be for my investment in your country. My goodness that's four alternatives, isn't it? Contact me immediately. I implore you to maintain the absolute secrecy required if you enter into this transaction. Thanks, BLESS YOU.
Best regards.
I know that there are many in this world who do not trust me very much so I am prepared for a difficult search to find my partner. Please pass ths plea on to those of your acquaintance who you know can be trusted with this information.
Here's something that really ticks me off: Let's say I get their stupid window popped on my screen 400 times. Just ONCE I make the mistake of hitting whatever "X" they regard as the YES button. Common sense says I have said NO to them (399 out of 400 times) but it would appear they have the right to claim I said yes.
My peeve applies to straightforward popups too, not just confusing ones. 399 NO's means: NO!
The RIAA has decided that money talks. How about boycotting the RIAA music companies for a month? That might make the music companies think about wooing us instead of suing us.
Let's make June "RIAA month".
Buy ONLY Indie music CDs this June.
When CD's just started to come out, often containing many programs, John Dvorak asked what was a sensible way to price them. Obviously no one would buy a CD with 100 applications if the cost was $100 per application or $10,000 for the CD. (And today it is clear that no one wants to pay $15 for a CD containing one good song and 14 blah ones.) His suggested rule of thumb at the time was to assume the typical buyer would use 5% of the CD and would be willing to pay 1/200th of the nominal value for it ($50 in my example case).
For most of the CD and DVD era, it appears that manufacturers have found prices that make money but are perceived as somewhat too high by the slightly larcenous public. But the next big jumps in storage size will repoen this issue.
In the future we will buy small optical cubes that can easily contain 1,000 full length movies along with multiple sound tracks, formats and out takes. No one will pay $15,000 for them but they might be willing to pay 1/200th or $75.
What would you be willing to pay for a music son-of-DVD containing five good songs and 3,000 bad ones?
BUT MORE LIKELY the increase in storage capacity will radically change our view of what ought to be included on a volume. Speculate away, this sort of thing is really hard to anticipate.
For example, a movie on a son-of-DVD volume might routinely come with copies of every web page containing every last bit of information about the movie, its cast and makers, the raw rushes, the intermediate edited chunks, etc.
Graham expects programming languages to become logically simpler, because the computing inefficiencies imposed by simplicity will be a bearable cost. His idea of simplicity is nonsense for practical software developers.
Developers need languages in which it is simple to notate the way they think of algorithms, and we hope that over time languages will help us that way. Graham says we should get rid of strings and use lists to represent them. But people naturally THINK in terms of character strings all the time, so it helps developers to support strings in a language.
In C and C++ programming there is a very nasty concept that is implemnted with casting and multiple inheritance. When people learned to think clearly about this concept it got a name: "interface". Java and C# naturally support interfaces, removing a lot of mysterious programming garbage that previous languages required to make themuseable. THAT's language evolution, making it natural to program the way we developers think!
To decide what programming languages will be in the future, we have to guess what developers will use as thoughtful building blocks in programs that interact with thousands of sources, routinely utilize quantum calculations, control artifical intelligence actors, deal with evolving changes in the components they interface to, and use totally new ways to get the attentions of the people who are using them. Our programs are starting to have to do all that now; we lack the languages to make the task at all routine; it's going to get worse before it improves, and it won't improve they way Graham thinks it wil.
SECURE QUANTUM KEY TRANSMISSION: Here (more or less) is how the key is transmitted securely. The technique arises from a mental experiment Einstein created (with others) to prove that Quantum mechanics was silly (but the experiment was actually done in the 1970's and it helped to confirm the reality of quantum mechanics): A bunch of photon pairs are generated (let's say 1000), and one photon of each pair is sent to the recipient. The other half of each pair is sampled at the sending site, either vertically or horizontally, to determine its spin. The recipient also randomly samples the phtons horizontally or vertically to determine their spin. The spins of each pair of photons will receive opposite values when their spins are observed.
The recipient and sender now have an INSECURE conversation to discuss the following: (1) Which photons they observed vertically and which horizontally; (2) the observed values of half of the photons that they both observed the same way.
If their observations do not agree, then it may be true that someone was eavesdroping on the tranmission; they start over. If the observations agree, the key must have been sent securely (because observations by another observer would randomize their values). The sender and recipient therefore use the other half of the photons they observed (the same way) as their one time pad key. They do not have to mention the actual values of the spins of these photons in the insecure conversation; they share the knowledge of these spins.
As time passes, this technique will become very practical and will be used over fairly long distances.
I am actually working on the Invidi technology under nondisclosure, so I will not go into detail. However when they say they can target advertizing AND protect the viewer's privacy, they mean it. They have a clever approach that works. Please don't be too quick to confuse what anyone can easily figure out for himself or herself, and what is non-obvious but true.
tobias robison.
I'm not going to go into detail, because I am actually working on this technology and under nondisclosure, but Invidi HAS figured out how to target advertizing without passing data that invades privacy. You will find their techniques interesting when they become generally known. They have a clever approach, and when they say they are protecting the viewer's privacy, THEY MEAN IT. And they nonetheless can target ads.
- tobias robison
I'm not going to go into detail, because I am actually working on this technology and under nondisclosure, but Invidi HAS figured out how to target advertizing without passing data that invades privacy. This is a very clever approach, and when they say they are protecting the viewer's privacy, THEY MEAN IT.
- tobias robison
There's a good reason why you do not have to "collect licenses" quickly. Look at what happens to a company that makes an honest invention and patents it. As long as the patent is valid, other companies are not supposed to be sneaky about using the patent technology without licensing it. ANY TIME the patent holder discovers the technology is in use, they can go after that user and get back royalties. In the past this has worked fairly to enforce patents.
Sometimes (with a complex patent) it might even take a long time to figure out that the patent was infringed. The holder is still entitled to fair royalties.
Remember that patents are all PUBLISHED. We engineers are responsible for avoiding patentable inventions UNLESS we want to risk paying royalties. It's just a bit of a shame that NO ONE can afford to do such searches accurately any more, there are too many non-obvious patents.
I worked on a project in which software and hardware together tuned a TV channel over the air. We programmers kept going back to the designer and complaining that the tuning algorithm was very poor, and suggesting obviously great improvements we had thought of. Each time, the designer patiently explained that we had "discovered" a patented tuning technique, and that there would be a royalty payment of 20% of the product price (the tuning royalties are TOUGH) if we used it. The goal of OUR project was to tune without infringing any tuning patents (and all the good algorithms were taken).
Slashdot Mirror
I checked the local news for Princeton NJ (which is equidisant between NYC and Philly; many Princeton residents think of themselves as living in an exurb of NYC).
Most of the "lcoal" news was for Philadelphia, none at all for New York.
The issue here: each user needs to be allowed to draw a map of what that listener thinks is "local".
- Precision Blogger.
This "solution" assumes that somehow, someone will be able to track WHO bought every song and what watermark was assigned to them. This is a great added cost, if it's even practical. The number of bits required to embed in one song, to make sure each watermark is unique, might be too great to fit in three minutes. (Movies are longer and more expensive AND sell fewer copies, so my arguments do not really apply to them.)
- Systems Curmudgeon, AKA Precison Blogger
"The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist ..."
No that is NOT how flame wars start, you $@&@)%^)^ idiot-like $^()@^$!
But what if a house is designed by GOOD software developers? There are lots of advantages, including the bathroom Class, the fridge that uses hashcoding and compression, and the ability to resize and move your windows. Check it out here.
You have to pay to read the original study, but the overview says they hypothesized (in conformnce with a crackpot theory) that engineers would have more boys and Then they did the study and "proved" it. It's very unlikely this will hold up, such a variation in sex by profession would have been noticed before.
It's a small world and you never know when you're going to run into the same people again. It's worth almost every decent effort to be cooperative and helpful, to try to end your current job with a good conscience.
Confronting your boss is very risky. There's only one way I would recommend if you have to - insist on a meeting with your boss AND his boss to plan how you will best use your remaining time (and while you're at it, make your case that you're being a good employee). Bear in mind that as a departing employee, you are actually providing your company the service of being able to blame things on you rather than look in the mirror. As a consultant I've faced this a lot, and I just regard it as one of the things I'm paid for (see below). Don't let it get to you.
NEXT time you change jobs, here are some pieces of advice:
(1) Don't tell anyone at work about your new job until you start it and decide how you like it. (2) Give as little notice as you decently can, rarely more than two weeks. Longer notice opens you up as a longterm target.
(3) Think about negotiating a "reciprocal notice" clause, something I've managed to do for 20 years. The idea is that the amount of notice you are required to give the company is the same that they are require to give you, be it one hour, two weeks or whatever; the more security they give you, the more you give them.
(4) Since we always sign agreements about proprietary property (which tend to be vaguely written in favor of the employer), it's a good idea when you change jobs to change to a somewhat different field, to avoid charges you are taking knowledge with you. Your boss of course has no right to withhold your paycheck for any grounds whatsoever. If you're worried about a real problem here, get copies of all relevant company policy BEFORE your last day. It will be much harder after you leave the company. Make it gently clear to the company president, if they actually try to withhold your paycheck, that you will be contacting your senator, a lawyer, and the relevant state regulatory boards (even though such boards probably do not exist) and that the time they spend dealing with you will be a much greater waste than paying you. E.g., "If you try to illegally withhold my paycheck, you're going to wind up spending an awful lot of time responding to queries by the government and all the relevant regulatory agencies I find. Heck I might even have to get a lawyer if we part on bad terms, I'd to do that. Why not pay me now instead of wasting all that precious time?"
If they try to make you sign something before you leave, you almost have to insist that you show it to an intellectual property lawyer before you sign; believe me, the stakes will be too high. If they are offering your $50,000 or more, take it or leave it, to sign without a lawyer, it might be worth it.
Finally, here's an example of how I was paid to be the "dumped on" person in one job. My main responsibility was to write the user documentation telling the customer how to operate the system. For years after I left this job, I ran into people who knew I had "failed" in this. The reason I wrote no user documentation at all was that there were no specs for this system, it never got out of the design phase, there was no running software, and no one could tell me what the user screens were going to look like! When told I failed to document this system, I just smile.
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com/
Hi, your informative email is not what the current motion is about, but let that pass. you wrote: "In such a pre-trial summary judgement motion, the rules are heavily biased in favor of Caldera/SCO; they only have to show a tiny bit of evidence to defeat the motion. ..."
It may seem easy to produce a 'tiny bit of evidence', but SCO has already sworn that no such evidence exists. In discovery they were required to provide IBM with such info and they averred that there is none, refusing even at the judge's demand to produce it.
If SCO produces that 'tiny bit of info' now, it will be inadmissible, and someone will go to jail for defying to, and lying to, the judge.
The stated goal of Metafor is to state requirements, not specs or algorithms. In the case of cooking, an requirement might be:
"The recipe is intended for amateurs; it must be designed so that it will produce good results even if the the oven is 30 degrees too hot or too cool."
The recipe you give above would meet the requirement by an adjustment of the ratio of solids to liquids, and carefully chosen temperature and cooking time.
It's not clear that there would be any utility in stating this requirement in an object-oriented form. The requirement cuts right across the details of the recipe design and implementation.
Of the six reasons adduced for project failure, these cannot be accurately applied post facto:
. pdf/
0 1/10/1844255&tid=156&tid=9/.
Use of an inappropriate methodology: Had they used a different methodology, they might have simply stumbled on different "gotcha's".
Lack of formal project management practices: This reason means they know a number of issues got out of control. They do not know how much more those issues would have been controlled, nor how much additional control might have slowed progress.
In addition, the "Requirements volatility" category begs a big question: requirements DO change over time; how is this category different from "Lack of formal project management practices" that would have planned for requirements changes?
It is interesting that "Project complexity" falls low on this list, because it is the most clearly proven reason why project plans fail. See this website for a fairly formal proof that project complexity cannot be estimated in advance: http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Work/Softestim/kcsest
This proof has been discussed at slashdot here: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/
A product that was poorly marketed in the late 1970's was called the "Bone Phone." It was a walkman-style audio player intended for runners, and you heard the music through your bones (no earpiece). I believe it was invented by a Princetonian. If any patents are claimed on this, there is prior art! - systems curmudgeon, AKA: The Precision Blogger http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
I will happily buy their product, as long as it detects all text written by themselves as SPAM.
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Berth, Dust to Distance.
Check out the first five books of the Old testament (especially Exodus) for detailed descriptions of how to construct a shrine (the Mikdash) from materials that fit together beautifully and are easily assembled and disasembled.
(1) Sharing a computer in a cubicle with three other people. Doesn't sound tooo bad, but the cubicle was only 5 by 7.5 feet. (2) Installing a computer in a computer room that was still under construction. Had to wear a hard hat to be safe from welding flmes from above. (3) Office was a halway, 3' wide and 40' long with no electrical plugs. I did have a desktop computer though.
Obviously, we send systems to Mars, and the Martians then do a good job of protecting their privacy. There's only one thing to do: Send in the naval fleet!
Dear friend, You may be surprised to receive this letter from me since you do not know me personally, although I am sure you know me by reputation. I am William Gates, "Bill" to many, and as you know, a recent refugee from the company Mi*ft. I got your contact through network online hence decided to write you. Before my flight from the United States to Swaziland I had accumulated tens of billions of dollars which I secreted in several private security companies, foreseeing the looming dangers and my own personal risks in the U.S. This money was deposited in a few boxes in the form of compile-and-run ".net" modules to avoid much demurrage from the Security Companies. This amount was meant for the purchase of new machines and chemicals for the Farms and establishment of new farms in Swaziland. But I have traveled to the Netherlands and I am currently staying in the Netherlands where I am seeking political asylum and more so have decided to transfer my money to a more reliable foreign account. Since the law of Europe prohibits a refugee (asylum seeker) to open any bank account or to be involved in any financial transaction throughout the territorial zone of European Union. As the richest child of my father, I am saddled with the responsibility of seeking a genuine foreign account where this money could converted to cash and transferred without the knowledge of my government who are bent on taking everything we have got. The South African government seems to be playing along with them. I am faced with the dilemma of moving this amount of money through the Netherlands for fear of going through the same experience in future. Both countries have similar political history. I am seeking for a partner who I have to entrust my future and that of my family in his hands, I must let you know that this transaction is risk free. If you accept to assist me and my family, all I want you to do for me is to make arrangements with the security companies to clear the Consignment (funds) from their affiliate office here in the Netherlands as I have already given directives for the consignment to be brought to the Netherlands from South Africa. But before then all modalities will have to be put in place like change of ownership to the consignment. I have three options for you. Firstly you can choose to have certain percentage of the money for nominating your account for this transaction. Secondly I can share with you the backdoor login and password to the Passport system. Thirdly you can go into partnership with me for the proper profitable investment of the money in your country. Whichever the option you want, feel free to notify me. I have also mapped out 2% of this money for all kinds of expenses incurred in the process of this transaction. If you do not prefer a partnership I am willing to give you 10% of the money while the remaining 88% will be for my investment in your country. My goodness that's four alternatives, isn't it? Contact me immediately. I implore you to maintain the absolute secrecy required if you enter into this transaction. Thanks, BLESS YOU. Best regards. I know that there are many in this world who do not trust me very much so I am prepared for a difficult search to find my partner. Please pass ths plea on to those of your acquaintance who you know can be trusted with this information.
Here's something that really ticks me off: Let's say I get their stupid window popped on my screen 400 times. Just ONCE I make the mistake of hitting whatever "X" they regard as the YES button. Common sense says I have said NO to them (399 out of 400 times) but it would appear they have the right to claim I said yes. My peeve applies to straightforward popups too, not just confusing ones. 399 NO's means: NO!
The RIAA has decided that money talks. How about boycotting the RIAA music companies for a month? That might make the music companies think about wooing us instead of suing us. Let's make June "RIAA month". Buy ONLY Indie music CDs this June.
When CD's just started to come out, often containing many programs, John Dvorak asked what was a sensible way to price them. Obviously no one would buy a CD with 100 applications if the cost was $100 per application or $10,000 for the CD. (And today it is clear that no one wants to pay $15 for a CD containing one good song and 14 blah ones.) His suggested rule of thumb at the time was to assume the typical buyer would use 5% of the CD and would be willing to pay 1/200th of the nominal value for it ($50 in my example case). For most of the CD and DVD era, it appears that manufacturers have found prices that make money but are perceived as somewhat too high by the slightly larcenous public. But the next big jumps in storage size will repoen this issue. In the future we will buy small optical cubes that can easily contain 1,000 full length movies along with multiple sound tracks, formats and out takes. No one will pay $15,000 for them but they might be willing to pay 1/200th or $75. What would you be willing to pay for a music son-of-DVD containing five good songs and 3,000 bad ones? BUT MORE LIKELY the increase in storage capacity will radically change our view of what ought to be included on a volume. Speculate away, this sort of thing is really hard to anticipate. For example, a movie on a son-of-DVD volume might routinely come with copies of every web page containing every last bit of information about the movie, its cast and makers, the raw rushes, the intermediate edited chunks, etc.
Graham expects programming languages to become logically simpler, because the computing inefficiencies imposed by simplicity will be a bearable cost. His idea of simplicity is nonsense for practical software developers. Developers need languages in which it is simple to notate the way they think of algorithms, and we hope that over time languages will help us that way. Graham says we should get rid of strings and use lists to represent them. But people naturally THINK in terms of character strings all the time, so it helps developers to support strings in a language. In C and C++ programming there is a very nasty concept that is implemnted with casting and multiple inheritance. When people learned to think clearly about this concept it got a name: "interface". Java and C# naturally support interfaces, removing a lot of mysterious programming garbage that previous languages required to make themuseable. THAT's language evolution, making it natural to program the way we developers think! To decide what programming languages will be in the future, we have to guess what developers will use as thoughtful building blocks in programs that interact with thousands of sources, routinely utilize quantum calculations, control artifical intelligence actors, deal with evolving changes in the components they interface to, and use totally new ways to get the attentions of the people who are using them. Our programs are starting to have to do all that now; we lack the languages to make the task at all routine; it's going to get worse before it improves, and it won't improve they way Graham thinks it wil.
SECURE QUANTUM KEY TRANSMISSION:
Here (more or less) is how the key is transmitted securely. The technique arises from a mental experiment Einstein created (with others) to prove that Quantum mechanics was silly (but the experiment was actually done in the 1970's and it helped to confirm the reality of quantum mechanics): A bunch of photon pairs are generated (let's say 1000), and one photon of each pair is sent to the recipient. The other half of each pair is sampled at the sending site, either vertically or horizontally, to determine its spin. The recipient also randomly samples the phtons horizontally or vertically to determine their spin. The spins of each pair of photons will receive opposite values when their spins are observed.
The recipient and sender now have an INSECURE conversation to discuss the following:
(1) Which photons they observed vertically and which horizontally;
(2) the observed values of half of the photons that they both observed the same way.
If their observations do not agree, then it may be true that someone was eavesdroping on the tranmission; they start over. If the observations agree, the key must have been sent securely (because observations by another observer would randomize their values). The sender and recipient therefore use the other half of the photons they observed (the same way) as their one time pad key. They do not have to mention the actual values of the spins of these photons in the insecure conversation; they share the knowledge of these spins.
As time passes, this technique will become very practical and will be used over fairly long distances.
I am actually working on the Invidi technology under nondisclosure, so I will not go into detail. However when they say they can target advertizing AND protect the viewer's privacy, they mean it. They have a clever approach that works. Please don't be too quick to confuse what anyone can easily figure out for himself or herself, and what is non-obvious but true. tobias robison.
I'm not going to go into detail, because I am actually working on this technology and under nondisclosure, but Invidi HAS figured out how to target advertizing without passing data that invades privacy. You will find their techniques interesting when they become generally known. They have a clever approach, and when they say they are protecting the viewer's privacy, THEY MEAN IT. And they nonetheless can target ads. - tobias robison
I'm not going to go into detail, because I am actually working on this technology and under nondisclosure, but Invidi HAS figured out how to target advertizing without passing data that invades privacy. This is a very clever approach, and when they say they are protecting the viewer's privacy, THEY MEAN IT. - tobias robison
There's a good reason why you do not have to "collect licenses" quickly. Look at what happens to a company that makes an honest invention and patents it. As long as the patent is valid, other companies are not supposed to be sneaky about using the patent technology without licensing it. ANY TIME the patent holder discovers the technology is in use, they can go after that user and get back royalties. In the past this has worked fairly to enforce patents. Sometimes (with a complex patent) it might even take a long time to figure out that the patent was infringed. The holder is still entitled to fair royalties. Remember that patents are all PUBLISHED. We engineers are responsible for avoiding patentable inventions UNLESS we want to risk paying royalties. It's just a bit of a shame that NO ONE can afford to do such searches accurately any more, there are too many non-obvious patents. I worked on a project in which software and hardware together tuned a TV channel over the air. We programmers kept going back to the designer and complaining that the tuning algorithm was very poor, and suggesting obviously great improvements we had thought of. Each time, the designer patiently explained that we had "discovered" a patented tuning technique, and that there would be a royalty payment of 20% of the product price (the tuning royalties are TOUGH) if we used it. The goal of OUR project was to tune without infringing any tuning patents (and all the good algorithms were taken).