For more information about the case brought by U-Haul and others visit WhenUSucks.com. They have a list of PDF complaints against WhenU and responses near the bottom. While I know U-Haul was not doing this to stop WhenU and protect consumers they we're doing it to stop customers from seeing Budget ads when they visit Uhaul.com I for one was happy to see my employeer doing this. This sort of backdoor advertising is sleazy and preys on Internet users who cannot or will not read all the details of the software they install.
I installed the Dix codec the other day and found I had Gator installed on my laptop. I had installed only Visual Studio, Office, email, and other well known applications on a clean XP install. I was surprised to find Gator. This makes think it was the Divx codec that installed Gator like I suspected.
I went to Lava Soft to get ad aware. I removed Gator no problem. Also check, if you're using Windows, msconfig to see what is starting.
I am not saying there is prior art, simply that the idea is trivial. It is specific, for the most part, to our company and industry. When I sat down that fateful day of invention and spent all of about 30 minutes hashing the idea out and a couple of weeks actually executing it I never thought a patent would come about. I guess I always think of inventions as something that is new and unique. An inventor needs a way of protecting the idea from others so she applies for a patent.
The ideas, like many others, are very patentable. It is my view however, that trivial ideas, such as "Buy it Now", and "one-click checkout" are silly ideas to patent. Patents should be reserved for real innovations like light bulb. I have no problem with my company pursuing these patents, I simply feel they ideas are trivial and not worthy of a patent. My company is simply attempting to protect their intellectual property like any other major corporation regardless of how trivial I feel those ideas are.
My company recently applied for two patents for which I am named the "inventor". the patents are pretty obvious ideas. In my opinion, there is nothing there worthy of a patent, in other words, there is nothing that is not obvious about the ideas.
While speaking with the patent attorney and describing the details of the "invention" he said that his job is to make the patent as broad and general as possible (read vague) to make it easier to litigate an infringement. You could see his mind working as he worked out the patent application in his head.
While I agree we need patents to protect intellectual property, patenting obvious ideas, not even actual working inventions, is amazing. Customers have been able to "Buy it Now" at any retail store in the world since the dawn of time! Why is it that when we get a computer involved we need a patent and ~$30 million USD in compensation for this idea?
The attorney would constantly look at other things we were doing and ask about them. The only plus to this is that I'll have my name on a few patents soon, if you call that a good thing. I was also told that if in a few years the need to litigate the patents arose I would be deposed. I'm imagining myself at a different job in a different location getting a letter saying I need to be present at a law office some where!
I've got a 1.6 Ghz Intel Pentium-M (centrino is a marketing gimmick. It is the chipset, processor, and wireless LAN module not the processor). The processor is as fast as a 2.4 Ghz Pentium chip in every benchmark I can run. Centrino may be a gimmick but the Pentium-M processor delivers real performance and allows for decent battery life too.
I wrote the software than runs on a cluster of ten low-end servers (800 Mhz 128 megs ram) and one database (dual 700 Mhz). This site hosts more than 1100 concurrent users and the database does over 300 transactions a second. The site brings in $600,000 in revenue a day. The cluster IP has not missed a single connection attempt in more than six months (we only started polling it then and we poll every minute). The only limitation we have is that our backend is a very poorly written fox pro system. The servers are barely taxed by our application and serve up 60 million+ hits a month.
Placing a well written applicaiton on a cluster of low-end servers yielded great results for us. The key is well written..NET scales very well.
But four Polish researchers, known as the "Last Stage of Delirium Research Group," said they discovered how to bypass the additional protections Microsoft added, just three months after the software went on sale.
Even the Poles are able to exploit Windows now! What is the world coming to?
DISCLAIMER: I love Poles, I married one! I love the Polish jokes too!
I am currently working to do it right. We have been told we have the time it takes to do it right. We will have spent, by the time it is over, a year and a half on this project. It includes researching, designing, implementing, and deploying a multi-tiered backend. The phrase that got some people going for our idea was a quote from elsewhere on the Internet.
"There's never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over."
I know I am lucky in that I am given the freedom to set my own deadline. This is a system we needed years ago but instead of rush it my boss is running cover all the way up the line for us so we have the time it takes to do it right. Middle management probably will not understand when one group says the same thing could have been done in a month or two and we say it will take 18 months. I hope that in the end they will see that unlike the other solutions implemented by the quick-n-dirty group, this one works.
I didn't stop because of paths but it was a source of frustration. I use.NET for my job but my experience with Java was frustrating. Java serves a purpose and others like it very much but in my opinion, it is not nearly as easy to use as Visual Studio and C#. There is a learning curve with anything and even after using Java for a while I was not comfortable with it. After using C# and.NET for a few months I was easily able to work with it and produce very complex applications. I think a lot of people on Slashdot don't give it a fair shake because it is Microsoft. Like it or not at least try it out for a while before judging it (I'm not say you did or did not but others did). I tried it out and I would not go back.
I use C# and.NET because the company I work for went that way. I'm happy because it makes my job easier and has yielded some great results.
BTW, the FreeBSD link is my site and it makes for a good hobby.;)
I've programmed in Java and C# and I have to say that I love C#. Java can't even come close to the ease of use you get with Visual Studio and C#. When I started with Java I would spend hours trying to figure out paths and dealing with all that nonsense. I tried the IDEs but they never seemed to work right. I fire up Visual Studio and it works great. There were bugs in the original IDE but most of them have been fixed.
Right now I am working on a multi-tier business application for the Fortune 1000 company I work for and the amount that two developers can get done with C# and.NET is staggering. We wrote the eCommerce site for the comapany and it does over $600,000 a day in revenue on Windows server and C#.NET.
If you are interested in developing web applications but don't want to buy Visual Studio give WebMatrix a shot. It is a great looking and totally free IDE.
A lot of people here would fall in love with C# and.NET if it had come from anywhere else other than Redmond. It's a shame since it really is a great platform.
I've got a Dell Latitude D800 with the 15.4" WUXGA screen running at 1920x1200. I love it. I have always been a fan of the ultraportable using a Compaq Presario 800 super-thin notebook and then a Dell C400 compact notebook. While I always thought the bigger notebooks were too big and less functional in that they were hard to move around, once I got the bigger screen and the higer resolution I'm never going back. It makes coding easier and the screen quality is spectacular on the D800. It's one of the clearest LCDs I've ever seen. I do think 17" is a bit too big. I think mine is a littly heavy to drag around but manageable. Any 17" notebook would be too big.
Consider using it in an embedded type device. Say a network appliance. Using Compact Flash is difficult, as you need to write to the disk and not only read. Writing to Compact Flash or any other form of memory using flash or EEPROM is hard on the memory. There are a finite number of writes before the memory device fails and placing a operating system swap file on one can kill it in a hurry.
I see this as geared more towards the network appliance, a PDA, or an embedded system that requires a real hard drive. Digital cameras and other devices needing removable media would probably still use Compact Flash, Secure Digital, or Smart Media and they are not as write intensive, at least not to the extent that a OS swap file is.
I have a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Arizona State University. I like to think that I am an engineer. I feel that the work I do is above just coding but at the same time I work with people with "Software Engineering" from a "design" school. They are the ones who seem happy to call themselves software engineers. I went to school and suffered through statics, physics, and calculus like the electrical, chemical, and civil engineers around me. My college had ABET accreditation so again I like to think that I am a real engineer. I know I may be viewed as a code monkey but I have a job so call me what you will.
I own one of the 800 MHz Mini-ITX boards. With a Compact Flash card as a hard drive, a little bit of RAM and a reduced FreeBSD operating system you can have a good firewall, DHCP server, DNS server or anything you want. They are very quite and can be placed in a drawer or small cabinet.
I have tried Windows XP and it can play mp3s and movies fairly well. The newer versions are better for multimedia.
I just finished updating 10 IIS servers running in a load-balancing configuration for a single ecommerce site. I got the CERT email, went to Windows Update, checked for updates, installed updates and rebooted. Problem solved. It took about a half hour to do it. The site was never down, not for even a second, and the vulnerability was fixed with a few mouse clicks. Windows Update will take care of most of the problems. It works very well on servers. These machines are all Windows 2000 Advanced Servers.
Excellent point, but while Microsoft's adoption of DRM may be the exception to the rule the adoption of Windows is not. Unfortunatly, Microsoft can force others to adopt DRM by their size alone.
Like the first speaker says....the entertainment industry has used their current business model for many years....and it has been VERY good to them. They won't give it up easily. But the big players will push this on people and hope it works.
I sure hope Apple can resist the pressure to get on the DRM bandwagon.
Slashdot Mirror
For more information about the case brought by U-Haul and others visit WhenUSucks.com. They have a list of PDF complaints against WhenU and responses near the bottom. While I know U-Haul was not doing this to stop WhenU and protect consumers they we're doing it to stop customers from seeing Budget ads when they visit Uhaul.com I for one was happy to see my employeer doing this. This sort of backdoor advertising is sleazy and preys on Internet users who cannot or will not read all the details of the software they install.
http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/
It originally posted here and reprinted on the slashdotted site.
http://slushdot.org/mirror/skulls/Skulls_gain_virt ual_faces_081303.html
She going down! And not in the good sense of that sentence!
I installed the Dix codec the other day and found I had Gator installed on my laptop. I had installed only Visual Studio, Office, email, and other well known applications on a clean XP install. I was surprised to find Gator. This makes think it was the Divx codec that installed Gator like I suspected.
I went to Lava Soft to get ad aware. I removed Gator no problem. Also check, if you're using Windows, msconfig to see what is starting.
A complete mirror here. Includes the images linked off the page at the bottom. Have at it.
I am not saying there is prior art, simply that the idea is trivial. It is specific, for the most part, to our company and industry. When I sat down that fateful day of invention and spent all of about 30 minutes hashing the idea out and a couple of weeks actually executing it I never thought a patent would come about. I guess I always think of inventions as something that is new and unique. An inventor needs a way of protecting the idea from others so she applies for a patent.
The ideas, like many others, are very patentable. It is my view however, that trivial ideas, such as "Buy it Now", and "one-click checkout" are silly ideas to patent. Patents should be reserved for real innovations like light bulb. I have no problem with my company pursuing these patents, I simply feel they ideas are trivial and not worthy of a patent. My company is simply attempting to protect their intellectual property like any other major corporation regardless of how trivial I feel those ideas are.
My company recently applied for two patents for which I am named the "inventor". the patents are pretty obvious ideas. In my opinion, there is nothing there worthy of a patent, in other words, there is nothing that is not obvious about the ideas.
While speaking with the patent attorney and describing the details of the "invention" he said that his job is to make the patent as broad and general as possible (read vague) to make it easier to litigate an infringement. You could see his mind working as he worked out the patent application in his head.
While I agree we need patents to protect intellectual property, patenting obvious ideas, not even actual working inventions, is amazing. Customers have been able to "Buy it Now" at any retail store in the world since the dawn of time! Why is it that when we get a computer involved we need a patent and ~$30 million USD in compensation for this idea?
The attorney would constantly look at other things we were doing and ask about them. The only plus to this is that I'll have my name on a few patents soon, if you call that a good thing. I was also told that if in a few years the need to litigate the patents arose I would be deposed. I'm imagining myself at a different job in a different location getting a letter saying I need to be present at a law office some where!
I've got a 1.6 Ghz Intel Pentium-M (centrino is a marketing gimmick. It is the chipset, processor, and wireless LAN module not the processor). The processor is as fast as a 2.4 Ghz Pentium chip in every benchmark I can run. Centrino may be a gimmick but the Pentium-M processor delivers real performance and allows for decent battery life too.
I wrote the software than runs on a cluster of ten low-end servers (800 Mhz 128 megs ram) and one database (dual 700 Mhz). This site hosts more than 1100 concurrent users and the database does over 300 transactions a second. The site brings in $600,000 in revenue a day. The cluster IP has not missed a single connection attempt in more than six months (we only started polling it then and we poll every minute). The only limitation we have is that our backend is a very poorly written fox pro system. The servers are barely taxed by our application and serve up 60 million+ hits a month.
.NET scales very well.
Placing a well written applicaiton on a cluster of low-end servers yielded great results for us. The key is well written.
rocket pack
dangerous products
radioactive uranium
I got like five images into a mirror and you brought it down! Anyway this is what I have...not much at all!
From the article here
But four Polish researchers, known as the "Last Stage of Delirium Research Group," said they discovered how to bypass the additional protections Microsoft added, just three months after the software went on sale.
Even the Poles are able to exploit Windows now! What is the world coming to?
DISCLAIMER: I love Poles, I married one! I love the Polish jokes too!
I am currently working to do it right. We have been told we have the time it takes to do it right. We will have spent, by the time it is over, a year and a half on this project. It includes researching, designing, implementing, and deploying a multi-tiered backend. The phrase that got some people going for our idea was a quote from elsewhere on the Internet.
"There's never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over."
I know I am lucky in that I am given the freedom to set my own deadline. This is a system we needed years ago but instead of rush it my boss is running cover all the way up the line for us so we have the time it takes to do it right. Middle management probably will not understand when one group says the same thing could have been done in a month or two and we say it will take 18 months. I hope that in the end they will see that unlike the other solutions implemented by the quick-n-dirty group, this one works.
I didn't stop because of paths but it was a source of frustration. I use .NET for my job but my experience with Java was frustrating. Java serves a purpose and others like it very much but in my opinion, it is not nearly as easy to use as Visual Studio and C#. There is a learning curve with anything and even after using Java for a while I was not comfortable with it. After using C# and .NET for a few months I was easily able to work with it and produce very complex applications. I think a lot of people on Slashdot don't give it a fair shake because it is Microsoft. Like it or not at least try it out for a while before judging it (I'm not say you did or did not but others did). I tried it out and I would not go back.
.NET because the company I work for went that way. I'm happy because it makes my job easier and has yielded some great results.
;)
I use C# and
BTW, the FreeBSD link is my site and it makes for a good hobby.
I've programmed in Java and C# and I have to say that I love C#. Java can't even come close to the ease of use you get with Visual Studio and C#. When I started with Java I would spend hours trying to figure out paths and dealing with all that nonsense. I tried the IDEs but they never seemed to work right. I fire up Visual Studio and it works great. There were bugs in the original IDE but most of them have been fixed.
.NET is staggering. We wrote the eCommerce site for the comapany and it does over $600,000 a day in revenue on Windows server and C#.NET.
.NET if it had come from anywhere else other than Redmond. It's a shame since it really is a great platform.
Right now I am working on a multi-tier business application for the Fortune 1000 company I work for and the amount that two developers can get done with C# and
If you are interested in developing web applications but don't want to buy Visual Studio give WebMatrix a shot. It is a great looking and totally free IDE. A lot of people here would fall in love with C# and
I've got a Dell Latitude D800 with the 15.4" WUXGA screen running at 1920x1200. I love it. I have always been a fan of the ultraportable using a Compaq Presario 800 super-thin notebook and then a Dell C400 compact notebook. While I always thought the bigger notebooks were too big and less functional in that they were hard to move around, once I got the bigger screen and the higer resolution I'm never going back. It makes coding easier and the screen quality is spectacular on the D800. It's one of the clearest LCDs I've ever seen. I do think 17" is a bit too big. I think mine is a littly heavy to drag around but manageable. Any 17" notebook would be too big.
Consider using it in an embedded type device. Say a network appliance. Using Compact Flash is difficult, as you need to write to the disk and not only read. Writing to Compact Flash or any other form of memory using flash or EEPROM is hard on the memory. There are a finite number of writes before the memory device fails and placing a operating system swap file on one can kill it in a hurry.
I see this as geared more towards the network appliance, a PDA, or an embedded system that requires a real hard drive. Digital cameras and other devices needing removable media would probably still use Compact Flash, Secure Digital, or Smart Media and they are not as write intensive, at least not to the extent that a OS swap file is.
I am getting 941 kBps (almost one megabyte) at work here. It took about two minutes or so to download! I wonder if we can /. aol?
I have a more complete mirror now.
http://www.massdebate.net/mirror/RIAA_4-10-2003/
I have a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Arizona State University. I like to think that I am an engineer. I feel that the work I do is above just coding but at the same time I work with people with "Software Engineering" from a "design" school. They are the ones who seem happy to call themselves software engineers. I went to school and suffered through statics, physics, and calculus like the electrical, chemical, and civil engineers around me. My college had ABET accreditation so again I like to think that I am a real engineer. I know I may be viewed as a code monkey but I have a job so call me what you will.
I own one of the 800 MHz Mini-ITX boards. With a Compact Flash card as a hard drive, a little bit of RAM and a reduced FreeBSD operating system you can have a good firewall, DHCP server, DNS server or anything you want. They are very quite and can be placed in a drawer or small cabinet. I have tried Windows XP and it can play mp3s and movies fairly well. The newer versions are better for multimedia.
I just finished updating 10 IIS servers running in a load-balancing configuration for a single ecommerce site. I got the CERT email, went to Windows Update, checked for updates, installed updates and rebooted. Problem solved. It took about a half hour to do it. The site was never down, not for even a second, and the vulnerability was fixed with a few mouse clicks. Windows Update will take care of most of the problems. It works very well on servers. These machines are all Windows 2000 Advanced Servers.
Excellent point, but while Microsoft's adoption of DRM may be the exception to the rule the adoption of Windows is not. Unfortunatly, Microsoft can force others to adopt DRM by their size alone.
Like the first speaker says....the entertainment industry has used their current business model for many years....and it has been VERY good to them. They won't give it up easily. But the big players will push this on people and hope it works.
I sure hope Apple can resist the pressure to get on the DRM bandwagon.