UIt is not racist to point out that fraud committed by Nigerian outsourcing employee will not be subject to the jurisdiction of the US. A phone call that starts out, I'm agent Mulder of the FBI just does not have the same weight as it does in the US, and vice-versa
Nah, it is just like the Democrats liking bad news because Bush is president. Bad news means the other guy loses face, thus bad news is good, good news is bad. (Republican's weren't exactly keen on good news during Clinton's term either).
Difference in agenda is big difference. Slashdotter's no more see this as ironic, than Dems sees the irony in their current good=bad viewpoint.
I for one look forward to this. I've spent most of the last 2 years interfacing EDI systems for quite a few automotive systems. Just think of the additional billable hours.
An EPA sticker is the printed result attached to each new car that reports the result of an EPA established test that gives estimated fuel mileage, both city and highway.
The test is completely artificial, being run on a dynomometer (no hills, wind, weight in the trunk, etc.) but has the considerable advantage of no being subject to these same variables when the test is run.
EPA established this test for emissions testing, but the government has made the results of this artificial test both required and the only allowed gas mileage estimate car manufacturers are allowed to post on the new cars.
Good -- consistent, easily compared, verifiable Bad -- not representative of actual usage. Misunderstood by many consumers.
For the non-Hoosiers out there. Julia Carson is a member of congress who is sorry to say, less than gifted. Not the brightest bulb, she is also poorly educated and makes many errors in vocabularity and grammar in her public speech.
From old geezers like me! I'm 45, so in 20 years I'll be 65 and have 40+ years of experience. I'm not worried about being outsourced, I own the company. Unless I keep working, I'll be trying to get by on social security checks. IT is more fun than being a WalMart greeter or flipping burgers.
That is assuming of course that I manage to avoid dying, strokes, Alzheimer's, etc. Come on medical nano.
Sorry, but the killer app is the one written to support the business. If my business is automobile auctions, its the vertical market or custom application written to support -- selling cars at auction.
I can swap word-processor, spreadsheets, email clients, web-browsers, etc. to Mac or Linux, but I must have my auction application which is tied to Windows.
Lots of business have pretty deep ties into the generic Windows apps, that make it tough to move to anything else too.
BTW, if your line of business app runs on Mac, you're not switching, and if it runs on Sun, but not Linux, you're not switching either. No, what Joel was saying is the most people writing to.Net are using ASP.Net, meaning that the client is not locked in -- which is true if you are not IE dependent, which is somewhat difficult to avoid if you don't plan for it
Microsoft does not like open standards based development, e.g. the Internet and related standards, because it do not allow them to lock in users to their proprietary platforms.
Only problem was lack of citation for a report that was actually independent.
Actually, there are some things worthwhile to learn from these reports. For example: what percentage of firms use linux currently (46%) or plan to with next 12 months (14%) or no plans (39%). This may be important to you in realizing that use in actually companies is likely to pass 50% of all companies within the year.
I would not expect to see MS sponsored report say, "Wow, open source is really being successful in mainstream these days. You should probably consider a switch to open source in your company when in makes sense. For example: Consider replacing MS SQL Server with Postgress, MySQL or FireBird. Can save licensing costs and avoid platform lock-in too!"
I'll choke on my food when I read that in an MS sponsored report.
I would also be surprised to ready on LinuxToday that, "Under these conditions you should probably consider remaining an all Microsoft shop because your existing technology culture will make it painful to switch to Linux".
More importantly, I learned a long time ago, that the smart move for me was to read the oppositions literature. Their attacks are rarely completely baseless (some kernal of truth makes attacks more effective), and makes me better prepared on the defense to know how I'll be attacked and have thought through the implications. Admitting weaknesses and adressing them intelligently makes my presentation much more effective than mindless scoffing at the opposition.
Delphi 5 was announced Aug 2, 1999 at Borcon 1999. Started shipping at the of November 1999.
I admit, I read the wrong date on the patent in terms of prior art filing. You know what, I don't care.
1) Do you think Borland did not have the idea 5 months before it was announced to the world. At the time, Borland was shipping new version about every 2 years. Note: I'm not accusing MS of patenting idea they saw from Borland, just remarking that Borland most likely had the idea first. Since I don't have access to internal Borland docs, I can't prove legally. Don't know all the history, but NDA style Alpha / Beta product was bound to be out much earlier than the public release announcment. I would say it was also prior to the rush of bad software patents becoming common knowledge due to the slow speed of this new class of insanity passing through the patent office.
2) Since the patent app was basically secret, isn't this sufficient proof that the patent was not novel (in the legal sense)? Borland did not even think this worthy of a patent. It was worth listing as a product feature when announced. It was worth protection by copyright law. If Borland was first to have the idea (it is quite likely others had the same idea too besides Borland & MS), it was still not worth a patent.
3) I don't believe that the race to the patent office is the best way to determine winners, esp. since such rules favor deep pockets. Novel should not mean who can beat feet to the patent office fastest. PTO prior art search for software patents is pitiful. Getting better - most likely, again so what. Patents are still the wrong mechanism.
4) Patent laws were never designed to cover mathmatic discoveries, or discovering natural laws -- only the novel application of such natural discoveries. This is why patents were never granted for software before 1981 (which was not so much a software patent as a chemical process patent), and it was not until 1995 that the floodgates were opened to reflect recent judicial rulings. See link for software patent history if you are interested, actually, you should look here if you would like to know more about software patents.
5)Software is not like hardware. I don't need to build a $100 million manufacting plant to produce software economically. This is why the inventor needs patent protection for a limited time -- to give him time to capitalize on his invention without ripped off by a more powerful competitor.
6) Stac Electronics won $120 million from MS over their stacker patent. This is supposed to be an example of having the patent system work correctly. Here is what's wrong with it. A) Compression was not a new idea, hard drives where not a new idea, the market had simply reached the point where Stacker made some sense. They went out and wrote it, and started making money off of it. B) MS was interested in bundling similar behavior in MSDOS C) MS got caught cheating by using Stacker code they saw under NDA that they did not have rights to use D) $120M is ok by me for damages, it's more than Stac would ever have made it all likelihood, probably in the treble damages range. E) If however, MS had done a clean-room reverse engineering project, this should be legal (excepting anti-trust considerations). Reverse engineering software does not violate copyright. F) Stac had a better product (though more expensive due to MS bundling), so Stac had grounds for recovery under anti-trust law. G) If Borland had said, we can write a better Stacker and sold it and put Stac out of business by better product Stac already had exclusive use of their product for a while H) Stac could have competed on basis of price, better product, better marketing.
The innovation comes people trying to make a better product, not milking a patent for many years to maintain artifically high prices.
A couple of people have mentioned Delphi. Maybe you did not notice, but Delphi 5 released in 1999 Takes comments typed in source code, of the form:
// todo 1: blah
And converts this to a todo list idea subject=blah, with priority of 1.
It does this in real time, as you type in the todo comment. This is prior to when the patent was filed by MS. So yeah, I think this is patent law abuse. I think it is primarily the government's fault (to date, MS is apparently playing the defensive patent game -- though I may have missed news where they attempt to enforce patents -- if so, shame on MS again).
Now, maybe you can argue that MS has a better, more complete implementation that Delphi did/does. But that is the purpose behind copyright law, not patent law. Surely MS is protected adequately in such a case by copyright law. I can't pirate/steal their product legally when protected by copyright instead of patent.
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8: Congress shall have the power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Congress has the right (not the requirement) to grant patents with the intent to promoting science and the useful arts. Please, explain to me how granting MS excludsive use of automated todo lists advances science or the useful arts. If that's not good enough, give a single example of a software patent that advances science or the useful arts. Specifically in ways that are better than copyright protection.
Software patents are the result of a revisionist judge deciding that he (not Congress) had the right to grant software patents.
Patents must also display "more ingenuity" than the work of a mechanic skilled in the arts. Usually this is referred to legally as novelty again, I ask what is really novel in this patent.
The patent system, as applied to software does not serve the purpose to which constitutional authority grants Congress the priviledge of patents. State of the art in software advances in spite of software, not because of patents. Only real advantage that I can see in the U.S. patent system is lining the pockets of patent attorney's and giving large corp with a patent portfolio a bigger stick with which to beat up the competition.
Most of the "using up" of engine oil is due to the limited ability of the oil (and the additives packages) to absorb various forms of contamination (carbon, unburned hydroncarbons, water, metal, etc.). while still retaining suitable lubrication qualities. Some temperatute dependent "cooking" of the oil is also a factor, but this "cooked" oil is still a lot closer to your clean oil than the crude oil it started out as.
Bill G. digs a few million out of his pockets, buys JP Aerospace, and finishes the blimp program.
MS Blimp Services (running Windows of course), puts NASA and everyone else out of business, then jacks the price back up to $10K/kilo once all of the competition is gone.
At ground level, average molecular weight (MW) of air is roughly 29 (3/4 N2 MW=28, 1/4 O2 MW=32). Buoyancy is achieved by displacing with He MW=4 or H2 MW=2. So, lift is 27/29ths the weight of air displaced (93.1%) for H2 vs 25/29ths (86.2%) for H2.
Net increase in buoyancy for H2 or He is thus a rather paltry 8%.
As altiude changes, atmospheric composition changes too, but the change in MW is not significant below the height desired for their big sub-space platform. At that height, you could not ignite hydrogen on a bet (unless you carry your own oxygen)
The trick is not to have it be barter, just an exchange of gifts. I actually have done well with this. I did quite a bit of free computer work (never asked for any compensation in any form) for a friend.
In return I received about a $13K+ discount on my house, and free yard card for life. However, nearly all of my other free services have not been gifted in return so generously. I guess it pays to have generous friends with broken computers.
I'm not so sure about Eiffel. In Eiffel, you can declare class invariants, which are contracts that must apply to your class and all inherited classes. Sounds like it includes OOPL contracts to me. Eiffel also has loop invarints.
Anyway, I see nothing new in DBC in SPARK not already in Eiffel.
OK, so you don't like decaying lightspeed as an explanation (and I agree, though it could explain some other issues and is given serious consideration by real scientists).
There is a thery that there is little or no dark matter, and the difference is accounted for by the assumption that the inverse square law for gravity fails at large distances -- based on a theoretical model of graviton particle exchanges that would not follow inverse square -- This just happens to match the observed data pretty well without need for dark matter.
A second alternative is combines light speed decay along with big change in assumed age of universe, so that spiral galaxies look the way they do because they are quite young compared to the standard model.
I'll bet there are other non-darm matter models that are explain observed data as well as the dark matter model too.
Actually, there is scientific evidence that not only is low-level radiation exposure harmless, it is actually good for you, and the optimium level is well above the normal background radiation.
It is true that any ionizing radiation can damage cellular material, but the human immune system seems to derive benefit from practicing fending off such low-level damage.
The evididence is not conclusive for low-level radiation benefits, but there are several good studies that suggest that it is, and not one scientific study that suggest the opposite as far as I know. If so, I would like to see it. Nearly all nuclear radiation threat assesments is based on extrapolation from high-level radiation exposes.
Scientists can and do close their mind before all the facts are in (after all, they are people too). For example, I believe this applies to "cold fusion", there has been a considerable amount of research into cold fusion since it was discredited by mainstream science, but some very good science seems to say that nonetheless, cold fusion is real. It may never be econmically viable, it may even be misnamed, etc. but science closed ranks and said it did not exist, despite some good evidence that it could exist.
For a less politically charged viewpoint, look at some of the earlier scientific controversies, old school scientist often hold too their orthodox views well after the point it is supported by the evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
UIt is not racist to point out that fraud committed by Nigerian outsourcing employee will not be subject to the jurisdiction of the US. A phone call that starts out, I'm agent Mulder of the FBI just does not have the same weight as it does in the US, and vice-versa
Nah, it is just like the Democrats liking bad news because Bush is president. Bad news means the other guy loses face, thus bad news is good, good news is bad. (Republican's weren't exactly keen on good news during Clinton's term either).
Difference in agenda is big difference. Slashdotter's no more see this as ironic, than Dems sees the irony in their current good=bad viewpoint.
I for one look forward to this. I've spent most of the last 2 years interfacing EDI systems for quite a few automotive systems. Just think of the additional billable hours.
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by stupidity.
Slashdot modifier:
Except in the case of Microsoft, in which case both malice and stupidity should be attributed.
An EPA sticker is the printed result attached to each new car that reports the result of an EPA established test that gives estimated fuel mileage, both city and highway.
The test is completely artificial, being run on a dynomometer (no hills, wind, weight in the trunk, etc.) but has the considerable advantage of no being subject to these same variables when the test is run.
EPA established this test for emissions testing, but the government has made the results of this artificial test both required and the only allowed gas mileage estimate car manufacturers are allowed to post on the new cars.
Good -- consistent, easily compared, verifiable
Bad -- not representative of actual usage. Misunderstood by many consumers.
Gee, and I thought Outlook was the primary virus delivery tool
For the non-Hoosiers out there. Julia Carson is a member of congress who is sorry to say, less than gifted. Not the brightest bulb, she is also poorly educated and makes many errors in vocabularity and grammar in her public speech.
From old geezers like me! I'm 45, so in 20 years I'll be 65 and have 40+ years of experience. I'm not worried about being outsourced, I own the company. Unless I keep working, I'll be trying to get by on social security checks. IT is more fun than being a WalMart greeter or flipping burgers.
That is assuming of course that I manage to avoid dying, strokes, Alzheimer's, etc. Come on medical nano.
Sorry, but the killer app is the one written to support the business. If my business is automobile auctions, its the vertical market or custom application written to support -- selling cars at auction.
.Net are using ASP.Net, meaning that the client is not locked in -- which is true if you are not IE dependent, which is somewhat difficult to avoid if you don't plan for it
I can swap word-processor, spreadsheets, email clients, web-browsers, etc. to Mac or Linux, but I must have my auction application which is tied to Windows.
Lots of business have pretty deep ties into the generic Windows apps, that make it tough to move to anything else too.
BTW, if your line of business app runs on Mac, you're not switching, and if it runs on Sun, but not Linux, you're not switching either. No, what Joel was saying is the most people writing to
Microsoft does not like open standards based development, e.g. the Internet and related standards, because it do not allow them to lock in users to their proprietary platforms.
Looks to me, this sentence works just fine.
Only problem was lack of citation for a report that was actually independent.
Actually, there are some things worthwhile to learn from these reports. For example: what percentage of firms use linux currently (46%) or plan to with next 12 months (14%) or no plans (39%). This may be important to you in realizing that use in actually companies is likely to pass 50% of all companies within the year.
I would not expect to see MS sponsored report say, "Wow, open source is really being successful in mainstream these days. You should probably consider a switch to open source in your company when in makes sense. For example: Consider replacing MS SQL Server with Postgress, MySQL or FireBird. Can save licensing costs and avoid platform lock-in too!"
I'll choke on my food when I read that in an MS sponsored report.
I would also be surprised to ready on LinuxToday that, "Under these conditions you should probably consider remaining an all Microsoft shop because your existing technology culture will make it painful to switch to Linux".
More importantly, I learned a long time ago, that the smart move for me was to read the oppositions literature. Their attacks are rarely completely baseless (some kernal of truth makes attacks more effective), and makes me better prepared on the defense to know how I'll be attacked and have thought through the implications. Admitting weaknesses and adressing them intelligently makes my presentation much more effective than mindless scoffing at the opposition.
Delphi 5 was announced Aug 2, 1999 at Borcon 1999. Started shipping at the of November 1999.
I admit, I read the wrong date on the patent in terms of prior art filing. You know what, I don't care.
1) Do you think Borland did not have the idea 5 months before it was announced to the world. At the time, Borland was shipping new version about every 2 years. Note: I'm not accusing MS of patenting idea they saw from Borland, just remarking that Borland most likely had the idea first. Since I don't have access to internal Borland docs, I can't prove legally. Don't know all the history, but NDA style Alpha / Beta product was bound to be out much earlier than the public release announcment. I would say it was also prior to the rush of bad software patents becoming common knowledge due to the slow speed of this new class of insanity passing through the patent office.
2) Since the patent app was basically secret, isn't this sufficient proof that the patent was not novel (in the legal sense)? Borland did not even think this worthy of a patent. It was worth listing as a product feature when announced. It was worth protection by copyright law. If Borland was first to have the idea (it is quite likely others had the same idea too besides Borland & MS), it was still not worth a patent.
3) I don't believe that the race to the patent office is the best way to determine winners, esp. since such rules favor deep pockets. Novel should not mean who can beat feet to the patent office fastest. PTO prior art search for software patents is pitiful. Getting better - most likely, again so what. Patents are still the wrong mechanism.
4) Patent laws were never designed to cover mathmatic discoveries, or discovering natural laws -- only the novel application of such natural discoveries. This is why patents were never granted for software before 1981 (which was not so much a software patent as a chemical process patent), and it was not until 1995 that the floodgates were opened to reflect recent judicial rulings. See link for software patent history if you are interested, actually, you should look here if you would like to know more about software patents.
5)Software is not like hardware. I don't need to build a $100 million manufacting plant to produce software economically. This is why the inventor needs patent protection for a limited time -- to give him time to capitalize on his invention without ripped off by a more powerful competitor.
6) Stac Electronics won $120 million from MS over their stacker patent. This is supposed to be an example of having the patent system work correctly. Here is what's wrong with it. A) Compression was not a new idea, hard drives where not a new idea, the market had simply reached the point where Stacker made some sense. They went out and wrote it, and started making money off of it. B) MS was interested in bundling similar behavior in MSDOS C) MS got caught cheating by using Stacker code they saw under NDA that they did not have rights to use D) $120M is ok by me for damages, it's more than Stac would ever have made it all likelihood, probably in the treble damages range. E) If however, MS had done a clean-room reverse engineering project, this should be legal (excepting anti-trust considerations). Reverse engineering software does not violate copyright. F) Stac had a better product (though more expensive due to MS bundling), so Stac had grounds for recovery under anti-trust law. G) If Borland had said, we can write a better Stacker and sold it and put Stac out of business by better product Stac already had exclusive use of their product for a while H) Stac could have competed on basis of price, better product, better marketing.
The innovation comes people trying to make a better product, not milking a patent for many years to maintain artifically high prices.
And converts this to a todo list idea subject=blah, with priority of 1.
It does this in real time, as you type in the todo comment. This is prior to when the patent was filed by MS. So yeah, I think this is patent law abuse. I think it is primarily the government's fault (to date, MS is apparently playing the defensive patent game -- though I may have missed news where they attempt to enforce patents -- if so, shame on MS again).
Now, maybe you can argue that MS has a better, more complete implementation that Delphi did/does. But that is the purpose behind copyright law, not patent law. Surely MS is protected adequately in such a case by copyright law. I can't pirate/steal their product legally when protected by copyright instead of patent.
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
Congress shall have the power
Congress has the right (not the requirement) to grant patents with the intent to promoting science and the useful arts. Please, explain to me how granting MS excludsive use of automated todo lists advances science or the useful arts. If that's not good enough, give a single example of a software patent that advances science or the useful arts. Specifically in ways that are better than copyright protection.
Software patents are the result of a revisionist judge deciding that he (not Congress) had the right to grant software patents.
Patents must also display "more ingenuity" than the work of a mechanic skilled in the arts. Usually this is referred to legally as novelty again, I ask what is really novel in this patent.
The patent system, as applied to software does not serve the purpose to which constitutional authority grants Congress the priviledge of patents. State of the art in software advances in spite of software, not because of patents. Only real advantage that I can see in the U.S. patent system is lining the pockets of patent attorney's and giving large corp with a patent portfolio a bigger stick with which to beat up the competition.
I feel better now at least.
Don't forget the web cam that shows pictures of spammer heads on pikes. The profit potential from spammer-heads-on-pikes.com must be huge.
Most of the "using up" of engine oil is due to the limited ability of the oil (and the additives packages) to absorb various forms of contamination (carbon, unburned hydroncarbons, water, metal, etc.). while still retaining suitable lubrication qualities. Some temperatute dependent "cooking" of the oil is also a factor, but this "cooked" oil is still a lot closer to your clean oil than the crude oil it started out as.
Bill G. digs a few million out of his pockets, buys JP Aerospace, and finishes the blimp program.
MS Blimp Services (running Windows of course), puts NASA and everyone else out of business, then jacks the price back up to $10K/kilo once all of the competition is gone.
The facts re: buoyancy.
At ground level, average molecular weight (MW) of air is roughly 29 (3/4 N2 MW=28, 1/4 O2 MW=32). Buoyancy is achieved by displacing with He MW=4 or H2 MW=2. So, lift is 27/29ths the weight of air displaced (93.1%) for H2 vs 25/29ths (86.2%) for H2.
Net increase in buoyancy for H2 or He is thus a rather paltry 8%.
As altiude changes, atmospheric composition changes too, but the change in MW is not significant below the height desired for their big sub-space platform. At that height, you could not ignite hydrogen on a bet (unless you carry your own oxygen)
The trick is not to have it be barter, just an exchange of gifts. I actually have done well with this. I did quite a bit of free computer work (never asked for any compensation in any form) for a friend.
In return I received about a $13K+ discount on my house, and free yard card for life. However, nearly all of my other free services have not been gifted in return so generously. I guess it pays to have generous friends with broken computers.
I'm not so sure about Eiffel. In Eiffel, you can declare class invariants, which are contracts that must apply to your class and all inherited classes. Sounds like it includes OOPL contracts to me. Eiffel also has loop invarints.
Anyway, I see nothing new in DBC in SPARK not already in Eiffel.
OK, so you don't like decaying lightspeed as an explanation (and I agree, though it could explain some other issues and is given serious consideration by real scientists).
There is a thery that there is little or no dark matter, and the difference is accounted for by the assumption that the inverse square law for gravity fails at large distances -- based on a theoretical model of graviton particle exchanges that would not follow inverse square -- This just happens to match the observed data pretty well without need for dark matter.
A second alternative is combines light speed decay along with big change in assumed age of universe, so that spiral galaxies look the way they do because they are quite young compared to the standard model.
I'll bet there are other non-darm matter models that are explain observed data as well as the dark matter model too.
Well, I just checked, the cards are not on Ebay (yet), but stolengoods.com looks promising :-)
(In reality, stolengoods.com is just a parked domain, no need to waste your time.)
Yeah, but when my original's die, I just ask my good friend, Dr. Who, to pop back in time and make me another copy of the pristine original.
Actually, there is scientific evidence that not only is low-level radiation exposure harmless, it is actually good for you, and the optimium level is well above the normal background radiation.
Here Here and here for example.
It is true that any ionizing radiation can damage cellular material, but the human immune system seems to derive benefit from practicing fending off such low-level damage.
The evididence is not conclusive for low-level radiation benefits, but there are several good studies that suggest that it is, and not one scientific study that suggest the opposite as far as I know. If so, I would like to see it. Nearly all nuclear radiation threat assesments is based on extrapolation from high-level radiation exposes.
I would be glad to send him my spam. I sure don't need or want it.
Actually, what you say is not entirely true.
Scientists can and do close their mind before all the facts are in (after all, they are people too). For example, I believe this applies to "cold fusion", there has been a considerable amount of research into cold fusion since it was discredited by mainstream science, but some very good science seems to say that nonetheless, cold fusion is real. It may never be econmically viable, it may even be misnamed, etc. but science closed ranks and said it did not exist, despite some good evidence that it could exist.
For a less politically charged viewpoint, look at some of the earlier scientific controversies, old school scientist often hold too their orthodox views well after the point it is supported by the evidence.