Thanks for everything on Slashdot from '97 on. And good luck with whatever you do next. I'm glad that things are up in the air. It's more exciting when things are a bit up in the air.
Three guesses which US Appeals Court the lawsuit was filed in.
None! You cannot originate a patent infringement suit in a United States Court of Appeals, any more than you can file in the Supreme Court. Instead, patent litigation must start at a United States District Court. The losing party may appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
My guess is that too few people knew about the election in the first place, and that it was just a failure to advertise it properly.
Perhaps their mistake was that their advertising wasn't as innovative as the balloting. Next time they can spend their advertising budget in Second Life, perhaps buying their own "Election Island" where voters' avatars can encounter virtual voter information while enjoying visiting replicas of actual places on Oahu painstakingly recreated with prims, textures and scripts. Surely if anything could replace the community spirit of a busy polling place at election day it would be the virtual community spirit created by avatars wandering around an an eerie, abandoned, ghost town-like virtual world while waiting for billboard textures to load so they can learn about the candidates.
Re:Honestly, this was a long time coming
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes. Very sad for the kids, especially. Sad for his wife too, but she made the choice to marry such a risk-taker.
Speaking of which, who was watching the kids anyway? The Age reports: It's believed his American-born wife Terri is trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and authorities are trying to reach her with news of her husband's death.
The 20 year lifetime of patents was reasonable when inventions dealt largely with mechanical inventions and the pace of innovation and adoption of innovation was slow (upgrading your OS is easier than upgrading your cotton gin).
Since the pace of innovation and adoption of innovation is much faster, it seems reasonable that the lifetime of patents should be shortened accordingly. Unfortunately, this isn't reflected in current agreements like TRIPS. But shorter terms for software patents would be a good step in the right direction.
If patent law is changed to allow for shorter software patents, would corporations push to keep extending the patent terms? Maybe. But that isn't a reason to choose the current system with 20 year patents over the possibility of a much shorter patent term.
And don't forget that corporations also have some interest in limiting patent terms, since it gives them the ability to eventually use competitor's innovations free from licensing fees or (especially) the threat of litigation.
The basic idea of patents -- Reward people to innovate and then funnel their innovations into the public domain -- isn't what is broken. What we have is just a flawed implementation.
And even if you think that the real solution is elimination of software patents altogether, shorter term patents would be a step in the right direction (and is more politically achievable).
is there a way to prevent students from saving things on the hard drive (thus forcing them to use a diskette and/or the CD drive?)
Since the grape iMacs shipped with no disk drives and only a CD-ROM drive, if you want users to save to removable media, providing a drive that can actually write data would probably be a good idea.
...I don't think making adult-themed games downloadable (with a credit card!) increases the chance that kids with access to the Internet can get their hands on porn.
I mean, outside of sports, 100% is still the max right?
I agree. Was this actually on anyone's wish list? I never felt a pressing need for an "enhanced" loop.
In general, these changes may offer limited benefits but will make the code harder to read, harder to maintain, and in the end, may hurt Java more than they help. I had *prayed* that we would never have to deal with templates/generics in Java. But sadly:
for (Prayer p : myPrayers) {
p.answer() = (p.isForNoTemplatesInJava())
? false : true; }
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for everything on Slashdot from '97 on. And good luck with whatever you do next. I'm glad that things are up in the air. It's more exciting when things are a bit up in the air.
Three guesses which US Appeals Court the lawsuit was filed in.
None! You cannot originate a patent infringement suit in a United States Court of Appeals, any more than you can file in the Supreme Court. Instead, patent litigation must start at a United States District Court. The losing party may appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
My guess is that too few people knew about the election in the first place, and that it was just a failure to advertise it properly.
Perhaps their mistake was that their advertising wasn't as innovative as the balloting. Next time they can spend their advertising budget in Second Life, perhaps buying their own "Election Island" where voters' avatars can encounter virtual voter information while enjoying visiting replicas of actual places on Oahu painstakingly recreated with prims, textures and scripts. Surely if anything could replace the community spirit of a busy polling place at election day it would be the virtual community spirit created by avatars wandering around an an eerie, abandoned, ghost town-like virtual world while waiting for billboard textures to load so they can learn about the candidates.
Yes. Very sad for the kids, especially. Sad for his wife too, but she made the choice to marry such a risk-taker. Speaking of which, who was watching the kids anyway? The Age reports: It's believed his American-born wife Terri is trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and authorities are trying to reach her with news of her husband's death.
Since the pace of innovation and adoption of innovation is much faster, it seems reasonable that the lifetime of patents should be shortened accordingly. Unfortunately, this isn't reflected in current agreements like TRIPS. But shorter terms for software patents would be a good step in the right direction.
If patent law is changed to allow for shorter software patents, would corporations push to keep extending the patent terms? Maybe. But that isn't a reason to choose the current system with 20 year patents over the possibility of a much shorter patent term.
And don't forget that corporations also have some interest in limiting patent terms, since it gives them the ability to eventually use competitor's innovations free from licensing fees or (especially) the threat of litigation.
The basic idea of patents -- Reward people to innovate and then funnel their innovations into the public domain -- isn't what is broken. What we have is just a flawed implementation.
And even if you think that the real solution is elimination of software patents altogether, shorter term patents would be a step in the right direction (and is more politically achievable).
...I don't think making adult-themed games downloadable (with a credit card!) increases the chance that kids with access to the Internet can get their hands on porn. I mean, outside of sports, 100% is still the max right?
"enhanced" loop.
In general, these changes may offer limited benefits but will make the code harder to read,
harder to maintain, and in the end, may hurt Java more than they help. I had *prayed* that we would never have to deal with templates/generics in Java. But sadly: