"It's the legal fees that are battering the company," said OptInRealBig.com lawyer Steven Richter, father of Scott Richter. He said the company faces lawsuits from Microsoft and other parties in Colorado, California and Utah. "OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits."
" For this patent, anything which existed publicly prior to July 20, 1984 would be considered prior art. Good luck."
Sadly I will show off my age here and point out that one of my favorite arcade games is a perfect example of prior art. 3D world, rendered onto a 2D screen, simulating a first person view from camera. I knew I remembered playing that before '84. The link says it came out in 1980.
Really? Emphasis on authenticating, huh? Isn't this what Microsoft wants to do with trusted computing? I thought that was on the list of officially recognized BAD THINGS here at slashdot?
" There is no software I need that is not included with my distro"
Sorry if this sounds insulting, but your attitude seems really narrow-minded and short sighted. The whole reason the computer is such an incredibly useful tool is that it is so flexible and extendable. YOU might manage to get everything you need out of the software included in your distro, but do you really expect the big distros to anticipate every single need of every single user? A lot of people who are not computer experts have specific application needs that the vast majority of users don't share. Should a good distro include a version of GAMESS just because I want to do a theoretical chemistry calculation? Or maybe the people who make distros should assume (correctly) that if I am one of the.0001% of computer users who would want to use that program, I should just go download it myself?
"This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision."
Yes, you sound incredibly elitist, as if it is impossible to be smart and NOT a computer expert. There is a big difference between knowing enough about one's Linux distro to install a program and having enough common sense to find programs on the internet with minimal risk of installing malware. If I google search for software that simulates microwave spectra of asymmetric top molecules (and by the way there are quite a few) what are the odds I'm going to find spyware masking itself as what I'm looking for?
" Remember, once the source is in the open, people can port your stuff to *BSD and WindRiver, VXworks, etc."
It makes me wonder why more hardware manufacturers aren't asking this very question, and why anybody making new devices wouldn't open their driver code from the beginning. I mean if you make hardware, and you write software to run it on at least one platform, what is the point in making it hard for people to port the software to another platform? Isn't your profit margin in the sales of the hardware? Do you think you're going to have to drop the price of your hardware just because the software that would normally be included can also be obtained for free? I doubt it. People buying hardware assume software is included, but they're not going to care how much it cost to develop. Even if you're too cheap to hire a programmer for anything but Windows drivers, some cheapskate programmer out there somewhere is going to inherit/buy used from ebay a cheap printer/camera/firewall/whatever and decide it's worth his time to port your software to his platform. If he's kind enough to share it with the world...BOOM...now you have a new customer base for free. If the code is sloppy maybe you do a little cleaning up re-release it, or you don't actually promise to support the other OS.
The point to keeping the drivers closed I can think of is some fear about your competitors learning trade secrets, but it seems like in most cases, one would expect the breakthroughs to be in the hardware itself and not the code that runs it.
"This may be really useful for sales, but it may also lead to a serious amount of bug finding!
Are you really sure you want your device drivers debugged?"
As has already been pointed out, why would this be a bad thing? That's usually considered one of open source's selling points. It's not like the bugs weren't there before. It's just that now some of the bug reports might contain useful suggestions rather than a screaming office drone on a deadline pissed that the brand new printer didn't interface with their computers.
But...I thought companies could make money by giving away free iPods, as long as they do it on the internets! I mean it seems like the profit margin might be small, but if you give enough away....
I've wondered that too. I guess it's kind of like the spam phenomenon: It's cheap enough to set up, the profit margin on the few successful pitches makes up for thousands of people who just go on their way? I think there's just a tendancy to underestimate the effectiveness of annoying advertising.
What really makes me wonder is the dude mentioned in the article trying to trick children with misspellings of CartoonNetwork.com etc. I mean WTF was he thinking? Doesn't his target audience not have credit cards for the most part?
" You can't burn a playlist with ITMS songs as a MP3 disc. Try it, it won't let you... You can only burn as an Audio-CD or Data disc."
I suspect you are right about b being incorrect: It seems like too stupid a loophole. But I was under the impression that an MP3 disc was just a Data disc with MP3s on it. Am I mistaken?
Why do you think Napster won't have the same costs that Apple does if they let you keep the music? It basically breaks down to bandwidth (which I think it's fair to say Napster will pay more for, given the estimated downloads per month they can expect) and royalties.
The math is really simple: By your number (I have no idea about the $.08, but for sake of argument lets use it) it would only take $14/$0.92 = 16 songs per month for the costs to outweigh Apple's pricing scheme. The only possible way Napster can make money with this service is that they don't have to pay full royalties: a condition that is no doubt only acceptable to the RIAA precisely because the songs only work as long as you keep paying subscription fees. The RIAA isn't giving the songs away here...they just take their cut in the form of montly installments.
Well the one fault you Linux users seem to find most often with Linux is lack of good fonts. Perhaps it's not such a fault after all:-). I can tell you on my FF 1.0, W2000, the title looks identical.
Even scarier, I copied both from the location bar and by right clicking the link->copy link location, pasted into notepad, and I still see
http://www.paypal.com/
even though the white paper implied this was supposed to be a way to check this spoof. Of course pasting from notepad into/. and previewing my post, it is now missing the "a".
Then even after disabling IDN, it's still not obvious. I don't see gibberish. The mouse-over preview still says "paypal". All I get when I click on it is an alert dialog saying "www.paypal.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again"...a rather "innocent" message that I actually get quite frequently at home with my spotty internet connection. The only positive identification of this spoof was to view the source. Then I see the strange "& #1072;" stuff that's doing the spoofing.
You're really missing Doc Ruby's point. There is a large amount of space between "All corporations are evil" and "Anything good for corporate America is good for America as a whole." There are as many knee-jerkers with the later attitude as the former, including Zeinfeld with his corporate apologist attitude.
I'm curious if their EULA (almost a moot point because of the shrink-wrap EULA problem, but I digress) actually expressly reserves the right for them to do this. It strikes me that if they're literally altering the behavior of the program on users' computers through automatic "updating" without something saying they would do this, they're in breach of contract or false advertising or whatever.
How is it gun manufacturers can get away with manufacturing semi-autos that are a easily converted into full-autos, but a (say for example) HDTVtuner card manufacturer couldn't make the broadcast flag decoder dependant on one little easily removed jumper? Then somehow the knowledge of this jumper would work its way onto the internet and coincidentally their sales jump through the roof. Of course it's still illegal for you or I to remove this jumper, but that's not their fault that there are so many criminals in the world, is it? After all, PC cards don't violate copyright...people do.
I suspect there are a lot of younger (non-computer) scientists like myself who hate Fortran not because it's inherently a bad language, but because we've been exposed to more bad code in Fortran than any other language. I hear a lot of people defending Fortran because it's got newer standards that make it look more like C, but it's the shitty programs written by bad programmers we mostly see.
All that said, though, I still think it's an ugly language. And I think there is something to be said for a programming language preventing some bad programming habits simply by not having any support for GOTOs.
Also digressing a little from my first point...did anybody else notice the irony of an article about clarity in programming posting
code examples in a.jpg?
So let me get this straight...after this incredibly hypothetical situation comes to pass where all the governments have agreed to mandate this technology, barring of course the millions of security cameras which would have to be exempt or useless (and god knows no one would ever abuse a security camera), and the billions of old fashioned cameras have been rounded up and burned...oh yes and of course all the professional photographers who STILL use 35mm have been convinced that they have to go digital...we still have Leo Di-Caprio preventing anybody in a 2 mile radius of himself from taking a picture of anybody else because cameras still have !@#!&# telephoto lenses?!?? I hope celebrities don't hang out in too many scenic areas.
Wouldn't it just be easier to pass a law allowing people to sue the Paparazo who took their picture (and/or the tabloid that published it) and published it without their permission? Is banning camera phones from locker rooms such a horrendous inconvenience? If your phone calls are so damn important you can't wait five minutes to exit the locker room, maybe you should think about...oh..wait...it's coming to me..buying a phone WITHOUT A CAMERA IN IT!??!?!?!?
Yes, I did RTFA, and I noticed the line about HP not actually expecting ever to use this patent. None-the-less, they paid a nice chunk of change for something they don't think they'll ever use.
No I think you missed the point. Now you'll be able to hear all your MP3s on Linux, plus get all the wonderful benefits Windows users enjoy like ads and spyware. I just don't understand how Linux geeks can be satisfied with MP3 players that only play music.
I think you kind of missed my point. I've used other free molecular modelling programs. I'm looking for a standardized data format for generic 3-D pictures. The molecular visualization is nice for me and other scientists, but to expect standards compliant web browsers to start supporting the format without a specialized plug-in, it would probably have to be more universally applicable.
This is more what I'm talking about, except I'd like it to be as ubiquitous as.gif or.jpeg: so that I can right click it, save it to my desktop, drop it into a presentation (with proper citation of course:-)). Right now it just seems too...specialized I guess. It's a whole java applet that takes care of the visualization, not just a data format. I dunno...maybe I'm being too picky. At least there is some kind of option. It just seems like the technology is all there for a simple, straight forward 3-D standard, it's just a matter of getting it all together and a critical mass of people using it so that most 3-D visualization programs would have an option to output to that format, even if it means loss of some information, and programs that can embed graphics would be expected to be able to embed the format. To extend the.png analogy: if you made a pretty picture in the GIMP, you wouldn't normally bother to post the original.xcf file. Even if you didn't mind people taking your work and modifying it, it just wouldn't be a safe assumption that most people viewing your website have the GIMP or even know what it is. And how many will bother to install it just because you included a link to http://www.gimp.org/? Instead you'd convert to.png and post that. Yes you lose some of the original information when you do that and if you go back to.xcf, you won't have the original layering etc, but then it's also a safe assumption that most people just want to see the picture and aren't interested in the original source.
Hah. Great links. You hit the nail on the head with "(a widely known property of magnets)." That's got to be near the top of my bad science pet peeves list. I saw a safety razor shaving kit at Sharper Image once with a storage base that used a magnet to "keep the blade sharp." I can't find it on their website now, perhaps their guilty consience got the better of them...or more likely they just had to make room for a cd-playing, golf swing improving, massage chair...with magnetic therapy cushions. It was basically this idea but in a fancier, higher-tech looking package, and more expensive.
"The 3D flat images are nice, but I want to spin it, go into it,etc. as far as I want, not a preset unchangable series of flats."
I don't have mod points to make up for this injustice, but I think this is a really good point. I haven't RTFA because it's down, but that's the first thing I would have looked for too. It really surprises me that there already isn't an open standard for this. A universal 3-D format for viewing molecular structures would be ideal for chemists. Something that could go on a website and visitors could look at whatever angle they wanted, or dropped into a PowerPoint presentation (or preferably Impress, but if I go and start complaining how ingrained M$ is in my field I'll really get Off-topic). I mean it's not like there aren't a million solutions to visualization when you're sitting there at your computer, mostly involving expensive propietary software, but also a fair share of free (both sense of the word) options. But at the end of the day, you can't assume most other people have your program (largely because Microsoft doesn't make one), or you don't want to drop out of the middle of your slide show just to show an rendering of your molecule and you're back to picking one (or a few) viewpoint(s) and making.pngs
Well that blogger seems like kind of a tool. Signed certificates are just the kind of thing M$ and the big companies want you to think you have to have to trust software. Good for big coorporations, bad for OS. And comparing installing software from a website I typed in by hand to an ActiveX exploit that installs software without any dialog or warning at all is a joke.
That said, he does have a reasonable point about the NYT ad. While the ad did not mention IE by name, it was pretty obviously targetted at IE users...not so much Opera or Mozilla users who already realize there are better options than IE. It's a safe assumption the target audience is going to use IE to download Firefox if the ad is successful, and that means they're going to see some random variation on the experience this guy went through. And if his experience really was typical, well, I think he's also correct about the number of users who will stop at the "OMIGODWHYDIDYOUSTRAYFROMMICROSOFTYOUMIGHTBEDOWNLO ADINGAVIRUS" dialog. It's just the same problem that OS projects trying to pull users away from M$ monopoly products have to face: assume the users you're trying to attract will compare everything to the M$ product. OO.org faces the exact same problem having to bend over backwards to make themselves Word compatible when it's Microsoft not sharing their file specs that makes compatibility difficult. If OpenOffice.org already had a reasonable market share, they wouldn't have to care about Word compatibility.
"So, say that, for example, the government of Germany would rather not accept software patents."
Can they just leave the EU? This is not meant as a troll, just an honest question from someone (okay you guessed it, I'm American) who doesn't particularly understand how the EU works. I'm also fully aware there are a vast number of consequences to leaving the EU and Germany isn't going leave just over software patents. I just find it interesting that so many of these posts bashing the EU seem beyond this smaller picture and really seem to indicate a lack of satisfaction with the whole democratic process. If a member country really feels like its interests are being consistantly trampled on by the EU, can they just leave?
" The games industry can pay low wages and make people slave because it's "cool" and people want to be in it.
Sad really."
Sad...or just basic economics? If the job is "cooler" by its very nature it will naturally compete for workers more effectively than a boring job, and be able to attract good workers for lower wages. And it naturally attracts programmers for whom the coolness factor is strongest, because they'll take the largest pay cut just to be a games programmer. That's a pretty basic concept of capitalism. Look at it from the opposite perspective: Let's say you took a job working on a boring accounting program you couldn't have less interest in, but the pay and hours were decent. Would you agree with your overworked, underpaid game programming friend who whines he should have the same salary and benefits you do? How is that fair you have this job that is shitty simply because it's boring, but your friend gets to have all the benefits of an interesting job and also get paid the same as you?
Not that I'm trying to stick up for EA...it sounds like they resort to some traditionally scummy big business tactics, and they're not delivering what they promised (in terms of time off and compensation) to the guy suing them.
"Exactly how are people taking "illicit" pictures with cell phones, that they couldn't take with ordinary digital cameras?"
Ordinary digital cameras, even the relatively small ones, are more conspicuous than cell phones, and what they are actually being used for is obvious from the fact that they look like cameras. Cell phones, on the other hand, are useful for illicit pictures because the photographers can pretend to be talking on them. Most people wouldn't object to your making a cell phone call while you're in a locker room, for example.
Couldn't agree more. I read that line and thought to myself, "wait...WMA is NOT a propietary standard?!?!". If it's percieved as an industry standard it's only because more companies have agreed to support it than AAC. Just because MS allows companies to licence it NOW and apparently allows them to licence it cheaply NOW (according to the article), in no way shape or manner guarantees the situation will remain after MS has stomped out all the competition yet again. It's still MS who owns the so-called "industry standard" if that's what we're calling WMA these days.
"How is anything considered your intellectual property when another person acquired the same "property" without any knowledge of you?"
Unfortunately that is not only how patent law is written, it seems to have been done on purpose. It is true that even if you can absolutely prove without a doubt (don't ask me how) you had absolutely no knowledge of me, my patent, or my patented invention, yet managed to coincidentally come up with something infringing on said patent, you are still infringing on my patent. It is one significant difference between patent and copyright: your code might do exactly what my copyrighted (but not patented) code does, and the source may look suspiciously similar, but if you really wrote it yourself, you're not in violation of copyright law.
I can't claim I understand WHY patent law is written this way. I suspect it's another unforseen consequence of technology. It made sense to the original people writing patent law when most of what they envisioned actually required physical construction, testing, and original thought. Rather than put the burdon of proof on the patent holder of an actually useful mechanical invention who is claiming his competitors must have reversed engineered his product, they settled for a first-come first-serve lottery system. Bummer if you get scooped, but it was probably considered highly unlikely that two people would independantly invent the same thing at nearly the same time.
This of course seems to be the exact opposite of the situation with software patents, and is precisely why they shouldn't be allowed. Software patents stifle more innovation than they encourage because it's all to easy for many people to come up with the same blindingly obvious yet apparently patentable idea.
Agree with you on the first part...I'm really unhappy that all of this seems to be finally making the mainstream news in time to help not at all in this particular election. I mean where the hell was this editorial 6 months ago or a year ago? Gee thanks NYT, way to be ahead of things...
As to whether the issue will disappear...I dunno. The
general concensus (okay, only one columnist doesn't make a "concensus, but I'm being lazy...) seems to be that this is still going to be a very close election (although chances are extremely slim that we'll have another Florida 2000 just from the sheer improbability of ~10 million votes being divided equally within a ~100 vote margin.) and both parties are readying armies of lawyers for the inevitable fallout. This election is going to be scrutinized with a fine toothed comb and whoever loses (especially if it's the Republicans) is probably not going to concede gracefully. I suspect this is an issue that will stay focussed for quite some time after the election unless it really ends up as a landslide.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh...duh!?!?
Sadly I will show off my age here and point out that one of my favorite arcade games is a perfect example of prior art. 3D world, rendered onto a 2D screen, simulating a first person view from camera. I knew I remembered playing that before '84. The link says it came out in 1980.
Really? Emphasis on authenticating, huh? Isn't this what Microsoft wants to do with trusted computing? I thought that was on the list of officially recognized BAD THINGS here at slashdot?
Sorry if this sounds insulting, but your attitude seems really narrow-minded and short sighted. The whole reason the computer is such an incredibly useful tool is that it is so flexible and extendable. YOU might manage to get everything you need out of the software included in your distro, but do you really expect the big distros to anticipate every single need of every single user? A lot of people who are not computer experts have specific application needs that the vast majority of users don't share. Should a good distro include a version of GAMESS just because I want to do a theoretical chemistry calculation? Or maybe the people who make distros should assume (correctly) that if I am one of the .0001% of computer users who would want to use that program, I should just go download it myself?
"This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision."
Yes, you sound incredibly elitist, as if it is impossible to be smart and NOT a computer expert. There is a big difference between knowing enough about one's Linux distro to install a program and having enough common sense to find programs on the internet with minimal risk of installing malware. If I google search for software that simulates microwave spectra of asymmetric top molecules (and by the way there are quite a few) what are the odds I'm going to find spyware masking itself as what I'm looking for?
It makes me wonder why more hardware manufacturers aren't asking this very question, and why anybody making new devices wouldn't open their driver code from the beginning. I mean if you make hardware, and you write software to run it on at least one platform, what is the point in making it hard for people to port the software to another platform? Isn't your profit margin in the sales of the hardware? Do you think you're going to have to drop the price of your hardware just because the software that would normally be included can also be obtained for free? I doubt it. People buying hardware assume software is included, but they're not going to care how much it cost to develop. Even if you're too cheap to hire a programmer for anything but Windows drivers, some cheapskate programmer out there somewhere is going to inherit/buy used from ebay a cheap printer/camera/firewall/whatever and decide it's worth his time to port your software to his platform. If he's kind enough to share it with the world...BOOM...now you have a new customer base for free. If the code is sloppy maybe you do a little cleaning up re-release it, or you don't actually promise to support the other OS.
The point to keeping the drivers closed I can think of is some fear about your competitors learning trade secrets, but it seems like in most cases, one would expect the breakthroughs to be in the hardware itself and not the code that runs it.
"This may be really useful for sales, but it may also lead to a serious amount of bug finding! Are you really sure you want your device drivers debugged?"
As has already been pointed out, why would this be a bad thing? That's usually considered one of open source's selling points. It's not like the bugs weren't there before. It's just that now some of the bug reports might contain useful suggestions rather than a screaming office drone on a deadline pissed that the brand new printer didn't interface with their computers.
But...I thought companies could make money by giving away free iPods, as long as they do it on the internets! I mean it seems like the profit margin might be small, but if you give enough away....
What really makes me wonder is the dude mentioned in the article trying to trick children with misspellings of CartoonNetwork.com etc. I mean WTF was he thinking? Doesn't his target audience not have credit cards for the most part?
I suspect you are right about b being incorrect: It seems like too stupid a loophole. But I was under the impression that an MP3 disc was just a Data disc with MP3s on it. Am I mistaken?
Why do you think Napster won't have the same costs that Apple does if they let you keep the music? It basically breaks down to bandwidth (which I think it's fair to say Napster will pay more for, given the estimated downloads per month they can expect) and royalties.
The math is really simple: By your number (I have no idea about the $.08, but for sake of argument lets use it) it would only take $14/$0.92 = 16 songs per month for the costs to outweigh Apple's pricing scheme. The only possible way Napster can make money with this service is that they don't have to pay full royalties: a condition that is no doubt only acceptable to the RIAA precisely because the songs only work as long as you keep paying subscription fees. The RIAA isn't giving the songs away here...they just take their cut in the form of montly installments.
Even scarier, I copied both from the location bar and by right clicking the link->copy link location, pasted into notepad, and I still see
http://www.paypal.com/
even though the white paper implied this was supposed to be a way to check this spoof. Of course pasting from notepad into /. and previewing my post, it is now missing the "a".
Then even after disabling IDN, it's still not obvious. I don't see gibberish. The mouse-over preview still says "paypal". All I get when I click on it is an alert dialog saying "www.paypal.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again"...a rather "innocent" message that I actually get quite frequently at home with my spotty internet connection. The only positive identification of this spoof was to view the source. Then I see the strange "& #1072;" stuff that's doing the spoofing.
I'm curious if their EULA (almost a moot point because of the shrink-wrap EULA problem, but I digress) actually expressly reserves the right for them to do this. It strikes me that if they're literally altering the behavior of the program on users' computers through automatic "updating" without something saying they would do this, they're in breach of contract or false advertising or whatever.
How is it gun manufacturers can get away with manufacturing semi-autos that are a easily converted into full-autos, but a (say for example) HDTVtuner card manufacturer couldn't make the broadcast flag decoder dependant on one little easily removed jumper? Then somehow the knowledge of this jumper would work its way onto the internet and coincidentally their sales jump through the roof. Of course it's still illegal for you or I to remove this jumper, but that's not their fault that there are so many criminals in the world, is it? After all, PC cards don't violate copyright...people do.
All that said, though, I still think it's an ugly language. And I think there is something to be said for a programming language preventing some bad programming habits simply by not having any support for GOTOs.
Also digressing a little from my first point...did anybody else notice the irony of an article about clarity in programming posting code examples in a .jpg?
HP focuses on paparazzi-proof cameras
So let me get this straight...after this incredibly hypothetical situation comes to pass where all the governments have agreed to mandate this technology, barring of course the millions of security cameras which would have to be exempt or useless (and god knows no one would ever abuse a security camera), and the billions of old fashioned cameras have been rounded up and burned...oh yes and of course all the professional photographers who STILL use 35mm have been convinced that they have to go digital...we still have Leo Di-Caprio preventing anybody in a 2 mile radius of himself from taking a picture of anybody else because cameras still have !@#!&# telephoto lenses?!?? I hope celebrities don't hang out in too many scenic areas.
Wouldn't it just be easier to pass a law allowing people to sue the Paparazo who took their picture (and/or the tabloid that published it) and published it without their permission? Is banning camera phones from locker rooms such a horrendous inconvenience? If your phone calls are so damn important you can't wait five minutes to exit the locker room, maybe you should think about...oh..wait...it's coming to me..buying a phone WITHOUT A CAMERA IN IT!??!?!?!?
Yes, I did RTFA, and I noticed the line about HP not actually expecting ever to use this patent. None-the-less, they paid a nice chunk of change for something they don't think they'll ever use.
No I think you missed the point. Now you'll be able to hear all your MP3s on Linux, plus get all the wonderful benefits Windows users enjoy like ads and spyware. I just don't understand how Linux geeks can be satisfied with MP3 players that only play music.
This is more what I'm talking about, except I'd like it to be as ubiquitous as .gif or .jpeg: so that I can right click it, save it to my desktop, drop it into a presentation (with proper citation of course :-)). Right now it just seems too...specialized I guess. It's a whole java applet that takes care of the visualization, not just a data format. I dunno...maybe I'm being too picky. At least there is some kind of option. It just seems like the technology is all there for a simple, straight forward 3-D standard, it's just a matter of getting it all together and a critical mass of people using it so that most 3-D visualization programs would have an option to output to that format, even if it means loss of some information, and programs that can embed graphics would be expected to be able to embed the format. To extend the .png analogy: if you made a pretty picture in the GIMP, you wouldn't normally bother to post the original .xcf file. Even if you didn't mind people taking your work and modifying it, it just wouldn't be a safe assumption that most people viewing your website have the GIMP or even know what it is. And how many will bother to install it just because you included a link to http://www.gimp.org/? Instead you'd convert to .png and post that. Yes you lose some of the original information when you do that and if you go back to .xcf, you won't have the original layering etc, but then it's also a safe assumption that most people just want to see the picture and aren't interested in the original source.
Hah. Great links. You hit the nail on the head with "(a widely known property of magnets)." That's got to be near the top of my bad science pet peeves list. I saw a safety razor shaving kit at Sharper Image once with a storage base that used a magnet to "keep the blade sharp." I can't find it on their website now, perhaps their guilty consience got the better of them...or more likely they just had to make room for a cd-playing, golf swing improving, massage chair...with magnetic therapy cushions. It was basically this idea but in a fancier, higher-tech looking package, and more expensive.
I don't have mod points to make up for this injustice, but I think this is a really good point. I haven't RTFA because it's down, but that's the first thing I would have looked for too. It really surprises me that there already isn't an open standard for this. A universal 3-D format for viewing molecular structures would be ideal for chemists. Something that could go on a website and visitors could look at whatever angle they wanted, or dropped into a PowerPoint presentation (or preferably Impress, but if I go and start complaining how ingrained M$ is in my field I'll really get Off-topic). I mean it's not like there aren't a million solutions to visualization when you're sitting there at your computer, mostly involving expensive propietary software, but also a fair share of free (both sense of the word) options. But at the end of the day, you can't assume most other people have your program (largely because Microsoft doesn't make one), or you don't want to drop out of the middle of your slide show just to show an rendering of your molecule and you're back to picking one (or a few) viewpoint(s) and making .pngs
That said, he does have a reasonable point about the NYT ad. While the ad did not mention IE by name, it was pretty obviously targetted at IE users...not so much Opera or Mozilla users who already realize there are better options than IE. It's a safe assumption the target audience is going to use IE to download Firefox if the ad is successful, and that means they're going to see some random variation on the experience this guy went through. And if his experience really was typical, well, I think he's also correct about the number of users who will stop at the "OMIGODWHYDIDYOUSTRAYFROMMICROSOFTYOUMIGHTBEDOWNLO ADINGAVIRUS" dialog. It's just the same problem that OS projects trying to pull users away from M$ monopoly products have to face: assume the users you're trying to attract will compare everything to the M$ product. OO.org faces the exact same problem having to bend over backwards to make themselves Word compatible when it's Microsoft not sharing their file specs that makes compatibility difficult. If OpenOffice.org already had a reasonable market share, they wouldn't have to care about Word compatibility.
Can they just leave the EU? This is not meant as a troll, just an honest question from someone (okay you guessed it, I'm American) who doesn't particularly understand how the EU works. I'm also fully aware there are a vast number of consequences to leaving the EU and Germany isn't going leave just over software patents. I just find it interesting that so many of these posts bashing the EU seem beyond this smaller picture and really seem to indicate a lack of satisfaction with the whole democratic process. If a member country really feels like its interests are being consistantly trampled on by the EU, can they just leave?
Sad...or just basic economics? If the job is "cooler" by its very nature it will naturally compete for workers more effectively than a boring job, and be able to attract good workers for lower wages. And it naturally attracts programmers for whom the coolness factor is strongest, because they'll take the largest pay cut just to be a games programmer. That's a pretty basic concept of capitalism. Look at it from the opposite perspective: Let's say you took a job working on a boring accounting program you couldn't have less interest in, but the pay and hours were decent. Would you agree with your overworked, underpaid game programming friend who whines he should have the same salary and benefits you do? How is that fair you have this job that is shitty simply because it's boring, but your friend gets to have all the benefits of an interesting job and also get paid the same as you?
Not that I'm trying to stick up for EA...it sounds like they resort to some traditionally scummy big business tactics, and they're not delivering what they promised (in terms of time off and compensation) to the guy suing them.
Ordinary digital cameras, even the relatively small ones, are more conspicuous than cell phones, and what they are actually being used for is obvious from the fact that they look like cameras. Cell phones, on the other hand, are useful for illicit pictures because the photographers can pretend to be talking on them. Most people wouldn't object to your making a cell phone call while you're in a locker room, for example.
Couldn't agree more. I read that line and thought to myself, "wait...WMA is NOT a propietary standard?!?!". If it's percieved as an industry standard it's only because more companies have agreed to support it than AAC. Just because MS allows companies to licence it NOW and apparently allows them to licence it cheaply NOW (according to the article), in no way shape or manner guarantees the situation will remain after MS has stomped out all the competition yet again. It's still MS who owns the so-called "industry standard" if that's what we're calling WMA these days.
Unfortunately that is not only how patent law is written, it seems to have been done on purpose. It is true that even if you can absolutely prove without a doubt (don't ask me how) you had absolutely no knowledge of me, my patent, or my patented invention, yet managed to coincidentally come up with something infringing on said patent, you are still infringing on my patent. It is one significant difference between patent and copyright: your code might do exactly what my copyrighted (but not patented) code does, and the source may look suspiciously similar, but if you really wrote it yourself, you're not in violation of copyright law.
I can't claim I understand WHY patent law is written this way. I suspect it's another unforseen consequence of technology. It made sense to the original people writing patent law when most of what they envisioned actually required physical construction, testing, and original thought. Rather than put the burdon of proof on the patent holder of an actually useful mechanical invention who is claiming his competitors must have reversed engineered his product, they settled for a first-come first-serve lottery system. Bummer if you get scooped, but it was probably considered highly unlikely that two people would independantly invent the same thing at nearly the same time.
This of course seems to be the exact opposite of the situation with software patents, and is precisely why they shouldn't be allowed. Software patents stifle more innovation than they encourage because it's all to easy for many people to come up with the same blindingly obvious yet apparently patentable idea.
As to whether the issue will disappear...I dunno. The general concensus (okay, only one columnist doesn't make a "concensus, but I'm being lazy...) seems to be that this is still going to be a very close election (although chances are extremely slim that we'll have another Florida 2000 just from the sheer improbability of ~10 million votes being divided equally within a ~100 vote margin.) and both parties are readying armies of lawyers for the inevitable fallout. This election is going to be scrutinized with a fine toothed comb and whoever loses (especially if it's the Republicans) is probably not going to concede gracefully. I suspect this is an issue that will stay focussed for quite some time after the election unless it really ends up as a landslide.
Of course