Is there a special place on the net where people can go and post ideas so as to make it impossible for the greedy bastards to patent them?
Yes there is, the Patent Office. The only place the USPO searches for prior art is in other patents. In other words, in order for something not to be patentable due to prior art it has to already be patented.
A result of this is of course that everything imagineable will be patented if things progress the way they are now. Weather they have existed for years or not.
This is IMHO one of the biggest reasons for the current mess.
Most likly because noone has applied. It is supricing how easy it often can be to get money from the Goverment (of course, it varies from country to country).
However there is always a certain amount of paperwork to fill out. Sometimes just when applying and sometimes a certain level of documentation needs to be continuously maintained.
Having the goverment come to you and hand you a stack of money is pretty unlikly to happen. You have to take the initiative. And it does come with requirements. Probably not with regards to the actual activity (the contents of the website in this case) but more with how the activity is orgainised.
This is one of the reasons why my bank uses onetime passwords generated by a small calculator-looking device. I enter a 4-digit password into the device and get back a sixdigit number that I give to my bank to log in. The key is generated based on time and a key built into the device.
This way no password information is transferred over the wire. In theory the information could be transferred over standard HTTP (though you probably don't want to do that since other people could see how much money you have on your account). The same system is used when I call my bank.
It constantly amazes me how bad security is at american banks. My mothers maiden name is certainly not impossible to figure out (it's my grandmothers last name), neither is my homenumber, zipcode or which year I opened my account. The first two is more or less public knowledge, and the last can be bruteforced or guessed. So the only thing standing between the bad guys and my money is my 6 digit accountnumber. That is in my mind not a whole lot.
If my brain was an eyeball it would be bleeding! Why do geeks think prefixing K (or G) to everything is witty? It's not; it's just annoying and confusing.
Webdevelopers complaining about IE-development comming to a halt are not powerless. Microsoft and IE are not building the web, webdevelopers are. The main problem is that users have no incentive to switch to another browser, all the websites out there work just fine with the browser they have.
If webdevelopers started taking advantage of technologies available in other browsers but that still downgraded 'good enough' to IE, and then put a small recommendation to switch to a better browser I'm sure that people would start migrating at a much higher pace then they do now.
Instead, the main message that webdevelopers now spread is "this page that I designed for IE doesn't work in browser X, you should fix that in the browser" and "Eh, mozilla doesn't have any marketshare anyway, i don't really care if my page doesn't work there" or "If this feature doesn't work in IE I won't use it".
Stop playing microsofts game and just maybe they will start listening to you. The way things are now microsoft can just sit back and enjoy the show while the entire internet world helps them out.
Also, an exemption has been added whereby you can't be charged with patent infringement if you are simply attempting to achieve interoperability with another program.
This is a good way to ensure that a company won't use patents to block other vendors from interoperability with their files/servers/clients. However it will only encourage companies that only create patents and sit on them without ever having an intention to implement the patent. So cases like the Eolas patent are not blocked.
But if you knew somebody was using your patent, and you held off on enforcing it for your own financial gain, there are precendents that make this illegal.
This doesn't seem to work very well. It's pretty clear that compuserve knew about people using GIF-encoders without paying them royalty, but that didn't stop them from waiting many years and then enforcing their patent.
There are many great ideas in the patent-system, unfortunatly only the bad onces seems to work in reality
Before Joe Sixpack will use Linux there needs to be a standardization of the UI. A standard that ALL graphical programs adhere to. No if ands or buts. One standard
Why do so many people take this as a universal trooth in computer UI design, when it is not the case in any other UI design?
Does all cars have the same-looking speed-meters, or the same warning-lights? Does all the dishwashers have the same-looking buttons? Does all the ticket-mashines work the same? No.
The important thing is not that they all look the same, the important thing is that they all are easy to use. A button should look enough like a button that you shouldn't need to learn what it looks like, it should be obvious the first time you see it.
The main problem in computer UI design today is not that the toolkit looks wierd. The problem is that there are too so buttons to push and switches to flick that users don't know what to do. Let alone how to go about doing it.
Yes. The best way to fix a system where too many people sue each other is to sue people for suing when they shouldn't have. Obviously.
Re:[OT] Oh my gosh! A female!
on
ALICE vs. ALICE
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· Score: 1
If you don't want freedom of speech - say so.
Freedom of speech, just like any other freedom, comes with taking responsibility for your actions.
If you want to offend people and having them turn and walk away, then feel free, it is legal. But if you want to give everybody a chance to join the party then mind what you are saying.
Tell me why it's ok for women to call us pigs but we can't make the occasional crack?
The reason is simply that women calling men pigs isn't a big problem in our society. If all there was was an occasinal crack then it would be ok, but there is so much more then that going on.
And if the ratio of men to women is 100:1 then an occasional crack from each man adds up pretty quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a special place on the net where people can go and post ideas so as to make it impossible for the greedy bastards to patent them?
Yes there is, the Patent Office. The only place the USPO searches for prior art is in other patents. In other words, in order for something not to be patentable due to prior art it has to already be patented.
A result of this is of course that everything imagineable will be patented if things progress the way they are now. Weather they have existed for years or not.
This is IMHO one of the biggest reasons for the current mess.
Now if someone would make a Bush 2.0 release I'd really be exited.
Most likly because noone has applied. It is supricing how easy it often can be to get money from the Goverment (of course, it varies from country to country).
However there is always a certain amount of paperwork to fill out. Sometimes just when applying and sometimes a certain level of documentation needs to be continuously maintained.
Having the goverment come to you and hand you a stack of money is pretty unlikly to happen. You have to take the initiative. And it does come with requirements. Probably not with regards to the actual activity (the contents of the website in this case) but more with how the activity is orgainised.
This is one of the reasons why my bank uses onetime passwords generated by a small calculator-looking device. I enter a 4-digit password into the device and get back a sixdigit number that I give to my bank to log in. The key is generated based on time and a key built into the device.
This way no password information is transferred over the wire. In theory the information could be transferred over standard HTTP (though you probably don't want to do that since other people could see how much money you have on your account). The same system is used when I call my bank.
It constantly amazes me how bad security is at american banks. My mothers maiden name is certainly not impossible to figure out (it's my grandmothers last name), neither is my homenumber, zipcode or which year I opened my account. The first two is more or less public knowledge, and the last can be bruteforced or guessed.
So the only thing standing between the bad guys and my money is my 6 digit accountnumber. That is in my mind not a whole lot.
- Jonas
performs as well as the convential quarter-wave design but is only 1/3 as large
I figured it out! It's 1/12-wave antenna!
Webdevelopers complaining about IE-development comming to a halt are not powerless. Microsoft and IE are not building the web, webdevelopers are. The main problem is that users have no incentive to switch to another browser, all the websites out there work just fine with the browser they have.
If webdevelopers started taking advantage of technologies available in other browsers but that still downgraded 'good enough' to IE, and then put a small recommendation to switch to a better browser I'm sure that people would start migrating at a much higher pace then they do now.
Instead, the main message that webdevelopers now spread is "this page that I designed for IE doesn't work in browser X, you should fix that in the browser" and "Eh, mozilla doesn't have any marketshare anyway, i don't really care if my page doesn't work there" or "If this feature doesn't work in IE I won't use it".
Stop playing microsofts game and just maybe they will start listening to you. The way things are now microsoft can just sit back and enjoy the show while the entire internet world helps them out.
This is a good way to ensure that a company won't use patents to block other vendors from interoperability with their files/servers/clients. However it will only encourage companies that only create patents and sit on them without ever having an intention to implement the patent. So cases like the Eolas patent are not blocked.
This doesn't seem to work very well. It's pretty clear that compuserve knew about people using GIF-encoders without paying them royalty, but that didn't stop them from waiting many years and then enforcing their patent.
There are many great ideas in the patent-system, unfortunatly only the bad onces seems to work in reality
Why do so many people take this as a universal trooth in computer UI design, when it is not the case in any other UI design?
Does all cars have the same-looking speed-meters, or the same warning-lights? Does all the dishwashers have the same-looking buttons? Does all the ticket-mashines work the same? No.
The important thing is not that they all look the same, the important thing is that they all are easy to use. A button should look enough like a button that you shouldn't need to learn what it looks like, it should be obvious the first time you see it.
The main problem in computer UI design today is not that the toolkit looks wierd. The problem is that there are too so buttons to push and switches to flick that users don't know what to do. Let alone how to go about doing it.
Simplicity is a lot more important then unity
Yes. The best way to fix a system where too many people sue each other is to sue people for suing when they shouldn't have. Obviously.
If you don't want freedom of speech - say so.
Freedom of speech, just like any other freedom, comes with taking responsibility for your actions.
If you want to offend people and having them turn and walk away, then feel free, it is legal. But if you want to give everybody a chance to join the party then mind what you are saying.
Tell me why it's ok for women to call us pigs but we can't make the occasional crack?
The reason is simply that women calling men pigs isn't a big problem in our society. If all there was was an occasinal crack then it would be ok, but there is so much more then that going on. And if the ratio of men to women is 100:1 then an occasional crack from each man adds up pretty quickly.