Well I'll go straight to the source with my question then.
What, pray tell, makes a 3D interface a step up from a 2D interface?
I can buy the fact that it's a newer design and therefore has a coolness about it, but I have trouble believing that it's a solid step forward. What are the shortcomings of a 2D desktop that need to be solved?
If it's really cool, then by all means, go for it. If these are good questions (unlikely) and you want to just see what you can do with a 3D interface, it sounds like a legitimate area of HCI research. I have to admit that when all is said and done, I expect to find a system with tons of eye candy that is, at best, no easier to use than a 2D interface.
Please don't take that as merely an unfounded criticism;) I'm a skeptic of 3D interfaces who would love to hear how wrong he is. Since I asked, here's a great opportunity to address these questions and explain why a 3D interface actually is or could be a step above my existing 2D interface.
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Oh, good one. I read that sentence and thought, "Great, now the editors are calling 'DUPE' in the blurbs but still post it!"
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In their quest to prove to others (as well as themselves) that money and materialism = happiness, they've perfected this growing trend of high-end vanity-oriented accessories. I hope it works out for 'em.
That's the type of thing I never hear from someone who has money.
People always say, "That guy has changed; he totally sold out." I want people to say about me, "That guy's dreams came true; he totally sold out."
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to afford being philosophical before AND after I'm rich, thanks. Meanwhile, social security is in the tank, the value of the dollar plummets, and an obscene amount of Americans don't have health care. So yeah, if it's insightful to talk about how dumb it is to have money, I'd rather be non-insightful with retirement savings and health care. THEN let's talk about who's unhappy with life.
And you know less than nothing about actually creating anything of your own. You're just a bean counter shuffling ever-expanding restrictions on other peoples' ability to work, dazzled by the glorious minutia of it all.
And as you can see, you don't really know much about the patent system, and you don't know the first thing about me.
BSCS and BS Mathematics, thanks. Worked in software development, thanks. Left graduate school (in CS, computability and algorithm analysis) for a great career, thanks. I refused to study for the GRE and scored 2210. I know you think that you're the smart one here, (and maybe you are - I wouldn't make an ass of myself and presume to know anything about you (see above)) but the odds are decidedly in my favor on that bet.
The problems you have with me and what I do is the direct result of the misinformation preached to you on Slashdot and from other equally qualified sources about the patent system. If you're interested in some information, rather than trying to provoke a juvenile response, let me know. Oh, and have the decency to post with an account name.
I notice that you don't deny the truth underlying my opinion.
That I work in the patent industry? Wow, you're so clever, you have comprehended statements that I have made that specifically stated that I work in IP law. I'm sure your mother thinks you're very, very, special.
What I considered clearly obvious, however you apparently consider the content of the talented & gifted class, is that my status as a person who works in IP law grants me a universe of qualifications to opine about the patent system that the average Slashdotter cannot dream of approaching. You'll notice that when there's a story about SQL I don't write "a slew of pro-MySQL shill posts". That's the result of "self respect", which dictates that I open my mouth when I know what I'm talking about.
Call it shill, the fact is that a software expert knows less than nothing about how the patent system works, and when confronted with that fact, they act like Star Trek nerds confronted with the idea that Star Trek sucks.
False Dichotomy
By stating that one cannot be against patents unless they are a communist.
Whatever makes you feel better.
What I have actually said is that being against patents is unwittingly to support a fascist economy. Whatever it takes to make you feel better about that, be my guest. I don't have a problem with that rationalization, however it doesn't even put a dent in the fact that the patent system is what preserves economic advantages for American innovators and therefore prevents our economy from slipping into the fascist economy I mention - demonstrated most handily by those Communists with whom Slashdotters are apparently so enamored.
If you read back over my posts, you'll find that I say nothing about how perfect our system is - and I don't believe it to be so. That doesn't mean, however, that patents are bad. If we decide that intellectual property rights are bad, that is something we WILL have in common with the fascists and Communists (among other traits), but this one I firmly believe is not an admirable characteristic.
So, if I patent something stupid (a method for preparing sandwhiches without crust), then offer you a choice between a $100,000 fine and a $100 "license" that just seems like a loopful for legal extortion.
And that opinion is a clear indication of your qualifications to give legal advice regarding patent litigation.
Your logic here is uterly incomprehensible. A Soviet boot factory has no competitors. So which is it? fascist cog or a clever communist?
True, but (the rhetorical) you, as a manager of the boot factory, might have personal ambitions of improving your station in life. Maybe you want to prove yourself as a great leader (of the boot factory) and move up to run a missle factory or work elsewhere in the government. Maybe you just want an increase in your food rations. Either way, you want to do better. Whatever form that takes, innovating at your factory will ultimately make your life harder, not better.
Expand that notion to an entire society and you have (drumroll please) the Soviet Empire, which had the best technology it could steal from the West (with a few notable exceptions). Some of the world's most brilliant scientists were Soviets yet the country crumbled after losing a technological war with the West. Why? Because it was a political and economic system that punished free-thinking innovators. Here I point back to the boot factory example. To advance yourself under such a system, you warm up to your bureaucratic superiors - do NOT demonstrate your innovative capabilities, you'll definitely make your future more difficult, or worse, embarrass your superiors.
And when you look at it from the other way, that if you as a small inventor do invent something, and can afford the patent process, what do you do when you find some big company has violated it?? Do you sue them? What happens then? They find 15 patents that they own that you are in violation of and it's you that ends up bankrupt not them. Now tell me how that's different from your comunist nightmare??
It took me five attempts to respond to this without being insulting.
In our system, you have a legal claim to monetary damages, known as a patent. If you cannot collect on that legal claim, there is a problem but it does not lie at the USPTO. That much is entirely, completely, and painfully obvious to someone who understands the interactions between patents and the court system.
In a "communist nightmare", you would have no legal claim regardless of whether you were rich or penniless. That's pretty much my point. When people suggest we should "do away with patents", an equivalent statement is, "Gee, living in a communist society would be great."
That's BS. A lot of small companies will settle a patent dispute even when the patent they have allegedly infringed is a flimsy one, especially if the requested licensing fees are substantially lower than the cost of going to court and getting the patent invalidated. Result: $$$ for the patent holder of a flimsy patent, without setting foot in the courtroom.
If I send you a BS bill for $50 and you pay it, it's your fault, not mine. Now, if you've got a suggestion to protect small players from frivilous litigation, I'd love to hear it. I'm not an expert on that area, but I understand that it's pretty standard practice to have the litigant pay the defense fees if the case is thrown out of court. I've also heard there's a lot of attention being paid to the topic of frivilous litigation.
Either way, that's how the system works. I'm not saying that you must like this aspect of it, but at least have the wits to recognize that the system is this way because it was constructed this way and it has nothing to do with the people working at the USPTO.
Something like 2/3 of the world's DVD players are manufactured there in rip-off factories that violate mountains of international intellectual property laws, then they dump these players on the international market that doesn't care where they came from.
Don't quote me on the numbers, but the situation there is that they live in an IP-law wild west and profit from the non-US, non-Europe, non-Japan markets.
bit late to "fix it". The damage has already been done, they need a system where you can go "Hey they didn't invent that!", where they will require you to give information proving the patent is totally wrong.
That is called "invalidating a patent" and it is the first thing your lawyers do when you are sued for infringement.
Guess what a patent is worth outside of a courtroom? $0. Guess what a flimsy patent is worth inside a courtroom? $0. The only patent that's worth anything is that which can withstand a validity attack. It's offensive how poorly this idea is understood in the media and the public at large.
Oops - just wanted to add that I wasn't talking about the original post when I said "Slashdotters with rabies".
Also, the recently signed omnibus spending bill has changed the fee schedule for the USPTO so that you now have to pay separate fees for searching. Don't quote me on this, but I believe this is in preparation for the USPTO to split the task of searching away from examining, so that professional searchers to the search and examiners do the analysis and apply the legal issues to the case. Much better, in my opinion, than any of the solutions I've heard around Slashdot.
First, create incentives and opportunities for parties to challenge the novelty and nonobviousness of an invention before the PTO grants a patent.
Prior art 'bounty hunters' and adding some common sense to the patent process sound like great ideas. Too bad they'll never be implemented, due to expensive lobbying efforts by those who stand to lose the most (i.e. the megacorps). ~Philly
The problem with this would be the purported "independence" of the bounty hunters. The last thing you want in a system like this is for IBM to swamp the USPTO with "prior art (nyuk nyuk)" against Microsoft's cases and vice versa. Both companies file thousands of applications per year and burdening the USPTO with an endless barrage of what an economic adversary considers "prior art" would only exacerbate the existing problems.
Of course, the law has allowed 3rd parties to submit prior art for a number of years now, but oddly enough, that law is rarely exercised. For all that people talk about 3rd parties submitting prior art, the fact remains that you can submit prior art as a 3rd party and almost nobody does.
The second tier to this (and all other complaints) is that the public generally misunderstands that there are two parts to a patent infringement lawsuit: 1) invalid the patent, and 2) fight the infringement allegation. Examiners are given 20-40 hours per application for the average electronics invention, and of that only 12-30 hours can reasonably be spent searching for prior art. That's what the application fee buys; nobody (except the media or Slashdotters with rabies) pretends this is a "perfect" search for prior art. Now, when you're sued for infringement, you can expect to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for a team of lawyers and professional searchers (outside the USPTO) to do an exhaustive search involving hundreds of man hours. If that patent is invalid, you'll find it and prove it. The prior art search performed by the USPTO for roughly $1000 that typically takes at most 20 man hours isn't as comprehensive as the $10,000 search that took 500 man hours. OMG WHO KNEW?!?!
By the way, if you want a rock solid patent, you can pay for the search while the patent is pending. Feel free. Expecting to get $100,000 of search for $1000 is insanity on the applicant's part, not incompetence on the USPTO's part.
(And bear in mind that I'm not addressing situations where oversights were clearly made by an examiner.)
do away with patents.
Seriously, they are anticompetitive and aid MONOPOLY. If we want monopolies, do it the right way and institute Communism already. Governement-endorsed monopolies in a free-market system are bad. That's why Linux beats 'doze.
How insightful.
Twice as insightful would be the realization that "doing away with patents" is equivalent to embarking on the road to corporate fascism, where the individual is powerless and the capitalist pigs own your life. Gone are the days when a person can start a small company and bring something new to the marketplace. Gone are the days when a company can lower its prices by developing a more efficient process and retain that advantage. Gone are the days when innovation is rewarded.
Take, for example, your typical Soviet boot factory. You get 100,000 monies to produce 10,000 boots per month. Your dumb ass innovates a new process which produces 10,000 boots for 80,000 moneys - you just proved you have been wasting 20,000 monies every month since you were given your job, you inefficient exploitative bastard. Now your process will be snatched up by all your competitors because you can't legally protect and you end up with no economic advantage - but you DO have tighter profit margins. Congratulations, you clever communist, you have been penalized by your own innovation.
So if you really ENJOY being a powerless cog in a fascist machine who is rewarded for keeping his head down and penalized for independent thought, by all means move your dumb ass to NW China and don't fuck it up for me
Oh god that's scary. A fairly famous programmer can't get work, and we're supposed to compete right out of college?
In case it hasn't been said over and over and over again, the job market for a coder in the US is saturated. In case it hasn't become apparent, the career path of a coder is not that different from a court stenographer - people tell you what to write and you write it.
If you want to be successful (employed for the next 40 years at a rate that justifies the cost of your education), you must have something beyond writing code. Writing code is a cheap skill that can be exported. Designing software, writing scientific software, writing software for a DoD contractor, doing research in user interfaces or system architecture, etc. are skills that will remain in the US and justify the cost of the education.
Being a professional PHP or Java or C++ coder on the open job market is NOT something I would recommend as a career choice. The people who are successful at this already have experience doing it. If you're fresh out of college, you don't have the experience plus your work ethic and maturity level are a question.
Case in point - I don't know anybody that I went to school with who is writing code commerically. I know a ton of people who work for DoD subcontractors, a few people who work in IT (sysadmins, networking infrastructure, etc.), a few people who work in research, and a good number of people who left computer programming (such as myself, who works in IP law.)
So if this is news to you, you might have bigger problems than your future career. I suggest becoming intimately familiar with issues such as the domestic economy, the foreign economic policies of your government, the standards of labor in other countries, and if you're dead set on being a professional programmer, I recommend figuring out what it takes to get a work visa in Australia, India, and a variety of eastern European nations.
People just don't care... they can't be bothered to think about it. I've talked to so many people, "yeah.. I need to get a new computer, this one's slow" their system gets hosed, they just get a new computer. wtf is with that?
Uh, and in The Gods Must Be Crazy, a simple Coca-Cola bottle turns a simple man's world upside down.
wtf is with that is money, money, and a little more money. Computers do not wear out fast enough to support a very profitable market selling to the home users. Corporations can invest a little money in a handful of experts to clean up their machines and keep them functional. Ma, Pa, & Joe Redstate don't know, don't care to know, and probably couldn't learn if you explained it slowly. All this spyware causes their investments to foul up prematurely. If they go out and buy a new computer, it is nothing but a win for computer manufactures. Oh, and by the way, enjoy your additional license for the latest, greatest, security improved version of your favorite easy-to-use operating system!
1. So WTF was behind the Quakers? The Mormons? The Salem Witch Trials? The context for The Scarlet Letter?
2. So what? Millions of people have immigrated all over Europe over the last 500 years. Germany is still Germany, Spain is still Spain, and America is still America.
3. What's your point? There's some unnameable magical force at play that makes America the way it is? Something "special" about America that makes our culture so radically different from Europe's when it comes to sexual stuff on TV? Do you philosophize while drinking Bud Lite or something? What is this? If you disagree with my idea that the origin of America has influenced our modern country, fine, but if you expect to believe there's any merit to your opinion, you'll have to offer some explanation other than "there's something out there, man, nobody knows what it is - we're just special that way."
I don't see the problem with censoring your own TV for your family, but censoring everyone else's just because you don't like what is on it? Is that acceptable?
Keep in mind the cultural identity we have. America was founded by Puritans who were offended by the moral depravity of 17th century England, for Chrissake.
Ok so the parent post to this is probably going to be moderated as a Troll. The point still holds. Look at the current political climate in the US: This is NOT the country that's going to stand up and protect its citizens with a Data Protection Act.
Countries that dont have a Data Protection Act like *cough* the USA need to get one, and countries that do need to add a clause to stop any stupid loop-holes. Oh and also kick people like Blunkett out who want to shit all over the DPA for no reason.
WTF are you talking about? It sounds pretty clear to me that there is money in this - industrial/commercial money. It's a service business that could relocate to any location where the laws permit it - taking its tax dollars along for the trip. A democracy should reflect the will of its people.
Like it or not, the American people spoke loud and clear last election day and told our government that we don't mind be face-fucked as long as somebody else is getting rich. The USA doesn't have a "Data Protection Act" because the people clearly don't want it - just as they don't want their soldiers at home, they don't like the Constitution anymore, and they really don't like fags.
So seriously, wtf are you talking about? You must be talking about some OTHER country that needs a Data Protection Act - a country that has -citizens-, not -consumers- as voters; A country that lives up to a higher standard of libery and justice. Wake up - these are the Red States of America. You don't want to be a terrorist, do you? Why do you need to protect that data, hm? What library books have you been reading?
Wish I could say this was tongue in cheek, unfortunately it's far more cynical/realistic than comedic.
Imagine another blue state with the population of California. I doubt that the present administration would want that.
Canada is one of the largest suppliers of American oil. Imagine the current administration annexing Canada and claiming all that oil as domestic - reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
The whole issue of whether or not Canada wants to be liberated notwithstanding, I don't think it's inconceivable, although it would take (or be) a world-changing event.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting read, thanks for the link.
What, pray tell, makes a 3D interface a step up from a 2D interface?
I can buy the fact that it's a newer design and therefore has a coolness about it, but I have trouble believing that it's a solid step forward. What are the shortcomings of a 2D desktop that need to be solved?
If it's really cool, then by all means, go for it. If these are good questions (unlikely) and you want to just see what you can do with a 3D interface, it sounds like a legitimate area of HCI research. I have to admit that when all is said and done, I expect to find a system with tons of eye candy that is, at best, no easier to use than a 2D interface.
Please don't take that as merely an unfounded criticism ;) I'm a skeptic of 3D interfaces who would love to hear how wrong he is. Since I asked, here's a great opportunity to address these questions and explain why a 3D interface actually is or could be a step above my existing 2D interface.
Oh, good one. I read that sentence and thought, "Great, now the editors are calling 'DUPE' in the blurbs but still post it!"
That's the type of thing I never hear from someone who has money.
People always say, "That guy has changed; he totally sold out." I want people to say about me, "That guy's dreams came true; he totally sold out."
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to afford being philosophical before AND after I'm rich, thanks. Meanwhile, social security is in the tank, the value of the dollar plummets, and an obscene amount of Americans don't have health care. So yeah, if it's insightful to talk about how dumb it is to have money, I'd rather be non-insightful with retirement savings and health care. THEN let's talk about who's unhappy with life.
And as you can see, you don't really know much about the patent system, and you don't know the first thing about me.
BSCS and BS Mathematics, thanks. Worked in software development, thanks. Left graduate school (in CS, computability and algorithm analysis) for a great career, thanks. I refused to study for the GRE and scored 2210. I know you think that you're the smart one here, (and maybe you are - I wouldn't make an ass of myself and presume to know anything about you (see above)) but the odds are decidedly in my favor on that bet.
The problems you have with me and what I do is the direct result of the misinformation preached to you on Slashdot and from other equally qualified sources about the patent system. If you're interested in some information, rather than trying to provoke a juvenile response, let me know. Oh, and have the decency to post with an account name.
Hope that helps.
That I work in the patent industry? Wow, you're so clever, you have comprehended statements that I have made that specifically stated that I work in IP law. I'm sure your mother thinks you're very, very, special.
What I considered clearly obvious, however you apparently consider the content of the talented & gifted class, is that my status as a person who works in IP law grants me a universe of qualifications to opine about the patent system that the average Slashdotter cannot dream of approaching. You'll notice that when there's a story about SQL I don't write "a slew of pro-MySQL shill posts". That's the result of "self respect", which dictates that I open my mouth when I know what I'm talking about.
Call it shill, the fact is that a software expert knows less than nothing about how the patent system works, and when confronted with that fact, they act like Star Trek nerds confronted with the idea that Star Trek sucks.
Said the anonymous coward.
After reading my post.
And was motivated enough to look at my posting history.
And then took the time to reply.
It sounds like you have the answer and I should be asking the question.
Like a parasite, you directly profit off of the economic damage caused by the deep flaws in the current system.
Aw, is that what you think? That's just adorable. You have the cutest little opinion that someone else could have given you!
By stating that one cannot be against patents unless they are a communist.
Whatever makes you feel better.
What I have actually said is that being against patents is unwittingly to support a fascist economy. Whatever it takes to make you feel better about that, be my guest. I don't have a problem with that rationalization, however it doesn't even put a dent in the fact that the patent system is what preserves economic advantages for American innovators and therefore prevents our economy from slipping into the fascist economy I mention - demonstrated most handily by those Communists with whom Slashdotters are apparently so enamored.
If you read back over my posts, you'll find that I say nothing about how perfect our system is - and I don't believe it to be so. That doesn't mean, however, that patents are bad. If we decide that intellectual property rights are bad, that is something we WILL have in common with the fascists and Communists (among other traits), but this one I firmly believe is not an admirable characteristic.
And that opinion is a clear indication of your qualifications to give legal advice regarding patent litigation.
True, but (the rhetorical) you, as a manager of the boot factory, might have personal ambitions of improving your station in life. Maybe you want to prove yourself as a great leader (of the boot factory) and move up to run a missle factory or work elsewhere in the government. Maybe you just want an increase in your food rations. Either way, you want to do better. Whatever form that takes, innovating at your factory will ultimately make your life harder, not better.
Expand that notion to an entire society and you have (drumroll please) the Soviet Empire, which had the best technology it could steal from the West (with a few notable exceptions). Some of the world's most brilliant scientists were Soviets yet the country crumbled after losing a technological war with the West. Why? Because it was a political and economic system that punished free-thinking innovators. Here I point back to the boot factory example. To advance yourself under such a system, you warm up to your bureaucratic superiors - do NOT demonstrate your innovative capabilities, you'll definitely make your future more difficult, or worse, embarrass your superiors.
It took me five attempts to respond to this without being insulting.
In our system, you have a legal claim to monetary damages, known as a patent. If you cannot collect on that legal claim, there is a problem but it does not lie at the USPTO. That much is entirely, completely, and painfully obvious to someone who understands the interactions between patents and the court system.
In a "communist nightmare", you would have no legal claim regardless of whether you were rich or penniless. That's pretty much my point. When people suggest we should "do away with patents", an equivalent statement is, "Gee, living in a communist society would be great."
If I send you a BS bill for $50 and you pay it, it's your fault, not mine. Now, if you've got a suggestion to protect small players from frivilous litigation, I'd love to hear it. I'm not an expert on that area, but I understand that it's pretty standard practice to have the litigant pay the defense fees if the case is thrown out of court. I've also heard there's a lot of attention being paid to the topic of frivilous litigation.
Either way, that's how the system works. I'm not saying that you must like this aspect of it, but at least have the wits to recognize that the system is this way because it was constructed this way and it has nothing to do with the people working at the USPTO.
Something like 2/3 of the world's DVD players are manufactured there in rip-off factories that violate mountains of international intellectual property laws, then they dump these players on the international market that doesn't care where they came from.
Don't quote me on the numbers, but the situation there is that they live in an IP-law wild west and profit from the non-US, non-Europe, non-Japan markets.
That is called "invalidating a patent" and it is the first thing your lawyers do when you are sued for infringement.
Guess what a patent is worth outside of a courtroom? $0. Guess what a flimsy patent is worth inside a courtroom? $0. The only patent that's worth anything is that which can withstand a validity attack. It's offensive how poorly this idea is understood in the media and the public at large.
Also, the recently signed omnibus spending bill has changed the fee schedule for the USPTO so that you now have to pay separate fees for searching. Don't quote me on this, but I believe this is in preparation for the USPTO to split the task of searching away from examining, so that professional searchers to the search and examiners do the analysis and apply the legal issues to the case. Much better, in my opinion, than any of the solutions I've heard around Slashdot.
Prior art 'bounty hunters' and adding some common sense to the patent process sound like great ideas. Too bad they'll never be implemented, due to expensive lobbying efforts by those who stand to lose the most (i.e. the megacorps). ~Philly
The problem with this would be the purported "independence" of the bounty hunters. The last thing you want in a system like this is for IBM to swamp the USPTO with "prior art (nyuk nyuk)" against Microsoft's cases and vice versa. Both companies file thousands of applications per year and burdening the USPTO with an endless barrage of what an economic adversary considers "prior art" would only exacerbate the existing problems.
Of course, the law has allowed 3rd parties to submit prior art for a number of years now, but oddly enough, that law is rarely exercised. For all that people talk about 3rd parties submitting prior art, the fact remains that you can submit prior art as a 3rd party and almost nobody does.
The second tier to this (and all other complaints) is that the public generally misunderstands that there are two parts to a patent infringement lawsuit: 1) invalid the patent, and 2) fight the infringement allegation. Examiners are given 20-40 hours per application for the average electronics invention, and of that only 12-30 hours can reasonably be spent searching for prior art. That's what the application fee buys; nobody (except the media or Slashdotters with rabies) pretends this is a "perfect" search for prior art. Now, when you're sued for infringement, you can expect to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for a team of lawyers and professional searchers (outside the USPTO) to do an exhaustive search involving hundreds of man hours. If that patent is invalid, you'll find it and prove it. The prior art search performed by the USPTO for roughly $1000 that typically takes at most 20 man hours isn't as comprehensive as the $10,000 search that took 500 man hours. OMG WHO KNEW?!?!
By the way, if you want a rock solid patent, you can pay for the search while the patent is pending. Feel free. Expecting to get $100,000 of search for $1000 is insanity on the applicant's part, not incompetence on the USPTO's part.
(And bear in mind that I'm not addressing situations where oversights were clearly made by an examiner.)
Seriously, they are anticompetitive and aid MONOPOLY. If we want monopolies, do it the right way and institute Communism already.
Governement-endorsed monopolies in a free-market system are bad. That's why Linux beats 'doze.
How insightful.
Twice as insightful would be the realization that "doing away with patents" is equivalent to embarking on the road to corporate fascism, where the individual is powerless and the capitalist pigs own your life. Gone are the days when a person can start a small company and bring something new to the marketplace. Gone are the days when a company can lower its prices by developing a more efficient process and retain that advantage. Gone are the days when innovation is rewarded.
Take, for example, your typical Soviet boot factory. You get 100,000 monies to produce 10,000 boots per month. Your dumb ass innovates a new process which produces 10,000 boots for 80,000 moneys - you just proved you have been wasting 20,000 monies every month since you were given your job, you inefficient exploitative bastard. Now your process will be snatched up by all your competitors because you can't legally protect and you end up with no economic advantage - but you DO have tighter profit margins. Congratulations, you clever communist, you have been penalized by your own innovation.
So if you really ENJOY being a powerless cog in a fascist machine who is rewarded for keeping his head down and penalized for independent thought, by all means move your dumb ass to NW China and don't fuck it up for me
In case it hasn't been said over and over and over again, the job market for a coder in the US is saturated. In case it hasn't become apparent, the career path of a coder is not that different from a court stenographer - people tell you what to write and you write it.
If you want to be successful (employed for the next 40 years at a rate that justifies the cost of your education), you must have something beyond writing code. Writing code is a cheap skill that can be exported. Designing software, writing scientific software, writing software for a DoD contractor, doing research in user interfaces or system architecture, etc. are skills that will remain in the US and justify the cost of the education.
Being a professional PHP or Java or C++ coder on the open job market is NOT something I would recommend as a career choice. The people who are successful at this already have experience doing it. If you're fresh out of college, you don't have the experience plus your work ethic and maturity level are a question.
Case in point - I don't know anybody that I went to school with who is writing code commerically. I know a ton of people who work for DoD subcontractors, a few people who work in IT (sysadmins, networking infrastructure, etc.), a few people who work in research, and a good number of people who left computer programming (such as myself, who works in IP law.)
So if this is news to you, you might have bigger problems than your future career. I suggest becoming intimately familiar with issues such as the domestic economy, the foreign economic policies of your government, the standards of labor in other countries, and if you're dead set on being a professional programmer, I recommend figuring out what it takes to get a work visa in Australia, India, and a variety of eastern European nations.
Uh, and in The Gods Must Be Crazy, a simple Coca-Cola bottle turns a simple man's world upside down.
wtf is with that is money, money, and a little more money. Computers do not wear out fast enough to support a very profitable market selling to the home users. Corporations can invest a little money in a handful of experts to clean up their machines and keep them functional. Ma, Pa, & Joe Redstate don't know, don't care to know, and probably couldn't learn if you explained it slowly. All this spyware causes their investments to foul up prematurely. If they go out and buy a new computer, it is nothing but a win for computer manufactures. Oh, and by the way, enjoy your additional license for the latest, greatest, security improved version of your favorite easy-to-use operating system!
wtf is what that? Profit, meet lordkuri.
2. So what? Millions of people have immigrated all over Europe over the last 500 years. Germany is still Germany, Spain is still Spain, and America is still America.
3. What's your point? There's some unnameable magical force at play that makes America the way it is? Something "special" about America that makes our culture so radically different from Europe's when it comes to sexual stuff on TV? Do you philosophize while drinking Bud Lite or something? What is this? If you disagree with my idea that the origin of America has influenced our modern country, fine, but if you expect to believe there's any merit to your opinion, you'll have to offer some explanation other than "there's something out there, man, nobody knows what it is - we're just special that way."
ONLY IN AMERICA
help us..
Keep in mind the cultural identity we have. America was founded by Puritans who were offended by the moral depravity of 17th century England, for Chrissake.
Ok so the parent post to this is probably going to be moderated as a Troll. The point still holds. Look at the current political climate in the US: This is NOT the country that's going to stand up and protect its citizens with a Data Protection Act.
WTF are you talking about? It sounds pretty clear to me that there is money in this - industrial/commercial money. It's a service business that could relocate to any location where the laws permit it - taking its tax dollars along for the trip. A democracy should reflect the will of its people.
Like it or not, the American people spoke loud and clear last election day and told our government that we don't mind be face-fucked as long as somebody else is getting rich. The USA doesn't have a "Data Protection Act" because the people clearly don't want it - just as they don't want their soldiers at home, they don't like the Constitution anymore, and they really don't like fags.
So seriously, wtf are you talking about? You must be talking about some OTHER country that needs a Data Protection Act - a country that has -citizens-, not -consumers- as voters; A country that lives up to a higher standard of libery and justice. Wake up - these are the Red States of America. You don't want to be a terrorist, do you? Why do you need to protect that data, hm? What library books have you been reading?
Wish I could say this was tongue in cheek, unfortunately it's far more cynical/realistic than comedic.
Canada is one of the largest suppliers of American oil. Imagine the current administration annexing Canada and claiming all that oil as domestic - reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
The whole issue of whether or not Canada wants to be liberated notwithstanding, I don't think it's inconceivable, although it would take (or be) a world-changing event.