Irrelevant. Most of those units were designated posthumously, in order to honor those individuals. The utility of a unit of measurement is not dependent upon the particular appellation. "A rose by any other name..." and all that.
but the fact is the big copyright holders (who are the ones we're concerned about) are generally composed of committees of rich, greedy fucks who point-blank don't care what we think.
You mean to tell me that there are authorized billing scams ? I get it, that must be my monthly cellphone bill.
Monthly phone bill, period. It's not like the Telcos manage their landline billing practices any more honestly than the cell phone companies do. Hell, a few years ago I moved, and had SBC come out to hook up my new lines. I got a bill for $350 for "installation" (after having been promised a thirty dollar charge.) According to SBC, the technician spent almost a whole day "wiring" my house. Which is ridiculous, since the place was wired in 1971 when it was built. In actual fact, he spent about fifteen minutes in the house, did a crappy job (ever heard of punch down wiring, dimbulb? Wire nuts? I'm sorry, but bare wires twisted together in midair is not acceptable), got the lines backward, and had ring-and-tip reversed on both so I couldn't dial out. SBC refused to credit me because "we have to go by what the technician said." Fuckers. I went out and bought a punchdown block and did it myself the right way, after spending three hundred and fifty bucks to have them not do it.
Prove that you can work with MS Access or MS Excel or write small applications and you will become an office hero.
I know very few people who spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars going to school, earning a CS degree... who would then be happy coding VBA add-ons to Excel.
I'm not sure it's the same case, but in the one I read about, the company that produced the unit was required to turn over the source code for independent verification and analysis. Apparently, it was a joke... with comments like "this section is just for testing and shouldn't be shipped", with some major design flaws as well. It didn't even do a proper baseline measurement, and it's results could have been off by something like +/- 50 percent or something like that. I should go Google that case and see what eventually happened with it.
In any event, proprietary software shouldn't be when people's lives are on the line. That includes losing judgments on the order of a quarter million dollars (as happened in a recent RIAA case.)
I tend to agree... and it's not as if Japanese pop culture isn't filled with rebellious and violent material too, machines included. And there've been plenty of Western books and movies that have portrayed robots in a very positive light.
We also haven't embraced robots in the industrial sector to the extent that the Japanese have, and much of that has to do with the perception of them as human replacements, not because they're rebellious and violent. Honestly, it's the humans that often get rebellious and violent when faced with the prospect of losing their jobs to a machine.
For example, Windows uses regions in GDI under a different name, using a very straightforward implementation that is not covered by that patent.
No, they still call them regions. But you're right... the lack of specificity (much less demonstrable functionality) is allowing software patents to cripple us. Meanwhile, countries without the dubious "protection" afforded by software patents are forging ahead. Oddly enough, their economies seem to be doing rather well in comparison.
Like copyright, a patent is a legal construct which (ideally) strikes a balance between the presumed need of the creator/inventor to make money, and the definite need of society to benefit from their efforts, in the long term. Also like copyright, patents have skewed too far in the direction of the rightsholder. That balance is what needs to be changed: the Founders did a pretty good job, and we wouldn't be in this mess if Congress had just left well enough alone. Instead, they made sweeping changes with profound and predictably negative effects.
It gets worse: the proper way of expressing fuel efficiency is L/100km, which is bizarre and counter-intuitive if you've grown up thinking in miles per gallon. A lower L/100km is better. I just find it really hard to visualize!
They do it that way because if you're rating efficiency in terms of, say, miles/gallon, if your engine ever reaches one hundred percent efficiency it will immediately crash with a divide overflow.
Illiterate twit. He was, in fact, pointing out that America is not the center of the world and that Slashdot readers shouldn't assume that a basic tenet of American law applies anywhere else.
After he's replaced all those signatures, next time the thing breaks down I bet he gets hold of another case and swaps it out for his signed one before he sends it in for repairs. It's what he should have done in the first place. Actually, if it were me, I'd have bought a console for the explicit purpose of collecting signatures. Then, once I had them I'd put the console back in the original box and store it safely away. One day I'd bring it out and sell it on EBay for fifty grand. Or maybe it would be worth nothing, the collector game is iffy at best. But I wouldn't use it in my living room as my regular game system and still call it a "collector's item." If it has such significant value (monetary, personal, or both) then protect it.
Your typical big repair center (and I don't care what name-brand company you're talking about) is a contract operation staffed by overworked people struggling to get the shit out the door. Microsoft's maybe more than most given the reliability problems they've had. The reality is, bitching about special requirements is pointless: if you actually receive a working unit you should count yourself lucky.
So the phone rep should have told him flatly "we can't guarantee compliance with special requirements." Granted, the guy was naive in expecting special treatment, regardless of what the phone rep said, but nevertheless the rep made a promise. Microsoft should make some restitution, if nothing else for the PR value.
Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'
Slashdot Mirror
Irrelevant. Most of those units were designated posthumously, in order to honor those individuals. The utility of a unit of measurement is not dependent upon the particular appellation. "A rose by any other name ..." and all that.
but the fact is the big copyright holders (who are the ones we're concerned about) are generally composed of committees of rich, greedy fucks who point-blank don't care what we think.
You mean to tell me that there are authorized billing scams ? I get it, that must be my monthly cellphone bill.
Monthly phone bill, period. It's not like the Telcos manage their landline billing practices any more honestly than the cell phone companies do. Hell, a few years ago I moved, and had SBC come out to hook up my new lines. I got a bill for $350 for "installation" (after having been promised a thirty dollar charge.) According to SBC, the technician spent almost a whole day "wiring" my house. Which is ridiculous, since the place was wired in 1971 when it was built. In actual fact, he spent about fifteen minutes in the house, did a crappy job (ever heard of punch down wiring, dimbulb? Wire nuts? I'm sorry, but bare wires twisted together in midair is not acceptable), got the lines backward, and had ring-and-tip reversed on both so I couldn't dial out. SBC refused to credit me because "we have to go by what the technician said." Fuckers. I went out and bought a punchdown block and did it myself the right way, after spending three hundred and fifty bucks to have them not do it.
Bloodsucking leeches, all of them.
Prove that you can work with MS Access or MS Excel or write small applications and you will become an office hero.
... who would then be happy coding VBA add-ons to Excel.
I know very few people who spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars going to school, earning a CS degree
I'm not sure it's the same case, but in the one I read about, the company that produced the unit was required to turn over the source code for independent verification and analysis. Apparently, it was a joke ... with comments like "this section is just for testing and shouldn't be shipped", with some major design flaws as well. It didn't even do a proper baseline measurement, and it's results could have been off by something like +/- 50 percent or something like that. I should go Google that case and see what eventually happened with it.
In any event, proprietary software shouldn't be when people's lives are on the line. That includes losing judgments on the order of a quarter million dollars (as happened in a recent RIAA case.)
Well, Mr. Friendly, at the time I commented the OP was rated +1, and I thought it was worth more.
I believe they're $300 each, but you have to buy two of them ... one for each frontal lobe.
Forget about games, this being mass-produced is a great step towards turning the handicapped into the handicapable .
Don't let George Carlin hear you talking like that.
People. Carbon nanotubes are made out of people.
Oh, come on. Am I the only one that picked up on the Soylent Green reference?
Wait, hold on... I thought we were talking about the internet... ?
We are. An Internet for bacteria.
I tend to agree ... and it's not as if Japanese pop culture isn't filled with rebellious and violent material too, machines included. And there've been plenty of Western books and movies that have portrayed robots in a very positive light.
We also haven't embraced robots in the industrial sector to the extent that the Japanese have, and much of that has to do with the perception of them as human replacements, not because they're rebellious and violent. Honestly, it's the humans that often get rebellious and violent when faced with the prospect of losing their jobs to a machine.
The Wikipedia page, however (at the time of writing) has not been modified and is still now present in the form challenged by Domenici.
... why didn't he just go change the page?
So
Vista is XP with a new hat and a STD.
I think that pretty much says it all, folks.
Ah! So that's what the "CE" in Windows CE stands for! Thanks, I was wondering about that.
it looks like we're well on the way to discovering the Stileman Process.
I don't expect to be looking for another laptop for a while though while this one is still going strong.
Good job. You just jinxed yourself.
For example, Windows uses regions in GDI under a different name, using a very straightforward implementation that is not covered by that patent.
... the lack of specificity (much less demonstrable functionality) is allowing software patents to cripple us. Meanwhile, countries without the dubious "protection" afforded by software patents are forging ahead. Oddly enough, their economies seem to be doing rather well in comparison.
No, they still call them regions. But you're right
Like copyright, a patent is a legal construct which (ideally) strikes a balance between the presumed need of the creator/inventor to make money, and the definite need of society to benefit from their efforts, in the long term. Also like copyright, patents have skewed too far in the direction of the rightsholder. That balance is what needs to be changed: the Founders did a pretty good job, and we wouldn't be in this mess if Congress had just left well enough alone. Instead, they made sweeping changes with profound and predictably negative effects.
I remember seeing a VW Beatle deisel
Was that the VW Lennon, or the McCartney model? I heard the Lennon could run Ringos around the McCartney, but only with the Harrison option installed.
It gets worse: the proper way of expressing fuel efficiency is L/100km, which is bizarre and counter-intuitive if you've grown up thinking in miles per gallon. A lower L/100km is better. I just find it really hard to visualize!
They do it that way because if you're rating efficiency in terms of, say, miles/gallon, if your engine ever reaches one hundred percent efficiency it will immediately crash with a divide overflow.
Well, they didn't say what type of juice they would need, so I just assumed apple juice.
You're a Mac user, aren't you.
Illiterate twit. He was, in fact, pointing out that America is not the center of the world and that Slashdot readers shouldn't assume that a basic tenet of American law applies anywhere else.
...
Sheesh. With friends like you
Stating the truth counts as a rock-solid defense.
... but not everywhere in the world, that's for sure.
In the U.S. most of the time
After he's replaced all those signatures, next time the thing breaks down I bet he gets hold of another case and swaps it out for his signed one before he sends it in for repairs. It's what he should have done in the first place. Actually, if it were me, I'd have bought a console for the explicit purpose of collecting signatures. Then, once I had them I'd put the console back in the original box and store it safely away. One day I'd bring it out and sell it on EBay for fifty grand. Or maybe it would be worth nothing, the collector game is iffy at best. But I wouldn't use it in my living room as my regular game system and still call it a "collector's item." If it has such significant value (monetary, personal, or both) then protect it.
Your typical big repair center (and I don't care what name-brand company you're talking about) is a contract operation staffed by overworked people struggling to get the shit out the door. Microsoft's maybe more than most given the reliability problems they've had. The reality is, bitching about special requirements is pointless: if you actually receive a working unit you should count yourself lucky.
So the phone rep should have told him flatly "we can't guarantee compliance with special requirements." Granted, the guy was naive in expecting special treatment, regardless of what the phone rep said, but nevertheless the rep made a promise. Microsoft should make some restitution, if nothing else for the PR value.
Is he really crooked, though? He'd be crooked by our standards, sure, but crooked is relative to the local laws under which you operate.
Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'
Liar.