The easiest way to ensure data will never go away is to publish it on a web site or post it in a newsgroup. Ever tried to delete a message that found its way into Google's results?
If the mayor is successful and forcibly prevents HP from laying off people, he'll be sending a strong message to other foreign corporations to avoid setting up an office in France.
The Titanic, after the collision, ran its bilge pumps full blast until it sank. While the pumps obviously couldn't keep it from sinking, they did add a lot of extra time for the Titanic, saving more lives.
And yes, I'm a little bitter because I was too young to get into the game to enjoy the dot-com insanity and profit from it and now it feels less like a career every day and more like an 8-5 burger flipping job.
Why don't you do like I did when I lost my job and start your own business? Oh, that's right, it's easier to be bitter and argue that the world owes you a living.
I can't think of a single time I've had to use algebra or calculus in order to solve an everyday problem.
Car salesmen and bankers have a name for people like you - "suckers". They make their money off of people who don't understand things like compound interest.
I've also had contractors try to take advantage of me by selling me 1000 sq ft and delivering 700, hoping I didn't know math.
Take one of those "get rich quick through real estate" seminars. Many of their techniques rely on suckering other people who don't understand the math part of money.
using private funds, because the British government wasn't interested in it. The government only got interested in it after Whittle demonstrated a working engine.
The article perpetuates the myth that government is the engine of innovation. It isn't. The reason the US has been at the forefront of innovation is because we have (or used to have) low taxes and low regulation.
Stallman seems to think that patents favor business interests as opposed to the public interest. What he doesn't realize is that patents are anti-business as well. All you have to do is look at how businesses can be threatened, cowed, and destroyed by patent litigation. The public isn't going to be sued out of existence by patent lawyers.
The interests served by patents are not the public or business in general, but a handful of giant corporations who wish to use armadas of patents to cover for their inefficiency and sloth and prevent other, more nimble businesses from competing with them.
Rather than learn the rules of the game and a vast array of human likes and dislikes, it just listens for an excited-sounding announcer and flags those parts as being important.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
What nonsense. Of course it's obvious. Haven't you ever had a game on while you do something else, and then look up to watch when the announcer gets an excited tone in his voice? Or when you hear the crowd roar?
There isn't any real way to codify whether an idea should be patentable or not. A better way would be to require, for each patent, a year of public comment on it. The patent examiners would be required to review and take public comments into account. The public could then comment on how absurd or obvious a patent is before it gets patented.
I had a similar experience. I went into a computer store to buy a printer. The cashier wanted my home address. I said "no". The cashier said it was their policy for all sales. I asked for the manager, who repeated that line. I asked him if he was willing to give up the sale for his policy. He said "yes", and I said it was my policy to not give out my address, and I left.
I went to his competitor up the street, bought the same printer. I told the story to the store manager there, who had a nice laugh and was happy to get my money.
Okay, Jeff Bezos claims he gets these patents defensively to prevent someone else from getting them and suing Amazon.
He doesn't need to patent it to do that. All he needs to do is publish the idea, then it cannot be patented by anyone else, as it then becomes "prior art." I'm sure he's is well aware of that.
Since it costs nearly half a billion dollars to get a drug approved by the FDA, that naturally is going to discourage any but blockbuster drugs from ever being developed.
Before the 1962 FDA amendments, drug development companies brought a much greater number and variety of new drugs to patients.
Ain't it nice that the Supreme Court decided that bureaucrats can decide what's best for your property, and now the FDA gets to play god and decide who gets a chance at life and who dies for sure.
You simply can't calculate worth that way. The only way to do it is to roughly estimate someone's experience and value, and compare it to what other's with roughly equivalent experience and value make.
Sure you make guesses at it. But on average, a company had better be right at these guesses or else it will go out of business.
Henry Ford understood this basic economic principle, and made sure his employees could afford to purchase the Model T's they built.
The truth is that Ford had to pay higher wages to attract workers to do numbing, unpleasant assembly line work. He put the best face on it with the great line of propaganda that he was paying the workers to buy Ford products. Of course, such an idea is absurd on its face. Why don't you start a business, pay your employees to buy your products, and see how long you'll last. I give it a week.
But none of you free-marketeers in this thread have yet answered the simple question: who is going to buy products if everyone is either unemployed or barely making a living?
I did answer it. The same thing that happened to all those agricultural workers who were replaced by automated farm machinery and now earn $0.00 from farm work.
Oh, I've heard of that line by Ford. Great propaganda. The reality is that Ford was forced to pay people more because working on an assembly line was distasteful, unpleasant work. He couldn't attract them unless he paid them more. Being a smart marketer, he turned this into a nice piece of propaganda.
Causing unemployment in Europe and the U.S. to save a couple sheckles on the front end will ultimately result in less wealth and less growth in the long run.
In the long run, automating farm production to save money freed the overwhelming majority of the workforce from working on farms and enabled them to work making those wonderful things that support our high standard of living.
You need someone to buy your products, and as others have already pointed out, the unemployed and minimum wage workers of the world aren't going to be able to do so.
Unfortunately, paying people to buy your products (which is another way of saying what you wrote) doesn't work and never has. Some corporations have attempted this to make their sales look better to pump the stock, but it's called "fraud" for good reason.
Um -- you're not paid based on how much money you generate for a company, you're paid based on how replaceable your job is. No, you're paid based on the money you generate for a company. It's easy to show this to be true. If you cost more money than you generated, the company will fire you (companies are not welfare organizations). If you cost $1 and generate $100 in revenue, then someone else will offer you $2 and pocket $98 profit. Someone else will offer $3 to get $97 in profit. This continues until an equilibrium is reached that is around 15% or so.
Of course, this will vary because it is often hard to calculate how much revenue a person will bring in, but if a company strays too far from this in either direction it is unstable and will likely fail.
I love how in "Revenge of the Sith" Obi-wan says he's going to hide Luke and Leia where Vader will never find them. So where does he place Luke, with a whole galaxy available? Why, with Luke's Uncle on Vader's home planet! Gee, Vader will never think to look there.
And Leia, Obi-wan puts her where she'll become a princess, because her mother was a queen. Fer crying out loud, a princess is a princess only because she can document her lineage and everyone will know it! Way to hide her, Obi-wan!
Slashdot Mirror
The easiest way to ensure data will never go away is to publish it on a web site or post it in a newsgroup. Ever tried to delete a message that found its way into Google's results?
If the mayor is successful and forcibly prevents HP from laying off people, he'll be sending a strong message to other foreign corporations to avoid setting up an office in France.
The Titanic, after the collision, ran its bilge pumps full blast until it sank. While the pumps obviously couldn't keep it from sinking, they did add a lot of extra time for the Titanic, saving more lives.
Why don't you do like I did when I lost my job and start your own business? Oh, that's right, it's easier to be bitter and argue that the world owes you a living.
One thing also not mentioned is the aging of baby boomers. Older folks don't go to the movies as much as younger ones.
Car salesmen and bankers have a name for people like you - "suckers". They make their money off of people who don't understand things like compound interest.
I've also had contractors try to take advantage of me by selling me 1000 sq ft and delivering 700, hoping I didn't know math.
Take one of those "get rich quick through real estate" seminars. Many of their techniques rely on suckering other people who don't understand the math part of money.
to such statements and attitudes is "Keep on thinking that, and stay out of the field. It keeps my salary high!"
The article perpetuates the myth that government is the engine of innovation. It isn't. The reason the US has been at the forefront of innovation is because we have (or used to have) low taxes and low regulation.
The interests served by patents are not the public or business in general, but a handful of giant corporations who wish to use armadas of patents to cover for their inefficiency and sloth and prevent other, more nimble businesses from competing with them.
Rather than learn the rules of the game and a vast array of human likes and dislikes, it just listens for an excited-sounding announcer and flags those parts as being important.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
What nonsense. Of course it's obvious. Haven't you ever had a game on while you do something else, and then look up to watch when the announcer gets an excited tone in his voice? Or when you hear the crowd roar?
There isn't any real way to codify whether an idea should be patentable or not. A better way would be to require, for each patent, a year of public comment on it. The patent examiners would be required to review and take public comments into account. The public could then comment on how absurd or obvious a patent is before it gets patented.
I went to his competitor up the street, bought the same printer. I told the story to the store manager there, who had a nice laugh and was happy to get my money.
He doesn't need to patent it to do that. All he needs to do is publish the idea, then it cannot be patented by anyone else, as it then becomes "prior art." I'm sure he's is well aware of that.
Before the 1962 FDA amendments, drug development companies brought a much greater number and variety of new drugs to patients.
Here are the true facts of the thalidomide case. It wasn't that the FDA heroically saved us from thalidomide. It was bureaucratic bungling.
So much for living in a free country.
Sure you make guesses at it. But on average, a company had better be right at these guesses or else it will go out of business.
The truth is that Ford had to pay higher wages to attract workers to do numbing, unpleasant assembly line work. He put the best face on it with the great line of propaganda that he was paying the workers to buy Ford products. Of course, such an idea is absurd on its face. Why don't you start a business, pay your employees to buy your products, and see how long you'll last. I give it a week.
I did answer it. The same thing that happened to all those agricultural workers who were replaced by automated farm machinery and now earn $0.00 from farm work.
Oh, I've heard of that line by Ford. Great propaganda. The reality is that Ford was forced to pay people more because working on an assembly line was distasteful, unpleasant work. He couldn't attract them unless he paid them more. Being a smart marketer, he turned this into a nice piece of propaganda.
In the long run, automating farm production to save money freed the overwhelming majority of the workforce from working on farms and enabled them to work making those wonderful things that support our high standard of living.
You need someone to buy your products, and as others have already pointed out, the unemployed and minimum wage workers of the world aren't going to be able to do so.
Unfortunately, paying people to buy your products (which is another way of saying what you wrote) doesn't work and never has. Some corporations have attempted this to make their sales look better to pump the stock, but it's called "fraud" for good reason.
Um -- you're not paid based on how much money you generate for a company, you're paid based on how replaceable your job is.
No, you're paid based on the money you generate for a company. It's easy to show this to be true. If you cost more money than you generated, the company will fire you (companies are not welfare organizations). If you cost $1 and generate $100 in revenue, then someone else will offer you $2 and pocket $98 profit. Someone else will offer $3 to get $97 in profit. This continues until an equilibrium is reached that is around 15% or so.
Of course, this will vary because it is often hard to calculate how much revenue a person will bring in, but if a company strays too far from this in either direction it is unstable and will likely fail.
even further!
How can you trademark a name that gets 200 million hits on Google?
And Leia, Obi-wan puts her where she'll become a princess, because her mother was a queen. Fer crying out loud, a princess is a princess only because she can document her lineage and everyone will know it! Way to hide her, Obi-wan!