Accepting merchandise-even to use-opens one to the bribery effect. Accepting merchandise-even just to "review" -means that yes indeed you can get a cherry picked tweaked pristine example of the article in question.
It is just common sense bad mojo to accept stuff directly from the manufacturers for this sort of work.
...to completely produce every new component in a new machine, fab it, assemble it, all the components top to bottom case to mobo, power supply to optical drives and etc, etc, and ship it around? The general societal TCO? Are those prices and watts and ergs and joules and BTUs and whatnot in the calculations of how much it "costs" in energy compared to just using an older machine for a much longer time period before it is junked? And how much does it cost to safely junk an old machine? Can we add in the eventual environmental cleanup costs here as well? Judging by various "superfund" costs it is not cheap. Judging by health insurance costs it is not cheap. Judging by cost of oil and what is apparently necessary politically to keep that oil flowing to run the mines to run the smelters to run the ships to run the trucks and so on and so forth is not cheap. What is the cost of peoples' medical expenses from all the poison in the environment from the throw away culture because something a few years old is now "obsolete", even if it is still functional?
I don't know the exact answers to any of those questions, just take a SWAG at it and say "not cheap", and I think it is fair to ask the questions and not just fixate on the "cost of running" the machine by todays kilowatt/hr quote and some CPU benchmarks.
..which is well over 40 years now, it's always been this way.
My recommendation is to stop supporting either the D or R party, acknowledge both of them are completely "broken", there is no fix available for them, the corruption just goes way too deep, and something newer should be supported instead.
It's the entrenched good old boy bribe and lobby system that is at work, along with the "shadow" government of crooks that exists deep within the civil and military non-elected folks..
Get in some REALLY new fresh blood that isn't tainted and corrupted from the beginning and you might see honest government again. You might, and that is the only credible chance at this point.
Keep falling victim to those parties biennial FUD campaigns that you are "wasting" your vote to not vote for them because "this time it will be different", and all you do is keep swapping out one set of crooks for another, back and forth, back and forth, ie "lather, rinse, repeat". Lucy-charlie brown-football. Comes a time to just admit reality and that maybe you've been faked out and conned enough..
Admit reality, they have jointly hijacked government and turned it into a jobs and skimming program for criminal gangs, with a shared agreement to do everything they can to squash third parties and independents. All the way to manipulating the mass media at the top I will add. This is obvious as all get out.
A lot of their grassroots supporters are very well meaning and honest-on both sides, this is true facts, but once past the county level...well, your default outlook at contemplating them as humans should be "crook". The odds are heavily in your favor that way. I would doubt there's more than perhaps a dozen or so uncorrupted members in both houses or the higher level judiciary at this point, and I include them because they are all D or R party hacks for the most part, that's how they got those appointments in the first place..
The only "wasted" vote is one not cast - or one hijacked by computerised voting. That needs to be fixed as well, but you will NOT see that happen with the D or R party running things.
..this morning in fact, I had one of my occassional massive back spasms, knocked me out for a minute and put me on the floor for around half an hour or so. I only get them a few times a year but man are they *doozies*. I mean painful, instant non functional....it usually lasts for around 3 days before it goes away completely, so I have two more to contemplate not being able to go to work..sucks.. hurts to even sit in this chair right now.. anyway, now my Gf is here, but she just isn't strong enough to pick me up. I know the spasms subside after awhile (so far anyway), and eventually I was able to crawl up a chair and get my stick for support, but it would have been *nice* to have a household robot right then to help out. Some situations don't really need an expensive 9-11 call, but sometimes there just aren't the human resources available real handy to help out either. I can see with the aging of the population that this sort of development is pretty good and will probably be a major driving force for the future, because the market potential is pretty darn big. And not just the beer fetching angle, just a generic "helperbot".
..internet. It really is, in this and in other situations where actual knowledge isn't locked away only available to insiders like it was in the past. I could about guarantee there are a LOT more people know about jury nullification now than 10 years ago. And it's not because ABC/CBS/whatever or the public propoganda indoctrination schools told them, nope, it's from reading stuff on the net. We are no longer confined to what a small handful of media outlets tell us, or government spokesgoons, or what the local library might hold. It is the "great enabler", and the main reason most governments seek to put more and more restrictions on it.
Well, LBJ won in 64 in the general election. Granted, he first got in with succession rules, but after that he got elected.
I wish goldwater had won though, I worked his campaign then. He was the closest thing to a semi honest guy for a long time in politics. You may not have agreed with him on this or that, but he stood his ground and spoke clearly and plainly and gave the reasoning behind what he said.
it's not my coding problem! I really don't care who owns what patent with activeX! Thanks for telling me/informing me, but I honestly do not care at this point. I am more concerned over the further ramifications of software patents in general. I prefer a no patents, GPL world, if that was possible. The article is an example, it wouldn't be an article if the patents didn't exist. *That* is the problem, not the minutiae of this or that case. Real companies big and small are getting nailed now, and the deluge has hardly begin, it is only going to get worse here on out, because more and more ridiculous patents are being issued. It's an artificially created problem, brought about by short market cycle greedsters, IMO, I'll add.
I am pessimistic anything good will happen until the system gets so complex that it collapses, which I think it will sometime. With thousands of software patents going in yearly...it'll collapse, bound to, because it was nuts to begin with.. After collapse, when even the dood in the street notices how far it is gone because it is affecting his life, then maybe we might see some positive changes for the better. It might take another decade, but collapse it will, when it becomes almost impossible to write one line of code without infringing on someones "IP" and when coders need a full time lawyer sitting right next to them as they type. That's the direction it is heading now, and I see nothing that will stop that extrapolated outlook on the horizon now.
"IP" is in a MAJOR push in the WTO,including software patents and patents on such things as the necessities of life, food, etc, and by far the WTO calls the shots on international business now, it's not this government or that government, it's the large corporations that run the WTO in the background insisting on this sort of thing. Some nations will hold out and not adopt software patents for awhile, but faced with trade sanctions from the major players..they'll cave.
Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton exhibited above median intelligence in various ways. Now if you want to include native cunning and near ESP skills with poly-tickin, add in LBJ and Truman. If you want to include organizational ability, add in Ike and Ronnie, because they knew when to layoff and let smarter folks do the heavy lifting. If you want to add in sheer reptile brain ruthlessness, add in Bush the elder.
NoXoN could have made any of those lists if he wasn't such a sheer ass.
Private healthcare insurance was pretty cheap before medicaid and medicare hit. I don't have a link handy but I remember when it was ridiculous cheap, nothing like it is now. Even if you work didn't provide it, 10-20 bucks a month usually did it. Maybe that would be 100$ now adjusted, something like that anyway.
Of course, an additional factor historically is that life insurance and annuities have pretty much always subsidised health insurance costs for those companies. Health coverage was pretty much a "loss leader" to get the agents foot in the door so to speak to sell Life policies, where the real loot was (and still is). They take the money and turn around and make the bulk of their profit money in the market, using the premiums cash to play with. If the market is healthy and stable, they can stay competitive, but if the market goes through boom and bust cycles severely, like it has recently (past decade in particular), combined with planetary wild cards like back to back killer hurricanes,etc (they ate over 50 billion just last year on hurricanes), insurance companies can stand to lose money bigtime and the only way to recoup it is to up rates and add more restrictions on policies, etc.. Some companies are doing their best to pull out of homeowner coverage in coastal areas, or dramatically raise prices, and I will predict if we get another killer hurricane season like last time that there will be profound governmental and mortgage lender and insurance changes coming next year. At the current rate, it is an unsustainable business, absolutely no doubt there at all. These companies (the one stop shop carriers who offer all sorts of insurance) are simply not going to keep eating massive damage and loss at that scale, it is impossible. People would have to pay a premium almost identical to the cost of their structure. How many times would a company pay for a rebuild? Right now, we still have places that haven't been rebuilt since the 2004 hurricane season, let alone last years. It is hemorrahging money just like the domestic auto manufacturers are, with no real good fix in sight.
Arkansas has pure quartz. Lovely, lovely stuff. I still have a bucket of nice stones from the time I went there tourist prospecting and camping out. Probably gave away or made into jewelry 150 lbs of nice points. Never did make it to go look at the diamonds though..sometime I will. And last I knew they still had decent affordable prices on nice farmland/small mountains type land. If I wasn't content with where I lived now I would consider northern Arkansas as a very nice place to live, especially if you could score a telecommute job.
Maybe your senior devs and management might want to take a look at GPL code now. This and many other reasons make it attractive, no vendor lock in (don't you think bill gates and MS are rich enough now?), helps to avoid future patent disputes, etc. It's as good as time as any,and you have 60 days, besides the one demo. Avoid future FUBARs like this, or at least minimise the chances. MS has a clear track record of shady deals and monopolistic abusive tendencies. It is their *business model*. Why be associated with people like that? And something to throw at senior management-where is the fat check from MS to pay for all the stuff you have to change because they were thieves and lost in court and people got sucked into using their stolen code? Aren't they the straight suits dream business? Where's this idemnification action?
The old saying fits, "sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas"
Go ahead and patent those innovations that make the computer hardware better. That's the tangible. the software still remains intangible, representation of ideas on a media. Now, you can answer the question, why not patent a novel or a musical score?
...proved my point. You can't do anything until you actually fire up the computer, or printer, or network switch, etc. Until then, your idea remains an intangible construct. Go ahead and patent your computer innovation, or new type of printer, etc. Copyright your code, but leave the patents to the tangibles.
As to a chemical patent, well..chemicals are tangibles, yes??
No, there's nothing magical about coding, it can be hard or easy, no one is trying to minimize the skull sweat involved or wants to fail to give appropriate societal props, financial or otherwise, it's just bad law, bad policy, it's screendoors on a submarine, just ill advised.
Like I said in my earlier reference, then why not patent new musical scores or a new novel? How about my landscape design and techniques? How about Dance, can you patent a dance number? Go ahead, tell a novelist or playwrite or composer their work is trivial, not deserving of a patent, while the stuff you type up called "code" is. Answer the question-where is the difference? They type up stuff, you type up stuff, it can be very simple to amazingly complex and involved, it might take years and years to "code" up a novel. Why can't that novelist get a patent?
Because it's a stupid idea? Good enough reason?
Ideas represented on any media, paper, scroll, vinyl, tape, magnetic disc, stone tablets, sheepskin, whatever-copyright fits. Perfectly acceptable.
Stuff that is built- tangibles-patent.
It's extremely easy to see the difference and why we are seeing problems with this experimental attempt to patent code, and thatis really all it is, an experiment, and I maintain all the evidence is there to see that it is failing..
Every day that goes by with more software patents being allowed and encouraged is another day closer to the coding world coming to a screechin halt as everyone turns their wallet over to the lawyers. They are going to need cross licensing halls as big as Walmarts soon.
Balmer and MS and some other goons like that aren't joking around, they WILL eventually try and use the big patent stick,when/if they really feel threatened and see nothing to lose, and because of all the prior acceptance of software patents, it is going to hurt the industry-not just open source, the entire industry when that time comes. This is an example of MAD on crack and steroids that can and will be activated.
A fully intact shirt! Say WHUT?? That's for n00bs and lusers! This is not Comdex or CES! This is *Linux*, you get the raw materials then custom craft your own technically superior and advanced shirt! What you get for show schwag is a box of old shop rags, a bent nail, some old rope to unravel for threads, crayon stubs, and MAN pages written on the back of old subway schedules translated from the original geekrish into urdu....and you'll LIKE IT
The reason why it's ludicrous is exactly why you see a case like this, and so many other software patent "disputes". It's just plain *nuts* on the face of it. Why not patent novels? Really, why not? Buncha stuff all typed up in a language or three, correct? So why not? Expresses some idea. It takes some skill, some effort, collating various ideas together in what the author hopes is a unique enough "new" thing to make a sale. The next novel might be slightly different, try to bring across a different idea, so another patent! How about music? Composers work at it, song writers, lyricists, arrangers. Why not patent what they do? It can be scored, using a musical language, and a unique song is unique. Give a patent! Next musician does something different, another patent! I do a lot of outside work, making gardens, landscaping, small scale terraforming. although others do it, my work is unique, it is slightly different from everyone else's. Can I get a patent? Why not? it takes work, it's unique, the arrangement is unique, it is meant for some purpose, so why not? I want my arrangement of x type of flowers next to y type of flowers in front of z bush to be patentable, because no one else did it before and I want them to license that idea from me, I demand exclusivity and government protection! I don't want anyone ripping off my ideas! Any other landscaper will have to license it, pay me! I learned my trade, work at it, use tools, create new stuff, etc, how come I am left out???
See how silly that is?
Nope, copyright is good enough for software, good enough for music and visual representations, but patents should be held in the physical realm. If you can't hold the device in your hand, it shouldn't be patentable. Once you start down the road patenting ideas alone, artificial constructs that only exist as representations on some media, no matter what they do, eventually everyone on the planet would need to have their own patent lawyer following them around reading contracts and paying licensing fees to do most anything. It is just plain nuts. It was a very bad idea to go down that road.
Back in ye olden days, people still did technical drawings before they built some new device. They didn't patent the drawings! they didn't patent the idea, they patented the stuff, the stuff made from the idea, you had to prove yourself by doing it. It was the device that had to be patented, the thing. Those people knew the difference, they could have easily made patents applicable to just the idea, but they DIDN'T because it's just *lame*. They made it so you could get a copyright on a drawing if you wanted to, and the written up description. that was enough then, it's still enough now (although the copyright term limits are still way too long in years)
multifunction tools that share either the same motor or engine are quite common now, go to any hardware store to see them. I have cordless "drills" that by pushing one button you remove the drillhead and can make it a jigsaw, or a sander or a...depends on which attachments you get. I have a basic string trimmer with a gas engine that you can swap the power head out and make it a pole saw, or a flowerbed rototiller or a... whatever attachment you buy. Different makes and brands have different attachments, but most of the big name vendors have those devices now.
It's common and not strange at all, a lot of people have them, from various vendors, it's a big market.
Not enough O2 on Mars to worry about rust. Heck, rust on cars in the US is only bad in northern states that spread a lot of salt on the roads, or in areas directly on the seashore. but inland, nope, rust isn't much of a problem. I live in georgia and you see plenty of old cars pretty much rust free here, and we have a lot more atmospheric water vapor and O2 than what Mars has.
Now dust might be a different problem, although I think the main ones on mars would be temp extremes and solar radiation. Machinery can be hardened, but we still don't have suits capable of allowing humans to go outside and work day in and day out, they are short exposure suits only, like the ones for EVA, and the astronauts take some radiation while they are out, part of the deal. A few hours, maybe semi OK, a colonist thinking permanent work on the surface..not yet, we need better materials science.
I wasn't commenting on the blackberry, just on the topic of convergence in general as a subthread side issue. I have heard that reply about "crappy cameras in phones" many times before, just thought that as long as they make good cameras and people tote them now and they are much larger than modern phones, that it might be easier to incorporate a decent phone/wireless function into a high end camera than vice versa. A niche product.
I'm sure blackberries are just fine products. I don't need one, but I am not a jet setting manager or governmental functionary either. I have a real cheap cell phone that probably does more things than make and take phone calls, but that's all I use it for. I think it does text messages but I've never even tried that. I don't even look at my email every day for that matter, it's always 99% spam anyway. My priorities and interests are quite different than from people who own blackberries, for the most part anyway. I'm more likely to drop 500 bucks on a used engine or a power tool or new rifle or something like that over a souped up cellphone.
Personally, I don't like most of the new cell phones, just too small, buttons too small, screen too small, and cost way too much. You can get a decent used laptop for what one of those new phones cost. Ya, you can't stick it in your pocket, but I don't really carry one all the time either, and when I am working I don't have the cellphone on me because A-I couldn't hear it, B-too dangerous, it would probably get smashed (already happened with pagers), and C-I can get to a phone or radio quick enough without carrying one constantly. If they ever release the cranked up MIT 100 buck laptop to civvies I'll buy one of those. Until then, I have a box of cell phones that are allegedly "obsolete". Screw it. Not buying any more, they can give them away, that's as much as I will pay for one anymore. I still have old bagphones that work-but you can't get them activated.
Anyway, carry on, I'm sure your company appreciates what you are doing, and heaven knows, our poor underpriveleged government workers and hard laboring corporate execs need every advantage they can possibly get to "stay on top of global business" and "manage" and "govern" us poor peons. In fact, I think RIM needs to come out with the 5,000$ limited edition co-branded with Rolex and DeBeers "global psychic plutocrat" model, think about how much more productive all those users will be with that one! They'll get their email before it's even sent!
...from terrestrial sources, but if you take solar thermal and combine it with Stirling technology it will work. The Sun is still our most practical fusion source.
I would agree with that and take it even further, I think most hot button issues have been artificially promoted as a left versus right dealo, when most of the time that doesn't exist. the R and D party seek to maintain ownzorships of the government, that is their primary function. governing is a secondary issue, they want to own the power so they keep that phony paradigm operating so that people won't look up and upstream and see that it's mostly the same crfew of millionaires and billionaires controlling everything. There are *some* differences, but, IMO, not as many as people think there are.
Word it how you like then, my point was easy enough to parse. the previous clinton administration sought to make him alter his speech to fit an agenda, in their case, they wanted him to sound more alarmist, in this admin, they want him to minimise any reports of global warming potential problems, etc.
I just thought it was interesting, as I hadn't read about that before. Both are forms of speech limitation, political pressure, etc..
I called it that because it was the opposite of what this administration wanted for his words to appear as. This time, they want his reports to be under emphasized on the severity, previously they wanted him to be more alarmist.
In the sense that they want to put words in his mouth, and/or somehow change or restrict what he is saying, it is the "same thing". Perhaps it could have worded better but I thought it was an interesting note, the first time I heard that about the previous admin with this guy,and I have read a lot of the recent previous reports about this guys struggles with government oficial interference.
...in TFA. He mentions in passing that the previous executive branch crew tried the same thing, but in an opposite manner, he was encouraged to overstate findings.
Slashdot Mirror
Accepting merchandise-even to use-opens one to the bribery effect. Accepting merchandise-even just to "review" -means that yes indeed you can get a cherry picked tweaked pristine example of the article in question.
It is just common sense bad mojo to accept stuff directly from the manufacturers for this sort of work.
...to completely produce every new component in a new machine, fab it, assemble it, all the components top to bottom case to mobo, power supply to optical drives and etc, etc, and ship it around? The general societal TCO? Are those prices and watts and ergs and joules and BTUs and whatnot in the calculations of how much it "costs" in energy compared to just using an older machine for a much longer time period before it is junked? And how much does it cost to safely junk an old machine? Can we add in the eventual environmental cleanup costs here as well? Judging by various "superfund" costs it is not cheap. Judging by health insurance costs it is not cheap. Judging by cost of oil and what is apparently necessary politically to keep that oil flowing to run the mines to run the smelters to run the ships to run the trucks and so on and so forth is not cheap. What is the cost of peoples' medical expenses from all the poison in the environment from the throw away culture because something a few years old is now "obsolete", even if it is still functional?
I don't know the exact answers to any of those questions, just take a SWAG at it and say "not cheap", and I think it is fair to ask the questions and not just fixate on the "cost of running" the machine by todays kilowatt/hr quote and some CPU benchmarks.
..which is well over 40 years now, it's always been this way.
My recommendation is to stop supporting either the D or R party, acknowledge both of them are completely "broken", there is no fix available for them, the corruption just goes way too deep, and something newer should be supported instead.
It's the entrenched good old boy bribe and lobby system that is at work, along with the "shadow" government of crooks that exists deep within the civil and military non-elected folks..
Get in some REALLY new fresh blood that isn't tainted and corrupted from the beginning and you might see honest government again. You might, and that is the only credible chance at this point.
Keep falling victim to those parties biennial FUD campaigns that you are "wasting" your vote to not vote for them because "this time it will be different", and all you do is keep swapping out one set of crooks for another, back and forth, back and forth, ie "lather, rinse, repeat". Lucy-charlie brown-football. Comes a time to just admit reality and that maybe you've been faked out and conned enough..
Admit reality, they have jointly hijacked government and turned it into a jobs and skimming program for criminal gangs, with a shared agreement to do everything they can to squash third parties and independents. All the way to manipulating the mass media at the top I will add. This is obvious as all get out.
A lot of their grassroots supporters are very well meaning and honest-on both sides, this is true facts, but once past the county level...well, your default outlook at contemplating them as humans should be "crook". The odds are heavily in your favor that way. I would doubt there's more than perhaps a dozen or so uncorrupted members in both houses or the higher level judiciary at this point, and I include them because they are all D or R party hacks for the most part, that's how they got those appointments in the first place..
The only "wasted" vote is one not cast - or one hijacked by computerised voting. That needs to be fixed as well, but you will NOT see that happen with the D or R party running things.
..this morning in fact, I had one of my occassional massive back spasms, knocked me out for a minute and put me on the floor for around half an hour or so. I only get them a few times a year but man are they *doozies*. I mean painful, instant non functional....it usually lasts for around 3 days before it goes away completely, so I have two more to contemplate not being able to go to work..sucks.. hurts to even sit in this chair right now.. anyway, now my Gf is here, but she just isn't strong enough to pick me up. I know the spasms subside after awhile (so far anyway), and eventually I was able to crawl up a chair and get my stick for support, but it would have been *nice* to have a household robot right then to help out. Some situations don't really need an expensive 9-11 call, but sometimes there just aren't the human resources available real handy to help out either. I can see with the aging of the population that this sort of development is pretty good and will probably be a major driving force for the future, because the market potential is pretty darn big. And not just the beer fetching angle, just a generic "helperbot".
..internet. It really is, in this and in other situations where actual knowledge isn't locked away only available to insiders like it was in the past. I could about guarantee there are a LOT more people know about jury nullification now than 10 years ago. And it's not because ABC/CBS/whatever or the public propoganda indoctrination schools told them, nope, it's from reading stuff on the net. We are no longer confined to what a small handful of media outlets tell us, or government spokesgoons, or what the local library might hold. It is the "great enabler", and the main reason most governments seek to put more and more restrictions on it.
Oh, man, cookies! How about peanut butter and molasses? Heck I even like plain old shortbreads.
Well, LBJ won in 64 in the general election. Granted, he first got in with succession rules, but after that he got elected.
I wish goldwater had won though, I worked his campaign then. He was the closest thing to a semi honest guy for a long time in politics. You may not have agreed with him on this or that, but he stood his ground and spoke clearly and plainly and gave the reasoning behind what he said.
it's not my coding problem! I really don't care who owns what patent with activeX! Thanks for telling me/informing me, but I honestly do not care at this point. I am more concerned over the further ramifications of software patents in general. I prefer a no patents, GPL world, if that was possible. The article is an example, it wouldn't be an article if the patents didn't exist. *That* is the problem, not the minutiae of this or that case. Real companies big and small are getting nailed now, and the deluge has hardly begin, it is only going to get worse here on out, because more and more ridiculous patents are being issued. It's an artificially created problem, brought about by short market cycle greedsters, IMO, I'll add.
I am pessimistic anything good will happen until the system gets so complex that it collapses, which I think it will sometime. With thousands of software patents going in yearly...it'll collapse, bound to, because it was nuts to begin with.. After collapse, when even the dood in the street notices how far it is gone because it is affecting his life, then maybe we might see some positive changes for the better. It might take another decade, but collapse it will, when it becomes almost impossible to write one line of code without infringing on someones "IP" and when coders need a full time lawyer sitting right next to them as they type. That's the direction it is heading now, and I see nothing that will stop that extrapolated outlook on the horizon now.
"IP" is in a MAJOR push in the WTO,including software patents and patents on such things as the necessities of life, food, etc, and by far the WTO calls the shots on international business now, it's not this government or that government, it's the large corporations that run the WTO in the background insisting on this sort of thing. Some nations will hold out and not adopt software patents for awhile, but faced with trade sanctions from the major players..they'll cave.
Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton exhibited above median intelligence in various ways. Now if you want to include native cunning and near ESP skills with poly-tickin, add in LBJ and Truman. If you want to include organizational ability, add in Ike and Ronnie, because they knew when to layoff and let smarter folks do the heavy lifting. If you want to add in sheer reptile brain ruthlessness, add in Bush the elder.
NoXoN could have made any of those lists if he wasn't such a sheer ass.
Private healthcare insurance was pretty cheap before medicaid and medicare hit. I don't have a link handy but I remember when it was ridiculous cheap, nothing like it is now. Even if you work didn't provide it, 10-20 bucks a month usually did it. Maybe that would be 100$ now adjusted, something like that anyway.
Of course, an additional factor historically is that life insurance and annuities have pretty much always subsidised health insurance costs for those companies. Health coverage was pretty much a "loss leader" to get the agents foot in the door so to speak to sell Life policies, where the real loot was (and still is). They take the money and turn around and make the bulk of their profit money in the market, using the premiums cash to play with. If the market is healthy and stable, they can stay competitive, but if the market goes through boom and bust cycles severely, like it has recently (past decade in particular), combined with planetary wild cards like back to back killer hurricanes,etc (they ate over 50 billion just last year on hurricanes), insurance companies can stand to lose money bigtime and the only way to recoup it is to up rates and add more restrictions on policies, etc.. Some companies are doing their best to pull out of homeowner coverage in coastal areas, or dramatically raise prices, and I will predict if we get another killer hurricane season like last time that there will be profound governmental and mortgage lender and insurance changes coming next year. At the current rate, it is an unsustainable business, absolutely no doubt there at all. These companies (the one stop shop carriers who offer all sorts of insurance) are simply not going to keep eating massive damage and loss at that scale, it is impossible. People would have to pay a premium almost identical to the cost of their structure. How many times would a company pay for a rebuild? Right now, we still have places that haven't been rebuilt since the 2004 hurricane season, let alone last years. It is hemorrahging money just like the domestic auto manufacturers are, with no real good fix in sight.
Arkansas has pure quartz. Lovely, lovely stuff. I still have a bucket of nice stones from the time I went there tourist prospecting and camping out. Probably gave away or made into jewelry 150 lbs of nice points. Never did make it to go look at the diamonds though..sometime I will. And last I knew they still had decent affordable prices on nice farmland/small mountains type land. If I wasn't content with where I lived now I would consider northern Arkansas as a very nice place to live, especially if you could score a telecommute job.
Maybe your senior devs and management might want to take a look at GPL code now. This and many other reasons make it attractive, no vendor lock in (don't you think bill gates and MS are rich enough now?), helps to avoid future patent disputes, etc. It's as good as time as any,and you have 60 days, besides the one demo. Avoid future FUBARs like this, or at least minimise the chances. MS has a clear track record of shady deals and monopolistic abusive tendencies. It is their *business model*. Why be associated with people like that? And something to throw at senior management-where is the fat check from MS to pay for all the stuff you have to change because they were thieves and lost in court and people got sucked into using their stolen code? Aren't they the straight suits dream business? Where's this idemnification action?
The old saying fits, "sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas"
Go ahead and patent those innovations that make the computer hardware better. That's the tangible. the software still remains intangible, representation of ideas on a media. Now, you can answer the question, why not patent a novel or a musical score?
...proved my point. You can't do anything until you actually fire up the computer, or printer, or network switch, etc. Until then, your idea remains an intangible construct. Go ahead and patent your computer innovation, or new type of printer, etc. Copyright your code, but leave the patents to the tangibles.
As to a chemical patent, well..chemicals are tangibles, yes??
No, there's nothing magical about coding, it can be hard or easy, no one is trying to minimize the skull sweat involved or wants to fail to give appropriate societal props, financial or otherwise, it's just bad law, bad policy, it's screendoors on a submarine, just ill advised.
Like I said in my earlier reference, then why not patent new musical scores or a new novel? How about my landscape design and techniques? How about Dance, can you patent a dance number? Go ahead, tell a novelist or playwrite or composer their work is trivial, not deserving of a patent, while the stuff you type up called "code" is. Answer the question-where is the difference? They type up stuff, you type up stuff, it can be very simple to amazingly complex and involved, it might take years and years to "code" up a novel. Why can't that novelist get a patent?
Because it's a stupid idea? Good enough reason?
Ideas represented on any media, paper, scroll, vinyl, tape, magnetic disc, stone tablets, sheepskin, whatever-copyright fits. Perfectly acceptable.
Stuff that is built- tangibles-patent.
It's extremely easy to see the difference and why we are seeing problems with this experimental attempt to patent code, and thatis really all it is, an experiment, and I maintain all the evidence is there to see that it is failing..
Every day that goes by with more software patents being allowed and encouraged is another day closer to the coding world coming to a screechin halt as everyone turns their wallet over to the lawyers. They are going to need cross licensing halls as big as Walmarts soon.
Balmer and MS and some other goons like that aren't joking around, they WILL eventually try and use the big patent stick,when/if they really feel threatened and see nothing to lose, and because of all the prior acceptance of software patents, it is going to hurt the industry-not just open source, the entire industry when that time comes. This is an example of MAD on crack and steroids that can and will be activated.
A fully intact shirt! Say WHUT?? That's for n00bs and lusers! This is not Comdex or CES! This is *Linux*, you get the raw materials then custom craft your own technically superior and advanced shirt! What you get for show schwag is a box of old shop rags, a bent nail, some old rope to unravel for threads, crayon stubs, and MAN pages written on the back of old subway schedules translated from the original geekrish into urdu. ...and you'll LIKE IT
The reason why it's ludicrous is exactly why you see a case like this, and so many other software patent "disputes". It's just plain *nuts* on the face of it. Why not patent novels? Really, why not? Buncha stuff all typed up in a language or three, correct? So why not? Expresses some idea. It takes some skill, some effort, collating various ideas together in what the author hopes is a unique enough "new" thing to make a sale. The next novel might be slightly different, try to bring across a different idea, so another patent! How about music? Composers work at it, song writers, lyricists, arrangers. Why not patent what they do? It can be scored, using a musical language, and a unique song is unique. Give a patent! Next musician does something different, another patent! I do a lot of outside work, making gardens, landscaping, small scale terraforming. although others do it, my work is unique, it is slightly different from everyone else's. Can I get a patent? Why not? it takes work, it's unique, the arrangement is unique, it is meant for some purpose, so why not? I want my arrangement of x type of flowers next to y type of flowers in front of z bush to be patentable, because no one else did it before and I want them to license that idea from me, I demand exclusivity and government protection! I don't want anyone ripping off my ideas! Any other landscaper will have to license it, pay me! I learned my trade, work at it, use tools, create new stuff, etc, how come I am left out???
See how silly that is?
Nope, copyright is good enough for software, good enough for music and visual representations, but patents should be held in the physical realm. If you can't hold the device in your hand, it shouldn't be patentable. Once you start down the road patenting ideas alone, artificial constructs that only exist as representations on some media, no matter what they do, eventually everyone on the planet would need to have their own patent lawyer following them around reading contracts and paying licensing fees to do most anything. It is just plain nuts. It was a very bad idea to go down that road.
Back in ye olden days, people still did technical drawings before they built some new device. They didn't patent the drawings! they didn't patent the idea, they patented the stuff, the stuff made from the idea, you had to prove yourself by doing it. It was the device that had to be patented, the thing. Those people knew the difference, they could have easily made patents applicable to just the idea, but they DIDN'T because it's just *lame*. They made it so you could get a copyright on a drawing if you wanted to, and the written up description. that was enough then, it's still enough now (although the copyright term limits are still way too long in years)
multifunction tools that share either the same motor or engine are quite common now, go to any hardware store to see them. I have cordless "drills" that by pushing one button you remove the drillhead and can make it a jigsaw, or a sander or a...depends on which attachments you get. I have a basic string trimmer with a gas engine that you can swap the power head out and make it a pole saw, or a flowerbed rototiller or a... whatever attachment you buy. Different makes and brands have different attachments, but most of the big name vendors have those devices now.
It's common and not strange at all, a lot of people have them, from various vendors, it's a big market.
Not enough O2 on Mars to worry about rust. Heck, rust on cars in the US is only bad in northern states that spread a lot of salt on the roads, or in areas directly on the seashore. but inland, nope, rust isn't much of a problem. I live in georgia and you see plenty of old cars pretty much rust free here, and we have a lot more atmospheric water vapor and O2 than what Mars has.
Now dust might be a different problem, although I think the main ones on mars would be temp extremes and solar radiation. Machinery can be hardened, but we still don't have suits capable of allowing humans to go outside and work day in and day out, they are short exposure suits only, like the ones for EVA, and the astronauts take some radiation while they are out, part of the deal. A few hours, maybe semi OK, a colonist thinking permanent work on the surface..not yet, we need better materials science.
I wasn't commenting on the blackberry, just on the topic of convergence in general as a subthread side issue. I have heard that reply about "crappy cameras in phones" many times before, just thought that as long as they make good cameras and people tote them now and they are much larger than modern phones, that it might be easier to incorporate a decent phone/wireless function into a high end camera than vice versa. A niche product.
I'm sure blackberries are just fine products. I don't need one, but I am not a jet setting manager or governmental functionary either. I have a real cheap cell phone that probably does more things than make and take phone calls, but that's all I use it for. I think it does text messages but I've never even tried that. I don't even look at my email every day for that matter, it's always 99% spam anyway. My priorities and interests are quite different than from people who own blackberries, for the most part anyway. I'm more likely to drop 500 bucks on a used engine or a power tool or new rifle or something like that over a souped up cellphone.
Personally, I don't like most of the new cell phones, just too small, buttons too small, screen too small, and cost way too much. You can get a decent used laptop for what one of those new phones cost. Ya, you can't stick it in your pocket, but I don't really carry one all the time either, and when I am working I don't have the cellphone on me because A-I couldn't hear it, B-too dangerous, it would probably get smashed (already happened with pagers), and C-I can get to a phone or radio quick enough without carrying one constantly. If they ever release the cranked up MIT 100 buck laptop to civvies I'll buy one of those. Until then, I have a box of cell phones that are allegedly "obsolete". Screw it. Not buying any more, they can give them away, that's as much as I will pay for one anymore. I still have old bagphones that work-but you can't get them activated.
Anyway, carry on, I'm sure your company appreciates what you are doing, and heaven knows, our poor underpriveleged government workers and hard laboring corporate execs need every advantage they can possibly get to "stay on top of global business" and "manage" and "govern" us poor peons. In fact, I think RIM needs to come out with the 5,000$ limited edition co-branded with Rolex and DeBeers "global psychic plutocrat" model, think about how much more productive all those users will be with that one! They'll get their email before it's even sent!
Don't start with a PDA and add a camera, start with a good camera and "converge in" the PDA things you might want.
I have no idea, anyone make anything like that? Niche market but it might sell.
...from terrestrial sources, but if you take solar thermal and combine it with Stirling technology it will work. The Sun is still our most practical fusion source.
I would agree with that and take it even further, I think most hot button issues have been artificially promoted as a left versus right dealo, when most of the time that doesn't exist. the R and D party seek to maintain ownzorships of the government, that is their primary function. governing is a secondary issue, they want to own the power so they keep that phony paradigm operating so that people won't look up and upstream and see that it's mostly the same crfew of millionaires and billionaires controlling everything. There are *some* differences, but, IMO, not as many as people think there are.
Word it how you like then, my point was easy enough to parse. the previous clinton administration sought to make him alter his speech to fit an agenda, in their case, they wanted him to sound more alarmist, in this admin, they want him to minimise any reports of global warming potential problems, etc.
I just thought it was interesting, as I hadn't read about that before. Both are forms of speech limitation, political pressure, etc..
I called it that because it was the opposite of what this administration wanted for his words to appear as. This time, they want his reports to be under emphasized on the severity, previously they wanted him to be more alarmist.
In the sense that they want to put words in his mouth, and/or somehow change or restrict what he is saying, it is the "same thing". Perhaps it could have worded better but I thought it was an interesting note, the first time I heard that about the previous admin with this guy,and I have read a lot of the recent previous reports about this guys struggles with government oficial interference.
...in TFA. He mentions in passing that the previous executive branch crew tried the same thing, but in an opposite manner, he was encouraged to overstate findings.