Ummm... well, ok, it *is* a 4-letter word. But you all
know what I mean.
Kern blames engineering schools for giving out too much
work and then complains that foreigners are taking up
the available engineering jobs. Didn't these foreigners
have just as much work to do as he had?
There's just no substitute for hard work and study. That's
why engineering school is made for people who like to
build stuff and work hard. We don't need engineers who shy
away from finishing the job at hand.
Instead of blaming engineering schools for giving out low grades,
why doesn't he complain about the grade-inflated liberal arts programs
that are graduating all our future dog-fXXXers. You know, those
people at work who are too lazy to figure out how to solve their
own problems themselves?
Contrary to what the parent post said, namely, "Where anything under the sun is patentable, it puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on the patent office," anything under the sun is NOT patentable. Anything under the sun MADE BY MAN has the POTENTIAL to be patentable - so long as it meets the criteria of the Patent Act, namely, novelty, utility, and non-obviousness.Despite the seeming simplicity of these terms, there are very well-defined legal tests behind each one that must be applied properly. Each of those terms has thousands of pages of case law / judicial interpretation behind it.
As comforting as you're making this sound, the truth is that non-obviousness and novelty seem to be completely ignored by the USPTO.
For instance, to anyone skilled in the art, bust-size measurement is an easy thing to do. As if no one had ever done this before in the garment industry...
The fact is that the patent system is now stifling innovation, not promoting it. People are scared to build obvious products because those products may already be patented. It's a real shame...
No, I've been reading/. for a long time. I just posted a little too quickly. I meant to say, "put the data in the public domain", but used the wrong term.
For that matter I wonder out loud if there isn't a kind of data licence whereby any subsequent redistribution of the post-processing on the data might not be subject to a GPL-like agreement...?
For instance, if you were to publish an article on your post-processing of the data, you might have to supply the original data in some form...
A good programmer once told me that the 3 steps to writing programs are:
1) Make it work.
2) Make it right.
3) Make it fast.
Most people never get past step 1. Unless runtime issues are severely limiting your ability to debug, optimizing is the step you take when you have nothing left to do.:-)
I don't know about the rest of you, but this story just doesn't seem physically right to me...
I don't see how a relatively local event like a volcanic landslide could cause the same kind of damage that continental plates can do. These two events are not on the same scale.
Yes, the landslide is a displacement wave, but it's a geologically minor event compared to a continental plate shift.
The equation I use the most is definitely "F = m a" in all of its interesting forms. I would give that a number one rating.
But the most intriguing are the Navier-Stokes Equations. It's amazing that just by changing the boundary conditions on these dynamical equations, you can completely change the behaviour of the flow.
For incompressible flows of common fluids, these 3 simple equations make incredibly accurate predictions:
The question, as posed, is a loaded one.
To paraphrase, we have two choices:
Will Open or Free communities ever develop
software that will be interesting to the
mainstream user?, or
Is Open or Free software only for more
intelligent users?
Equally loaded questions could be:
Will mainstream users ever realise that Open or Free software is the better choice?
Will Microsoft ever not need to resort to FUD to counter Open and Free software choices?
... or a whole host of other loaded questions.
Who knows what cultural or commercial trends will
bring us in terms of mainstream appeal? One thing's for sure: software quality and efficiency will not be significant criteria.
Slashdot Mirror
Cool! Pre-crime
Everything you need to manage your schedule is a d/a board and crontab on linux/Unix.
Ummm... well, ok, it *is* a 4-letter word. But you all know what I mean.
Kern blames engineering schools for giving out too much work and then complains that foreigners are taking up the available engineering jobs. Didn't these foreigners have just as much work to do as he had?
There's just no substitute for hard work and study. That's why engineering school is made for people who like to build stuff and work hard. We don't need engineers who shy away from finishing the job at hand.
Instead of blaming engineering schools for giving out low grades, why doesn't he complain about the grade-inflated liberal arts programs that are graduating all our future dog-fXXXers. You know, those people at work who are too lazy to figure out how to solve their own problems themselves?
As comforting as you're making this sound, the truth is that non-obviousness and novelty seem to be completely ignored by the USPTO.
For instance, to anyone skilled in the art, bust-size measurement is an easy thing to do. As if no one had ever done this before in the garment industry...
The fact is that the patent system is now stifling innovation, not promoting it. People are scared to build obvious products because those products may already be patented. It's a real shame...
No, I've been reading /. for a long time. I just posted a little too quickly. I meant to say, "put the data in the public domain", but used the wrong term.
For that matter I wonder out loud if there isn't a kind of data licence whereby any subsequent redistribution of the post-processing on the data might not be subject to a GPL-like agreement...?
For instance, if you were to publish an article on your post-processing of the data, you might have to supply the original data in some form...
You're right, of course. My mistake - I guess I posted too quickly and really meant to put the data in the public domain.
Thanks to all those who offered a correction.
It would certainly interest readers of /. a lot more
if the data were GPL'd. I don't see any reason why
data like this shouldn't be accessible to all.
I wouldn't be a true Slashdot reader if I didn't point out that you can't sort by operating system in the Top500 database.
But if you could, you'd see Linux prominently displayed.
Q: You know what *other* business you're in if you're in the business of extermination? A: That's right - breeding rats!
Before answering the question, we all need to agree on a design and implementation framework. For instance, the one I use looks like:
Once the above framework is laid, the following definitions can now make sense:
Note that if the code is the spec, then there can never really be a bug, can there?
A good programmer once told me that the 3 steps to writing programs are:
Most people never get past step 1. Unless runtime issues are severely limiting your ability to debug, optimizing is the step you take when you have nothing left to do. :-)
Be very careful with your current MP3 player. Keep it safe and happy. Keep it clean and dust-free. Don't jar it too much...
Because pretty soon it may very well be the only hardware that plays the mp3's you've been collecting for so long!
I don't know about the rest of you, but this story just doesn't seem physically right to me... I don't see how a relatively local event like a volcanic landslide could cause the same kind of damage that continental plates can do. These two events are not on the same scale. Yes, the landslide is a displacement wave, but it's a geologically minor event compared to a continental plate shift.
The equation I use the most is definitely "F = m a" in all of its interesting forms. I would give that a number one rating.
But the most intriguing are the Navier-Stokes Equations. It's amazing that just by changing the boundary conditions on these dynamical equations, you can completely change the behaviour of the flow.
For incompressible flows of common fluids, these 3 simple equations make incredibly accurate predictions:
du/dx + dv/dx = 0 (incompressibility eqn)
du/dt + u du/dx + v du/dy + dP/dx = 1/R ( d^2 u/dx^2 + d^2 u/ dy^2 ) (momentum-x eqn)
dv/dt + u dv/dx + v dv/dy + dP/dy = 1/R ( d^2 v/dx^2 + d^2 v/ dy^2 ) (momentum-y eqn)
The question, as posed, is a loaded one. To paraphrase, we have two choices:
Will Open or Free communities ever develop software that will be interesting to the mainstream user?, or
Is Open or Free software only for more intelligent users?
Equally loaded questions could be:
Will mainstream users ever realise that Open or Free software is the better choice?
Will Microsoft ever not need to resort to FUD to counter Open and Free software choices?
Who knows what cultural or commercial trends will bring us in terms of mainstream appeal? One thing's for sure: software quality and efficiency will not be significant criteria.