In unilateral contracts, the requirement that acceptance be communicated to the offeror is waived. The offeree accepts by performing the condition, and the offeree's performance is also treated as the price, or consideration, for the offeror's promise.
Actually, two different words: Unilateral Contract.
Microsoft is entering into an enforceable contract. This isn't grey area. Anyone who accepts this offer by building an application that utilizes the patented technology is untouchable. This is well established law.
OK, so it's 750 students, and say it lasts 20 years (I'd call that optimistic, I haven't seen a whole lot of schools that old without some serious refresh, and this is a high-tech school as well - high tech gets real old real fast.) Anyhow, that's still $4500 per year, per student. And that's purely depreciation on the building. Once you add in teacher salaries, administrative overhead, maintenance, and (this is Microsoft after all) software licensing and upgrades, that won't be chump change.
First of all that is the buiding and the initial set of equipment. It may also be the real estate, which lasts essentially forever. The building can last a long long time - 30+ years, some equipment - desks and the like - may last 15 years while the tech equipment will probably last five.
Factor that big city school systems frequently pay in $8,000 to $12,000 per pupil per year. Usually that is an average of all pupils, where HS costs are higher than lower grades. So the school district might be paying $15,000 per HS student per year anyway. So there is still plenty leftover to operate the school.
are you implying that current DVD and SD displays are the "peak" of home theater technology?
For the average user? Yes.
You may very well be correct in your assessment that they aren't using HD to it's full potential yet. If so, there may very well be a market when and if they do. I won't make a prediction either way, as I do not feel qualified.
But for the average user? They jumped wholesale to DVDs, and it wasn't just the picture quality that did it for them. VCRs are an inferior technology on so many levels - from the need to rewind or fast forward if there is a specific part of the movie you want to see, to the noticable degredation of the tape after only a few years of regular use. DVDs were better in every sense of the word, and early adopters flocked to them, with the average users following shortly thereafter. That isn't happening this time.
Now, will it happen if true HD becomes available? I can't say. But even if that does happen, it will not be on par with the shift from VHS to DVD, if only because it's an improvement in the area of picture quality alone, and not overall usability.
This is "the lesson of the iPod" all over again.
Digital music, in the formats and sample rates that the vast majority of people use, is far inferior to best recorded sources, and inferior to the basic and ubiquitous CD. Digital music is successful because it is convenient to carry around an entire record collection. The iPod is the most successful digital music player line because it is easy to use, especially coupled with iTunes and the iTunes store.
Cable TV offered the convenience of more channels and not having to struggle with an antenna. Cell phones offered the convenience of making and receiving call anywhere. People buy laptops now because they can carry them around their house rather than sit at a desk.
In the end HD and all its accoutrements won't be rapidly adopted because they don't offer any increase in convenience. If people cared about quality, we'd still have big movie theatres playing 75mm films, but people preferred more choices and more show times.
By way of comparison: NYC has the subway and affordable cabs - with flat rates to the airports. You can go anywhere you want in NYC on the subway and maybe a cab.
So my boss is visiting from HQ in San Mateo. We're meeting with clients in downtown Brooklyn and we need to go to midtown for the next set of meetings. He asks "How are we going to get there?" I told him "The many-windowed limosine."
$2 each and 10 minutes later we're riding the #2 subway under the East River and he hits me with "How late do these run?" Apparently in less civilized parts of the world, mass transit is only available during certain hours, where NY has a system that is available 24/7/365, only stopping for an occassional major blackout or the "once every 20 years" transit strike.
Where else are there 3 major airports within 50 miles of each other with a Bay between them? Where else are can you find enough land to support the millions of poorer people who live on the edges of the valley and take all the supporting jobs that the rich dont have to do, but are willing to pay someone else to do? Decent Mass-transit, Two major Colleges, a better freeway system then most places, AND better then average weather?
In short, Silicon Valley has everything good about all the other technical centers, but little of the bad. You dont have the weather issues, the traffic issues (at least not as bad as in Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue, and you dont have a population afraid to display conspicuous wealth and success in their purchases and activities.
In the Valley, there is a general assumption that with luck, education and a work ethic, it is possible to get rich relatively quick. In Seattle and other areas, if you dont work for some place like Microsoft (of late 80s-to late 90s) it is assumed that fast wealth is beyond your reach by a large part of the populi.
In the Valley, money and work = competition and lifestyle.
Big F'ing Deal! NY has far more of just about everything you've listed there other than weather.
I'm roughly employee 35 at a Silicon Valley startup, doing pre-sales technical work and implementations with our customers in and around NYC. I can tell you this from experience:
Northern California is a technology center because it doesn't have a substantial competing industry. A software house in SV needs to compete with other software houses for talent. A software house in NYC needs to compete with other software houses, consulting and solutions vendors, and the customers' own IT shops. Wall St, in particular, is willing to throw lots and lots of resources into hiring the best people available. I've worked with plenty of Wall St developers who are every bit as sharp as the best in SV.
Northern California is a tech center because there is less competition from other industries. A hot developer in SV is going to work for a tech company, the only question is which one. A hot developer in NYC has a choice of industry.
I've been using Verizon EvDO in and around NYC for about 9 months, and I've found that Verizon has been surprisingly honest about their speed. Everything I've read from Verizon said typical speeds of 400-600kbs with bursts up to 2 Mbs. This is pretty much exactly what I get. I did some downloads yesterday of some decent size files in a strong signal location in downtown Brooklyn and got 1.7 Mbs. Typically, however, I average about 500 kbs.
When are we going to see flash type drives that are cheap AND super fast? After all, secondary storage is perhaps the only remaining perfomance bottleneck in computers these days (well, that and crappy ISPs that don't/can't give you more than a few mips up and a little more down, but I digress.)
If secondary storage is that fast, how is different than primary storage? The real interesting thing is that as persistant ram improves the distinction between primary and secondary will gradually fade. Or, perhaps, both will be lumped together and compared to on-die cache.
No, actually in a lot of ways they're not incompatible, even thought they use a different set of technology for the air interface, much of the infrastructure is similar as are the concepts. Check out the 3gpp specs if you wish.
Most 3G phones are dual mode, and can do a handover between 3G and 2.5G (gsm) networks.
They're incompatible because they require two different radios implementing two different multiplexing/modulation schemes. The carriers were forced to develop dual mode phones because there was no upgrade path from GSM to UMTS. Way back when the CDMA carriers in the US provided dual mode phones that also provided AMPS service. GSM and UMTS are no more compatible than AMPS and CDMA. I can build a PC with a token ring adapter and an ethernet adapter, but that doesn't make token ring and ethernet compatible.
Once UMTS is widespread, it will be possible to build phones that can operate in both UMTS and CDMA environments with the same radio. Roaming across both CDMA and UMTS networks will be natively possible with virtually all phones, not as a special feature of some phones, or as a necessity that adds significant expense.
Europe is currently running two completely incompatible standards - GSM and UMTS.
With AMPS virtually dead and IDEN at end of life, the US is running two incompatible standards, GSM and CDMA2000.
Eventually, the GSM providers in Europe and the US will migrate everyone to UMTS and GSM will finally die like the old US TDMA system. Dual mode phones for UMTS and CDMA2000 are trivially simple, because UMTS is a CDMA technology differing from CDMA2000 only in software.
Actually, it is you who is missing the point. Go look at some prices. Vodaphone, for instance charges 90 Euro - $107 - for 500 minutes. Verizon, by comparison, will sell you 2000 peak minutes for $100, which more than makes up for the incoming charges. European carriers can't provide the services that Sprint and Verizon can provide in the US.
Europe standardized on a bad standard. In their rush to standardize, they didn't let the technology develop sufficiently. Now they are in the position of abandoning their infrastructure and building a new one at huge expense.
The US allowed the carriers to do their own thing, and because of it there was mass chaos at the beginning. But after several rounds of consolidation, standardization has come without the intervention of bureaucrats. And winners are using the superior technology.
Better service for less money. Europe has become the backwater.
As a side note, keep in mind that the legacy environment in Europe and the Unites States was far different. In Europe, the phone systems were generally incredibly bad. Just getting service would frequently take months, and the charges were exhorbitant. For all its faults, the traditional telephone system in the United States was exceptionally well run and efficient. The charges were low, especially for local calling. If one decided they needed a new line on Monday, it would generally be installed and working on Wednesday or Thursady. In Europe, mobile phones were a way to sidestep the train wreck of a wired phone system; there was pent up demand. In the US, mobile phones were luxury items for a long time.
As an American, I read about these nifty phone network upgrades and know that I will not see them for at least 3 years. Why is this? Is it the geographical size of the market? The size of the customer bases that subscribe to the networks? Regulatory restrictions? User demand/knowledge/acceptance of these features?
I am inviting anyone in the know to please beat me with the clue stick!
I'll gladly beat you with the clue stick.
As an American, you've had access to the better technology for quite a while now. GSM, based on TDMA, is fundamentally inferior to the more prevelent CDMA technology used in the United States as well as much of the pacific rim. The EDGE is laughable. GPRS, which all the GSM fanboys are so excited about, is equivalent to the CDMA2000 1xRTT protocol available nationwide for at least three or four years now. CDMA2000 1xEvDO is currently delivering speeds of 400-600 kbs with bursts up to 2 Mbps in 50+ metro areas. I use this on a daily basis, and those speeds are not just marketing literature.
The GSM/TDMA infrastructure is essentially at end-of-life, and the providers in Europe are finally starting to deploy CDMA based WCDMA/UMTS systems. UMTS grafts the GSM style sim card and other parts of the stack with a CDMA network layer. UMTS can provide data rates similar to EvDO, as well as 8 times the calls of a GSM node at only 1.5 times the cost.
The radios used for CDMA2000 and WCDMA are identical, so the primary handset differences are in software. Expect to see a next generation of CDMA phones able to roam on both CDMA2000 and WCDMA/UMTS systems. Hopefully that will allow the legacy CDMA providers to migrate to admittedly superior SIM card based systems.
Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing. Many people have likely experienced this: ever start working and then suddenly realize it's already lunch time? Have you had periods where you spend a couple hours deeply focused while getting enormous amounts of work done? That's flow.
The thing is, getting into this state requires at least 20 minutes to a half an hour, and it can be very easily disturbed by outside distractions, such as noise, conversations, etc. And any break in ones concentration just requires another 20 minutes of recovery time. Consequently, open, cubicle-style workspaces are exactly the *worst* kind of work environment for these kinds of professions. All they do is increase the amount of distraction and make it more difficult for employees to enter a proper state of flow, when they are most productive.
Even in a typical private office, however, there are still distractions. The telephone ringing or your neighbor speaking too loud or any of a million other things can be disturbing.
A good compromise is to provide flexible space, cubicles for handling the normal day-to-day stuff, team rooms for collaborative work, and small private spaces with no distractions for deep solo concentration.
Actually, lots of companies provide the third. The room is generally tiled and has a row of tiny offices equipped with porceline chairs.
Sorry to reply twice... just thought of a second point.
I used to work for a "Big 6" professional services/accounting firm. I can't even tell you the number of SAP or PeopleSoft implementations this firm bungled with a staff of 100+ on a project all billing at about $200/hr.
Plenty of high priced consultants screw up too.
To make any kind of large scale project succede, you need to 1) look for - and be willing to pay for - good quality talent and 2) watch them like a hawk. Have them deliver early and often, and monitor their deliverables. Yank them out if the project gets into trouble, don't wait until you've sunk two years and $50 million in before you find out they are incompetent.
Well if you are using Wipro you get what you deserve. I've had good luck with an outfit called Kanbay. I don't send them architecture work, but they do pretty good implementation.
Your correct that the top people have emigrated, but that is slowly changing, and the quality of the people that you can find in India is improving. In another 5-10 years I expect to see good architects staying in India.
everything we've outsourced to india has been slower to develop, buggier, and come with more absolute incomprehensibility of design than anything I've ever seen.
I've seen it both ways. When companies off-shore and go for the cheapest bid, they have the same poor experience as when they hire the cheapest on-shore consultants.
The bottom-of-the-barrel firms offer cheap rates because they pay poorly. Since they pay poorly anyone with a little talent leaves as soon as they have enough experience to get a better job. The only people that stay in these jobs are incompetents.
Plenty of off-shore providers pay well enough to attract high quality talent, and so are able to provide high quality services.
The next time some manager wants to hire an off-shore provider, make sure they understand this and get them to hire a $40/hr firm rather than a $20/hr firm. They'll still save money over the $80+/hr that it will cost them on-shore, and they'll get a skilled workforce.
Your experiences with India have been because of your own company's poor decisions or lack of due diligence. Brown people are just as capable as white people.
I'm sorry. Your post is not in accordance with the ill-informed groupthink that characterizes slashdot in general and "your rights online" in particular. You must be down-modded no matter how accurate and insightful you actually are. Please refrain from challenging ignorance again.
Let's say inventor A have the idea of a way of doing something. He patents it. Doesn't use it, and sit on it.
And how is this relevant to this case?
Tom Campagna had an idea, built it, patented it, demoed it at trade shows, and tried to sell it. How is that sitting on it?
Have you bothered to read any details on this case at all? Or do you have a preconceived notion and prefer to sjsut set up straw man arguments to knock them down?
Sorry, I am against THIS. Some ideas are obvious, if it is process, a software, a mathematical formula, something relatively obvious, it SHOULD NOT be patentable.
Sure. All this was obvious in 1990 when cell phones were barely available and the only people on the internet were college students and researchers.
I agree that putting email on a wireless device probably would be obvious. Aloha-Net was already active, exchanging email among other traffic between fixed wireless points.
The key is that Campagna's patents were not simply about exchanging email wirelessly, but were about exchanging email with a wireless device while minimizing the amount of time the radio on the device was active. A 'blackberry' that needed to be plugged in or needed to be recharged every two hours. The non-obvious factors were the techniques to shut down the radio so that small batteries would last several days. Those things are not so obvious.
What bothers me in this entire process is that NTP was composed entirely of the inventor and a lawyer. So for much of this case, it's been just a lawyer.
Actually, Tom Campagna was around for most of this case. This case started in 2001 and he died in 2004, IIRC. And it hasn't just been the lawyer, Tom's widow inherited his interest in NTP. They've brought in more partners in order to have the capital to pursue the case, which has cost millions.
The most foolish thing though is that I believe RIM could have settled this case for far smaller sum early on, but now its 600M and probably something similar again in lawyers fees and business damage.
My understanding is that NTP offered a licensing agreement in 2001 on the order of $4 or $5 million. RIM didn't even respond. When a patent holder contacts you and you respond and try to work out an arrangement, the damages that the patent holder can collect are relatively small. However, if you have been notified that their is a potential infringement and you ignore it, it becomes "willful infringement" and the potential damages are much higher.
Not in direct response to your comments, but as a general comment, it is important to point out that Campagna filed the patents in 1990-91. He built a working system and demonstrated it at trade shows before email or cell phones were commonplace. He tried to market it, but the customers weren't ready. RIM basically reimplemented his ideas when the market was ready.
Wireless email is certainly predictable, and was done before ESA (the predecessor to RIM). What ESA produced was a system that pushed email without the client device needing to be continually active in a high power state. That is what was novel and non-obvious. A device that simple reimplemented wired or fixed wireless strategies would have needed to be powered continuously or at least recharged every several hours.
So RIM invented something that Tom Campagna demoed at COMDEX in 1990? That is a pretty good trick. Or maybe we should blame him for being almost a decade ahead of the market?
If the patents are good, that's reasonable. If they aren't, it's extortion. The fact that it's a widow doing the extorting doesn't make it more ethical; any more than being an orphan makes piracy ethically acceptable.
And it isn't RIM's fault if the basement tinkerer didn't come up with something legitimately patentable, even if he left a poor, starving widow behind. Perhaps she can figure out something for the company to do.
The patents were good until RIM bought enough congressmen and lobbyists. Or do you subscribe to the theory that sending large sums of money to Washington and the PTO review were simply a big coincidence. RIM bribed their way to a patent invalidation.
I guess it is the widow's fault that she didn't buy off congressmen too. All hail RIM, defender of the prinicpal - "Money Talks".
I think they still should have something. I mean, the "inventions" we're talking about here are nothign of the kind. They're just ideas with no practical anything behind them...Like, I'm going to patent "Holographic optical email display interfaces that use retinal focus for navigation" *Patent patent patent*
Okay, I'm done. Now, when someone actually invents that, I own it because I thought of it first? How does that follow? I can sit around and pull stuff outta my ass all day long, do no more investment in it than it costs to get a patent, then sue the people who put zillions of dollars and tens of thousands of manhours into developing it, and that is somehow legit?
All that does is make corporations unwilling to invest in new tech, for fear some stupid patent troll who has a patent on the fricking XOR gate will come along and sue them for *cue Dr. Evil voice* One billion dollars!
There is no legal punishment sufficient for NTP...I'm thinking dark alleys, big angry nerds (with overdeveloped Crackberry thumb muscles) wielding boards studded with nails.
I can't believe how badly the Slashbots have been brainwashed on this one...
NTP's predecessor built and demonstrated working systems in the late 80's/early 90's (back when email was in technical colleges and research labs, but virtually nowhere else). He demonstrated the technology at trade shows. He almost closed a deal with IBM. The technology is real, not some fanciful bit of imagination the way yo imply.
A little later RIM comes along, builds a successful company, and uses their patent portfolio to stifle innovation and drive competitors out of business.
NTP's predecessor goes out of business. The basement inventor loses his money but gets to keep the patent portfolio after the liquidation.
NTP attempts to license the patents to RIM for $4 million. RIM refuses. NTP sues RIM. RIM falsifies evidence during the case. The jury finds for NTP. RIM still refuses to settle.
The inventor dies. Now his widow is the owner of NTP.
NTP requests that RIM be shutdown. RIM works out a deal to license the patents for $450 million, but backs out at the last moment. RIM floods congress with lobbyists. After all these lobbyists start spreading money around Washington, the PTO is suddenly interested in reviewing the patents. Apparently you can buy patent invalidation.
And the slashbots all stand up and cheer while a big company lies, cheats, and bribes in order to steal a basement inventor's legacy from his widow.
What the predecessor to NTP did was demonstrate a workable system in the late 80s/early 90s, before all that infrastructure was in place. He tried to bring it to market. He had a deal almost done with IBM, even demonstrated it at trade shows. His company was liquidated after the IBM deal fell threw, but was left with the patent portfolio.
Several years later, RIM came on the scene and developed a workable system based on his technology. He offered a license for $4 million. RIM didn't even bother to respond, because they were too busy driving competitors out of the market using their own patents. After RIM repeatedly blew him off, he got pissed and sued. RIM's lawyers were caught falsifying evidence. They still wouldn't pay the licensing. He started raising his price.
Fast forward a few years. The inventor is dead, but his widow now holds the patents. RIM is on the verge of losing. So RIM throws lots and lots of dollars at Washington lobbyists to pressure congressmen, who pressure the Patent Office.
The real lesson here is that big successful technology companies can push around the little guy, can cheat and bribe to steal someone else's work, and all the slashbots will stand up and cheer.
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Actually, two different words: Unilateral Contract.
Microsoft is entering into an enforceable contract. This isn't grey area. Anyone who accepts this offer by building an application that utilizes the patented technology is untouchable. This is well established law.
This is "the lesson of the iPod" all over again.
Digital music, in the formats and sample rates that the vast majority of people use, is far inferior to best recorded sources, and inferior to the basic and ubiquitous CD. Digital music is successful because it is convenient to carry around an entire record collection. The iPod is the most successful digital music player line because it is easy to use, especially coupled with iTunes and the iTunes store.
Cable TV offered the convenience of more channels and not having to struggle with an antenna. Cell phones offered the convenience of making and receiving call anywhere. People buy laptops now because they can carry them around their house rather than sit at a desk.
In the end HD and all its accoutrements won't be rapidly adopted because they don't offer any increase in convenience. If people cared about quality, we'd still have big movie theatres playing 75mm films, but people preferred more choices and more show times.
So my boss is visiting from HQ in San Mateo. We're meeting with clients in downtown Brooklyn and we need to go to midtown for the next set of meetings. He asks "How are we going to get there?" I told him "The many-windowed limosine."
$2 each and 10 minutes later we're riding the #2 subway under the East River and he hits me with "How late do these run?" Apparently in less civilized parts of the world, mass transit is only available during certain hours, where NY has a system that is available 24/7/365, only stopping for an occassional major blackout or the "once every 20 years" transit strike.
Big F'ing Deal! NY has far more of just about everything you've listed there other than weather.
I'm roughly employee 35 at a Silicon Valley startup, doing pre-sales technical work and implementations with our customers in and around NYC. I can tell you this from experience:
Northern California is a technology center because it doesn't have a substantial competing industry. A software house in SV needs to compete with other software houses for talent. A software house in NYC needs to compete with other software houses, consulting and solutions vendors, and the customers' own IT shops. Wall St, in particular, is willing to throw lots and lots of resources into hiring the best people available. I've worked with plenty of Wall St developers who are every bit as sharp as the best in SV.
Northern California is a tech center because there is less competition from other industries. A hot developer in SV is going to work for a tech company, the only question is which one. A hot developer in NYC has a choice of industry.
I've been using Verizon EvDO in and around NYC for about 9 months, and I've found that Verizon has been surprisingly honest about their speed. Everything I've read from Verizon said typical speeds of 400-600kbs with bursts up to 2 Mbs. This is pretty much exactly what I get. I did some downloads yesterday of some decent size files in a strong signal location in downtown Brooklyn and got 1.7 Mbs. Typically, however, I average about 500 kbs.
If secondary storage is that fast, how is different than primary storage? The real interesting thing is that as persistant ram improves the distinction between primary and secondary will gradually fade. Or, perhaps, both will be lumped together and compared to on-die cache.
They're incompatible because they require two different radios implementing two different multiplexing/modulation schemes. The carriers were forced to develop dual mode phones because there was no upgrade path from GSM to UMTS. Way back when the CDMA carriers in the US provided dual mode phones that also provided AMPS service. GSM and UMTS are no more compatible than AMPS and CDMA. I can build a PC with a token ring adapter and an ethernet adapter, but that doesn't make token ring and ethernet compatible.
Once UMTS is widespread, it will be possible to build phones that can operate in both UMTS and CDMA environments with the same radio. Roaming across both CDMA and UMTS networks will be natively possible with virtually all phones, not as a special feature of some phones, or as a necessity that adds significant expense.
So what?
Europe is currently running two completely incompatible standards - GSM and UMTS.
With AMPS virtually dead and IDEN at end of life, the US is running two incompatible standards, GSM and CDMA2000.
Eventually, the GSM providers in Europe and the US will migrate everyone to UMTS and GSM will finally die like the old US TDMA system. Dual mode phones for UMTS and CDMA2000 are trivially simple, because UMTS is a CDMA technology differing from CDMA2000 only in software.
Where is the issue?
Actually, it is you who is missing the point. Go look at some prices. Vodaphone, for instance charges 90 Euro - $107 - for 500 minutes. Verizon, by comparison, will sell you 2000 peak minutes for $100, which more than makes up for the incoming charges. European carriers can't provide the services that Sprint and Verizon can provide in the US.
Europe standardized on a bad standard. In their rush to standardize, they didn't let the technology develop sufficiently. Now they are in the position of abandoning their infrastructure and building a new one at huge expense.
The US allowed the carriers to do their own thing, and because of it there was mass chaos at the beginning. But after several rounds of consolidation, standardization has come without the intervention of bureaucrats. And winners are using the superior technology.
Better service for less money. Europe has become the backwater.
As a side note, keep in mind that the legacy environment in Europe and the Unites States was far different. In Europe, the phone systems were generally incredibly bad. Just getting service would frequently take months, and the charges were exhorbitant. For all its faults, the traditional telephone system in the United States was exceptionally well run and efficient. The charges were low, especially for local calling. If one decided they needed a new line on Monday, it would generally be installed and working on Wednesday or Thursady. In Europe, mobile phones were a way to sidestep the train wreck of a wired phone system; there was pent up demand. In the US, mobile phones were luxury items for a long time.
I'll gladly beat you with the clue stick.
As an American, you've had access to the better technology for quite a while now. GSM, based on TDMA, is fundamentally inferior to the more prevelent CDMA technology used in the United States as well as much of the pacific rim. The EDGE is laughable. GPRS, which all the GSM fanboys are so excited about, is equivalent to the CDMA2000 1xRTT protocol available nationwide for at least three or four years now. CDMA2000 1xEvDO is currently delivering speeds of 400-600 kbs with bursts up to 2 Mbps in 50+ metro areas. I use this on a daily basis, and those speeds are not just marketing literature.
The GSM/TDMA infrastructure is essentially at end-of-life, and the providers in Europe are finally starting to deploy CDMA based WCDMA/UMTS systems. UMTS grafts the GSM style sim card and other parts of the stack with a CDMA network layer. UMTS can provide data rates similar to EvDO, as well as 8 times the calls of a GSM node at only 1.5 times the cost.
The radios used for CDMA2000 and WCDMA are identical, so the primary handset differences are in software. Expect to see a next generation of CDMA phones able to roam on both CDMA2000 and WCDMA/UMTS systems. Hopefully that will allow the legacy CDMA providers to migrate to admittedly superior SIM card based systems.
Even in a typical private office, however, there are still distractions. The telephone ringing or your neighbor speaking too loud or any of a million other things can be disturbing.
A good compromise is to provide flexible space, cubicles for handling the normal day-to-day stuff, team rooms for collaborative work, and small private spaces with no distractions for deep solo concentration.
Actually, lots of companies provide the third. The room is generally tiled and has a row of tiny offices equipped with porceline chairs.
Sorry to reply twice... just thought of a second point.
I used to work for a "Big 6" professional services/accounting firm. I can't even tell you the number of SAP or PeopleSoft implementations this firm bungled with a staff of 100+ on a project all billing at about $200/hr.
Plenty of high priced consultants screw up too.
To make any kind of large scale project succede, you need to 1) look for - and be willing to pay for - good quality talent and 2) watch them like a hawk. Have them deliver early and often, and monitor their deliverables. Yank them out if the project gets into trouble, don't wait until you've sunk two years and $50 million in before you find out they are incompetent.
Well if you are using Wipro you get what you deserve. I've had good luck with an outfit called Kanbay. I don't send them architecture work, but they do pretty good implementation.
Your correct that the top people have emigrated, but that is slowly changing, and the quality of the people that you can find in India is improving. In another 5-10 years I expect to see good architects staying in India.
I've seen it both ways. When companies off-shore and go for the cheapest bid, they have the same poor experience as when they hire the cheapest on-shore consultants.
The bottom-of-the-barrel firms offer cheap rates because they pay poorly. Since they pay poorly anyone with a little talent leaves as soon as they have enough experience to get a better job. The only people that stay in these jobs are incompetents.
Plenty of off-shore providers pay well enough to attract high quality talent, and so are able to provide high quality services.
The next time some manager wants to hire an off-shore provider, make sure they understand this and get them to hire a $40/hr firm rather than a $20/hr firm. They'll still save money over the $80+/hr that it will cost them on-shore, and they'll get a skilled workforce.
Your experiences with India have been because of your own company's poor decisions or lack of due diligence. Brown people are just as capable as white people.
I'm sorry. Your post is not in accordance with the ill-informed groupthink that characterizes slashdot in general and "your rights online" in particular. You must be down-modded no matter how accurate and insightful you actually are. Please refrain from challenging ignorance again.
And how is this relevant to this case?
Tom Campagna had an idea, built it, patented it, demoed it at trade shows, and tried to sell it. How is that sitting on it?
Have you bothered to read any details on this case at all? Or do you have a preconceived notion and prefer to sjsut set up straw man arguments to knock them down?
Sure. All this was obvious in 1990 when cell phones were barely available and the only people on the internet were college students and researchers.
I agree that putting email on a wireless device probably would be obvious. Aloha-Net was already active, exchanging email among other traffic between fixed wireless points.
The key is that Campagna's patents were not simply about exchanging email wirelessly, but were about exchanging email with a wireless device while minimizing the amount of time the radio on the device was active. A 'blackberry' that needed to be plugged in or needed to be recharged every two hours. The non-obvious factors were the techniques to shut down the radio so that small batteries would last several days. Those things are not so obvious.
Actually, Tom Campagna was around for most of this case. This case started in 2001 and he died in 2004, IIRC. And it hasn't just been the lawyer, Tom's widow inherited his interest in NTP. They've brought in more partners in order to have the capital to pursue the case, which has cost millions.
My understanding is that NTP offered a licensing agreement in 2001 on the order of $4 or $5 million. RIM didn't even respond. When a patent holder contacts you and you respond and try to work out an arrangement, the damages that the patent holder can collect are relatively small. However, if you have been notified that their is a potential infringement and you ignore it, it becomes "willful infringement" and the potential damages are much higher.
Not in direct response to your comments, but as a general comment, it is important to point out that Campagna filed the patents in 1990-91. He built a working system and demonstrated it at trade shows before email or cell phones were commonplace. He tried to market it, but the customers weren't ready. RIM basically reimplemented his ideas when the market was ready.
I agree. Anything that keeps a lawyer employed, and her husband well fed, is ok in my book.
Wireless email is certainly predictable, and was done before ESA (the predecessor to RIM). What ESA produced was a system that pushed email without the client device needing to be continually active in a high power state. That is what was novel and non-obvious. A device that simple reimplemented wired or fixed wireless strategies would have needed to be powered continuously or at least recharged every several hours.
So RIM invented something that Tom Campagna demoed at COMDEX in 1990? That is a pretty good trick. Or maybe we should blame him for being almost a decade ahead of the market?
The patents were good until RIM bought enough congressmen and lobbyists. Or do you subscribe to the theory that sending large sums of money to Washington and the PTO review were simply a big coincidence. RIM bribed their way to a patent invalidation.
I guess it is the widow's fault that she didn't buy off congressmen too. All hail RIM, defender of the prinicpal - "Money Talks".
I can't believe how badly the Slashbots have been brainwashed on this one...
NTP's predecessor built and demonstrated working systems in the late 80's/early 90's (back when email was in technical colleges and research labs, but virtually nowhere else). He demonstrated the technology at trade shows. He almost closed a deal with IBM. The technology is real, not some fanciful bit of imagination the way yo imply.
A little later RIM comes along, builds a successful company, and uses their patent portfolio to stifle innovation and drive competitors out of business.
NTP's predecessor goes out of business. The basement inventor loses his money but gets to keep the patent portfolio after the liquidation.
NTP attempts to license the patents to RIM for $4 million. RIM refuses. NTP sues RIM. RIM falsifies evidence during the case. The jury finds for NTP. RIM still refuses to settle.
The inventor dies. Now his widow is the owner of NTP.
NTP requests that RIM be shutdown. RIM works out a deal to license the patents for $450 million, but backs out at the last moment. RIM floods congress with lobbyists. After all these lobbyists start spreading money around Washington, the PTO is suddenly interested in reviewing the patents. Apparently you can buy patent invalidation.
And the slashbots all stand up and cheer while a big company lies, cheats, and bribes in order to steal a basement inventor's legacy from his widow.
What the predecessor to NTP did was demonstrate a workable system in the late 80s/early 90s, before all that infrastructure was in place. He tried to bring it to market. He had a deal almost done with IBM, even demonstrated it at trade shows. His company was liquidated after the IBM deal fell threw, but was left with the patent portfolio.
Several years later, RIM came on the scene and developed a workable system based on his technology. He offered a license for $4 million. RIM didn't even bother to respond, because they were too busy driving competitors out of the market using their own patents. After RIM repeatedly blew him off, he got pissed and sued. RIM's lawyers were caught falsifying evidence. They still wouldn't pay the licensing. He started raising his price.
Fast forward a few years. The inventor is dead, but his widow now holds the patents. RIM is on the verge of losing. So RIM throws lots and lots of dollars at Washington lobbyists to pressure congressmen, who pressure the Patent Office.
The real lesson here is that big successful technology companies can push around the little guy, can cheat and bribe to steal someone else's work, and all the slashbots will stand up and cheer.