But how do we figure out how long it took/takes to develop something? If I wanted to patent something for a really long time, I could just say it took me a really long time to develop it. Even if we could somehow monitor progress to get the real development time, there's still a problem. Company X with all its inefficiency might take 10 years to develop something while Person X in his garage might take 10 weeks to do the same thing. Does Company X get a longer patent because they are inefficient?
I don't think I was clear on this point. I would not issue the patent based on how long it took to develop an innovation, but based on broad estimates of how long it takes to develop things in particular fields. So regardless of the fact that Company X is inefficient, the software industry moves at a remarkable pace, and so the patent would still be for a short term.
Another way to think about this is in terms of "generations". A generation for software is probably about 2.5 years - the landscape changes significantly in that time. A patent should probably last only that long. A generation in computer hardware is a bit longer - probably about 5 years - and so a hardware innovation should only be patented for that long. A generation in automotive technology probably lasts 10 or 15 years, and a generation in pharmaceuticals probably lasts a little longer still.
Patents should apply to technology that requires years of research and/or lots of money and/or lots of people to develop (i.e. when there is definite financial risk to a company doing the R&D but unable to recover if the patent isn't awarded). I simply can't understand how a patent for putting a hyperlink in a web page or a special button on a device has the same legal standing as developing a hybrid car engine or a new innovative propulsion system that will take us out of the solar system, i.e. REAL INNOVATION!
I've often thought along the same line. In my method (Patent Pending?) the duration of the patent would be on a sliding scale depending on the kind of investment needed to develop innovations in a particular field. So a new pharmaceutical which took 10 years and tens of millions of dollars to develop might have protection for 20 years, while a software innovation developed by one guy in his Mom's basement would only be protected for 18 months.
I think that key is "Special Function". There are a pair of dark blue/black keys on the bottom row with a right arrow symbol on them. My guess is that these are the space keys. BTW, there are two other keys in the same dark blue/black. The one on the left has two right arrows - I'm guessing tab. The one on the right has a down arrow - I'm guessing enter/return.
On either side of the "space" keys are keys labeled Num and Cap. These are in convenient thumb locations as well, and probably access numbers and capital letters. There is no obvious caps lock, which is no great loss. There is also a pair of Sym keys on in the alphabet area which probably access puntuation.
Finally, Ctrl, Alt, and some keys that I can't make out in the picture but are probably the windows keys in the bottom-most "control" row. They are at the most inconvenient positions - probably a reasonable move for the average user.
The one big benefit over Qwert and Dvorak is the alphabetical arrangement of keys. While the qwerty layout is fine for people already computer literate and office workers, it is extremely confusing for others. I've seen thist with my father-in-law - a civil engineer who has spent his entire life in the field erecting skyscrapers in NYC. He can operated detailed surveying equipment and lay out concrete columns, but he has never used a keyboard. As a consequence, the layout is very confusing to him, and he spends a lot of time hunting. It is a barrier for him.
As far as I know (from cousins, friends, and general chat from India), there is still a strong demand for the outsourced jobs. Almost tens of resumes per open position, so the prediction of "short fall" looks to be based on shaky ground.
I go through at least 40 or 50 resumes in the US (Metro NYC area) to find one person worth hiring. And these are resumes that have been supposedly pre-screened by headhunters. Resume counts mean nothing if those tens of resumes represent poorly skilled people.
I assume that cable tv isn't in this area to provide a counter. The way to provide competition in this kind of situation is by setting up a WISP. WiMax makes this easier and cheaper, but people have been doing it for a while now with decent levels of success.
You make a lot of good points. I would point out, however, that there is plenty of dark fiber around not controlled by the telcos. IF the cll and VoIP companies need to do their own backhaul they will. Likewise, the regulations against municipal broadband and the like are coming at various levels of government. It is one thing to try to control one federal regulator. It is another thing to try to lobby every state and local government. Some of these efforts will succede and deploy successful municipal broadband. And then those communities will serve as examples that others will emulate.
My basic point is not that we shouldn't be concerned about monopolistic practices in the traditional phone industry, but that it is not very likely that they will be able to exert near the influence that they once had.
I don't deny everything you say, but the landscape today is very different than it was in 1984. Pre-breakup there was no other game in town. Now even if Ma' Bell is reassembled there are several alternatives.
First, cell phones are wide spread, and the companies that control them aren't entirely under the thumb of Ma' Bell. Verizon and Cingular are closely related to Regional Bell operating companies, T-Mobile and Sprint are not. They'll limit any power that resurgent Ma' Bell could exercise.
Second, the cable tv industry is making strong moves into telephony. The VoIP bundles offered by the cable companies provide the second line of defense against Ma' Bell.
Third, municpal broadband would only become a stronger alternative in the face of a reassembled Ma' Bell. Municipal broadband, coupled with Skype, Vonage, or a dozen others will offer a third line of defense against Ma' Bell.
Fourth, new technologies like WiMax will provide additional communications options.
In 1984, Ma' Bell was a monopoly because not only did they completely control a particular service, but there was feasible substitute service available. Twenty-one years later there are several substitutes available and so the monopoly won't have near the market influence it once had. The attempts to reestablish Ma' Bell should be interpretted as a set of uncompetative companies merging in order to hopefully achieve economies of scale and become competative - not an attempt to reestablish an old monopoly.
This is a great idea, but they've got the pricing completely backwards. The more popular songs shold get cheaper and the less popular more expensive. Why? That's easy....
It doesn't work that way.
The marginal cost of distributing music via internet download is almost neglible. The costs are almost entirely upfront costs to produce the music in the first place. These costs have already been incurred by the time the music is up for sale.
Since these costs have already been sunk, they have no bearing on the price of music afterwards. There is no opportunity to change the past, so the best overall outcome is achieved by maximizing the profit from this point forward.
As a comparison, say you were to purchase an apartment building for one million dollars. You're already a million in the hole. If you decide to lease the first appartment for 8x the market rent, the second for 7x the market rent, and so on, you'll have a completely vacant building. Your revenues will be zero and you'll be out a million dollars. On the other hand, if you rent all the apartments for below market prices you'll get some revenue - which may or may not be enough to cover your costs but will always be better than not renting any.
The maximum revenue in a transparent marketplace, and therefore (assuming zero marginal costs) the maximum profit, is attained by setting the price such that volume X price is at a maximum. The area of that square on the demand curve is the operating profit.
This however, leaves two roughly triangular areas of lost revenue, the triangle above the square which indicates the amount of discount some consumers received and the triangle to the right which indicates the amount of revenue that could be recovered from additional consumers at a lower price. The real trick, then, is obscuring the marketplace so that no consumer knows what any other consumer is paying. Then each consumer can be convinced to pay their own maximum and the entire area under the demand curve could be realized as revenue.
Currently, publishers attempt to collect this additional revenue in a course way by segmenting the market. This is why books are sold as both hardcover and softcover, DVDs are sold as "special collectors editions" along with the regular release, and futhermore DVDs are region encoded. They are all attempts to sell the same product at multiple price points.
At least in the laptop world, one problem is that many older laptops have low resolution screens. 640x480 is not comfortable anymore no matter what window manager you use.
I'm running a Cyrix 266 machine with 192M Ram. I'm using fairly stock Debian Sarge on it. IceWM works like a dream. I didn't have room in my office for it so it sits in my basement. I have a windows box I use for work on my desk, and I just use vnc for all my personal work.
Yeah, the exact rules and regs. are local in nature. In one place I lived, for instance, a tree root from a tree on city property caused a flag to heave. The city removed the root but I had to replace the flag.
The warnings on the download page talk about criminal court. Whatever they're paying the attorney that wrote it for them is too much.
That is really pretty funny. Lets just assume, for the sake of argument, that there might be a criminal question here. The idea that a prosecuter, who you'll recall is an elected official or is working directly for an elected official, is going to spend time enforcing an EULA is just ridiculous. All sorts of "crimes" are ignored everyday because they don't warrant prosecutorial effort. In order to get reelected, prosecutors spend their time working on cases that are important, or percieved to be important, to the voters.
How many slashot readers have ever bounced a check? Did you now that this is generally a crime - at least in the United States? When is the last time you've ever heard of an "average Joe" who accidentally bounces a check being pursued and prosecuted? Likely never. Procescutors will pursue serious swindlers and such, but not the guy who bounced an occassional check. Even if they wanted to, the voters would say "Couldn't you be spending your time better putting away rapists?"
I beg your pardon, but isn't it more correct to say that "innocent until proven guilty" does apply to civil matters, only the burden of proof is less?
No, it isn't. For one thing, a civil trial will never result in a verdict of guilty or not guilty, but in a verdict of liable or not liable. Second, there may or may not be a presumption of liabilty for any particular matter. While a prosecutor always must establish the guilt of criminal defendant, a civil defendant in some cases may be presumed liable unless the defendant establishes that he should not be liable.
Except that you don't actually own the sidewalk, and if you and a group of friends were obstructing it, could be forced to move under penalty of arrest. So you have the responsibilities of ownership, but not the associated rights. You can be sued or fined. But you can't have a picnic or park your car there.
Your title or lack there of to the sidewalk is something that can be different from property to property. In some cases the municipality owns a certain amount of land from the centerline of the street out. In this case, you do not own the sidewalk, but you are forced to maintain the sidewalk in exchange for the use of that part of your front lawn which rightfully belongs to the municipal authorities. I'm personnaly in this situation, in that I have an extra 15 feet of front lawn that I don't own. In other cases you may own the sidewalk, but the municipal authority has an easement that allows the public use of that space. The big difference here is that, should the municpality decide to widen that road, you may or may not have right to compensation.
If someone walks on my sidewalks and trips in a hole in it, it's their own g*dd*mn f**ing fault for not watching where they are going, not mine.
Well, that all depends. If you have a sidewalk you have a duty to keep it in good repair. So it hinges on whether you had actual or implied notice that the sidewalk was damaged and had you taken steps to warn others of a dangerous situation.
When you buy a piece of property you also purchase with that certain duties, one of which is to maintain the sidewalk on that property. You can't pick and choose what responsibilities you will have, taking title on the property confers those responsibilities.
I would suspect that this can all be a case of "You get what you pay for." I can listen to free radio, or I can pay for a subscription to XM and listen to commercial free music. It is, in the end, my choice. It would be nice to have a free legal Windows for those people in my family that want to use windows bt don't want to pay for it.
Next up for Windows Longhorn: A brand new desktop popup ad API complete with billboard-type access to the background pic. No more questionably ethical malware required--it's now part of the OS.
Give that some careful thought. How much does the OS cost at retail? If you need to rebuild a family machine and want to put the latest greatest OS on it, it would be pretty reasonable if Windows was available free but with adds in the background.
This is a direct result of better PDA technology. Devices like the Treo, Blackberry, and ultra-light tablets are allowing the normal business user avoid lugging around a normal laptop and still have access to email and office suite apps. So the pressure to make laptops more portable has been relieved by the emergence of a new market segment and devices specifically aimed at being ultra-portable.
Meanwhile, the desktop users, all but the l33test gamers, and developers are demanding more powerful transportable devices. They don't need to travel accross the country, but would like the flexibility of using their PCs from their living room or the backyard without sacrificing their big screens and better power.
The transportable desktop replacement business is naturally growing while the ultraportable segment is shrinking.
Slashdot Mirror
I've often thought along the same line. In my method (Patent Pending?) the duration of the patent would be on a sliding scale depending on the kind of investment needed to develop innovations in a particular field. So a new pharmaceutical which took 10 years and tens of millions of dollars to develop might have protection for 20 years, while a software innovation developed by one guy in his Mom's basement would only be protected for 18 months.
I think that key is "Special Function". There are a pair of dark blue/black keys on the bottom row with a right arrow symbol on them. My guess is that these are the space keys. BTW, there are two other keys in the same dark blue/black. The one on the left has two right arrows - I'm guessing tab. The one on the right has a down arrow - I'm guessing enter/return.
On either side of the "space" keys are keys labeled Num and Cap. These are in convenient thumb locations as well, and probably access numbers and capital letters. There is no obvious caps lock, which is no great loss. There is also a pair of Sym keys on in the alphabet area which probably access puntuation.
Finally, Ctrl, Alt, and some keys that I can't make out in the picture but are probably the windows keys in the bottom-most "control" row. They are at the most inconvenient positions - probably a reasonable move for the average user.
I need hjkl together though. :)
The one big benefit over Qwert and Dvorak is the alphabetical arrangement of keys. While the qwerty layout is fine for people already computer literate and office workers, it is extremely confusing for others. I've seen thist with my father-in-law - a civil engineer who has spent his entire life in the field erecting skyscrapers in NYC. He can operated detailed surveying equipment and lay out concrete columns, but he has never used a keyboard. As a consequence, the layout is very confusing to him, and he spends a lot of time hunting. It is a barrier for him.
Nope. Just looking for someone with good SQL skills in any of the 4 major platforms, and is decent in Java.
I go through at least 40 or 50 resumes in the US (Metro NYC area) to find one person worth hiring. And these are resumes that have been supposedly pre-screened by headhunters. Resume counts mean nothing if those tens of resumes represent poorly skilled people.
I assume that cable tv isn't in this area to provide a counter. The way to provide competition in this kind of situation is by setting up a WISP. WiMax makes this easier and cheaper, but people have been doing it for a while now with decent levels of success.
You make a lot of good points. I would point out, however, that there is plenty of dark fiber around not controlled by the telcos. IF the cll and VoIP companies need to do their own backhaul they will. Likewise, the regulations against municipal broadband and the like are coming at various levels of government. It is one thing to try to control one federal regulator. It is another thing to try to lobby every state and local government. Some of these efforts will succede and deploy successful municipal broadband. And then those communities will serve as examples that others will emulate.
My basic point is not that we shouldn't be concerned about monopolistic practices in the traditional phone industry, but that it is not very likely that they will be able to exert near the influence that they once had.
Actually I have an under-floor gravity generator right here. The producers are lying.
I don't deny everything you say, but the landscape today is very different than it was in 1984. Pre-breakup there was no other game in town. Now even if Ma' Bell is reassembled there are several alternatives.
First, cell phones are wide spread, and the companies that control them aren't entirely under the thumb of Ma' Bell. Verizon and Cingular are closely related to Regional Bell operating companies, T-Mobile and Sprint are not. They'll limit any power that resurgent Ma' Bell could exercise.
Second, the cable tv industry is making strong moves into telephony. The VoIP bundles offered by the cable companies provide the second line of defense against Ma' Bell.
Third, municpal broadband would only become a stronger alternative in the face of a reassembled Ma' Bell. Municipal broadband, coupled with Skype, Vonage, or a dozen others will offer a third line of defense against Ma' Bell.
Fourth, new technologies like WiMax will provide additional communications options.
In 1984, Ma' Bell was a monopoly because not only did they completely control a particular service, but there was feasible substitute service available. Twenty-one years later there are several substitutes available and so the monopoly won't have near the market influence it once had. The attempts to reestablish Ma' Bell should be interpretted as a set of uncompetative companies merging in order to hopefully achieve economies of scale and become competative - not an attempt to reestablish an old monopoly.
It doesn't work that way.
The marginal cost of distributing music via internet download is almost neglible. The costs are almost entirely upfront costs to produce the music in the first place. These costs have already been incurred by the time the music is up for sale.
Since these costs have already been sunk, they have no bearing on the price of music afterwards. There is no opportunity to change the past, so the best overall outcome is achieved by maximizing the profit from this point forward.
As a comparison, say you were to purchase an apartment building for one million dollars. You're already a million in the hole. If you decide to lease the first appartment for 8x the market rent, the second for 7x the market rent, and so on, you'll have a completely vacant building. Your revenues will be zero and you'll be out a million dollars. On the other hand, if you rent all the apartments for below market prices you'll get some revenue - which may or may not be enough to cover your costs but will always be better than not renting any.
The maximum revenue in a transparent marketplace, and therefore (assuming zero marginal costs) the maximum profit, is attained by setting the price such that volume X price is at a maximum. The area of that square on the demand curve is the operating profit.
This however, leaves two roughly triangular areas of lost revenue, the triangle above the square which indicates the amount of discount some consumers received and the triangle to the right which indicates the amount of revenue that could be recovered from additional consumers at a lower price. The real trick, then, is obscuring the marketplace so that no consumer knows what any other consumer is paying. Then each consumer can be convinced to pay their own maximum and the entire area under the demand curve could be realized as revenue.
Currently, publishers attempt to collect this additional revenue in a course way by segmenting the market. This is why books are sold as both hardcover and softcover, DVDs are sold as "special collectors editions" along with the regular release, and futhermore DVDs are region encoded. They are all attempts to sell the same product at multiple price points.
At least in the laptop world, one problem is that many older laptops have low resolution screens. 640x480 is not comfortable anymore no matter what window manager you use.
I'm running a Cyrix 266 machine with 192M Ram. I'm using fairly stock Debian Sarge on it. IceWM works like a dream. I didn't have room in my office for it so it sits in my basement. I have a windows box I use for work on my desk, and I just use vnc for all my personal work.
Don't worry. Scientists are also developing this new substance called soylent green which will help feed all these people.
That argument would be more persuasive if the record companies and radio companies weren't in cahoots to manipulate the charts.
Yeah, the exact rules and regs. are local in nature. In one place I lived, for instance, a tree root from a tree on city property caused a flag to heave. The city removed the root but I had to replace the flag.
That is really pretty funny. Lets just assume, for the sake of argument, that there might be a criminal question here. The idea that a prosecuter, who you'll recall is an elected official or is working directly for an elected official, is going to spend time enforcing an EULA is just ridiculous. All sorts of "crimes" are ignored everyday because they don't warrant prosecutorial effort. In order to get reelected, prosecutors spend their time working on cases that are important, or percieved to be important, to the voters.
How many slashot readers have ever bounced a check? Did you now that this is generally a crime - at least in the United States? When is the last time you've ever heard of an "average Joe" who accidentally bounces a check being pursued and prosecuted? Likely never. Procescutors will pursue serious swindlers and such, but not the guy who bounced an occassional check. Even if they wanted to, the voters would say "Couldn't you be spending your time better putting away rapists?"
No, it isn't. For one thing, a civil trial will never result in a verdict of guilty or not guilty, but in a verdict of liable or not liable. Second, there may or may not be a presumption of liabilty for any particular matter. While a prosecutor always must establish the guilt of criminal defendant, a civil defendant in some cases may be presumed liable unless the defendant establishes that he should not be liable.
Your title or lack there of to the sidewalk is something that can be different from property to property. In some cases the municipality owns a certain amount of land from the centerline of the street out. In this case, you do not own the sidewalk, but you are forced to maintain the sidewalk in exchange for the use of that part of your front lawn which rightfully belongs to the municipal authorities. I'm personnaly in this situation, in that I have an extra 15 feet of front lawn that I don't own. In other cases you may own the sidewalk, but the municipal authority has an easement that allows the public use of that space. The big difference here is that, should the municpality decide to widen that road, you may or may not have right to compensation.
Well, that all depends. If you have a sidewalk you have a duty to keep it in good repair. So it hinges on whether you had actual or implied notice that the sidewalk was damaged and had you taken steps to warn others of a dangerous situation.
When you buy a piece of property you also purchase with that certain duties, one of which is to maintain the sidewalk on that property. You can't pick and choose what responsibilities you will have, taking title on the property confers those responsibilities.
The general gist is correct, but "innocent until proven guilty" is a principle that applies to criminal matters, not civil matters.
I would suspect that this can all be a case of "You get what you pay for." I can listen to free radio, or I can pay for a subscription to XM and listen to commercial free music. It is, in the end, my choice. It would be nice to have a free legal Windows for those people in my family that want to use windows bt don't want to pay for it.
My God! Someone with a grasp of the law! On Slashdot! In other news, Hell freezes over.
This is a direct result of better PDA technology. Devices like the Treo, Blackberry, and ultra-light tablets are allowing the normal business user avoid lugging around a normal laptop and still have access to email and office suite apps. So the pressure to make laptops more portable has been relieved by the emergence of a new market segment and devices specifically aimed at being ultra-portable.
Meanwhile, the desktop users, all but the l33test gamers, and developers are demanding more powerful transportable devices. They don't need to travel accross the country, but would like the flexibility of using their PCs from their living room or the backyard without sacrificing their big screens and better power.
The transportable desktop replacement business is naturally growing while the ultraportable segment is shrinking.