And what does this change? Spying by your own country is a different matter. Hint - representation.
For a state owned company or agency this is not a problem. For a private company it might not matter - that doesn't leak to competitors, and that's the only thing that really matters. And for a citizen it might or might not be a problem, that depends on your views. But these agencies are under control of a democratically elected government, so if they overstep the bounds you can react, at least in theory. In the EU this also partially works over borders - I don't have any direct influence over German authorities, but the european bodies include politicians from my country, either directly elected (the parliament) or appointed by elected national bodies (the commision), so I'm not entirely powerless.
On the other hand, I have precisely zero influence on US agencies. It's your democracy, I'm not part of it. See the difference? Whether this internal control works at all is a different question, but in this case no control is possible. Add to this the fact that the data they collect is more than likely to land in the hands of american competitors (the US loves protectionism)...
The only way to avoid that is to stay away, and that's starting to happen. Of course this will reduce the global income of US corporations, not a surprise.
So, the fact that others want to do the same thing doesn't change a thing. Avoiding US-based services still makes sense.
The recent events made it clear that globalization includes some risks. Most companies knew this - would anyone from, say, EU use a chinese cloud service for company data? Now we've seen that even the globally trusted US of A is not that trustworthy, so the world is taking a step back. High time.
Why out of question? SSL and PKI are not the same thing. You can run SSL even with self-signed certificates. The real question is whether the protocols, algorithms and implementations are free form NSA backdoors and strong enough. Of course, not being able to trust the chain of trust restricts the possible uses, but for many applications it's not a problem.
Yeah... There's something seriously wrong with the system.
A european here. Guns banned and I like it this way. Lots of guns in movies, games, etc. Trying to keep their existence secret from children would be laughable. Encouraging kids to play with gun toys would be seen as wrong, but suspending a pupil for making a gun sign with his hand? The principal would have to do a lot of explaining after a massive outrage among the parents.
US? You can legally own a gun. It's even your constitutional right, and then this.
Jeeeeez, people, get your logic straight! That just doeasn't make sense!
A PhD here, tech field. Not a native speaker, but clearly way above the 5-year-old level.
I had NO idea what answer they want. Really. I got completely fooled by the non sequitur caused by pairing 5 somethings (pennies?) with a fluid container labeled 6 and the nonsensical "part I know" and "whole" labels. I could make up a more-or-less believable explanation of any of the answers.
How the hell did I get a 5 (make it A for american readers) in functional calculus at the university? And algebra? And... nah, skip it - in short: most of the mathematical subjects? How the hell am I able to easily balance the budget of a project I lead? And why the hell do I tend to approach problems that escape my intuition by modeling them using (gasp!) mathematics, if I can't absentmindedly answer a question from a math test for 5-year-olds?
I see this kind of stuff everywhere, it's not US specific. It's testmania. Using tests as a way to test someone's competence itself is disputable but useful, the real problems are: 1. that the teacher is not allowed to accept and score a textual explanation of reasoning if the student thinks that the question is wrong. 2. perhaps more important - that anyone at all believes that ambiguity in questions is not a problem as long as that type of problem was practiced. JEEZ! People! This is problem solving! You're not supposed to learn what solution is expected! Real problems do not have expected outcomes, just the right ones! If the problem is not clearly defined and no means of clarification are present, then the problem is not well stated and the only correct answer is "not enough input"!
I would not focus on the boredom, I'd focus on relevance. And again, everything depends on a particular situation and the chairperson. I'm thirty-something by the way, so - neither generation.
A good meeting has an agenda. Sometimes you're on the meeting for one or two specific points of that agenda and the rest is irrelevant to you and you are unlikely to contribute anything there. During a local meeting, if you can be reached by phone and the meeting is small enough to make it managable, you would be called in and allowed to leave once not needed. If the meeting is somewhere else, you need to arrive early and stay until the last point that affects you, even if some unrelated stuff is getting discussed in the meantime. In that case, feel free to do whatever you please (although I find that half-listening often gives you some usable background information you wouldn't get otherwise), just don't disturb the discussion. Sometimes you are expected to just be there for the entire meeting. Bad decision from the chairperson or your boss, definitely. Feel free to do anything, you're getting paid anyway.
So, simple rules: 1. Don't waste the time of others. Just because something seems boring to you doesn't mean it doesn't need a discussion and eveybody wants to finish it asap. So, do not disturb the discussion, don't make distracting sounds, help them get to the part you want quickly. If your phone rings (why the hell isn't it set to vibrate while in a meeting?!?), either leave for the call or whisper a quick "I'm in a meeting, I'll call you back". Do not call anyone, if you have to - leave. Sound - off. Other than that - I don't care. 2. Do your part. If the meeting gets to a part where you are required, your full attention is needed, period. I don't care if you're bored, you cannot drift off - this is the part I invited you for, if I have to repeat something because you didn't listen, you're wasting my time. If someone's babbling, say so, unless it's politically risky for you (in that case, I'm sorry for you, you'll just have to tough it out). It's the chairpersons responsibility to push the speakers a little if needed. 3. One painful exception - if you're the "ears" of someone who couldn't participate in that meeting, specifically sent in that role, then you will have to suffer the boredom. You do not have the priviledge to choose what's important - you can't be sure. And you wouldn't be there if the one sending you was only interested in decisions - they should be in the minutes anyway. So, you are supposed to make your own notes, see what gets decided in 5 seconds and what generates a long discussion, look for nonverbal signals... That's a difficult job and not everyone is good for that role. If you are, you probably already know all this.
Meetings are generally very helpful, no electronic communication trumps a short discussion for decision making. You just have to use them wisely, keep them short and only invite the needed participants. Any meeting above 7 persons will waste a lot of time, avoid if possible. Sometimes it makes sense to do a big meeting though. Especially if you see that you would need 10+ small meetings within a month to decide everything - maybe it's better to even lose a whole day in a large meeting and just get it all done at once, instead of pulling crucial people out to the conference room now and then during the whole month...
And you simply cannot do a project involving several companies or weakly connected divisions without meetings. Quite often a chat/e-mail/whatever discussion will drag on for weeks, while you could reach a decision in a single meeting. By all means, do as few meetings as you can and keep them short and focused - but they are the crucial points of the project, the moments where you detect and fix any misunderstandings about things that allow all parts to work together.
This patent is a lot narrower than it seems. Notice the "fuzzy". Fuzzy logic is well defined and does have alternatives. Use any alternative solution in this step and you're not infringing.
Bing. Microsoft is part of this consortium, remember?
You underestimate human ability to adapt. If we lose what we use, we'll use what's available. Sure, there'd be a period of outrage and a bit of chaos, but then everything would stabilise. Business as usual while someone else reaps the profit.
There's a Polish proverb: "If you don't have what you like, you like what you have".
And what exactly did you think was the goal of this WTO decision? That's how treaties are enforced - through smart playing on local politics. Instead of invading the country in violation (which - as in this case - may be completely infeasible), you cause some other internal force to play on your side. This move seems exactly aimed at starting a lobby war. IP violation will trigger a bigger bully, who will make sure that the smaller bully, who started it all, plays by the rules. As soon as that happens, the bigger bullies interests will be protected again and everyone's happy. Except the smaller bully. Oh well. You should have grown bigger.
And why the hell is everybody here protecting the gambling oligopoly of the USA as if it was the USA itself?
Maybe. I don't know and I don't care. That's the beauty of international agreements - if you sing them, you promise to make them work somehow in your country. If you can't do that, you're in breach and you shouldn't have signed at all. That's the way they are designed, because that's the only way they can possibly work. If you sign, it's your problem how to enforce them locally.
Are you familiar with the term "punitive damages"? I believe the WTO couldn't care less. In fact, that explains the huge difference between the claimed losses and allowed profit - the WTO is saying "well, it would not be fair for you to earn too much off this, so we'll set the cap at 21M... but if you can stretch this to cost the USA as much as you lost - feel free." You are in breach of an agreement. You can swallow the losses or exit the treaty. If you do, your IP is no longer protected at all, making this case seem minor. Enjoy.
In fact, I for one urge you to throw a fit and exit the treaty! Every US movie, book or song available for free - works fine for me, thank you very much! I can't wait!
I was born in a police state (no longer so, unless you believe some crackpots). Not the worst of the kind, but still. Let me tell you: the kind of news that reach us from the US, like this one... You are quickly becoming a police state, period. Wake up while you still have some means of reversing that. There is still actual freedom to vote, even if severely weakened by a two-party domination where a third party vote is widely considered lost and the two parties have similar goals. There are still some laws you can actually use in a court. But the speed at which your freedom degraded in the last 20 years or so is terrifying.
Looking from outside, you will still be bragging about being more free than, say, China in about 40 years, while no longer being that. And the acceleration after 9/11... boy, that was impressive.
Yes, she was free to report that. And it would be suppressed in a police state with strong internal opposition. But in the US it does not matter. Do you see a huge outrage abaout this? No? Then it's best to allow this to happen. People vent, people see others venting and believe that's a proof of freedom... The sheeple are content, everybody's happy.
You have been warned. Freedom you don't protect is a freedom lost. Winning it back is far more difficult.
I completely agree (*not a "me too", read on) with you on the impossibility of printing <100nm electronics in forseeable future. However, this does not mean that 3D printing has no potential for nearly-commercial-level prototyping.
As you mentioned a couple of times, FPGA is incredibly powerful. You can also buy some commercial-level chips, the same the big companies are using. Now realize that printing of the boards is entirely realistic. That leaves only two problems:
1. Precise soldering of complex chips with insane amounts of pins 2. Availability of insanely complex FPGAs with lots of pins and gates
Doesn't adaptation of sufficiently precise 3D printers to 1. seem feasible? In 15 years? Certainly. I also believe this will solve 2. as well - as soon as it's easy to use them, they will appear on the market.
So, printing commercial-level electronics? No, if at all, then always at least 20-30 years behind. But printing of nearly-there prototypes using existing chips and FPGAs far more powerful than today? In 15 years? I can easily see that happening.
Exactly. In fact, I like to think about the popularity of the cloud as anything other than a low-security file sharing platform in terms of five words:
It's a matter of being Fast, Easy, Convenient, Accessible & Low-cost.
Actually the existence of SEPs itself is a sign of a broken system - if a patent is essential to entering the market in an entire industry, how the HELL is it still valid?! Patents are there to provide a head start for the inventor (or whoever owns the patent or a licence), nothing more.
This is a result of two colliding processes. The patent owners (as with all other IP) would love to have their exclusive rights last longer and will lobby for it. At the same time the world has been constantly speeding up. Design, production, even distribution are a lot faster now. This means that the power of a patent grew a lot. Unfortunately, this effect is different in different industries (*).
Consumer electronics is one field where patents should last a LOT shorter. Barrier to entry is way too high for an individual inventor to enter the market based on one patent anyway, so most patents will be used by existing companies. In this situation new technology can be brought to market quickly and sold worldwide. Why grant 10 or 20 years of exclusive rights for a technology which will be outdated in 5? A patent should last long enough to enter the market, maybe get a significant market share... not build a new large market from scratch - that should never happen entirely without competition if the words "free market" have any meaning at all.
However, there are still industry fields where 10 years is a short period. Basically, field-invariant patent law is worthless.
(*) The same goes for copyrights. Immediate distribution. Quick printing/production/whatever. Instant access through the internet. Whether your IP-protected product is a song, a book, a movie or whatever, you can now reach a market bigger than ever almost immediately. So, why grant so many years of protection? It's a monopolistic perversion of the IP law's original intent. The protection period grows all the time, while changes in technology dictate that it should actually be reduced.
Actually... I see it as a fair warning and in the current situation (with the USA getting hammered for listening in on pretty much everything) reads pretty much as a "who's the good guy now" directed at America.
They are basically saying this: "Hi. We're organizing a big event, a natural target for terrorist attacks. So, while this should be obvious, we'll warn you: we're prepared and we will listen in on anything we possibly can to avert any destructive plans. So, if you come here - do not expect any privacy, either over phone or over the Internet. Thank you for your attention."
And the funny thing is that this actually looks unbelievably fair compared to recent news from the USA. "Do not have expectation of privacy" is a fair warning. At the same time recent news made it clear that any time I use a service on the Internet the data is more likely than not to be available to US - unless the service is hosted in a non-US-friendly country and routing avoids the US. And noone said so.
Not that I expected anything else, but expectation of privacy is an important concept. Russia saying upfront that privacy will be ignored during the games actually sounds positive now. Sure, they will abuse it, but they are not claiming that your privacy matters. The US did. Hell, we just had a big discussion whether crucial Internet services (like IP allocation) should be moved under UN control. And you had the f...g guts to claim that it was "more free" as it is, that the move was to apply undue control.
Look what you've done to your contry. Land of the free, right...
Mod parent up, if only for the first sentence. I've been watching the US from outside for many years. I see all these comments about the huge gap between the two parties, the differences that make it impossible for a Republican to ever vote for a Democrat and vice versa, the Incompatible Values (TM)... And I just cannot see it. I mean I get the difference in high-level declarations, just not in actions. The actual differences between the two sides in practically any discussion I've seen would easily fit within the bounds of internal disagreements in a single party elsewhere. There is no real difference. In fact, quite possibly the differences inside each party are greater than the difference between the somwhat averaged official stances of both parties.
And you seriously want something to change while still voting for the same two parties? Good luck with that.
"First Few Doctor Who Episodes May Fall To Public Domain Next Year"
I cannot even begin to comprehend the depression behind this sentence. The law states clearly that these episodes will enter the public domain. This seems as deterministic as the law gets. The only alternative would be a very sudden move by the lawmakers, right now. Since there's no real gossip about such a plan, this means that whoever wrote the title deeply believes that lobbyists will enter soon and be fast and effective.
Come on, guys! This is not America! European lawmakers can obviously be bought, but not that easily and quickly - the voters are not yet completely asleep (vide ACTA). Have you so completely lost hope in humanity, not just your corrupt politicians?
BTW: check who holds the copyright and their track record. It might not be stellar, but it certainly is not as bad as MPAA's...
Yes, the home-brewing is less likely. But since only one component is prescription-only, I would bet the drug will hit the market. The component is readily available over the counter in several countries and actually legal to possess in the US (with prescription). This makes acquiring codeine a lot easier and cheaper than many alternatives. Plus, the drug is actually great to sell if purified - it is very highly addictive, doesn't last long and doesn't kill the client too quickly. Goldmine. Then the client is not able to pay for that anymore - cool, you tell him to get more money just once and sell him some codeine and the instructions (not saying anything about purification methods) and it's quite likely he won't bother you anymore.
Pfffft... You had it easy. My Garmin with maps from about two years ago (yeah, yeah, I know, I should update...) is very hard to use for E-W trips in southern Warsaw, Poland - exactly where I drive most often. It always forces a route through the S2 express road and will ask you to turn around for quite a few kilometers if you miss the crossing and fail to use this route. No wonder - there are absolutely NO traffic jams on this road, there are few alternatives and the express roads have 2.5x higher speed limit (this is a city after all), plus the S2 takes a very, very useful route through the city.
One problem though - at the time the maps were released the S2 was nothing but a couple of disjoint overpasses, sandy construction sites and untouched grass. It's still not completed today, although I think some parts were opened recently.
The point is - a GPS is just a useful and easy to use information source, not a reality interface. You can and should check the route it proposes for obvious mistakes, consider the warnings it may not have received and always watch the actual road. It is extremely useful if used with this in mind - but it does. Make. Mistakes!
Unfortunately our brains were not built for logic. We have an instinct that makes us automatically offload difficult tasks to remote agents if they prove effective enough. Lazy brain. If you don't conciously fight this tendency, it will happen. It's just so much easier to just trust someone to do something. Our brains had no time to evolve a separate mode of interaction for technological devices, so - as with people - once we delegate, trust follows.
People, it's simple! You are the driver - you are responsible for a safe trip. You simply cannot delegate any part of that responsibility. Sure, someone else may show the way but you and only you are responsible for making sure it is actually a safe and legal way. You just cannot ignore the road, the signs, lights, etc. Period.
No. That's like a salvage company taking over the sunken ship for pennies and rehiring the captain they sent there.
Corporate assasination is relatively easy. Corporate poisoning is difficult. He had to make Nokia cheap as fast as possible but without completely killing it or losing the technological potential or IP assets. Plus, narrowly avoid crossing the line that would cause either legal problems or massive shareholder outrage. That's a hard job. The bonus is well earned.
Yup, sounds good. But escalation of an economic war could turn ugly very quickly. Just imagine the consequences of the Chinese just dumping their dollar reserves on the market in response to the interest rate change. These are not billions of dollars. Trillions (short scale, 10^12, T$ if you like). With that sort of arsenal several tactics are possible:
dump most of them and watch the fireworks as the dollar-based global economy goes through an unprecedented crash,
drive the value down over a long period, dumping billions each month, creating a stable oversupply,
possibly the worst - unpredictable destabilization through random movements - sell a lot, do nothing, buy some, sell more...
None of this makes sense in a more-or-less stable global economy, China would lose a lot in every scenario - but a war is a war, even if no guns are fired. They could make the dollar a very, very risky currency, not suitable for long term reserves. The consequences of the dollar losing that role in the global economy would be far greater than any direct consequences of the attack.
Their reserves are an order of magnitude greater than those of the US central bank. If they go all the way, there's no practical defense - at least nothing without far-reaching negative consequences.
So, I stand by my point - any conflict between the USA and China would have to go through all the possible phases, including actual military action, before anyone would think of sanctions. The effects of an economic war would be perhaps worse than even those of a (limited scale) nuclear shootout.
It's definitely time to prepare long-term plans to reduce this entanglement if conflicts seem to rise. Or just treat this like the nuclear MAD principle and remove sanctions from your vocabulary. Might be a more realistic choice.
Really? Remember the last time the US voiced that opinion? Let me remind you - it was Condoleezza Rice, the U-2 fiasco. A few words too much. Threatening with sanctions.
Nothing materialized. Nothing.
I don't know how it was covered up in the US, but that's how it looked from the outside.
China knows what you are obviously missing. The USA is incredibly dependent on cheap chinese stuff. Hell, most of the western world is.You simply do not have the manufacturing capacity to produce all those simple cheap things in sufficient numbers to at least cover the internal market demand. Try sanctions. Just TRY IT.
This is the reason the threats were so empty. The Chinese did what they wanted with the U-2 and nothing happened. Because real sanctions against China might result in riots within days. China has more than enough reserves to survive that, but you WILL lose the next election - Joe Sixpack will remember you as the one that made the shelves empty. The price of globalization. Really, I cannot comprehend how anyone in power could allow this to happen. The blinding power of money? The governments should be doing everything they could to obstruct globalization to stay in power. The private sector WILL move to wherever work is cheapest, thats obvious. A truly open global market closes the gates for classic economic war tactics like sanctions, since after a few years you are simply not nearly self-sufficient in some areas.
Correction - that's not what "legal tender" means. The meaning is that if a currency is a legal tender in a given country then you are required to accept it as payment of debt. In other words, for any debt in the US, if you are offered payment in US dollars you may not refuse to accept it (and still consider the debt not paid). You may accept or refuse payment in euros, canadian dollars, bitcoins, pieces of silver or particularly fine seashells, as you wish (unless in your jurisdiction some of those are not allowed). US dollars you simply have to take. The consequence of this is of course that courts do use US dollars in their decisions, to remove any doubt about the value of the debt - a consequence, not the definition.
Which of course doesn't really affect the rest of your argument.
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Assuming they want to thwart them, not just show that they are trying.
And what does this change? Spying by your own country is a different matter. Hint - representation.
For a state owned company or agency this is not a problem. For a private company it might not matter - that doesn't leak to competitors, and that's the only thing that really matters. And for a citizen it might or might not be a problem, that depends on your views. But these agencies are under control of a democratically elected government, so if they overstep the bounds you can react, at least in theory. In the EU this also partially works over borders - I don't have any direct influence over German authorities, but the european bodies include politicians from my country, either directly elected (the parliament) or appointed by elected national bodies (the commision), so I'm not entirely powerless.
On the other hand, I have precisely zero influence on US agencies. It's your democracy, I'm not part of it. See the difference? Whether this internal control works at all is a different question, but in this case no control is possible. Add to this the fact that the data they collect is more than likely to land in the hands of american competitors (the US loves protectionism)...
The only way to avoid that is to stay away, and that's starting to happen. Of course this will reduce the global income of US corporations, not a surprise.
So, the fact that others want to do the same thing doesn't change a thing. Avoiding US-based services still makes sense.
The recent events made it clear that globalization includes some risks. Most companies knew this - would anyone from, say, EU use a chinese cloud service for company data? Now we've seen that even the globally trusted US of A is not that trustworthy, so the world is taking a step back. High time.
Why out of question? SSL and PKI are not the same thing. You can run SSL even with self-signed certificates. The real question is whether the protocols, algorithms and implementations are free form NSA backdoors and strong enough. Of course, not being able to trust the chain of trust restricts the possible uses, but for many applications it's not a problem.
Yeah... There's something seriously wrong with the system.
A european here. Guns banned and I like it this way. Lots of guns in movies, games, etc. Trying to keep their existence secret from children would be laughable. Encouraging kids to play with gun toys would be seen as wrong, but suspending a pupil for making a gun sign with his hand? The principal would have to do a lot of explaining after a massive outrage among the parents.
US? You can legally own a gun. It's even your constitutional right, and then this.
Jeeeeez, people, get your logic straight! That just doeasn't make sense!
A PhD here, tech field. Not a native speaker, but clearly way above the 5-year-old level.
I had NO idea what answer they want. Really. I got completely fooled by the non sequitur caused by pairing 5 somethings (pennies?) with a fluid container labeled 6 and the nonsensical "part I know" and "whole" labels. I could make up a more-or-less believable explanation of any of the answers.
How the hell did I get a 5 (make it A for american readers) in functional calculus at the university? And algebra? And... nah, skip it - in short: most of the mathematical subjects? How the hell am I able to easily balance the budget of a project I lead? And why the hell do I tend to approach problems that escape my intuition by modeling them using (gasp!) mathematics, if I can't absentmindedly answer a question from a math test for 5-year-olds?
I see this kind of stuff everywhere, it's not US specific. It's testmania. Using tests as a way to test someone's competence itself is disputable but useful, the real problems are:
1. that the teacher is not allowed to accept and score a textual explanation of reasoning if the student thinks that the question is wrong.
2. perhaps more important - that anyone at all believes that ambiguity in questions is not a problem as long as that type of problem was practiced. JEEZ! People! This is problem solving! You're not supposed to learn what solution is expected! Real problems do not have expected outcomes, just the right ones! If the problem is not clearly defined and no means of clarification are present, then the problem is not well stated and the only correct answer is "not enough input"!
I would not focus on the boredom, I'd focus on relevance. And again, everything depends on a particular situation and the chairperson. I'm thirty-something by the way, so - neither generation.
A good meeting has an agenda. Sometimes you're on the meeting for one or two specific points of that agenda and the rest is irrelevant to you and you are unlikely to contribute anything there. During a local meeting, if you can be reached by phone and the meeting is small enough to make it managable, you would be called in and allowed to leave once not needed. If the meeting is somewhere else, you need to arrive early and stay until the last point that affects you, even if some unrelated stuff is getting discussed in the meantime. In that case, feel free to do whatever you please (although I find that half-listening often gives you some usable background information you wouldn't get otherwise), just don't disturb the discussion. Sometimes you are expected to just be there for the entire meeting. Bad decision from the chairperson or your boss, definitely. Feel free to do anything, you're getting paid anyway.
So, simple rules:
1. Don't waste the time of others. Just because something seems boring to you doesn't mean it doesn't need a discussion and eveybody wants to finish it asap. So, do not disturb the discussion, don't make distracting sounds, help them get to the part you want quickly. If your phone rings (why the hell isn't it set to vibrate while in a meeting?!?), either leave for the call or whisper a quick "I'm in a meeting, I'll call you back". Do not call anyone, if you have to - leave. Sound - off. Other than that - I don't care.
2. Do your part. If the meeting gets to a part where you are required, your full attention is needed, period. I don't care if you're bored, you cannot drift off - this is the part I invited you for, if I have to repeat something because you didn't listen, you're wasting my time. If someone's babbling, say so, unless it's politically risky for you (in that case, I'm sorry for you, you'll just have to tough it out). It's the chairpersons responsibility to push the speakers a little if needed.
3. One painful exception - if you're the "ears" of someone who couldn't participate in that meeting, specifically sent in that role, then you will have to suffer the boredom. You do not have the priviledge to choose what's important - you can't be sure. And you wouldn't be there if the one sending you was only interested in decisions - they should be in the minutes anyway. So, you are supposed to make your own notes, see what gets decided in 5 seconds and what generates a long discussion, look for nonverbal signals... That's a difficult job and not everyone is good for that role. If you are, you probably already know all this.
Meetings are generally very helpful, no electronic communication trumps a short discussion for decision making. You just have to use them wisely, keep them short and only invite the needed participants. Any meeting above 7 persons will waste a lot of time, avoid if possible. Sometimes it makes sense to do a big meeting though. Especially if you see that you would need 10+ small meetings within a month to decide everything - maybe it's better to even lose a whole day in a large meeting and just get it all done at once, instead of pulling crucial people out to the conference room now and then during the whole month...
And you simply cannot do a project involving several companies or weakly connected divisions without meetings. Quite often a chat/e-mail/whatever discussion will drag on for weeks, while you could reach a decision in a single meeting. By all means, do as few meetings as you can and keep them short and focused - but they are the crucial points of the project, the moments where you detect and fix any misunderstandings about things that allow all parts to work together.
Also, every word of the claim counts.
This patent is a lot narrower than it seems. Notice the "fuzzy". Fuzzy logic is well defined and does have alternatives. Use any alternative solution in this step and you're not infringing.
Bing. Microsoft is part of this consortium, remember?
You underestimate human ability to adapt. If we lose what we use, we'll use what's available. Sure, there'd be a period of outrage and a bit of chaos, but then everything would stabilise. Business as usual while someone else reaps the profit.
There's a Polish proverb: "If you don't have what you like, you like what you have".
And what exactly did you think was the goal of this WTO decision? That's how treaties are enforced - through smart playing on local politics. Instead of invading the country in violation (which - as in this case - may be completely infeasible), you cause some other internal force to play on your side. This move seems exactly aimed at starting a lobby war. IP violation will trigger a bigger bully, who will make sure that the smaller bully, who started it all, plays by the rules. As soon as that happens, the bigger bullies interests will be protected again and everyone's happy. Except the smaller bully. Oh well. You should have grown bigger.
And why the hell is everybody here protecting the gambling oligopoly of the USA as if it was the USA itself?
Maybe. I don't know and I don't care. That's the beauty of international agreements - if you sing them, you promise to make them work somehow in your country. If you can't do that, you're in breach and you shouldn't have signed at all. That's the way they are designed, because that's the only way they can possibly work. If you sign, it's your problem how to enforce them locally.
Are you familiar with the term "punitive damages"? I believe the WTO couldn't care less. In fact, that explains the huge difference between the claimed losses and allowed profit - the WTO is saying "well, it would not be fair for you to earn too much off this, so we'll set the cap at 21M... but if you can stretch this to cost the USA as much as you lost - feel free." You are in breach of an agreement. You can swallow the losses or exit the treaty. If you do, your IP is no longer protected at all, making this case seem minor. Enjoy.
In fact, I for one urge you to throw a fit and exit the treaty! Every US movie, book or song available for free - works fine for me, thank you very much! I can't wait!
I was born in a police state (no longer so, unless you believe some crackpots). Not the worst of the kind, but still. Let me tell you: the kind of news that reach us from the US, like this one... You are quickly becoming a police state, period. Wake up while you still have some means of reversing that. There is still actual freedom to vote, even if severely weakened by a two-party domination where a third party vote is widely considered lost and the two parties have similar goals. There are still some laws you can actually use in a court. But the speed at which your freedom degraded in the last 20 years or so is terrifying.
Looking from outside, you will still be bragging about being more free than, say, China in about 40 years, while no longer being that. And the acceleration after 9/11... boy, that was impressive.
Yes, she was free to report that. And it would be suppressed in a police state with strong internal opposition. But in the US it does not matter. Do you see a huge outrage abaout this? No? Then it's best to allow this to happen. People vent, people see others venting and believe that's a proof of freedom... The sheeple are content, everybody's happy.
You have been warned. Freedom you don't protect is a freedom lost. Winning it back is far more difficult.
I completely agree (*not a "me too", read on) with you on the impossibility of printing <100nm electronics in forseeable future. However, this does not mean that 3D printing has no potential for nearly-commercial-level prototyping.
As you mentioned a couple of times, FPGA is incredibly powerful. You can also buy some commercial-level chips, the same the big companies are using. Now realize that printing of the boards is entirely realistic. That leaves only two problems:
1. Precise soldering of complex chips with insane amounts of pins
2. Availability of insanely complex FPGAs with lots of pins and gates
Doesn't adaptation of sufficiently precise 3D printers to 1. seem feasible? In 15 years? Certainly. I also believe this will solve 2. as well - as soon as it's easy to use them, they will appear on the market.
So, printing commercial-level electronics? No, if at all, then always at least 20-30 years behind. But printing of nearly-there prototypes using existing chips and FPGAs far more powerful than today? In 15 years? I can easily see that happening.
Exactly. In fact, I like to think about the popularity of the cloud as anything other than a low-security file sharing platform in terms of five words:
It's a matter of being Fast, Easy, Convenient, Accessible & Low-cost.
Making it F.E.C.A.L. matter.
Actually the existence of SEPs itself is a sign of a broken system - if a patent is essential to entering the market in an entire industry, how the HELL is it still valid?! Patents are there to provide a head start for the inventor (or whoever owns the patent or a licence), nothing more.
This is a result of two colliding processes. The patent owners (as with all other IP) would love to have their exclusive rights last longer and will lobby for it. At the same time the world has been constantly speeding up. Design, production, even distribution are a lot faster now. This means that the power of a patent grew a lot. Unfortunately, this effect is different in different industries (*).
Consumer electronics is one field where patents should last a LOT shorter. Barrier to entry is way too high for an individual inventor to enter the market based on one patent anyway, so most patents will be used by existing companies. In this situation new technology can be brought to market quickly and sold worldwide. Why grant 10 or 20 years of exclusive rights for a technology which will be outdated in 5?
A patent should last long enough to enter the market, maybe get a significant market share... not build a new large market from scratch - that should never happen entirely without competition if the words "free market" have any meaning at all.
However, there are still industry fields where 10 years is a short period. Basically, field-invariant patent law is worthless.
(*) The same goes for copyrights. Immediate distribution. Quick printing/production/whatever. Instant access through the internet. Whether your IP-protected product is a song, a book, a movie or whatever, you can now reach a market bigger than ever almost immediately. So, why grant so many years of protection? It's a monopolistic perversion of the IP law's original intent. The protection period grows all the time, while changes in technology dictate that it should actually be reduced.
Actually... I see it as a fair warning and in the current situation (with the USA getting hammered for listening in on pretty much everything) reads pretty much as a "who's the good guy now" directed at America.
They are basically saying this: "Hi. We're organizing a big event, a natural target for terrorist attacks. So, while this should be obvious, we'll warn you: we're prepared and we will listen in on anything we possibly can to avert any destructive plans. So, if you come here - do not expect any privacy, either over phone or over the Internet. Thank you for your attention."
And the funny thing is that this actually looks unbelievably fair compared to recent news from the USA. "Do not have expectation of privacy" is a fair warning. At the same time recent news made it clear that any time I use a service on the Internet the data is more likely than not to be available to US - unless the service is hosted in a non-US-friendly country and routing avoids the US. And noone said so.
Not that I expected anything else, but expectation of privacy is an important concept. Russia saying upfront that privacy will be ignored during the games actually sounds positive now. Sure, they will abuse it, but they are not claiming that your privacy matters. The US did. Hell, we just had a big discussion whether crucial Internet services (like IP allocation) should be moved under UN control. And you had the f...g guts to claim that it was "more free" as it is, that the move was to apply undue control.
Look what you've done to your contry. Land of the free, right...
Mod parent up, if only for the first sentence. I've been watching the US from outside for many years. I see all these comments about the huge gap between the two parties, the differences that make it impossible for a Republican to ever vote for a Democrat and vice versa, the Incompatible Values (TM)... And I just cannot see it. I mean I get the difference in high-level declarations, just not in actions. The actual differences between the two sides in practically any discussion I've seen would easily fit within the bounds of internal disagreements in a single party elsewhere. There is no real difference. In fact, quite possibly the differences inside each party are greater than the difference between the somwhat averaged official stances of both parties.
And you seriously want something to change while still voting for the same two parties? Good luck with that.
"First Few Doctor Who Episodes May Fall To Public Domain Next Year"
I cannot even begin to comprehend the depression behind this sentence. The law states clearly that these episodes will enter the public domain. This seems as deterministic as the law gets. The only alternative would be a very sudden move by the lawmakers, right now. Since there's no real gossip about such a plan, this means that whoever wrote the title deeply believes that lobbyists will enter soon and be fast and effective.
Come on, guys! This is not America! European lawmakers can obviously be bought, but not that easily and quickly - the voters are not yet completely asleep (vide ACTA). Have you so completely lost hope in humanity, not just your corrupt politicians?
BTW: check who holds the copyright and their track record. It might not be stellar, but it certainly is not as bad as MPAA's...
Yes, the home-brewing is less likely. But since only one component is prescription-only, I would bet the drug will hit the market. The component is readily available over the counter in several countries and actually legal to possess in the US (with prescription). This makes acquiring codeine a lot easier and cheaper than many alternatives. Plus, the drug is actually great to sell if purified - it is very highly addictive, doesn't last long and doesn't kill the client too quickly. Goldmine. Then the client is not able to pay for that anymore - cool, you tell him to get more money just once and sell him some codeine and the instructions (not saying anything about purification methods) and it's quite likely he won't bother you anymore.
Pfffft... You had it easy. My Garmin with maps from about two years ago (yeah, yeah, I know, I should update...) is very hard to use for E-W trips in southern Warsaw, Poland - exactly where I drive most often. It always forces a route through the S2 express road and will ask you to turn around for quite a few kilometers if you miss the crossing and fail to use this route. No wonder - there are absolutely NO traffic jams on this road, there are few alternatives and the express roads have 2.5x higher speed limit (this is a city after all), plus the S2 takes a very, very useful route through the city.
One problem though - at the time the maps were released the S2 was nothing but a couple of disjoint overpasses, sandy construction sites and untouched grass. It's still not completed today, although I think some parts were opened recently.
The point is - a GPS is just a useful and easy to use information source, not a reality interface. You can and should check the route it proposes for obvious mistakes, consider the warnings it may not have received and always watch the actual road. It is extremely useful if used with this in mind - but it does. Make. Mistakes!
Unfortunately our brains were not built for logic. We have an instinct that makes us automatically offload difficult tasks to remote agents if they prove effective enough. Lazy brain. If you don't conciously fight this tendency, it will happen. It's just so much easier to just trust someone to do something. Our brains had no time to evolve a separate mode of interaction for technological devices, so - as with people - once we delegate, trust follows.
People, it's simple! You are the driver - you are responsible for a safe trip. You simply cannot delegate any part of that responsibility. Sure, someone else may show the way but you and only you are responsible for making sure it is actually a safe and legal way. You just cannot ignore the road, the signs, lights, etc. Period.
No. That's like a salvage company taking over the sunken ship for pennies and rehiring the captain they sent there.
Corporate assasination is relatively easy. Corporate poisoning is difficult. He had to make Nokia cheap as fast as possible but without completely killing it or losing the technological potential or IP assets. Plus, narrowly avoid crossing the line that would cause either legal problems or massive shareholder outrage. That's a hard job. The bonus is well earned.
Yup, sounds good. But escalation of an economic war could turn ugly very quickly. Just imagine the consequences of the Chinese just dumping their dollar reserves on the market in response to the interest rate change. These are not billions of dollars. Trillions (short scale, 10^12, T$ if you like). With that sort of arsenal several tactics are possible:
None of this makes sense in a more-or-less stable global economy, China would lose a lot in every scenario - but a war is a war, even if no guns are fired. They could make the dollar a very, very risky currency, not suitable for long term reserves. The consequences of the dollar losing that role in the global economy would be far greater than any direct consequences of the attack.
Their reserves are an order of magnitude greater than those of the US central bank. If they go all the way, there's no practical defense - at least nothing without far-reaching negative consequences.
So, I stand by my point - any conflict between the USA and China would have to go through all the possible phases, including actual military action, before anyone would think of sanctions. The effects of an economic war would be perhaps worse than even those of a (limited scale) nuclear shootout.
It's definitely time to prepare long-term plans to reduce this entanglement if conflicts seem to rise. Or just treat this like the nuclear MAD principle and remove sanctions from your vocabulary. Might be a more realistic choice.
Really? Remember the last time the US voiced that opinion? Let me remind you - it was Condoleezza Rice, the U-2 fiasco. A few words too much. Threatening with sanctions.
Nothing materialized. Nothing.
I don't know how it was covered up in the US, but that's how it looked from the outside.
China knows what you are obviously missing. The USA is incredibly dependent on cheap chinese stuff. Hell, most of the western world is.You simply do not have the manufacturing capacity to produce all those simple cheap things in sufficient numbers to at least cover the internal market demand. Try sanctions. Just TRY IT.
This is the reason the threats were so empty. The Chinese did what they wanted with the U-2 and nothing happened. Because real sanctions against China might result in riots within days. China has more than enough reserves to survive that, but you WILL lose the next election - Joe Sixpack will remember you as the one that made the shelves empty. The price of globalization. Really, I cannot comprehend how anyone in power could allow this to happen. The blinding power of money? The governments should be doing everything they could to obstruct globalization to stay in power. The private sector WILL move to wherever work is cheapest, thats obvious. A truly open global market closes the gates for classic economic war tactics like sanctions, since after a few years you are simply not nearly self-sufficient in some areas.
Hype, hype, hype. Vide Segway. Nuff said.
Correction - that's not what "legal tender" means. The meaning is that if a currency is a legal tender in a given country then you are required to accept it as payment of debt. In other words, for any debt in the US, if you are offered payment in US dollars you may not refuse to accept it (and still consider the debt not paid). You may accept or refuse payment in euros, canadian dollars, bitcoins, pieces of silver or particularly fine seashells, as you wish (unless in your jurisdiction some of those are not allowed). US dollars you simply have to take. The consequence of this is of course that courts do use US dollars in their decisions, to remove any doubt about the value of the debt - a consequence, not the definition.
Which of course doesn't really affect the rest of your argument.