Imagine filing a patent in Jan 2001 and it not being reviewed for about 4.5 years! And everytime you call about it you get the/dev/null spill. The USPTO is broken. It is not beneficial to the average American. Only exists for the benefit of the corporate aristocracy. Don't even get me started on the ludicrous nature of the patent objections made by the USPTO. I seriously doubt they ever critically read the patents they cite and know for sure they are neither software engineers nor experienced in the field of the patent they review.
When I filed the patent the delay was 2-3 years. Then it went up to 3 years a few years ago. Now it is north of 4.5 years. At this rate, in a few decades then will patents expire before they are granted?
I submitted this and the idea of optimizing the shipping when searching across sites for a basket of books to http://www.allbookstores.com/ (think thats the name) and they said they may do it. Site design is strangely familiar.;-)
Its a good idea and past due.
Maker to consumer. That's what the Internet is about. Not fat cats in the middle. Chinese junk is marked up 6x in WMT and other places. If ever we solve the shipping logistics and taxing logistics then the price can drop precipitously towards the Chinese price! Of course, lots of industries (steel industry) are notorious for lieing on shippers to avoid taxes (finished steel as raw steel) so the dishonesty factor is tough. As it is the government has a system that promotes dishonesty (inspects 10% of the shipments, non-fatal penalties, etc.).
Anyhoo, the general idea of meta seaching is past due. As craigslist blocks the meta searching engines, we must move to client-based meta searching. Death to the csars. Freedom for the people. And such.
Please don't attribute to SW Engineers what is corrctly attributed to inexperience. Alot of db advocates never worked much with filesystems. Anyways, I think ORCL plops its own file management instead of the OS so that underscores your point. BTW, IME ORCL is a bit of stone soup as the query optimization is really a manual process of determining indexes et cetera so does not really offer the savings versus a properly designed file-based system. Of course, dba's a re more prevelant and the tools to hook to db's well established and taught in the industry.
BTW, email is inherently easy to scale as the work load is inherently not interconnected. A tools vendor who tells you email serving is a hard problem should be crossed off the list. It's just not that hard of a problem and the only hard parts are the load balancing and management of cheap resources and backups. And, of course, choosing proper hardware and design to avoid issues with HW failures and continue operating robustly.
Best wishes,
TimJowers
Patent releases are a concession that the future of software is free software. Even as M$FT and Gaggle kill emerging markets by flooding with free software, they admit the now and in the future is more free software. IBM and CA realize they have to get positioned to consult with and service free software to stay in business.
Have you ever applied for a patent? The process has died. It's only a legal quagmire and has no longer anything to do with techology advancement. I applied for one in Jan 2001. It took them 4 and 1/2 years to even review it and they still have not let me know the status. IME, the US Patent and Trademark office is simply a roadblock to technological progress in contrast to their charter to disseminate technical knowledge. $4,500 which I could have better spent on a boat!
Plus to mention the admission of uselessness when they granted the single click patent. Granting this patent to me represents how little they know about software and that they have no qualifications as a governing entity. The USPTO should be disbanded and replaced with something useful and intelligent.
What I heard was INTC was supposed to release 1.6GHz already, 2GHz end of summer etc. revs but canned it. So, those who went itanium got burned. does it make AMD more attractive?
The counties accrue negligible additional costs to share GIS data. In fact, probably accrue cost savings. For example, Richland County covering Columbia, South Carolina and the metropolitan areas freely shares its GIS data and allows the public to view housingh information. Housing prices and other information may be delisted but, I believe, are still available from physically visiting the county office. Also, Los Angeles County provides the information freely as well. It will sell the information in a more compact form but the information can be accessible one property at a time from the Internet. I think they try to get you to buy it but suspect the recent court ruling underscores they are required to make this information publicly available.
I've run into city and other public officials before who think the government is a business. They'll try to block your business in order to compete. Best thing to do is let them dive in fully and see how hard business truly is and why the government has no business in business.
Long time in coming. This is what people promised with bluetooth at the turn of the century... after we realized we'd be working stiffs the rest of our lives we posted this idea to an anti-patent site. Network Companion Assistant: http://www.shouldexist.org/story/2001/4/2/181510/2 356 It's a variant of something we worked on in '95. In fact, around the '96 timeframe people had computer-CB-phone networks going from what I remember. I remember seeing one setup where the dude used his CB to make phone calls through his home phone.
TimJowers (Global Solutions, Inc. long forgotten, long remembered.:-)
Me too about the eye strain. I'm projecting a few more years before I'd better be out of the industry or start losing my eyesight. Already had to side-step carpal tunnel one time this year...
Is Pingtel's software the best? What is the state of Open Source PBX and VoIP? What names should I research? Thanks. I'm doing a general analysis of Free/Open v. Closed/Commercial at http://www.unitedswe.com/opensrc/images/sheet001.h tm and http://www.unitedswe.com/opensource.htm and have read several articles on Open Source PBX software but still looking for a good summary or comparison matrix.
My friend last night told me a DELL with a 17in flat panel goes for $300.
That's pretty darn cheap. Better than $500 in Brazil!
Yup: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Those Chinese sure make some cheap computers!
Looks like computers are headed towards free only slightly slower than software. What's next? Videos? Music?
TimJowers
Yep, once the megalith recognizes the upstart then the upstart has succeeded. That is how we can surmise FF and Linux are ending M$FT's strangle-hold on technology advancement. Viva la software developer, maybe a time of advancement awaits!
And then there's that family that took over Hawaii by lieing the USA was waiting to attack.... ummm, wasn't one of them Vice President of the USA or something?
Even Roe herself cannot get that overturned!!! From what I read apparently she feels she was duped into the lawsuit in the first place!
As far as Bush and fundamentalism, you have a definite point. The Bush-Bashers need another term besides Fundamentalism as this term in no way is accurate. Fundamentalists lean more towards giving up all wealth while Bush is more like the rich man who could not do so.
If you meet a man focused on personal wealth, then you have not met a Christian Fundamentalist.
Actually you are fairly clueless due to your lack of reasoning capabilities. Get an education by first reading the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America. In it you will read that the US Federal Government is directly in violation in many, many counts including its taxation. Your holding the Supreme Court supreme over your freedoms yet subservient over the freedoms of the Executive and Legislative Branch is symptomatic of why US citizens are allow this country to turn into a Corporate Aristocracy (the same end result for the people as Communism and Socialism...absolute loss of sovereignty to the government).
My point is the Legislative Branch acts on behalf of MNC's so the Judicial Branch is totally crippled and can make no fair law unless it can include jurisdiction over the parties involved in the action... in this case Chinese counterfeiters. You probably have not even heard the story of the Big Bertha being sold in Asia that was taken to Calloway Golf and even they could not tell the difference. Only a pro golfer noticed the difference: steel instead of titanium.
In the end, allowing a corporation to be a person is a huge source of this problem as an MNC can commit whatever stock fraud and importation/exportation/tax/copyright fraud in the name of a foreign company and the JoSchmo sitting in Manhattan can rest assured he will never be punished fairly. E.g. Gucci.
My point is the Supreme Court will have to take on global tax structures to make fair laws.
I see your point that China is a sovereign nation but you miss the point that China's growth is fueled by job loss in the USA and lack of proper tarriffs. As soon as goods from Chinese have the same absolute tax load as goods made here then I'll approve your assertion that they can continue to make illegal copies of movies if they want; but, right now, the US Government subsidizes job loss to China and importation of Chinese goods by taxing a worker in the USA about 10x to produce a widget what the tax would be to import the widget.
The Supreme Court will have to tackle national import tax law to properly address this problem of Copryright as we do not live on an island.
I'm planning to use P2P for my website. Someone posted a link you can prepend to yours to automagically get your files put out on bittorrent/P2P networks. This is ideal for me because it gives me the power of localization of content (like Akamai) for free. Anyone have that link?
This is arguably alot more important than copying some videos. This will allow fast distributed content, allows leveraging the hundreds of millions of idle PCs, and allows each individual a level playing field in publishing content on the Internet. I can argue why big money from Intel, Akamai, and others will want P2P networks killed because it will reduce the demand for expensive servers (possibly) and reduce the need to pay big bucks for site distribution services.
Another point is that people who otherwise could not get published by Sony and Viacom can now self publish. There are lots of sites with music and videos on the Internet other than those of the RIAA cartel. This is what they want to stop. If they can kill any distribution mechanism other than their own then they can stop progress. Ha!
Unfortunately, these music companies have largely outlived their usefulness to society. Within a few decades we'll be able to preview new music by search engines rather than visiting the record store.
The music industry is one generation behind the SW industry. I was diappointed to find I cannot write SW products for a living other than integration but do realize the over-supply of SW generally drives progress. Likewise, we'll see an over-supply of music. Related to this is the over-supply of food: if someone from the 1600's walked into a grocery store today they'd be flabergasted. That's how the music industry will look to us by the end of the century.
MPIAA/RIAA is still trying to force people to buy buggy whips.
As in the MSFT case, the US legal system has shown absolutely no concern for technical facts. (Remember the insanely ludicrous claim that Internet Browsing was part of the OS? Such BS should have been grounds for immediate loss of the case for MSFT - if you think you can boldfacedly lie in court, well, you must be in America, a land where even the President lies in court and gets off basically scott free.)
Unfortunately, reason has little to do with the US court system. Thanks to idiots like United States District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. When we look back at the lack of advancement in the tech field in the last decade, she stands tall as a prime culprit.
If the Supreme Court is truly serous about Copyright Law then it will need to enact a heavy Copyright Infringement Tax on any goods being shipping in from China and other coutries where the Copyright Law is Totally Abused. Forget dinkering around with filesharing networks that cost pennies in relation to the world practice of not paying $10/movie like US citizens have to do to see the movie!
When I was a kid people used to record tapes off the radio. Is that legal?
If so, why not make a frieTunes that sucks songs off the Internet radio stations and, if you have a radio card, the radio? Just tell fT what you want and it trolls for it and then sucks it into your personal listening library.
BTW, corporations are having a hard time adapting their business models to new technology. One thing history has shown is that countries that burn their fleets to hide exposure to the rest of the world (China) or ignore technology (battery in India) fell woefully behind. Allowing a supreme court to drive technology adoption is ludicrous.
We all know that technology such as file sharing is not going to die. Some country will have copyright-bypassing DVD burners by the end of the year and then, again, China will sell movies for $1 while the USA people are gouged for $10 at the theater! So, then the US government-backed economists will tell us the cost of living is lower is why our jobs are making a mass exodus but have not the fortitude to admit they have enacted a legal system that financially attacks Americans/lets other coutries off scott free.
Sadly, this is a case of extracting money from whoever can pay rather than enforcing legal justice. To continue to turn a blind eye on the rampant Copyright Infringements in Asia while attacking filesharing is like giving a speeding ticket to the guy late for work while failing to even investigate thefts (oh yeah, I'm wure we've all experienced this!!!).
Well, I think y'all might miss the reality. FR1 probably was paid more than FR2. Managers see all jobs and workers as identical. Firing the higher paid allows them to meet a metric of saving money. Can always replace FR1 with an H1 at 1/2 his salary and no benefits if more workers are needed.
BTW, how did you report FR2's incompetence to his manager? Perhaps tactfully it could be done.
Talked to my father-in-law on the phone yesterday... Wachovia was targeted too. The support guy had no ideas about it other than "it's your computer". Of course but this just shows the big companies are in no way prepared for what is starting to happen: an all-out crippling of computer systems by hackers.
Our profession will not take off with commodity computing due to hackers! We have to fix them.
BTW, anyone know what can fix the Wachovia keylogger?
I agree that dishonesty means business cannot be reliably conducted. Honesty has probably been the leading benefactor of US progress. Yet, parading a Corporate Aristocracy as a Democracy belies the failure of the US system. The patent process is 100% geared towards Corporate Dominance rather than creation of knowledge. IF I filed a patent in Jan '00 that has yet to be reviewed. Go figure!!! The patent application displays are not featured to expand knowledge but, rather, for use in legal research!
The USA has a huge head start that the Corporate Overlords are seeking to destroy. Bush increases military spending which is past far out of reason while cutting domestic programs. This is indicative of an Aristocracy and very similar to the polit bureau (sp?) where a small rich minority ran the USSR through the suffering of the masses. The American Dream is prosperity for all, not those that can finegle the patent process and court system. Allowing patents for silly stuff is a step over the cliff and cleary Japan has followed the USA.
My reason for listing the above countries is they are the predicted future population dominance for the world. What they do will determine to a great degree what the future looks like. Clearly a world like China, Pakistan, or Nigeria is much worse than a world like the USA; yet, the USA is much more like China WRT human rights today than it was in the 80's for instance. We are becoming what a communist country is in practice: a controlling elite that uses government to remove rights and restrict the populace. Taking a quick read of the Constitution of the United States of America reveals the federal government has over-stepped the agreement and is in breach of contract. Where does this leave the States and people with who the contract was made? Still paying taxes and losing human rights.
What would be more interesting to me would be to see language feature evolution. E.g. C# copied packages from Java and Java copied foreach from VB. Where did foreach first orginate? PERL copied {} for statement blocks from C but where did it first originate? And those sorts of features. Personally, I like the charts that reflect that VB.Net is more like Java than BASIC et cetera.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine filing a patent in Jan 2001 and it not being reviewed for about 4.5 years! And everytime you call about it you get the /dev/null spill. The USPTO is broken. It is not beneficial to the average American. Only exists for the benefit of the corporate aristocracy. Don't even get me started on the ludicrous nature of the patent objections made by the USPTO. I seriously doubt they ever critically read the patents they cite and know for sure they are neither software engineers nor experienced in the field of the patent they review.
When I filed the patent the delay was 2-3 years. Then it went up to 3 years a few years ago. Now it is north of 4.5 years. At this rate, in a few decades then will patents expire before they are granted?
I'd love to see Linus get a new house built without any specs. Funny stuff!!!
I submitted this and the idea of optimizing the shipping when searching across sites for a basket of books to http://www.allbookstores.com/ (think thats the name) and they said they may do it. Site design is strangely familiar. ;-)
Its a good idea and past due.
Maker to consumer. That's what the Internet is about. Not fat cats in the middle. Chinese junk is marked up 6x in WMT and other places. If ever we solve the shipping logistics and taxing logistics then the price can drop precipitously towards the Chinese price! Of course, lots of industries (steel industry) are notorious for lieing on shippers to avoid taxes (finished steel as raw steel) so the dishonesty factor is tough. As it is the government has a system that promotes dishonesty (inspects 10% of the shipments, non-fatal penalties, etc.).
Anyhoo, the general idea of meta seaching is past due. As craigslist blocks the meta searching engines, we must move to client-based meta searching. Death to the csars. Freedom for the people. And such.
TimJowers
Please don't attribute to SW Engineers what is corrctly attributed to inexperience. Alot of db advocates never worked much with filesystems. Anyways, I think ORCL plops its own file management instead of the OS so that underscores your point. BTW, IME ORCL is a bit of stone soup as the query optimization is really a manual process of determining indexes et cetera so does not really offer the savings versus a properly designed file-based system. Of course, dba's a re more prevelant and the tools to hook to db's well established and taught in the industry. BTW, email is inherently easy to scale as the work load is inherently not interconnected. A tools vendor who tells you email serving is a hard problem should be crossed off the list. It's just not that hard of a problem and the only hard parts are the load balancing and management of cheap resources and backups. And, of course, choosing proper hardware and design to avoid issues with HW failures and continue operating robustly. Best wishes, TimJowers
Patent releases are a concession that the future of software is free software. Even as M$FT and Gaggle kill emerging markets by flooding with free software, they admit the now and in the future is more free software. IBM and CA realize they have to get positioned to consult with and service free software to stay in business.
Have you ever applied for a patent? The process has died. It's only a legal quagmire and has no longer anything to do with techology advancement. I applied for one in Jan 2001. It took them 4 and 1/2 years to even review it and they still have not let me know the status. IME, the US Patent and Trademark office is simply a roadblock to technological progress in contrast to their charter to disseminate technical knowledge. $4,500 which I could have better spent on a boat!
Plus to mention the admission of uselessness when they granted the single click patent. Granting this patent to me represents how little they know about software and that they have no qualifications as a governing entity. The USPTO should be disbanded and replaced with something useful and intelligent.
What I heard was INTC was supposed to release 1.6GHz already, 2GHz end of summer etc. revs but canned it. So, those who went itanium got burned. does it make AMD more attractive?
The counties accrue negligible additional costs to share GIS data. In fact, probably accrue cost savings. For example, Richland County covering Columbia, South Carolina and the metropolitan areas freely shares its GIS data and allows the public to view housingh information. Housing prices and other information may be delisted but, I believe, are still available from physically visiting the county office. Also, Los Angeles County provides the information freely as well. It will sell the information in a more compact form but the information can be accessible one property at a time from the Internet. I think they try to get you to buy it but suspect the recent court ruling underscores they are required to make this information publicly available. I've run into city and other public officials before who think the government is a business. They'll try to block your business in order to compete. Best thing to do is let them dive in fully and see how hard business truly is and why the government has no business in business.
Long time in coming. This is what people promised with bluetooth at the turn of the century... after we realized we'd be working stiffs the rest of our lives we posted this idea to an anti-patent site.2 356
:-)
Network Companion Assistant: http://www.shouldexist.org/story/2001/4/2/181510/
It's a variant of something we worked on in '95. In fact, around the '96 timeframe people had computer-CB-phone networks going from what I remember. I remember seeing one setup where the dude used his CB to make phone calls through his home phone.
TimJowers (Global Solutions, Inc. long forgotten, long remembered.
Me too about the eye strain. I'm projecting a few more years before I'd better be out of the industry or start losing my eyesight. Already had to side-step carpal tunnel one time this year...
Is Pingtel's software the best? What is the state of Open Source PBX and VoIP? What names should I research? Thanks. I'm doing a general analysis of Free/Open v. Closed/Commercial at http://www.unitedswe.com/opensrc/images/sheet001.h tm and http://www.unitedswe.com/opensource.htm
and have read several articles on Open Source PBX software but still looking for a good summary or comparison matrix.
Thanks for any references,
TimJowers
My friend last night told me a DELL with a 17in flat panel goes for $300. That's pretty darn cheap. Better than $500 in Brazil! Yup: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Those Chinese sure make some cheap computers!
Looks like computers are headed towards free only slightly slower than software. What's next? Videos? Music?
TimJowers
Yep, once the megalith recognizes the upstart then the upstart has succeeded. That is how we can surmise FF and Linux are ending M$FT's strangle-hold on technology advancement. Viva la software developer, maybe a time of advancement awaits!
And then there's that family that took over Hawaii by lieing the USA was waiting to attack.... ummm, wasn't one of them Vice President of the USA or something?
Even Roe herself cannot get that overturned!!! From what I read apparently she feels she was duped into the lawsuit in the first place!
As far as Bush and fundamentalism, you have a definite point. The Bush-Bashers need another term besides Fundamentalism as this term in no way is accurate. Fundamentalists lean more towards giving up all wealth while Bush is more like the rich man who could not do so.
If you meet a man focused on personal wealth, then you have not met a Christian Fundamentalist.
Actually you are fairly clueless due to your lack of reasoning capabilities. Get an education by first reading the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America. In it you will read that the US Federal Government is directly in violation in many, many counts including its taxation. Your holding the Supreme Court supreme over your freedoms yet subservient over the freedoms of the Executive and Legislative Branch is symptomatic of why US citizens are allow this country to turn into a Corporate Aristocracy (the same end result for the people as Communism and Socialism...absolute loss of sovereignty to the government).
My point is the Legislative Branch acts on behalf of MNC's so the Judicial Branch is totally crippled and can make no fair law unless it can include jurisdiction over the parties involved in the action... in this case Chinese counterfeiters. You probably have not even heard the story of the Big Bertha being sold in Asia that was taken to Calloway Golf and even they could not tell the difference. Only a pro golfer noticed the difference: steel instead of titanium.
In the end, allowing a corporation to be a person is a huge source of this problem as an MNC can commit whatever stock fraud and importation/exportation/tax/copyright fraud in the name of a foreign company and the JoSchmo sitting in Manhattan can rest assured he will never be punished fairly. E.g. Gucci.
My point is the Supreme Court will have to take on global tax structures to make fair laws.
I see your point that China is a sovereign nation but you miss the point that China's growth is fueled by job loss in the USA and lack of proper tarriffs. As soon as goods from Chinese have the same absolute tax load as goods made here then I'll approve your assertion that they can continue to make illegal copies of movies if they want; but, right now, the US Government subsidizes job loss to China and importation of Chinese goods by taxing a worker in the USA about 10x to produce a widget what the tax would be to import the widget.
The Supreme Court will have to tackle national import tax law to properly address this problem of Copryright as we do not live on an island.
It's the wires! Wires and fiber are tools of the theives! Outlaw the tools and only criminals will use them!
Outlaw oxygen and only criminals will breathe!
I'm planning to use P2P for my website. Someone posted a link you can prepend to yours to automagically get your files put out on bittorrent/P2P networks. This is ideal for me because it gives me the power of localization of content (like Akamai) for free. Anyone have that link?
This is arguably alot more important than copying some videos. This will allow fast distributed content, allows leveraging the hundreds of millions of idle PCs, and allows each individual a level playing field in publishing content on the Internet. I can argue why big money from Intel, Akamai, and others will want P2P networks killed because it will reduce the demand for expensive servers (possibly) and reduce the need to pay big bucks for site distribution services.
Another point is that people who otherwise could not get published by Sony and Viacom can now self publish. There are lots of sites with music and videos on the Internet other than those of the RIAA cartel. This is what they want to stop. If they can kill any distribution mechanism other than their own then they can stop progress. Ha!
Unfortunately, these music companies have largely outlived their usefulness to society. Within a few decades we'll be able to preview new music by search engines rather than visiting the record store.
The music industry is one generation behind the SW industry. I was diappointed to find I cannot write SW products for a living other than integration but do realize the over-supply of SW generally drives progress. Likewise, we'll see an over-supply of music. Related to this is the over-supply of food: if someone from the 1600's walked into a grocery store today they'd be flabergasted. That's how the music industry will look to us by the end of the century.
MPIAA/RIAA is still trying to force people to buy buggy whips.
"First, the United States' description
... and for whom do the justices work again?
As in the MSFT case, the US legal system has shown absolutely no concern for technical facts. (Remember the insanely ludicrous claim that Internet Browsing was part of the OS? Such BS should have been grounds for immediate loss of the case for MSFT - if you think you can boldfacedly lie in court, well, you must be in America, a land where even the President lies in court and gets off basically scott free.)
Unfortunately, reason has little to do with the US court system. Thanks to idiots like United States District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. When we look back at the lack of advancement in the tech field in the last decade, she stands tall as a prime culprit.
If the Supreme Court is truly serous about Copyright Law then it will need to enact a heavy Copyright Infringement Tax on any goods being shipping in from China and other coutries where the Copyright Law is Totally Abused. Forget dinkering around with filesharing networks that cost pennies in relation to the world practice of not paying $10/movie like US citizens have to do to see the movie!
When I was a kid people used to record tapes off the radio. Is that legal?
If so, why not make a frieTunes that sucks songs off the Internet radio stations and, if you have a radio card, the radio? Just tell fT what you want and it trolls for it and then sucks it into your personal listening library.
BTW, corporations are having a hard time adapting their business models to new technology. One thing history has shown is that countries that burn their fleets to hide exposure to the rest of the world (China) or ignore technology (battery in India) fell woefully behind. Allowing a supreme court to drive technology adoption is ludicrous.
We all know that technology such as file sharing is not going to die. Some country will have copyright-bypassing DVD burners by the end of the year and then, again, China will sell movies for $1 while the USA people are gouged for $10 at the theater! So, then the US government-backed economists will tell us the cost of living is lower is why our jobs are making a mass exodus but have not the fortitude to admit they have enacted a legal system that financially attacks Americans/lets other coutries off scott free.
Sadly, this is a case of extracting money from whoever can pay rather than enforcing legal justice. To continue to turn a blind eye on the rampant Copyright Infringements in Asia while attacking filesharing is like giving a speeding ticket to the guy late for work while failing to even investigate thefts (oh yeah, I'm wure we've all experienced this!!!).
Well, I think y'all might miss the reality. FR1 probably was paid more than FR2. Managers see all jobs and workers as identical. Firing the higher paid allows them to meet a metric of saving money. Can always replace FR1 with an H1 at 1/2 his salary and no benefits if more workers are needed.
BTW, how did you report FR2's incompetence to his manager? Perhaps tactfully it could be done.
Talked to my father-in-law on the phone yesterday... Wachovia was targeted too. The support guy had no ideas about it other than "it's your computer". Of course but this just shows the big companies are in no way prepared for what is starting to happen: an all-out crippling of computer systems by hackers.
Our profession will not take off with commodity computing due to hackers! We have to fix them.
BTW, anyone know what can fix the Wachovia keylogger?
I agree that dishonesty means business cannot be reliably conducted. Honesty has probably been the leading benefactor of US progress. Yet, parading a Corporate Aristocracy as a Democracy belies the failure of the US system. The patent process is 100% geared towards Corporate Dominance rather than creation of knowledge. IF I filed a patent in Jan '00 that has yet to be reviewed. Go figure!!! The patent application displays are not featured to expand knowledge but, rather, for use in legal research!
The USA has a huge head start that the Corporate Overlords are seeking to destroy. Bush increases military spending which is past far out of reason while cutting domestic programs. This is indicative of an Aristocracy and very similar to the polit bureau (sp?) where a small rich minority ran the USSR through the suffering of the masses. The American Dream is prosperity for all, not those that can finegle the patent process and court system. Allowing patents for silly stuff is a step over the cliff and cleary Japan has followed the USA.
My reason for listing the above countries is they are the predicted future population dominance for the world. What they do will determine to a great degree what the future looks like. Clearly a world like China, Pakistan, or Nigeria is much worse than a world like the USA; yet, the USA is much more like China WRT human rights today than it was in the 80's for instance. We are becoming what a communist country is in practice: a controlling elite that uses government to remove rights and restrict the populace. Taking a quick read of the Constitution of the United States of America reveals the federal government has over-stepped the agreement and is in breach of contract. Where does this leave the States and people with who the contract was made? Still paying taxes and losing human rights.
TimJowers
What would be more interesting to me would be to see language feature evolution. E.g. C# copied packages from Java and Java copied foreach from VB. Where did foreach first orginate? PERL copied {} for statement blocks from C but where did it first originate? And those sorts of features. Personally, I like the charts that reflect that VB.Net is more like Java than BASIC et cetera.
Thanks for the fun and useful topic.
TimJowers