Most laws have a underlying intention, that's where the whole concept of "letter of the law" vs. "spirit of the law" comes from. When someone/corporation is technically following the law but undermining the intention of the lawmakers, I think it's perfectly fair to call that an "abuse". GE paying $0 in taxes through creative bookkeeping may be legal, but it's also an abuse. Companies spamming the patent office with crap IP just to bolster their legal threats is also an abuse.
And yes, I can call it an abuse, still do the same to protect myself, and call on my lawmakers to fix the problem, hopefully all at the same time.
often there's prior art to the rescue to invalidate those
Which might mean something, if the patent office actually cared about prior art. They don't, so you'll still spend a fortune paying ransom money either to lawyers or patent trolls instead of doing something useful.
The "something" people deserve for coming up with an idea is "first mover advantage". That is what keeps people doing further innovation. If an idea is simple enough to be easily copied, it's also obvious enough it shouldn't qualify for patent protection in the first place. A discriminating patent office could help protect innovation, but what we have is actively hindering innovation by rewarding the trolls and penalizing the people who actually try to bring things to market.
I think if companies want to claim an exclusive right to a piece of "Intellectual Property", they should pay a property tax over time, just like they do with physical real estate. That would encourage judicious use of claiming intellectual property instead of the spam we have now.
I can see it on a 17", but on a 15" that means a smaller keyboard and it means it's going to be pushed significantly off-center too. *shrug* to each their own, but unless you use NumPad a lot, I'd rather just press Fn.
I don't see too many laptops with a dedicated numpad, but if you're interested you can use KeyRemap4Macbook to remap a section of keys with the 'fn'. That's a Mac thing, I'd assume Windows has something similar for keyboard remapping...
On the Mac side at least, I use KeyRemap4Macbook to enable the 7-8-9 columns as a numpad with the 'fn' key (which reproduces what older Macbooks did by default). Perhaps a similar configuration utility exists on the Windows side? I don't see many non-gigantic 'desktop replacement' laptops that feature a dedicated numpad.
Your university maybe, but FWIW, mine doesn't go anywhere near it. From working on a grant that had us working with a bunch of other universities, I can definitely see what this blog post is talking about: students from these other universities could do fine (barely) at "fill in the blanks" type coding problems, but plop them down at a blank editor and they were completely helpless. Maybe fine for an Windows-specifc IT program (not for Linux IT though), but for a general CS or software engineering track this is a problem.
Also, while I'm no iTunes expert, I'm pretty sure that you can convert your Apple music to mp3s. My wife does it somehow.
Only because Apple was able to convince the RIAA to drop the DRM restrictions... Apple was certainly not alone in that, but they did fight the good fight for us in terms of removing DRM on music, even though the associated lock-in was working in their favor to keep people using iTunes/iPod. Unfortunately I see no pressure to do the same with TV/Movies they sell through iTunes, as much as I would like to buy TV a la carte and watch it on my Linux media center. (Hacked AirPlay developments not withstanding)
Ignoring the snarkiness of the comment, there's actually a large runaway fusion reaction going on relatively near our planet, which solar powered electric planes can use to extend their range...
They mention a few places that Thunderbolt is daisy-chainable. I assume that when you buy Thunderbolt devices they will provide a pass-through port like firewire devices usually did. So just make the display (adapter) the last device in the chain. (and hope that everything else you want to use does include the pass-through;))
I wouldn't be surprised if 'native' DisplayPort screens start including a pass-through as well, it's just the adapters that are 'terminal'.
It's an outgrowth of their core strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. If there is a category using non-Microsoft products, it is a potential breeding ground for competitive technologies to take hold and spread into other markets where it could displace Microsoft. I interpret their faltering steps whenever they try to do something new as a result of being focused on simply blocking competitors as opposed to actually having any innovative insights of their own. (i.e. they decide to move into a market based on strategic value, not because they have any idea what they're going to contribute to that market.)
God I hope so. Verizon lobotomizes their phones, removing features like vibrate-then-ring for no apparent reason. Others are apparent, like removing bluetooth file transfer to force you to pay to send it through their network. I hate them with a passion, but I'm stuck on a cheap family plan... for now.
To add on ravenspear's comment, remember that part of stock valuation is based on how much money they have in the bank. So Apple may not pay out a dividend, but instead reinvest their profits, and the stock price will rise to reflect that you have a share of these additional assets. It's almost as if you received a dividend and automatically reinvested it.
Yeah, you know how power hates a vacuum... If only there was a way to codify that no one was allowed to filter/delay packets being routed, since the regional ISP monopolies are looking to rewrite the peering rules which have so far prevented this, and if they don't it's only a matter of time until the gov't tries to protect-the-children or some such BS. We really want the ISPs to be common carriers, maybe we should make an Internet "Bill of Rights" which says no further regulation is allowed, even by the government, you know, just like the original Bill of Rights established so many of our other freedoms by limiting further regulation. I know! We could call it... "NET NEUTRALITY"!
Do you realize net neutrality is supposed to disallow discrimination based on content aka filtering? So do you like your freedom of internet, or do you just blindingly hate all regulation on "principle", regardless of what it's trying to do? Because it's the ISPs who are going to start filtering things if no higher power tells them they aren't allowed. Even given the worse case where the gov't is also trying to filter, it's really a question of whether you'd like to be screwed by unelected profiteers or someone you can at least vote against.
1) CD's, FDDs, etc., only became popular after they were developed by a group. The development group itself does not constitute popularity, and I'm not even sure Sony gets credit for putting these groups together. (e.g. Philips was already working on the CD independently of Sony) IMHO when Sony has exclusive licensing control it gets too greedy, but also the "standards" its promoting are corrupted as per (2) below, so other companies are rightfully wary.
2) The divisions fighting each other basically means they shoot each other in the foot and produce worse products. There are not two electronics divisions who compete on quality. Instead, as a classic example, consider how the music division forced the electronics division to apply DRM that ruined the digital walkmans. And in return, the CD rootkit fiasco was thanks to the application of their technical expertise to the music business...
A consortium of like-minded companies strives to produce a standard that is optimized for a task at hand. Sony's "consortium" only strives to protect its special interests, which at best have nothing to do with, or even work against, the task at hand.
True, but note that when they are part of a consortium then it's not really their own in-house design. For that matter, the CD was joint with Philips. And the 3.5" floppy was actually a consortium that took over a flopped Sony design. This is a very consistent story: Sony doesn't wind up with a monopoly on successful formats, which is exactly why they succeed.
What sucks is when Sony decides it's going to open up a new market and try to lock everyone into a format it designed on its own and where it controls all the rights. Then consumers get stuck with a ball and chain to drag along if they want to get the good parts. Even Apple, who appreciates a good lock-in as much as anyone, promotes consortium-based standards when they can, like USB, Firewire, CHRP, HTML5, etc. As far as I'm concerned, they do it "right": invent a new format when it's necessary to meet a design constraint to make the best product, not because some PHB thinks he sees an opportunity to make a mint with his own de facto standard.
At the end of the day, Sony is a Corporation, through and through. They're out to make a buck, and happen to do so by targeting the high-end of the market. IMHO, they are not seeking to serve the customers with the best experience—if they do so, that's just a lucky side-effect of taking their money. That and their multiple-personality disorder from division infighting (e.g. music vs. hardware sales) means I prefer to stay far away from their products. *shrug*
PS3 happens to support multiple formats, but note that includes Memory Stick... the point being they're not going leave support out for their pet format, still hoping someone will use it...;-P
Which is barely displacing DVD... not exactly popular, more like last man standing vs HD-DVD, and it's slowly bleeding to death as downloads and streaming displace Bluray as fast as Bluray displaces DVD.
I've not owned/used any of those except the CD and FDD... not much of a track record, especially in the last couple decades. Bluray is still having trouble displacing DVDs, they barely won that against HD-DVD (and probably lost the war in the process).
Sony has great engineers, but horrible management. If they had half a brain they'd realize the more they try to lock down a monopoly on their formats, the less accepted it will be. SD has licensing, but it's a consortium, not one company.
I'm confident that alternative JVM implementations will fill the void: If you remember, Apple was slow with Java 1.6 and even then did not provide a 32-bit version for some time afterward, but third parties have already stepped in even on that relatively limited niche. What concerns me though is that third party ports may lack some of the nice OS X integration that Apple has implemented, allowing various UI tweaks to feel like a native app, or that there will be multiple ports with different integration interfaces, and Java apps will become fragmented or avoid using the features due to inconsistent support.
Anyway, also keep in mind this could be due to expiring Sun contracts, or the new Oracle owners might want to supply the JVM themselves instead of Apple, although I admit the obvious explanation is simply that Apple is making a power play. But Apple hasn't always done the best job with updating their JVM, so having a version from a cross-platform vendor may put more emphasis on synchronization, standardization, and portability, which in the end could actually make life easier for your business apps.
I don't think AC's point is that lawyers never take on good cases, the problem being raised is that we need lawyers in order to pursue these cases in the first place. If the law was "user accessible" then reasonably intelligent people could represent themselves, or at least pay others non-exhorbitant fees to do so. The fact that normal people cannot understand and process the law throws into question how we are expected to obey those laws in the first place.
I think a big part is simply that the law is a mishmash of original bills, amendments ("come from" anyone?), and case law (execution log?). Government really should modernize and make an effort to adopt some kind of revision control system where the current law is maintained as a single set of documents with a changelog. You could imagine different jurisdictions maintaining patchsets against the federal codes. But good luck with such an overhaul, few lawyers are going to support making their profession more accessible, they profit too much from the confusing mess we have now.
A exceedingly long test puts too much emphasis on speed. Some people can race through, some people like to be methodical and double check things... I'm not sure your grading mechanism should reward one versus the other. I don't think GP's claim that cheating is slower holds water either, for many people it'll be much faster to glance at their neighbors' solution than to figure it out from scratch. So you might wind up punishing the wrong people if that is part of your motivation.
My suggestion would be to include some tricky problems to spread out the curve. Not reading comprehension tricks, students will just complain about the exam being poorly worded, I mean problems that require combining approaches or particular insight into the material. Perhaps look at later courses for inspiration.
Slashdot Mirror
Most laws have a underlying intention, that's where the whole concept of "letter of the law" vs. "spirit of the law" comes from. When someone/corporation is technically following the law but undermining the intention of the lawmakers, I think it's perfectly fair to call that an "abuse". GE paying $0 in taxes through creative bookkeeping may be legal, but it's also an abuse. Companies spamming the patent office with crap IP just to bolster their legal threats is also an abuse.
And yes, I can call it an abuse, still do the same to protect myself, and call on my lawmakers to fix the problem, hopefully all at the same time.
often there's prior art to the rescue to invalidate those
Which might mean something, if the patent office actually cared about prior art. They don't, so you'll still spend a fortune paying ransom money either to lawyers or patent trolls instead of doing something useful.
The "something" people deserve for coming up with an idea is "first mover advantage". That is what keeps people doing further innovation. If an idea is simple enough to be easily copied, it's also obvious enough it shouldn't qualify for patent protection in the first place. A discriminating patent office could help protect innovation, but what we have is actively hindering innovation by rewarding the trolls and penalizing the people who actually try to bring things to market.
I think if companies want to claim an exclusive right to a piece of "Intellectual Property", they should pay a property tax over time, just like they do with physical real estate. That would encourage judicious use of claiming intellectual property instead of the spam we have now.
I can see it on a 17", but on a 15" that means a smaller keyboard and it means it's going to be pushed significantly off-center too. *shrug* to each their own, but unless you use NumPad a lot, I'd rather just press Fn.
I don't see too many laptops with a dedicated numpad, but if you're interested you can use KeyRemap4Macbook to remap a section of keys with the 'fn'. That's a Mac thing, I'd assume Windows has something similar for keyboard remapping...
On the Mac side at least, I use KeyRemap4Macbook to enable the 7-8-9 columns as a numpad with the 'fn' key (which reproduces what older Macbooks did by default). Perhaps a similar configuration utility exists on the Windows side? I don't see many non-gigantic 'desktop replacement' laptops that feature a dedicated numpad.
just it's that the university requires [.NET]
Your university maybe, but FWIW, mine doesn't go anywhere near it. From working on a grant that had us working with a bunch of other universities, I can definitely see what this blog post is talking about: students from these other universities could do fine (barely) at "fill in the blanks" type coding problems, but plop them down at a blank editor and they were completely helpless. Maybe fine for an Windows-specifc IT program (not for Linux IT though), but for a general CS or software engineering track this is a problem.
Also, while I'm no iTunes expert, I'm pretty sure that you can convert your Apple music to mp3s. My wife does it somehow.
Only because Apple was able to convince the RIAA to drop the DRM restrictions... Apple was certainly not alone in that, but they did fight the good fight for us in terms of removing DRM on music, even though the associated lock-in was working in their favor to keep people using iTunes/iPod. Unfortunately I see no pressure to do the same with TV/Movies they sell through iTunes, as much as I would like to buy TV a la carte and watch it on my Linux media center. (Hacked AirPlay developments not withstanding)
Ignoring the snarkiness of the comment, there's actually a large runaway fusion reaction going on relatively near our planet, which solar powered electric planes can use to extend their range...
If Verizon represents the rebel forces, we're pretty screwed.
They mention a few places that Thunderbolt is daisy-chainable. I assume that when you buy Thunderbolt devices they will provide a pass-through port like firewire devices usually did. So just make the display (adapter) the last device in the chain. (and hope that everything else you want to use does include the pass-through ;))
I wouldn't be surprised if 'native' DisplayPort screens start including a pass-through as well, it's just the adapters that are 'terminal'.
It's an outgrowth of their core strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. If there is a category using non-Microsoft products, it is a potential breeding ground for competitive technologies to take hold and spread into other markets where it could displace Microsoft. I interpret their faltering steps whenever they try to do something new as a result of being focused on simply blocking competitors as opposed to actually having any innovative insights of their own. (i.e. they decide to move into a market based on strategic value, not because they have any idea what they're going to contribute to that market.)
God I hope so. Verizon lobotomizes their phones, removing features like vibrate-then-ring for no apparent reason. Others are apparent, like removing bluetooth file transfer to force you to pay to send it through their network. I hate them with a passion, but I'm stuck on a cheap family plan... for now.
To add on ravenspear's comment, remember that part of stock valuation is based on how much money they have in the bank. So Apple may not pay out a dividend, but instead reinvest their profits, and the stock price will rise to reflect that you have a share of these additional assets. It's almost as if you received a dividend and automatically reinvested it.
Yeah, you know how power hates a vacuum... If only there was a way to codify that no one was allowed to filter/delay packets being routed, since the regional ISP monopolies are looking to rewrite the peering rules which have so far prevented this, and if they don't it's only a matter of time until the gov't tries to protect-the-children or some such BS. We really want the ISPs to be common carriers, maybe we should make an Internet "Bill of Rights" which says no further regulation is allowed, even by the government, you know, just like the original Bill of Rights established so many of our other freedoms by limiting further regulation. I know! We could call it... "NET NEUTRALITY"!
Do you realize net neutrality is supposed to disallow discrimination based on content aka filtering? So do you like your freedom of internet, or do you just blindingly hate all regulation on "principle", regardless of what it's trying to do? Because it's the ISPs who are going to start filtering things if no higher power tells them they aren't allowed. Even given the worse case where the gov't is also trying to filter, it's really a question of whether you'd like to be screwed by unelected profiteers or someone you can at least vote against.
1) CD's, FDDs, etc., only became popular after they were developed by a group. The development group itself does not constitute popularity, and I'm not even sure Sony gets credit for putting these groups together. (e.g. Philips was already working on the CD independently of Sony) IMHO when Sony has exclusive licensing control it gets too greedy, but also the "standards" its promoting are corrupted as per (2) below, so other companies are rightfully wary.
2) The divisions fighting each other basically means they shoot each other in the foot and produce worse products. There are not two electronics divisions who compete on quality. Instead, as a classic example, consider how the music division forced the electronics division to apply DRM that ruined the digital walkmans. And in return, the CD rootkit fiasco was thanks to the application of their technical expertise to the music business...
A consortium of like-minded companies strives to produce a standard that is optimized for a task at hand. Sony's "consortium" only strives to protect its special interests, which at best have nothing to do with, or even work against, the task at hand.
True, but note that when they are part of a consortium then it's not really their own in-house design. For that matter, the CD was joint with Philips. And the 3.5" floppy was actually a consortium that took over a flopped Sony design. This is a very consistent story: Sony doesn't wind up with a monopoly on successful formats, which is exactly why they succeed.
What sucks is when Sony decides it's going to open up a new market and try to lock everyone into a format it designed on its own and where it controls all the rights. Then consumers get stuck with a ball and chain to drag along if they want to get the good parts. Even Apple, who appreciates a good lock-in as much as anyone, promotes consortium-based standards when they can, like USB, Firewire, CHRP, HTML5, etc. As far as I'm concerned, they do it "right": invent a new format when it's necessary to meet a design constraint to make the best product, not because some PHB thinks he sees an opportunity to make a mint with his own de facto standard.
At the end of the day, Sony is a Corporation, through and through. They're out to make a buck, and happen to do so by targeting the high-end of the market. IMHO, they are not seeking to serve the customers with the best experience—if they do so, that's just a lucky side-effect of taking their money. That and their multiple-personality disorder from division infighting (e.g. music vs. hardware sales) means I prefer to stay far away from their products. *shrug*
PS3 happens to support multiple formats, but note that includes Memory Stick... the point being they're not going leave support out for their pet format, still hoping someone will use it... ;-P
Which is barely displacing DVD... not exactly popular, more like last man standing vs HD-DVD, and it's slowly bleeding to death as downloads and streaming displace Bluray as fast as Bluray displaces DVD.
I've not owned/used any of those except the CD and FDD... not much of a track record, especially in the last couple decades. Bluray is still having trouble displacing DVDs, they barely won that against HD-DVD (and probably lost the war in the process).
Sony has great engineers, but horrible management. If they had half a brain they'd realize the more they try to lock down a monopoly on their formats, the less accepted it will be. SD has licensing, but it's a consortium, not one company.
They'll keep beating that dead horse until pigs fly... or one of their proprietary standards becomes popular... which is the same thing.
I'm confident that alternative JVM implementations will fill the void: If you remember, Apple was slow with Java 1.6 and even then did not provide a 32-bit version for some time afterward, but third parties have already stepped in even on that relatively limited niche. What concerns me though is that third party ports may lack some of the nice OS X integration that Apple has implemented, allowing various UI tweaks to feel like a native app, or that there will be multiple ports with different integration interfaces, and Java apps will become fragmented or avoid using the features due to inconsistent support.
Anyway, also keep in mind this could be due to expiring Sun contracts, or the new Oracle owners might want to supply the JVM themselves instead of Apple, although I admit the obvious explanation is simply that Apple is making a power play. But Apple hasn't always done the best job with updating their JVM, so having a version from a cross-platform vendor may put more emphasis on synchronization, standardization, and portability, which in the end could actually make life easier for your business apps.
Err, actually, GP is not AC, s/AC/GP/
I don't think AC's point is that lawyers never take on good cases, the problem being raised is that we need lawyers in order to pursue these cases in the first place. If the law was "user accessible" then reasonably intelligent people could represent themselves, or at least pay others non-exhorbitant fees to do so. The fact that normal people cannot understand and process the law throws into question how we are expected to obey those laws in the first place.
I think a big part is simply that the law is a mishmash of original bills, amendments ("come from" anyone?), and case law (execution log?). Government really should modernize and make an effort to adopt some kind of revision control system where the current law is maintained as a single set of documents with a changelog. You could imagine different jurisdictions maintaining patchsets against the federal codes. But good luck with such an overhaul, few lawyers are going to support making their profession more accessible, they profit too much from the confusing mess we have now.
Wasn't there just something in the news about Obama pressing for similar access? I wonder if the mighty US gov't will fair any better...
A exceedingly long test puts too much emphasis on speed. Some people can race through, some people like to be methodical and double check things... I'm not sure your grading mechanism should reward one versus the other. I don't think GP's claim that cheating is slower holds water either, for many people it'll be much faster to glance at their neighbors' solution than to figure it out from scratch. So you might wind up punishing the wrong people if that is part of your motivation.
My suggestion would be to include some tricky problems to spread out the curve. Not reading comprehension tricks, students will just complain about the exam being poorly worded, I mean problems that require combining approaches or particular insight into the material. Perhaps look at later courses for inspiration.