If the prices go up, then it becomes reasonable for another competitor to enter the market again, restoring competition. Microsoft isn't the only company with a war chest.
There are, of course, other factors. If Microsoft sets the "standard", then it doesn't matter if a competitor is better if it does not fully comply with Microsoft's "standard".
And, of course, Microsoft has lots of strings to pull to reduce the ability to comply with that "standard".
We can evangelize all we want, but the average person wants what is "safe". Of course, "safe" is defined as "what everyone else is using", not in terms of security.
If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?
The purpose of patents is to allow the patent holder a limited monopoly on the invention while telling everyone how it's done.
Think of it as a solution to a problem for which one can, if the solution is truly clever, receive a government granted monopoly on the solution for a period of time.
What we have now is that any solution, no matter how obvious or trivial, is being granted the same monopoly protection as if it were really unique.
It's like giving a class a test in which the first person to solve the problem by some method gets an 'A' and the rest using the same method are given 'F's. The question is whether that problem is sufficiently difficult that the other students would have been able to arrive at the same solution without copying the solution of the first to solve the problem.
If the other students could have only solved the problem by copying that of the first, then the 'F's would be appropriate. But if the problem was such that every student satisfactorally solved the problem on his own, they should all receive 'A's.
But it's certainly a legal precedent. What do you think?
No. It's not a legal precedent. At least, it wouldn't be in the U.S.
In the US, for it to be a legal precedent, he would have to win the lawsuit in a court high enough for it to be a legal precedent.
And then it would only be a legal precedent for lower courts beneath that one. It would not set a legal precedent for other courts on its' level or for lower courts not under it.
It wouldn't even be a legal precedent for the same court that decided the case. Although it is unlikely, that court could hear an identical case the next day and decide 100% different.
For example, a municipal court can set no legal precedent at all, even on lesser courts in the same jurisdiction.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court can and does set precedents that are binding on every US court.
The funniest thing that anyone did to a spammer was a woman who checked out the registration records on a spam domain and found that they had used a free e-mail address from yahoo, hotmail, or someone similar.
When she sent a test e-mail to it, it came back as undeliverable because there was no such address.
So she obtained the address and then used it to change the DNS servers for the domain to her own.
She set up an e-mail account to match the one in the spam and sent back a canned reply to everyone who expressed interest in the spamvertized product that they were really stupid to fall for such things. If I remember correctly, she also set up a web page for the domain to tell the interested buyers how stupid they were.
The first-time spammers were, I think, from South America and were extremely upset to lose their domain and all the potential sales from the spam. But all their complaints did nothing to get their domain back again.
The Can-Spam Act includes a clause that states that even if the spam is legal, the act does not confer any greater right to file suit against ISPs over blocking of the spam than they already had.
Check out Section 8(c):
(c) NO EFFECT ON POLICIES OF PROVIDERS OF INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages.
With no metal articles of clothing or in my pockets, I still set off the metal detector.
They then went over me with a hand held metal detector. It beeped over my chest area. The only thing there was the stainless steel surgical suture inside my heart.
I got by on about 2 hours sleep for a little more than ten years.
Prior to that, I had only gained about 20 pounds in the previous ten years. Since then I've gained about 60 pounds.
But in July last year I was sick for about a month Since then, I've been sleeping about 6 or more hours a night and don't seem to be gaining additional weight. But I'm not losing it, either.
Of course, there are far more factors than just sleep to account for.
I've wondered what the rules are when one party is in a state requiring only that one party consent to the taping and another party is in a state requiring both parties consent.
Years ago, I was the head of R&D for a company in Texas with a competitor in California. The president of the competitor in California was a lawyer and not a very agreeable person.
One day the presidents of the two companies were arguing about some issue over the telephone. The president of my company mentioned something about the fact that he was recording the call. The president of the company in California got real upset over that.
I knew one president of a company who noticed one day that every desk in the office had a recorder to record the telephone calls.
So he went to a local store and bought a bunch of casette tapes, took them back to the office, and put a tape in each recorder.
After that, about once a month, he'd go through the office to pick up the old tapes and put in fresh tapes.
He would then put the tapes he collected in a box in his car trunk. While driving around Houston, he'd listen to the tapes to see how his employees were dealing with the customers.
His wife actually ran the office. He acted more as an idea man and met personally with the customers whenever necessary.
One day his wife borrowed his car. She picked up the tape off the seat and put it in the tape player.
It was her telephone calls.
She thought her husband was spying on her and filed for divorce. As part of the divorce settlement, she received $1,000,000 paid in equal monthly installments over 5 years.
His lawyer screwed up royally. He didn't include a stipulation that she couldn't use the money to compete against his company.
So she used the money to start up a company that competed directly against him.
Without her running his office and without him delegating the authority very well to an employee to run the office, her company pushed his into bankruptcy in five years. At the time they filed bankruptcy, he had only one remaining payment of the $1,000,000 left to make.
My Master's degree in Math was from 1980. I went back in 1994.
I applied to four universities and was accepted at all of them. So I had my pick of where to go.
The first thing I noticed was that, in general, the classes were somewhat less rigorous.
One math professor told me that was true for undegraduates as well as graduate students. He said that the quality of students they were getting was much lower than in the 70s. The high school (and earlier) education systems were leaving them less prepared for college than before.
I found out that older students were generally treated much better than the usual undergraduate students. That was true at all levels.
Seminars were quire interesting. Often, I was older than the profs at seminars being given by outside people. As a result, the presenter would typically think that I was the most senior professor in attendance. So if I subtly nodded in understanding of a point, he would move on to the next point. But if I looked puzzled, he'd explain it in greater detail.
The campus parking people were much more understanding as well. When I received a parking ticket one night because the parking permit was obscured by another parking permit, they dismissed it on the spot. According to the rules, that was still a parking violation and should not be dismissed.
Most of the profs treated me better as well. For example, in one class everyone had to do a presentation during the course. Most of the time, the prof just sat at the back during the presentation and listened. When I gave my presentation, the prof actively participated in the discussion.
With my background, I participated more in class discussions than back in the 70s. In the 70s, if I didn't understand a point, I'd just figure I'd look it up later. When I returned to school, if I had a question, I'd ask it right then. In nearly every class, I asked more questions than anyone else in the class. Most profs get tired of just standing up in front of the class talking the entire period and really appreciate on-topic questions.
Well at least he goes out on a limb and his predictions aren't vague or anything.
Like this?
I wrote that spam would get worse, that there would be useless laws passed to stop it (Can-Spam, anyone?)
If he was predicting the passage of the CAN-SPAM act in his first column of 2004, then it would have been pretty funny if he couldn't have been specific. It had alread passed.
Why would it be _so_ important to have _live_ radio-coverage while driving the tractor?
Any kind of radio coverage besides the limited selection we had would have been great to alleviate the boredom and help stay awake.
There were some distractions from time to time.
For example, there was an oil burner route that went right over a field that was 1.5 miles long. About once a week a number of B-52s would fly over at an altitude of a few hundred feet about a minute or two apart. The nearest Air Force base was about 100 miles away.
Why not just record something to bring along, that you _don't_ listen to before the "big event"..
I did have a reel to reel tape recorder. Most of my audio tapes were the news coverage of NASA's space flights at the time (mid 60s to very early 70s). The only music I had was a few songs recorded from American Bandstand.
It would have been rather difficult to listen to them on a tractor, though. For one thing, the recorder needed a 120 volt power source. Also, the dust would have destroyed the tape recorder.
I think that Captain Kangaroo wore a rather flamboyant jacket and tie. While I have gone fishing in a suit and tie (I had an hour to kill before a wedding) and I've probably ridden a horse in suit and tie, I'm fairly sure that I have never worn a suit and tie on a tractor.
That would have been great for around the farm when I was a kid.
While driving the tractor about 60 hours a week throughout the summer, I had my choice of precisely two stations. One was country and western and the other covered things like little league baseball games and the farm reports.
There still would have been a problem -- I didn't have anything at home that would have been worth broadcasting. After all, attaching a microphone and listening to the dogs barking occasionally would have gotten old real quick.
I think we'd all be a lot better off if the junior high and high school math teachers had real math degrees instead of education degrees. Or if they at least took some real math courses.
I went to Texas A&M University. I don't know of any math majors there who went on to be school teachers, but I'm sure there were some.
They did have a master's program in Math Education. A friend of mine has two master's degrees, one in Math Education and one in Computer Science. He has worked for a defense contractor in California since the mid 80s.
However, how many people can honestly say they went to college to learn?
I wouldn't be surprised if you could sort out those there for a job from those there to learn by their majors.
Engineering, pre-med, and business type majors are probably there for a job. English, philosophy, and history majors are more likely to be there to either learn or to party.
Math and physics majors are nearly always there to learn -- forget the parties.
I figured with a math degree or two, one could find a decent job and so I never worried about it at all.
Because people generally won't go to see movies without an actor they already know in it.
I am more likely to skip a movie with certain stars. There are some movies that I completely ignore that I might see if they had relative unknowns in it.
For example, I steadfastly avoid any movie starring Travolta. He's easily one of the most overrated "stars" in existence.
And I avoid any movie with a rap artist.
On the other hand, while I won't go out of my way at all to see a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, I won't go out of my way to avoid her movies.
Re:I don't see what is so special here.
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 1
I've only had four interviews for my last seven jobs.
And of those four interviews, two of them were of the "I should at least talk to him before making it official" types of interview.
I've wondered why some people didn't just change tags for the hell of it.
One time I saw someone taking parking tickets out from under the windshield wipers of vehicles and placing them under the windshield wipers of other vehicles.
They didn't get anything out of it. They just wanted to cause trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
There are, of course, other factors. If Microsoft sets the "standard", then it doesn't matter if a competitor is better if it does not fully comply with Microsoft's "standard".
And, of course, Microsoft has lots of strings to pull to reduce the ability to comply with that "standard".
Lots of others here got it nearly right.
But I think you got it exactly right.
We can evangelize all we want, but the average person wants what is "safe". Of course, "safe" is defined as "what everyone else is using", not in terms of security.
Just this past week. Actually, it was a little less than 200 lines.
I was kind of surprised it compiled and ran exactly right the very first time.
The only problem was the 9 megabytes of input data contained numerous errors.
The purpose of patents is to allow the patent holder a limited monopoly on the invention while telling everyone how it's done.
Think of it as a solution to a problem for which one can, if the solution is truly clever, receive a government granted monopoly on the solution for a period of time.
What we have now is that any solution, no matter how obvious or trivial, is being granted the same monopoly protection as if it were really unique.
It's like giving a class a test in which the first person to solve the problem by some method gets an 'A' and the rest using the same method are given 'F's. The question is whether that problem is sufficiently difficult that the other students would have been able to arrive at the same solution without copying the solution of the first to solve the problem.
If the other students could have only solved the problem by copying that of the first, then the 'F's would be appropriate. But if the problem was such that every student satisfactorally solved the problem on his own, they should all receive 'A's.
No. It's not a legal precedent. At least, it wouldn't be in the U.S.
In the US, for it to be a legal precedent, he would have to win the lawsuit in a court high enough for it to be a legal precedent.
And then it would only be a legal precedent for lower courts beneath that one. It would not set a legal precedent for other courts on its' level or for lower courts not under it.
It wouldn't even be a legal precedent for the same court that decided the case. Although it is unlikely, that court could hear an identical case the next day and decide 100% different.
For example, a municipal court can set no legal precedent at all, even on lesser courts in the same jurisdiction.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court can and does set precedents that are binding on every US court.
That's very good.
The funniest thing that anyone did to a spammer was a woman who checked out the registration records on a spam domain and found that they had used a free e-mail address from yahoo, hotmail, or someone similar.
When she sent a test e-mail to it, it came back as undeliverable because there was no such address.
So she obtained the address and then used it to change the DNS servers for the domain to her own.
She set up an e-mail account to match the one in the spam and sent back a canned reply to everyone who expressed interest in the spamvertized product that they were really stupid to fall for such things. If I remember correctly, she also set up a web page for the domain to tell the interested buyers how stupid they were.
The first-time spammers were, I think, from South America and were extremely upset to lose their domain and all the potential sales from the spam. But all their complaints did nothing to get their domain back again.
The Can-Spam Act includes a clause that states that even if the spam is legal, the act does not confer any greater right to file suit against ISPs over blocking of the spam than they already had.
Check out Section 8(c):
I had a problem at LAX about 15 years ago.
With no metal articles of clothing or in my pockets, I still set off the metal detector.
They then went over me with a hand held metal detector. It beeped over my chest area. The only thing there was the stainless steel surgical suture inside my heart.
The broadband playing field is anything but level.
The large telecom can undercut the small ISP at will and there is nothing the small ISP can do about it.
I got by on about 2 hours sleep for a little more than ten years.
Prior to that, I had only gained about 20 pounds in the previous ten years. Since then I've gained about 60 pounds.
But in July last year I was sick for about a month Since then, I've been sleeping about 6 or more hours a night and don't seem to be gaining additional weight. But I'm not losing it, either.
Of course, there are far more factors than just sleep to account for.
I've wondered what the rules are when one party is in a state requiring only that one party consent to the taping and another party is in a state requiring both parties consent.
Years ago, I was the head of R&D for a company in Texas with a competitor in California. The president of the competitor in California was a lawyer and not a very agreeable person.
One day the presidents of the two companies were arguing about some issue over the telephone. The president of my company mentioned something about the fact that he was recording the call. The president of the company in California got real upset over that.
I knew one president of a company who noticed one day that every desk in the office had a recorder to record the telephone calls.
So he went to a local store and bought a bunch of casette tapes, took them back to the office, and put a tape in each recorder.
After that, about once a month, he'd go through the office to pick up the old tapes and put in fresh tapes.
He would then put the tapes he collected in a box in his car trunk. While driving around Houston, he'd listen to the tapes to see how his employees were dealing with the customers.
His wife actually ran the office. He acted more as an idea man and met personally with the customers whenever necessary.
One day his wife borrowed his car. She picked up the tape off the seat and put it in the tape player.
It was her telephone calls.
She thought her husband was spying on her and filed for divorce. As part of the divorce settlement, she received $1,000,000 paid in equal monthly installments over 5 years.
His lawyer screwed up royally. He didn't include a stipulation that she couldn't use the money to compete against his company.
So she used the money to start up a company that competed directly against him.
Without her running his office and without him delegating the authority very well to an employee to run the office, her company pushed his into bankruptcy in five years. At the time they filed bankruptcy, he had only one remaining payment of the $1,000,000 left to make.
I went back after 14 years away from school.
My Master's degree in Math was from 1980. I went back in 1994.
I applied to four universities and was accepted at all of them. So I had my pick of where to go.
The first thing I noticed was that, in general, the classes were somewhat less rigorous.
One math professor told me that was true for undegraduates as well as graduate students. He said that the quality of students they were getting was much lower than in the 70s. The high school (and earlier) education systems were leaving them less prepared for college than before.
I found out that older students were generally treated much better than the usual undergraduate students. That was true at all levels.
Seminars were quire interesting. Often, I was older than the profs at seminars being given by outside people. As a result, the presenter would typically think that I was the most senior professor in attendance. So if I subtly nodded in understanding of a point, he would move on to the next point. But if I looked puzzled, he'd explain it in greater detail.
The campus parking people were much more understanding as well. When I received a parking ticket one night because the parking permit was obscured by another parking permit, they dismissed it on the spot. According to the rules, that was still a parking violation and should not be dismissed.
Most of the profs treated me better as well. For example, in one class everyone had to do a presentation during the course. Most of the time, the prof just sat at the back during the presentation and listened. When I gave my presentation, the prof actively participated in the discussion.
With my background, I participated more in class discussions than back in the 70s. In the 70s, if I didn't understand a point, I'd just figure I'd look it up later. When I returned to school, if I had a question, I'd ask it right then. In nearly every class, I asked more questions than anyone else in the class. Most profs get tired of just standing up in front of the class talking the entire period and really appreciate on-topic questions.
Like this?
If he was predicting the passage of the CAN-SPAM act in his first column of 2004, then it would have been pretty funny if he couldn't have been specific. It had alread passed.
It took effect on January 1, 2004.
Any kind of radio coverage besides the limited selection we had would have been great to alleviate the boredom and help stay awake.
There were some distractions from time to time.
For example, there was an oil burner route that went right over a field that was 1.5 miles long. About once a week a number of B-52s would fly over at an altitude of a few hundred feet about a minute or two apart. The nearest Air Force base was about 100 miles away.
I did have a reel to reel tape recorder. Most of my audio tapes were the news coverage of NASA's space flights at the time (mid 60s to very early 70s). The only music I had was a few songs recorded from American Bandstand.
It would have been rather difficult to listen to them on a tractor, though. For one thing, the recorder needed a 120 volt power source. Also, the dust would have destroyed the tape recorder.
I think that Captain Kangaroo wore a rather flamboyant jacket and tie. While I have gone fishing in a suit and tie (I had an hour to kill before a wedding) and I've probably ridden a horse in suit and tie, I'm fairly sure that I have never worn a suit and tie on a tractor.
That would have been great for around the farm when I was a kid.
While driving the tractor about 60 hours a week throughout the summer, I had my choice of precisely two stations. One was country and western and the other covered things like little league baseball games and the farm reports.
There still would have been a problem -- I didn't have anything at home that would have been worth broadcasting. After all, attaching a microphone and listening to the dogs barking occasionally would have gotten old real quick.
I think we'd all be a lot better off if the junior high and high school math teachers had real math degrees instead of education degrees. Or if they at least took some real math courses.
I went to Texas A&M University. I don't know of any math majors there who went on to be school teachers, but I'm sure there were some.
They did have a master's program in Math Education. A friend of mine has two master's degrees, one in Math Education and one in Computer Science. He has worked for a defense contractor in California since the mid 80s.
I wouldn't be surprised if you could sort out those there for a job from those there to learn by their majors.
Engineering, pre-med, and business type majors are probably there for a job. English, philosophy, and history majors are more likely to be there to either learn or to party.
Math and physics majors are nearly always there to learn -- forget the parties.
I figured with a math degree or two, one could find a decent job and so I never worried about it at all.
I am more likely to skip a movie with certain stars. There are some movies that I completely ignore that I might see if they had relative unknowns in it.
For example, I steadfastly avoid any movie starring Travolta. He's easily one of the most overrated "stars" in existence.
And I avoid any movie with a rap artist.
On the other hand, while I won't go out of my way at all to see a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, I won't go out of my way to avoid her movies.
I've only had four interviews for my last seven jobs.
And of those four interviews, two of them were of the "I should at least talk to him before making it official" types of interview.
The taxes were collected for the specific purpose of paying the copyright owners.
Has the Canadian government ever paid even one cent in the collected copyright tax to the copyright owners?
The last I have heard it had been a couple of years and they hadn't paid anything to the copyright holders, yet.
And, for what it's worth, in the US, there are also taxes on both audio recording equipment and media. Check out Title 17, Chapter 10, Subsection C - Royalty Payments
Is there anything illegal about "trying to download a pirated audio file"?
I've wondered why some people didn't just change tags for the hell of it.
One time I saw someone taking parking tickets out from under the windshield wipers of vehicles and placing them under the windshield wipers of other vehicles.
They didn't get anything out of it. They just wanted to cause trouble.