Legal people really hate it, when they can't deny knowing about holes in their patent. And if you did your work properly, the patent shouldn't have many legs to stand on, should they go ahead.
One problem is that if you file your part of the patent claim to the legal people and then they file the patent they may chose to cut out parts of prior art that you have written just to ensure that it will get through the patent system. That's one reason for hiring a patent lawyer - make the application as general as possible to allow for the best and broadest hit. The patent office won't be able to search fully for prior art because they don't have the knowledge you have about the thing patented.
File the prior art together with the patent application and make the application so bad that it's rejected.
That should teach your boss.
Or file the whole thing on slashdot as an AC. But let a friend write it so the writing style isn't matching your style.
But maybe your boss was asked for possible patents from an investor. Venture capitalists usually looks for companies to invest in by measuring the patents they have. Which in the end doesn't say a thing about how well the company actually can fare. It may also be that your boss (if he owns the company) is under way of selling it and wants to get as much money out of it as possible, which may mean that you can get fired anyway for other reasons.
Even though they are intended to be used in server hardware where they are going to be kept stationary you will also be able to find users that are going to use them in their home computers or in servers that are on the move.
This means that the gyro effects are worth to consider. Also considering my experience from WD disks I'm not sure that I would want to use them for anything reliable.
For a solution where speed is important but the data itself can be re-created or of less critical value they can be OK.
Reality is that you when designing an application on an enterprise-scale level have to consider that not every user is running the latest browser.
I know that for a fact, and that also means that if you don't care about users running IE5.0 or whatnot then you will get toasted by bug reports.
This is especially true when it comes to governmental organizations as end users. I wouldn't be all surprised to find NT4 clients out in the wild still.
All logging will hurt performance, but how much depends on the system you are running, and for Java also the implementation of the JRE.
I have been using Log4J under OpenVMS and that was a real performance killer in some places.
But as a general, using all levels available will usually be a good thing. Even the 'fatal' level is sometimes useful. Like when you can't access a database then it may be considered as a fatal error that actually can be logged.
Re:Why is JavaScript is so popular? Lamda Function
on
ECMAScript 4.0 Is Dead
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
JavaScript is popular only because it exists in almost every browser since a long time ago. This means that if you code something for a browser in JavaScript you know that it has a reasonable chance to work for the most commonly used browsers.
The use of JavaScript outside the environment of browsers is very limited, and exists only in specialized applications where it may be useful to have a script language. But then it competes with other script languages like TCL/Tk.
I agree that JavaScript/ECMAScript is horrible, but it's what we have.
At least it's not as horrible as VBScript.
But I sure would like to have had a language with strong static typing, which in effect would have made it very similar to Java. By doing this we would have had at least some bugs straightened out before deploying to a large number of users.
The inconsistency between browsers is also a catch, but it could have been a lot worse.
And notice that the adoption of scripting of web pages are slow in order to allow the web pages to be useful even on older browsers.
Most of the functionality in JavaScript 1.5 is sufficient for what you normally want to do.
The only problem is that JavaScript/ECMAScript from a language point of view isn't really good. A strongly statically typed script language would have been better since it would have allowed the developers to catch a lot of bugs that now occasionally blows up in the face of the users.
And gag orders are today's version of "shoot the messenger".
The problem is there even if you don't tell the world.
Anyway - being a security person is more than revealing or hiding facts. It's also about having the insight to realize that there are always security failures in a system. The point isn't to track down each individual security failure but to create a layered solution that can change a security problem from being critical to moderate.
It's impossible to catch all security problems in a system, and sometimes a security weakness is in place because it isn't possible to make the system more secure without causing it to be impossibly hard to use.
But there are of course stupid security failures too. Autorun in Windows is one... Very effective when you want to spread viruses and other malicious features. And now and then we hear about USB devices that are infected.
The problem is more of the kind that if all seems well, THEN I shall start worrying...
Have spammers found a hole in my mail setup, or what have they found?
But it may be something like a case where the mail list generator has dropped the address in question and then several spammers have done an upgrade of their systems.
That's what subtitles in the program are good for!:-]
Maybe if a joint effort is done to complain about the pop-up:s will have some effect. Everyone sends a postcard the same day and also calls the same day to complain about the same issue...
echo "I'm an old Bourne Shell" echo "Early on the first line was a colon to indicate a bourne shell" echo "And that was before the convention of #!/bin/sh"
Personally I think it's hard to decide if our planetary system is rare or not just by computer simulations. There are too many factors involved to make it easy to calculate how a planetary system evolves.
There have been many guesses over the last century about how the planets did form. But from the data we now have from a few other planetary systems we can at least say that a few of them have large planets (gas or not remains to be seen).
And what would say that a planet has to be the size of earth to provide for life? A gas giant may be good for life too, but maybe not the life we know here.
The only considerable problem here is the retirement of the space shuttles. In a way they are dinosaurs of the cold war era.
Much of the specifications originated from the US military since they wanted the space shuttles to be able to launch spy satellites and the devil knows what.
But there have been advantages with them for civilian use too, so they haven't been useless.
What's needed are actually smaller shuttles mainly for person transportation. The Soyuz capsules are in a way good, but leaves little control over the descent. A small shuttle will be able to do more controlled landings, which may be useful.
But there is a downside for a shuttle that is able to fly (even if it flies like a brick), and that is that it's a lot more expensive than a capsule like the Soyuz.
The current shuttles are getting old, and the biggest problem is more the question of spare parts than it is of the hull itself, even if the hull is important too. But the hull and structure can be replaced relatively easy while a lot of the equipment onboard the shuttles are ancient with computer age measurements.
Which never would work anyway considering that very few drivers actually use the stick by the steering wheel for what it's intended. Flashing the headlights seems to be the only thing they use it for...
We are all criminals, but if we are convicted or not is a different case. How many of us have never been over the posted speed limit or crossed the street when the light is red?
You will need to figure out - is it worth it to actually invoke a law or not for a certain case? Maybe it's time to clear the books and start over again.
A few quotes:
"In a mature society, the term 'Civil Servant' is semanticaly equal to 'Civil Master' " - Robert A. Heinlein
"Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed." - Mark Twain
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing, with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place. Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Slashdot Mirror
And there is an article (auto-translated article in link) in the Swedish magazine Ny Teknik (New Tehcnology) about this too.
So it's a problem that is well discussed these days.
Legal people really hate it, when they can't deny knowing about holes in their patent. And if you did your work properly, the patent shouldn't have many legs to stand on, should they go ahead.
One problem is that if you file your part of the patent claim to the legal people and then they file the patent they may chose to cut out parts of prior art that you have written just to ensure that it will get through the patent system. That's one reason for hiring a patent lawyer - make the application as general as possible to allow for the best and broadest hit. The patent office won't be able to search fully for prior art because they don't have the knowledge you have about the thing patented.
Yes - I have an evil mood today...
File the prior art together with the patent application and make the application so bad that it's rejected.
That should teach your boss.
Or file the whole thing on slashdot as an AC. But let a friend write it so the writing style isn't matching your style.
But maybe your boss was asked for possible patents from an investor. Venture capitalists usually looks for companies to invest in by measuring the patents they have. Which in the end doesn't say a thing about how well the company actually can fare. It may also be that your boss (if he owns the company) is under way of selling it and wants to get as much money out of it as possible, which may mean that you can get fired anyway for other reasons.
Even though they are intended to be used in server hardware where they are going to be kept stationary you will also be able to find users that are going to use them in their home computers or in servers that are on the move.
This means that the gyro effects are worth to consider. Also considering my experience from WD disks I'm not sure that I would want to use them for anything reliable.
For a solution where speed is important but the data itself can be re-created or of less critical value they can be OK.
Reality is that you when designing an application on an enterprise-scale level have to consider that not every user is running the latest browser.
I know that for a fact, and that also means that if you don't care about users running IE5.0 or whatnot then you will get toasted by bug reports.
This is especially true when it comes to governmental organizations as end users. I wouldn't be all surprised to find NT4 clients out in the wild still.
All logging will hurt performance, but how much depends on the system you are running, and for Java also the implementation of the JRE.
I have been using Log4J under OpenVMS and that was a real performance killer in some places.
But as a general, using all levels available will usually be a good thing. Even the 'fatal' level is sometimes useful. Like when you can't access a database then it may be considered as a fatal error that actually can be logged.
JavaScript is popular only because it exists in almost every browser since a long time ago. This means that if you code something for a browser in JavaScript you know that it has a reasonable chance to work for the most commonly used browsers.
The use of JavaScript outside the environment of browsers is very limited, and exists only in specialized applications where it may be useful to have a script language. But then it competes with other script languages like TCL/Tk.
I agree that JavaScript/ECMAScript is horrible, but it's what we have.
At least it's not as horrible as VBScript.
But I sure would like to have had a language with strong static typing, which in effect would have made it very similar to Java. By doing this we would have had at least some bugs straightened out before deploying to a large number of users.
The inconsistency between browsers is also a catch, but it could have been a lot worse.
And notice that the adoption of scripting of web pages are slow in order to allow the web pages to be useful even on older browsers.
Most of the functionality in JavaScript 1.5 is sufficient for what you normally want to do.
The only problem is that JavaScript/ECMAScript from a language point of view isn't really good. A strongly statically typed script language would have been better since it would have allowed the developers to catch a lot of bugs that now occasionally blows up in the face of the users.
And gag orders are today's version of "shoot the messenger".
The problem is there even if you don't tell the world.
Anyway - being a security person is more than revealing or hiding facts. It's also about having the insight to realize that there are always security failures in a system. The point isn't to track down each individual security failure but to create a layered solution that can change a security problem from being critical to moderate.
It's impossible to catch all security problems in a system, and sometimes a security weakness is in place because it isn't possible to make the system more secure without causing it to be impossibly hard to use.
But there are of course stupid security failures too. Autorun in Windows is one... Very effective when you want to spread viruses and other malicious features. And now and then we hear about USB devices that are infected.
The problem is more of the kind that if all seems well, THEN I shall start worrying...
Have spammers found a hole in my mail setup, or what have they found?
But it may be something like a case where the mail list generator has dropped the address in question and then several spammers have done an upgrade of their systems.
That's what subtitles in the program are good for! :-]
Maybe if a joint effort is done to complain about the pop-up:s will have some effect. Everyone sends a postcard the same day and also calls the same day to complain about the same issue...
Identity theft with criminal intent should be a capital crime...
Yes - flaimebait, but it will sure stop them from repeating...
Maybe it's time to get a new job and offer some "cleaning" services.
I just have to buy some large buckets and fast-setting concrete first.
It's not really that simple.
Different sports have different doping drugs. For a pistol shooter it may be beer.
But I agree - doping is not the way to get better results.
A differentiation between prescription drugs and open drugs may be in place.
:
echo "I'm an old Bourne Shell"
echo "Early on the first line was a colon to indicate a bourne shell"
echo "And that was before the convention of #!/bin/sh"
Personally I think it's hard to decide if our planetary system is rare or not just by computer simulations. There are too many factors involved to make it easy to calculate how a planetary system evolves.
There have been many guesses over the last century about how the planets did form. But from the data we now have from a few other planetary systems we can at least say that a few of them have large planets (gas or not remains to be seen).
And what would say that a planet has to be the size of earth to provide for life? A gas giant may be good for life too, but maybe not the life we know here.
If all the money spent on Iraq had been spent on broadband - where would the US have been then?
The only considerable problem here is the retirement of the space shuttles. In a way they are dinosaurs of the cold war era.
Much of the specifications originated from the US military since they wanted the space shuttles to be able to launch spy satellites and the devil knows what.
But there have been advantages with them for civilian use too, so they haven't been useless.
What's needed are actually smaller shuttles mainly for person transportation. The Soyuz capsules are in a way good, but leaves little control over the descent. A small shuttle will be able to do more controlled landings, which may be useful.
But there is a downside for a shuttle that is able to fly (even if it flies like a brick), and that is that it's a lot more expensive than a capsule like the Soyuz.
The current shuttles are getting old, and the biggest problem is more the question of spare parts than it is of the hull itself, even if the hull is important too. But the hull and structure can be replaced relatively easy while a lot of the equipment onboard the shuttles are ancient with computer age measurements.
Both sides are guilty here, no doubt.
But Russia made it worse by their actions.
Only until there is a spy revealed that checks what his hobbies are.
"I would like to turn left in 50 meters"
Which never would work anyway considering that very few drivers actually use the stick by the steering wheel for what it's intended. Flashing the headlights seems to be the only thing they use it for...
And hack it to honk at all truck drivers, only do max 30km/h on highway and always run the fan at maximum speed and max temperature in the summer.
And another part too...
The 78 RPM records weren't on Vinyl - it's Shellac, which is a lot more sensitive than Vinyl.
We are all criminals, but if we are convicted or not is a different case. How many of us have never been over the posted speed limit or crossed the street when the light is red?
You will need to figure out - is it worth it to actually invoke a law or not for a certain case? Maybe it's time to clear the books and start over again.
A few quotes:
"In a mature society, the term 'Civil Servant' is semanticaly equal to 'Civil Master' " - Robert A. Heinlein
"Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed." - Mark Twain
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing, with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love