I find the patent system to have strange parallels with mass religion, or more specifically, evangelical Christian beliefs.
One loose theory of why religion is originally formed is that it is a mutation of the set of rules the tribal elders set down in order to protect ones tribe. The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions. Rules on sexual interaction were originally intended to prevent the spread of STD's in ancient times. These very rules were later warped by the church (which had turned the "rules" into its own organization) in order to force a population increase in their followers. By promoting a warped version of this rule the church now contributes to the spread of STD's, one of the very things its founders most likely hoped to prevent.
How dose this relate to software patents you ask?
Well patents were not intended to strangle progress of smaller companies, they were intended to prevent big companies with huge R&D budgets from stealing smaller companies ideas, and either beat them to market with their own idea, or buy off the researchers from the smaller companies with huge bribes.
But in order to prevent the smaller companies from becoming the very entities that threatened innovation by hoarding their ideas, patents had a time limit on them that was reasonable.
5-10 years was the norm for most countries I think, but I'd have to look it up.
Then a funny thing happened. As the means of production became more efficient, i.e. companies needed LESS protection from the competition, patents started to get Longer and Longer. So companies started to buy up patents, or lobby for longer patent lengths.
The very system that was meant to help innovation is now the main reason that innovation is suffering.
Peter Julian is the Member Parliament (MP) for that area. So anyone who gets 25 or more signitures for there area must take their copy of the petition to their MP, weather their in "power" or not!
My MP (Jaff Brya Victoria-Becon Hill, [Libral]) happens to be a member of the ruling party, and ther more MP's whose contsituants ask their MP's to Present the petition to Parliament the stronger it looks!
Here is the Cool part: If I am correct, only 25 signitures are needed for each MP, so the more Rideings (Canadian for an MP's electoral district) who collect signitures, the better!
Copied from MY OWN AC post cus I forgot to turn cookies on in Firefox!
I'm a photographer/video editor. If you think I.T. has shitty job security, let me just say "Ha, Ha, Ha..."
So in between Photo assginments and editing work, I take all the skills that are required to keep a Final Cut Pro rig happy, and use them for "normal" IT work (fixing small networks, setting up small labs for schools ect).
At this point I can hear a few *nix admins laughing. Well at the same time the FCP boys are nodding along. A Final Cut Pro system takes a strange mix of creative, technical, and voodoo skill to run. Animal (or tofu) sacrifices are not un-commen.
I find a few weeks between "creative" jobs doing "grunt level" IT work is jsut the thing for letting ones brain rest just by working in a diffrent mode. Of course the real reason is that there are just too many good pho-togs in this dam town:)
Yes, but it's a pain in the ass to do it. He's a backpacker, which probably means that if he's going to be hiking a major trail, like pacific crest, or even soemthing like the John Muir trail, he's going to want to be able to have a week or so's worth of music available. It's a lot easier to pop in a couple of AAs than it is to disassemble an ipod.
Yes, as a backpacker I won't have much access to power sockets on my travels. Not only is the Mini-Disk's interal Li-ion battery swapable by the user, you can attach a (supplied) small external cradle that takes one AAA size battery. If you use boh at the same time, the play time is crazy!
Plus the only way to get music into an iPod is via a computer some how. I do that plus I have Anolog line in, and Digital (optical/toslink) line in, for loss-less audio in (exempting internal comperssion by the player it self). I can (and have) plug(ed) in a microphone, and used it just like an old tape recorder.
Apple should not think of Real as any Real threat:)
Let 'em use the 'pod and win a major PR victory for not invoking the DMCA.
OT: If I could change the battery I would have bought an iPod, instead, as a backpacker I was forced to go to Sony's MiniDisk palyer/recorder, which I then fell in love with, despite the ATRAC3 Format, wich has evil DRM.
I think if the above article is true, and HDTV prevents Hollywood and network TV from faking beauty, then it could be very good for peoples personal well being.
HDTV and ultra high def-movies would force Hollywood and Network television to abandon the forever-young look and the plastic look. Two things would happen:
1) Hollywood et all would be forced to allow people to age more naturally on screen, allowing (and requiring) more realistic casting. No more 28-year-old Hollywood stars cast as high school seniors.
2) Casting people who are naturally or un-conventionally beautiful would become the norm, instead of people who are mere canvases for make-up artists.
I find that European television (and films) have always had a more natural approach when it came to make-up and casting for actors and actresses. British TV characters are far less likely to look like they just had a manicure after every shot.
I think this would help improve peoples self esteem greatly, if all their heroes and roll models resembled real people more often.
I used to live on Vancouver Island, Canada. We get one or two big fires every year and these planes are called in when things get hairy.
During a fire a few years back, the pilots were using are road as ref. point for heading back to the fire after scooping up a new load of water. These things were passing over our house not more then 100 ft from the top of our roof. With a full load of water then engines make one hell of a noise.
Vancouver Island is home to two other interesting fire fighting planes: The Mars Water Bombers.
The Mars planes fight fires in the US all the time since they are privetly owned.
Character names are based on somthing interesting:
on
H2G2 Film Website
·
· Score: 1
Adams created all the character names for HG2G from adding bits of real company names that line the railway line between London and Bristol.
I know this 'cuss my dad used to make he very same comute to work.
Perfect! Know I won't have to ask...
on
Perfect Digital Skin
·
· Score: 4, Funny
..as I will already know what Sex my robot is!
Wow, the kiddies will be able to download Pre set Studio Max, or lightwave files with finnished wireframe movies and then all the have to do is hit RENDER. It's like the EasyBake oven for porn!
Sign me up for the next distributed computing craze: pr0n@home!
GNER don't operate in Bristol, or Manchester... Bristol is on the West Coast line which is Virgin Trains territory.
Ya, I know, I live in London.
But the BBC commented on the fact that other Operators were going to interduce the same survice soon. If Branson fails to get the same thing added to Virgin's trains with-in six months of GNER doing it, I'll send my e-mail address to the top five spammers:)
I was not intending for my comment to be Moded funny anyway, I was hoping that the idea of moblie offices would actualy spark some interest, but it looks like most people took it as mobile SPAM offices, and i only ment that to be a humerious title.
Why not buy up a whole carriages worth of space and set up your office on a train going between say, Bristol and london, or Manchester? Sure beats sitting in an office all day. If you worked the shifts out correctly, your staff would have a choice between living in two citys (or any stop in between).
Of course that bring up the obvious joke: In Soviet Russia, the office commutes to YOU!
I think the view from a moving train would be much nicer then a static office window anyday!
$613m is a lot of money, but will Microsoft try to use cupons, or "donate" software to schools, thus locking in more Microsoft users from a young age?
If the EU is smart it will force Microsoft to donate to CASH to open source, or educational groups, thus allowing people to break the Monoply by their own choice.
All the people bashing 3D user interfaces are the same people who are addicted to the Command line.
Some people i.e. those who do not work in IT would welcome a good 3D interface.
I'm always amazed when IT techs blast through ten windows worth of settings, while muttering instructions and then expect the user to remember it all.
Not all tasks are suited to 3D UI's, I know, but on the other hand a lot of tasks would be ten times quicker if shown in 3D. Setting up print ques, or networks would be a snap, if everything was shown in 3D and you could see when things were not connected. Watching heavy network traffic move, or being able to tell which e-mail server, router, or switch just died simply by watching it change colour on the network map would really help a lot of people.
A lot of people that are shut-out of the IT world due to learning disabilities, and Language processing skills would suddenly be 10 to 100 times more able in the IT world.
Of course I could be biased, I am dyslexic after all...
Try using a CLI when you can't spell, or like me make so many errors when I type, that CLI's would make me un-employed.
Or, try using a CLI that is written in somthing other then english? Try mocking GUI's after you travel through Europe, and you have to use computers in a French/Polish/Spanish internet cafe. It's amazing how easy it is to use OS X or windows even when they are running in some other language.
(RANT) As for all the people saying that CLIs are faster to use, it's you not the GUI thats slow, it's your brain. Try watching someone who thinks 3D space use a good GUI. It can blow CLI people away, easy. The thing is, the majority of people (70 percent?) think in the normal way (in words). Where as some people think in pure images. It's not that CLIs are faster then GUIs, its just that less people are phisologicely (spelling, ha) able to take full advantage of them. (/RANT)
Disclaimer: I'm a 3D thinker and a bad speller (as you know if you read this far:).
I use music as a way to focus my attention on the task at hand. Music seems to help me by gving my brain a timeing signal that I seem to lack.
I was given special permisson to listne to music in class 'cus my teachers had noticed that I was 10 time more productive when i had something to listen too.
I think Heinlein SHOULD get the credit, or who ever thought up the idea in the first place.
IMHO thinking up the ideas in the first place is the real breakthrough, or at the very least EQUAL to implimenting the idea. I think PHDs already get a lot of credit for things that other people invented, or thought up, but had neither the time, nor the funding to develope.
Not that have anything against PHDs, but I think the real brains is in the creative process.
Of course people that are both (i.e. Nicola Teasla), well, I'm just in awe of.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the patent system to have strange parallels with mass religion, or more specifically, evangelical Christian beliefs.
One loose theory of why religion is originally formed is that it is a mutation of the set of rules the tribal elders set down in order to protect ones tribe. The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions. Rules on sexual interaction were originally intended to prevent the spread of STD's in ancient times. These very rules were later warped by the church (which had turned the "rules" into its own organization) in order to force a population increase in their followers. By promoting a warped version of this rule the church now contributes to the spread of STD's, one of the very things its founders most likely hoped to prevent.
How dose this relate to software patents you ask?
Well patents were not intended to strangle progress of smaller companies, they were intended to prevent big companies with huge R&D budgets from stealing smaller companies ideas, and either beat them to market with their own idea, or buy off the researchers from the smaller companies with huge bribes.
But in order to prevent the smaller companies from becoming the very entities that threatened innovation by hoarding their ideas, patents had a time limit on them that was reasonable.
5-10 years was the norm for most countries I think, but I'd have to look it up.
Then a funny thing happened. As the means of production became more efficient, i.e. companies needed LESS protection from the competition, patents started to get Longer and Longer. So companies started to buy up patents, or lobby for longer patent lengths.
The very system that was meant to help innovation is now the main reason that innovation is suffering.
I really, really, want Mr. Lucus to make or Autherizse movies made from Zahn's books! Crazy Hope: Michel Mann (Las of the Mohicains) Directs!
Fox News "fair and balanced"
Microsoft Windows "It just works"
Mr. Bush "One Nation Under [a christian] God."
Wacky Wookie "I am the leader of a Penguin Army! Bow before my troops!."
I'm not kidding, I really DO Find it Funny!
I hope this post gets Modded UP!
Peter Julian is the Member Parliament (MP) for that area. So anyone who gets 25 or more signitures for there area must take their copy of the petition to their MP, weather their in "power" or not!
My MP (Jaff Brya Victoria-Becon Hill, [Libral]) happens to be a member of the ruling party, and ther more MP's whose contsituants ask their MP's to Present the petition to Parliament the stronger it looks!
Here is the Cool part: If I am correct, only 25 signitures are needed for each MP, so the more Rideings (Canadian for an MP's electoral district) who collect signitures, the better!
Copied from MY OWN AC post cus I forgot to turn cookies on in Firefox!
I also want a Moof ring tone!
I'm a photographer/video editor. If you think I.T. has shitty job security, let me just say "Ha, Ha, Ha..."
So in between Photo assginments and editing work, I take all the skills that are required to keep a Final Cut Pro rig happy, and use them for "normal" IT work (fixing small networks, setting up small labs for schools ect).
At this point I can hear a few *nix admins laughing. Well at the same time the FCP boys are nodding along. A Final Cut Pro system takes a strange mix of creative, technical, and voodoo skill to run. Animal (or tofu) sacrifices are not un-commen.
I find a few weeks between "creative" jobs doing "grunt level" IT work is jsut the thing for letting ones brain rest just by working in a diffrent mode. Of course the real reason is that there are just too many good pho-togs in this dam town :)
Yes, as a backpacker I won't have much access to power sockets on my travels. Not only is the Mini-Disk's interal Li-ion battery swapable by the user, you can attach a (supplied) small external cradle that takes one AAA size battery. If you use boh at the same time, the play time is crazy!
Plus the only way to get music into an iPod is via a computer some how. I do that plus I have Anolog line in, and Digital (optical/toslink) line in, for loss-less audio in (exempting internal comperssion by the player it self). I can (and have) plug(ed) in a microphone, and used it just like an old tape recorder.
Apple should not think of Real as any Real threat :)
Let 'em use the 'pod and win a major PR victory for not invoking the DMCA.
OT: If I could change the battery I would have bought an iPod, instead, as a backpacker I was forced to go to Sony's MiniDisk palyer/recorder, which I then fell in love with, despite the ATRAC3 Format, wich has evil DRM.
Also is an equatorial launch even needed if it's going to be sub-orbital anyway?
Is there any advantages from a high Polar launch have any advantages that an equatorial launch might lack?
1) Hollywood et all would be forced to allow people to age more naturally on screen, allowing (and requiring) more realistic casting. No more 28-year-old Hollywood stars cast as high school seniors.
2) Casting people who are naturally or un-conventionally beautiful would become the norm, instead of people who are mere canvases for make-up artists.
I find that European television (and films) have always had a more natural approach when it came to make-up and casting for actors and actresses. British TV characters are far less likely to look like they just had a manicure after every shot.
I think this would help improve peoples self esteem greatly, if all their heroes and roll models resembled real people more often.
During a fire a few years back, the pilots were using are road as ref. point for heading back to the fire after scooping up a new load of water. These things were passing over our house not more then 100 ft from the top of our roof. With a full load of water then engines make one hell of a noise.
Vancouver Island is home to two other interesting fire fighting planes: The Mars Water Bombers.
The Mars planes fight fires in the US all the time since they are privetly owned.
Adams created all the character names for HG2G from adding bits of real company names that line the railway line between London and Bristol.
I know this 'cuss my dad used to make he very same comute to work.
..as I will already know what Sex my robot is!
Wow, the kiddies will be able to download Pre set Studio Max, or lightwave files with finnished wireframe movies and then all the have to do is hit RENDER. It's like the EasyBake oven for porn!
Sign me up for the next distributed computing craze: pr0n@home!
Chekov:
"In sis seen I vas mota-waited by the large wessel looming..."
Scotty:
"..but we could'na finnish the seen, as we just did'na have the film!"
Ya, I know, I live in London.
But the BBC commented on the fact that other Operators were going to interduce the same survice soon. If Branson fails to get the same thing added to Virgin's trains with-in six months of GNER doing it, I'll send my e-mail address to the top five spammers :)
I was not intending for my comment to be Moded funny anyway, I was hoping that the idea of moblie offices would actualy spark some interest, but it looks like most people took it as mobile SPAM offices, and i only ment that to be a humerious title.
Why not buy up a whole carriages worth of space and set up your office on a train going between say, Bristol and london, or Manchester? Sure beats sitting in an office all day. If you worked the shifts out correctly, your staff would have a choice between living in two citys (or any stop in between).
Of course that bring up the obvious joke:
In Soviet Russia, the office commutes to YOU!
I think the view from a moving train would be much nicer then a static office window anyday!
CANADA:
Life expectancy at birth:
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
total population: 79.83 years
female: 83.38 years (2003 est.)
male: 76.44 years
(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/g
USA:
Life expectancy at birth:
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
total population: 77.14 years
female: 80.05 years (2003 est.)
male: 74.37 years
(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/g
Think about it, drug marketing teciniques are the same as microsofts. Pushers say this to kids all the time:
"Everyone else does it."
"Just try it once for free (a donation)."
"It lets you do things you could not do before."
$613m is a lot of money, but will Microsoft try to use cupons, or "donate" software to schools, thus locking in more Microsoft users from a young age?
If the EU is smart it will force Microsoft to donate to CASH to open source, or educational groups, thus allowing people to break the Monoply by their own choice.
All the people bashing 3D user interfaces are the same people who are addicted to the Command line.
Some people i.e. those who do not work in IT would welcome a good 3D interface.
I'm always amazed when IT techs blast through ten windows worth of settings, while muttering instructions and then expect the user to remember it all.
Not all tasks are suited to 3D UI's, I know, but on the other hand a lot of tasks would be ten times quicker if shown in 3D. Setting up print ques, or networks would be a snap, if everything was shown in 3D and you could see when things were not connected. Watching heavy network traffic move, or being able to tell which e-mail server, router, or switch just died simply by watching it change colour on the network map would really help a lot of people.
A lot of people that are shut-out of the IT world due to learning disabilities, and Language processing skills would suddenly be 10 to 100 times more able in the IT world.
Of course I could be biased, I am dyslexic after all...
Try using a CLI when you can't spell, or like me make so many errors when I type, that CLI's would make me un-employed.
:).
Or, try using a CLI that is written in somthing other then english? Try mocking GUI's after you travel through Europe, and you have to use computers in a French/Polish/Spanish internet cafe. It's amazing how easy it is to use OS X or windows even when they are running in some other language.
(RANT)
As for all the people saying that CLIs are faster to use, it's you not the GUI thats slow, it's your brain. Try watching someone who thinks 3D space use a good GUI. It can blow CLI people away, easy. The thing is, the majority of people (70 percent?) think in the normal way (in words). Where as some people think in pure images. It's not that CLIs are faster then GUIs, its just that less people are phisologicely (spelling, ha) able to take full advantage of them.
(/RANT)
Disclaimer: I'm a 3D thinker and a bad speller (as you know if you read this far
I use music as a way to focus my attention on the task at hand. Music seems to help me by gving my brain a timeing signal that I seem to lack.
I was given special permisson to listne to music in class 'cus my teachers had noticed that I was 10 time more productive when i had something to listen too.
I think Heinlein SHOULD get the credit, or who ever thought up the idea in the first place.
IMHO thinking up the ideas in the first place is the real breakthrough, or at the very least EQUAL to implimenting the idea. I think PHDs already get a lot of credit for things that other people invented, or thought up, but had neither the time, nor the funding to develope.
Not that have anything against PHDs, but I think the real brains is in the creative process.
Of course people that are both (i.e. Nicola Teasla), well, I'm just in awe of.
I, for one, welcome our new Teasla overlords.