Software that can reliably pinpoint tumors in medical images is not "just mathematics."
As someone who works in the medical imaging industry, I can't argue with that. There is some amazing work being done in this field that truly deserves patents.
But at the same time, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that all 283 of those patents in Linux are of that quality. I suspect that they're all of the "so obvious no one ever bothered to file a patent until we came along" class of patent.
You've been modded "funny", but you're serious as a heart attack. I use FreeBSD instead of Linux, but I suspect that at least 90% of those patents still apply to me. (I could be wrong, but I simply cannot imagine that many patents applying to the kernel).
But I just don't care. I can't care. It's impossible for me to care. Those are too high of numbers. If it were only four or five patents, I could deal with it. For those few of patents I could either avoid them or cross my fingers until they got "fixed" in the next release. But you can't avoid 283 patents without avoiding the OS entirely. I'm not going to do that. And even if I did, who's to say that there aren't patents in Firefox or OpenOffice? If avoiding patents means I have to stick with 100% commercially indemnified software, then I'm going to be violating some patents!
Since I can't avoid these patents, I'm not even going to try. I just don't care.
Re:I think Marx would shit a brick if he could see
on
What The Bubble Got Right
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think you need to clarify your definition of "class". Marx used it as a semi-permanent state of a individual. But "management" and "worker" are not semi-permanent states that take a lifetime to overcome, but temporary roles.
My boss only became my boss a couple of years ago. He only gets paid about 15% more than me. We live in the same neighborhood. We have the same level of education. The only "class" differences we have are that I came from the middle class and he came from the urban poor.
I can't get to anyone outside my "class" until I get up to the CEO and CFO, or down to the janitor. Everyone in between from the vice presidents to the landscapers are in the same socio-economic class as I. I know this because we live in the same neighborhoods and drive the same cars and our kids attend the same schools.
Stuff written in Java is better than stuff written in C or C++ because there are no frapping buffer overflows in Java code
Come back when you've reached perfection and no longer write bugs. Until then it doesn't matter if Java doesn't have buffer overflows because you're still going to be writing stupid brownbag bugs. I don't get buffer overflows with C++'s string and vector either, but you don't see me strutting around like I'm using God's own language!
Saying Java prevents buffer overflows is like saying a nailgun prevents you from hitting your thumb with a hammer. While technically true, it still doesn't prevent you from nailing your thumb to the wall.
Garbage collection, in particular, is coming along nicely.
Coming along nicely! Did you hear you correctly?
A freaking decade ago I was being harassed by the Java disciples because of garbage collection, and now you're telling me it's "coming along nicely"? It's been ten freaking years and you're still not done?!?! Wake me up when you're finally finished...
It's amazing the myth that Java is fast just because it can optimize some benchmarks and computationally intensive loops. In my real world with a real world computer running real world applications, Java still runs slower C.
I've ported several computationally intensive image processing programs from C to Java and have experienced a speed degradation of perhaps 10-15%
You know as well as I do that single-issue voters not only exist, but might well be the most common kind of voter. There are people in the tech community who would vote for Hitler if he only promised to abolish the DMCA. Bonus points if his website ran Linux. They would even overlook Treblinka and Dachau if only who would promise to use OpenOffice and Firefox in government offices.
It doesn't matter if a candidate agrees with you on one or two of your pet bills, if his entire ideology is opposed to yours.
Some of you folks need to get a major clue. Either that or find the bottle of Prozac that rolled under the sofa.
Unfortunately, you're not alone. I was at a party where Bush appeared on a TV news clip. One attendee then went bonkers, and started shouting, "Ohmygod he's wearing a cowboy hat! Did you see that he's wearing a cowboy hat! Does he think he's a fucking cowboy ohmygod hes wearing a goddam fucking cowboy hat!" He was grabbing people, sticking his head in their face, and asking "does he think he's a fucking cowboy?"
If the candidates can't get your own debate organized, or have supporters dedicated enough to organize one for them, then they're S.O.L.
A debate shouldn't be a candidate welfare program. If Mr. Shutter and Karr want to join in this debate, they're more than free to convince the organizers to let them in. But I'm willing to bet they haven't even asked...
You're arguments are disproved by the glut of ambulance chasers out there. There is an entire industry of lawyers who work on contingency. They might not be respected by others in the legal profession, but they do exist. They're goal isn't to win, it's to settle. But they would fewer of them if their clients realized it could cost them if they people they're pissed at decided not to settle.
If they're anything like a small retail shop I once tried to collect from, it's because they're a corporation. Get a judgement against the proprietary and he shifts his assets to the corporation. Get a judgement against the corporation and the proprietary gets a huge bonus. If you're only trying to collect a few thousand, it's not worth taking it to a higher court to stop the shell game. You eventually settle for fifty cents on the dollar, close the books, and place them on your blacklist. In the meantime they've found another supplier.
I've personally collected judgements against a state government, but never once have I ever collected against a corporation. I'm no longer in business, but if I were my policy would be cash up front for corporations.
I few years ago I wouldn't have believed it. But the megaeurocorp that bought out my past employer has made me change my mind. I swear they're literally in the business of being in business. We could be selling chewing gum and they would be just as happy.
But this isn't "business" as a group that's doing this. Only corporate business. Private businesses aren't. When you product isn't a stock price, what you do product has much higher quality.
This shouldn't be about Pork for IT. It should be about common sense. Stop whining about what your congressman is going to do for your iPod, and start looking at what he or she stands for as a WHOLE. Yes, we probably all want our jobs back from Bangalore. But at any cost?
I want my congressmen to be operating under the premise that government exists solely to protect the lives, liberties and properties of its citizens, that government is the servant of the people and not its master, and that honest (and genuine) free trade is the best foreign policy. I don't expect any candidate to be perfect, but one who made the previous the foundation of his platform and could demonstrate he was serious about it, would have vote.
We do need to get more of a 1:1 ratio of R:D asap, though
No, that would be scary. Very scary. Sit back and think about it for a bit. I can easily imagine the a 50/50 split in public opinion over a particular issue. But not for all issues. That would be unnatural. That's why we don't have a 50/50 split, why we have a Green and Libertarian party, and why we see people jump party lines each and every election.
For an electorate to divide itself that evenly tells me that one of three things is happening: 1) there are no substantive differences between the two sides; 2) the electorate has been manipulated into an artificial and arbitrary split; or 3) the parties themselves have maneuvered themselves so as to create the even split.
Not any more so than the distro-supplied packages for many popular distros. Is it really that big of an inconvenience to wait a week or so for the package bots to get around to your favorite app?
The quickest, simple way to implement a callback is to pass a block as a closure to the widget at construction time.
It may be simple, but it isn't optimal. I'm going to need named callbacks, multiple callbacks, and mutable callbacks. Ruby blocks to not offer me this. The first two cases I use all the time. The third I use ocassionally, but when I need it I really need it.
Blocks are very nice things, but they are not omnipotent.
It's crony capitalism and it wouldn't happen if we had a government that was capable of having a valid debate about these issues.
True, true. However...
People need to go into their local voting boths... so that they can vote for the people with the (D)s after their names
How the hell is more of the same going to solve the problem? If you're worried about crony capitalism and corruption and the like, the (D)'s aren't going to be any better than the (R)'s. What's truly disgusting is your us-versus-them mentality that can't see any solutions beyond hate.
These are two separate questions, directed at different candidates. Please condense into one question and ask it of both candidates. Or ask both questions of both candidates.
Part of the problem is the Linux marketing. When the ecommerce system crashed, Linux was blamed because in all likelihood the system as a whole was advertised as "Linux".
I have a friend who switched back to Windows because GIMP kept crashing (SuSE gave him a beta). He blamed Linux. "Linux is a pile of shiit!" he kept saying. Yet when an application crashed under Windows, he only blamed the application. "PaintShop Pro is a pile shiit!" What was the difference? Simply that GIMP was marketed as a part of his system, while PSP he had to download and install separately.
People need to stop pretending like Apache, MySQL, Python, etc, are a part of Linux. The customer just might believe you.
Slashdot Mirror
Software that can reliably pinpoint tumors in medical images is not "just mathematics."
As someone who works in the medical imaging industry, I can't argue with that. There is some amazing work being done in this field that truly deserves patents.
But at the same time, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that all 283 of those patents in Linux are of that quality. I suspect that they're all of the "so obvious no one ever bothered to file a patent until we came along" class of patent.
You've been modded "funny", but you're serious as a heart attack. I use FreeBSD instead of Linux, but I suspect that at least 90% of those patents still apply to me. (I could be wrong, but I simply cannot imagine that many patents applying to the kernel).
But I just don't care. I can't care. It's impossible for me to care. Those are too high of numbers. If it were only four or five patents, I could deal with it. For those few of patents I could either avoid them or cross my fingers until they got "fixed" in the next release. But you can't avoid 283 patents without avoiding the OS entirely. I'm not going to do that. And even if I did, who's to say that there aren't patents in Firefox or OpenOffice? If avoiding patents means I have to stick with 100% commercially indemnified software, then I'm going to be violating some patents!
Since I can't avoid these patents, I'm not even going to try. I just don't care.
I think you need to clarify your definition of "class". Marx used it as a semi-permanent state of a individual. But "management" and "worker" are not semi-permanent states that take a lifetime to overcome, but temporary roles.
My boss only became my boss a couple of years ago. He only gets paid about 15% more than me. We live in the same neighborhood. We have the same level of education. The only "class" differences we have are that I came from the middle class and he came from the urban poor.
I can't get to anyone outside my "class" until I get up to the CEO and CFO, or down to the janitor. Everyone in between from the vice presidents to the landscapers are in the same socio-economic class as I. I know this because we live in the same neighborhoods and drive the same cars and our kids attend the same schools.
...pick it up, take it outside, let it finish, and when it does, IMMEDIATELY reward it.
It? Stop switching pronouns. For a while there I thought you were talking about the turd!
You know you're doing it right when she starts moaning... and her dog starts growling.
Stuff written in Java is better than stuff written in C or C++ because there are no frapping buffer overflows in Java code
Come back when you've reached perfection and no longer write bugs. Until then it doesn't matter if Java doesn't have buffer overflows because you're still going to be writing stupid brownbag bugs. I don't get buffer overflows with C++'s string and vector either, but you don't see me strutting around like I'm using God's own language!
Saying Java prevents buffer overflows is like saying a nailgun prevents you from hitting your thumb with a hammer. While technically true, it still doesn't prevent you from nailing your thumb to the wall.
Garbage collection, in particular, is coming along nicely.
Coming along nicely! Did you hear you correctly?
A freaking decade ago I was being harassed by the Java disciples because of garbage collection, and now you're telling me it's "coming along nicely"? It's been ten freaking years and you're still not done?!?! Wake me up when you're finally finished...
It's amazing the myth that Java is fast just because it can optimize some benchmarks and computationally intensive loops. In my real world with a real world computer running real world applications, Java still runs slower C.
I've ported several computationally intensive image processing programs from C to Java and have experienced a speed degradation of perhaps 10-15%
Aha! Even you admit it!
Try my new text editor, it's written in Java!
Why should I?
Because it's written in Java!
How is it better than what I'm currently using?
It's written in Java!
I'm already using vi, emacs, kate and gedit, why should I use yours as well?
Because it's written in Java!
Does it have a spell checker, syntax highlighting, and auto-indent?
Who cares? It's written in Java!
Name two benefits to your text editor?
That's easy! First, it's written in Java. Second, it's uh... uh... hang on, uh... it's written in Java! Yeah, that's it, it's written in Java!
You know as well as I do that single-issue voters not only exist, but might well be the most common kind of voter. There are people in the tech community who would vote for Hitler if he only promised to abolish the DMCA. Bonus points if his website ran Linux. They would even overlook Treblinka and Dachau if only who would promise to use OpenOffice and Firefox in government offices.
It doesn't matter if a candidate agrees with you on one or two of your pet bills, if his entire ideology is opposed to yours.
Look at his eyes the guy is vacant
Some of you folks need to get a major clue. Either that or find the bottle of Prozac that rolled under the sofa.
Unfortunately, you're not alone. I was at a party where Bush appeared on a TV news clip. One attendee then went bonkers, and started shouting, "Ohmygod he's wearing a cowboy hat! Did you see that he's wearing a cowboy hat! Does he think he's a fucking cowboy ohmygod hes wearing a goddam fucking cowboy hat!" He was grabbing people, sticking his head in their face, and asking "does he think he's a fucking cowboy?"
If the candidates can't get your own debate organized, or have supporters dedicated enough to organize one for them, then they're S.O.L.
A debate shouldn't be a candidate welfare program. If Mr. Shutter and Karr want to join in this debate, they're more than free to convince the organizers to let them in. But I'm willing to bet they haven't even asked...
You're arguments are disproved by the glut of ambulance chasers out there. There is an entire industry of lawyers who work on contingency. They might not be respected by others in the legal profession, but they do exist. They're goal isn't to win, it's to settle. But they would fewer of them if their clients realized it could cost them if they people they're pissed at decided not to settle.
Geez! That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that we colonists got stuck with Ashcroft :-)
If they're anything like a small retail shop I once tried to collect from, it's because they're a corporation. Get a judgement against the proprietary and he shifts his assets to the corporation. Get a judgement against the corporation and the proprietary gets a huge bonus. If you're only trying to collect a few thousand, it's not worth taking it to a higher court to stop the shell game. You eventually settle for fifty cents on the dollar, close the books, and place them on your blacklist. In the meantime they've found another supplier.
I've personally collected judgements against a state government, but never once have I ever collected against a corporation. I'm no longer in business, but if I were my policy would be cash up front for corporations.
I few years ago I wouldn't have believed it. But the megaeurocorp that bought out my past employer has made me change my mind. I swear they're literally in the business of being in business. We could be selling chewing gum and they would be just as happy.
But this isn't "business" as a group that's doing this. Only corporate business. Private businesses aren't. When you product isn't a stock price, what you do product has much higher quality.
Feingold was the only *senator* to vote against the PATRIOT act. There were 66 representatives who voted against it as well.
This shouldn't be about Pork for IT. It should be about common sense. Stop whining about what your congressman is going to do for your iPod, and start looking at what he or she stands for as a WHOLE. Yes, we probably all want our jobs back from Bangalore. But at any cost?
I want my congressmen to be operating under the premise that government exists solely to protect the lives, liberties and properties of its citizens, that government is the servant of the people and not its master, and that honest (and genuine) free trade is the best foreign policy. I don't expect any candidate to be perfect, but one who made the previous the foundation of his platform and could demonstrate he was serious about it, would have vote.
We do need to get more of a 1:1 ratio of R:D asap, though
No, that would be scary. Very scary. Sit back and think about it for a bit. I can easily imagine the a 50/50 split in public opinion over a particular issue. But not for all issues. That would be unnatural. That's why we don't have a 50/50 split, why we have a Green and Libertarian party, and why we see people jump party lines each and every election.
For an electorate to divide itself that evenly tells me that one of three things is happening: 1) there are no substantive differences between the two sides; 2) the electorate has been manipulated into an artificial and arbitrary split; or 3) the parties themselves have maneuvered themselves so as to create the even split.
Not any more so than the distro-supplied packages for many popular distros. Is it really that big of an inconvenience to wait a week or so for the package bots to get around to your favorite app?
The quickest, simple way to implement a callback is to pass a block as a closure to the widget at construction time.
It may be simple, but it isn't optimal. I'm going to need named callbacks, multiple callbacks, and mutable callbacks. Ruby blocks to not offer me this. The first two cases I use all the time. The third I use ocassionally, but when I need it I really need it.
Blocks are very nice things, but they are not omnipotent.
It's crony capitalism and it wouldn't happen if we had a government that was capable of having a valid debate about these issues.
... so that they can vote for the people with the (D)s after their names
True, true. However...
People need to go into their local voting boths
How the hell is more of the same going to solve the problem? If you're worried about crony capitalism and corruption and the like, the (D)'s aren't going to be any better than the (R)'s. What's truly disgusting is your us-versus-them mentality that can't see any solutions beyond hate.
Gno it doesgn't! Gnet real, you're gnot making segnse!
These are two separate questions, directed at different candidates. Please condense into one question and ask it of both candidates. Or ask both questions of both candidates.
Part of the problem is the Linux marketing. When the ecommerce system crashed, Linux was blamed because in all likelihood the system as a whole was advertised as "Linux".
I have a friend who switched back to Windows because GIMP kept crashing (SuSE gave him a beta). He blamed Linux. "Linux is a pile of shiit!" he kept saying. Yet when an application crashed under Windows, he only blamed the application. "PaintShop Pro is a pile shiit!" What was the difference? Simply that GIMP was marketed as a part of his system, while PSP he had to download and install separately.
People need to stop pretending like Apache, MySQL, Python, etc, are a part of Linux. The customer just might believe you.