You are correct as far as near-clones of existing software. What you forget was the original intent of patents.
With a guaranteed monopoly for creating something new and no chance of copying old ideas before they become too unprofitable, the bright minds of these decades would have been brainstorming and coming up with new ideas to patent them for themselves. Imagine what could have been done if Linus Torvalds had spent his energy on developing a new paradigm for operating systems instead of just cloning the existing Unices. Imagine if Richard Stallman had spent his time on more software like Emacs - whose fundamental idea of an intertwined editor and scripting language had not been seen before - instead of working on the Hurd, which replicates not only existing OSes but also Linux. Imagine if Bill Gates had used his genius to code more and clone/buy less.
We're only really getting XML, journaled/databased file systems, truly portable technology, etc. today. By forcing the bright minds to innovate instead of just creating clones of existing ideas, we'd've had these for years now. As an example in gaming, there would be more Katamari Damacies and less Random Celebrity's Pro Sportsgame or Race Around New Scenery 2004s.
And you also forget that patents can be licensed. Bungie could've doubtless licensed id's FPS patent for enough money to satisfy id, but made enough on Halo to pay back the license and still make as much money as they actually did - remember that there wouldn't've been as many FPSes on the market.
Mind you, I'm not supporting software patents today. With the market evolved the laissez-faire way it did, open-source and free patents are almost necessary to be fair to the consumer. But if software patents had been in effect since the early 1980s, the market would've had a lot less simple repetition and much more true innovation or actual improvements on existing products.
If you're trying to parody, it isn't working. I agree. Hm...if the entire world were indeed Communist, I'm sure somebody would out of necessity find a way to make the economy work.
I had to manually lower security settings on a computer to get to a Flash game the other day. I think this comp had SP2 installed, and the installer got a bit overexcited.
Whoops. This security thing starts breaking down when you turn it off.
This is the same computer that wouldn't follow through on this redirect page. I had put in 2 or 3 different redirects to the new SSI version of that page. Apparently, the computer blocked all the methods -- even the META refresh. This makes the computer about as "secure" as unplugging the cable.
If he's threatening to obfuscate his changelog...keep his changes you want rolled into a single patchfile, and apply the patch with the next major release. Credit the changes, surely, but don't make them whenever you see them. Do it all at once, or as a.1 release to the program.
In Louisiana, we state that if no candidate receieves a majority, it goes to runoff between the top two (or something like that; I'm not voting age yet). We tend to have a runoff every year for some important race or another.
A runoff is a recognition that these two candidates were preferred by the people, and it's a request to see which of these two would most approve of.
That still doesn't exactly explain what role (other than the aforementioned) Microsoft played in this.
The same. All major game console makers have a policy of licensing, authorizing, and publishing games for their consoles. The PS2 versions were published by Sony, the Xbox versions by Microsoft. The publishers had the option to go the PC route - open up the programming interface and make their platform simply a tool. But no, they had to approve it, mint it, market it...and they thus took responsibility for this material that turned out to be illegal.
Re:IE XP SP2 is as safe as Firefox
on
Firefox vs. SP2's IE?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
There, now IE is approximately as secure as Firefox.
And approximately as useful as Firefox, with respect to ActiveX-requiring sites. Anything else can probably be rendered equally well by the two of them.
Incidentally, how do you plan on running Windows Update without ActiveX? And apparently Flash and so forth require ActiveX in IE...I had to manually lower security settings on a computer to get to a Flash game the other day. I think this comp had SP2 installed, and the installer got a bit overexcited.
Sony was not sued because a Playstation can play this game.
Sony was sued because they published the game, and the game developer contracted for them. They are thus technically the representative of a child pornographer and publishers of child pornography.
Frankly, I'm surprised Sony was willing to publish so stupid a game. Anyway, they should know you have to be extra careful with releases on content like this. Sony wouldn't've had legal liability if they didn't act as publisher/approver (that's why Dell et. al aren't being sued for the PC version of this); they chose to have their own publishing and content standard rules, and managed to approve something illegal.
The end users could probably be technically sued, but they'll probably be able to get off due to not knowing about this -- incidentally, anyone who buys the game in response to this story is a prime target for a legal attack due to intentional purchase of child porn.
Don't forget Poland & Jan Sobieski III in 1683 at Vienna -- Europe could be Islamic today!
That wouldn't be half bad. At least that way, there'd be a lot less motivation to threaten radical-Islam terror attacks in Europe. And if that was before the 1700s, they might've influenced America enough...
Not that having over half the world under Islamic theocratic empire would be a necessarily good (or stable) thing, but...it's always interesting to speculate.
When the web browser crashes, it doesn't kill part of the user environment.
It does what? IE hasn't crashed recently in my memory, and I've never seen Active Desktop Recovery from an IE crash. Besides, you're always running IE in the form of Active Desktop and so forth.
Security holes are fewer, farther betwee, and quicker to be patched
He doesn't care. Who's going to hax0r his computer for the information on it? At worst, they'll try to stick an open relay on, but he should have a firewall anyway, since there are more attack vectors than just IE.
Type-ahead-find is GREAT
Typeahead find is great for hyper teens whose brains work faster than their connection. No insult meant, but I'm not sure he's going to appreciate the page being scrolled faster than he can read it. He'd probably read the whole thing top-to-bottom.
The web pages are standards-based, which will make the web run better for everyone.
Urm? Whose web pages? If your reason is "This will increase the market share of Firefox", I guess that's acceptable. Otherwise, your statement can be rephrased as "Firefox doesn't support the IE quirks that a few web pages use". I don't know of any web pages (other than CSS proofs-of-concept and XUL stuff) that work on Firefox but not IE.
Les partitions NTFS sont supportées à travers l'utilisation de captive-ntfs
In other words, oui. NTFS is supported through Captive (which, I might add, works well from personal experience on Knoppix). Captive requires using NTFS drivers on an existing Windows installation, but does anyone have an NTFS drive without Windows installed on it? (Even if your install is b0rked, the drivers are still there.)
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet.
You mean, when you do installations for others, you don't rename the icon to "Internet (Firefox)"!? Depending on my experiennce with the person, I may even change the icon to Iexplore.exe's.
Frankly, I think making their computer safe from malware is far more important than any brand recognition of Firefox.
Our legislators pass laws without reading them, in some cases without being allowed to read them and/or discuss them, and we pass laws which average citizens are not allowed to own a copy of.
Would you care to mention any recorded case of this happening? Sorry, but I can't see legislators of one party willing to pass hidden legislation from another party, no matter what the subject. PATRIOT ACT I can kinda blame on mass hysteria and groupthink, but AFAIK that was public. And in the split political climate that developed shortly after 9/11, I can hardly see any other hidden legislation about security and foreign affairs getting through committee. Oh, wait. You said they're not discussed. Then what about committees?
If you think there are no images censored from the US, you are nuts.
That I agree with. There are plenty of censored images. There are of course classified documents (military abilities + specifications, ongoing investigations, etc.) that can be described as censored. Even my calc teacher, a retired Cold War lieutenant colonel, can't tell us half the abilities of his now-abandoned missile silo because he was never told if they were declassified yet. Half of this is censored because they don't want it to support the enemy, and half is censored as propaganda so that we don't stop supporting them.
As a side question, why exactly do you care to see these images? I'm sure they exist; I don't have the interest in seeing them. I don't even have the interest to see the released Abu Ghraib pictures...it's not my business. It's war; of course abuses happen. What did you expect, that we give people CPR after shooting them?
I've got a.mdb file for a small website that I'd like to edit and run SELECT queries on from a Macintosh (or X Window) laptop. Is there any (preferably Free) software I can use to edit the files -- other than MS Access:mac or a homebuilt interface on the website's ASP itself?...would it be worth the effort to build such an ASP interface seeing as not much exists in the way of Free.mdb editors?
I can't believe people are still giving that guy money.
Me neither. I just checked out the 9th book from the public library. Other than the researchers, who'd want to read these books more than once? Reading the sequels is enough repetition....
You are never done reading WoT. I'm assuming you're done with the 10 books + 1 prequel that are out. As far as I know, Robert Jordan plans to write at least 2 more books and 2 more prequels. He hadn't earlier mentioned the third prequel, so you never know if he'll add more to his schedule. He might even do another 15 books on some other story arc: Hawkwing's exploits, Lews Therin's story, another Age he hasn't mentioned...there's a lot to be explored.
This is funny, in a way, but it's also extremely true.
When you've got IP that somebody doesn't want to release, the company will only pay for driver development where they'll have the most use -- in Windows. ATI will suffer very little monetary loss from not supporting Linux, and barring turning over the IP to the OSS community, they may have to spend more than their potential profits to bring their drivers to Linux.
Free software works better with Linux and other Free systems (c.f. Cygwin's difficulty in porting software); conversely, proprietary software is much more likely to work fully with the most common proprietary system: Windows. I'm not saying Windows is better; I'm just saying that you'll get your performance much more easily under Windows, and this is simply a fact of the market.
Re:how about "creationism" crap?
on
Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 2, Interesting
belief in god is as valid as belief in unicorns. You do believe in unicorns, right? I have never had any experiences involving unicorns. To be honest, I cannot disbelieve in unicorns, since I cannot disprove their hypothetical existence. However, a unicorn is a claim for a specific type of equine within this world. A god is a supernatural entity. There's an important difference.
to risk pressing a point a little too far, have you ever considered the idea that your 'religious experiences' are little more than a firing of neurotransmitters in a particular way, caused by perhaps a particular mental and physical state? Yeah. But why did our brain bother to create neurotransmitters that do this in response to religion? You yourself admit this is "strange". I prefer to rationalize this as the work of the Holy Spirit.
"Lots of people" do have this mistaken assumption. But not *my* physics students, I assure you. I tell them, "The models used in physics are *useful*. Are they true? I have no idea. And I don't care."
That is a lot better than trying to argue evolutionism or creationism. Maybe the laws passed should merely make all teachers follow roughly your example, instead of trying to ban evolutionism or teach creationism.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct as far as near-clones of existing software. What you forget was the original intent of patents.
With a guaranteed monopoly for creating something new and no chance of copying old ideas before they become too unprofitable, the bright minds of these decades would have been brainstorming and coming up with new ideas to patent them for themselves. Imagine what could have been done if Linus Torvalds had spent his energy on developing a new paradigm for operating systems instead of just cloning the existing Unices. Imagine if Richard Stallman had spent his time on more software like Emacs - whose fundamental idea of an intertwined editor and scripting language had not been seen before - instead of working on the Hurd, which replicates not only existing OSes but also Linux. Imagine if Bill Gates had used his genius to code more and clone/buy less.
We're only really getting XML, journaled/databased file systems, truly portable technology, etc. today. By forcing the bright minds to innovate instead of just creating clones of existing ideas, we'd've had these for years now. As an example in gaming, there would be more Katamari Damacies and less Random Celebrity's Pro Sportsgame or Race Around New Scenery 2004s.
And you also forget that patents can be licensed. Bungie could've doubtless licensed id's FPS patent for enough money to satisfy id, but made enough on Halo to pay back the license and still make as much money as they actually did - remember that there wouldn't've been as many FPSes on the market.
Mind you, I'm not supporting software patents today. With the market evolved the laissez-faire way it did, open-source and free patents are almost necessary to be fair to the consumer. But if software patents had been in effect since the early 1980s, the market would've had a lot less simple repetition and much more true innovation or actual improvements on existing products.
Wow. Apparently that number (888/5-OPTOUT) is valid [FTC] (see also here).
Opting out of pre-approved credit offers is not much, but it can be useful (and save you a lot of annoyance).
Who cares? Have a merry Christmas and go play the games and quit complaining!
If you're trying to parody, it isn't working. I agree. Hm...if the entire world were indeed Communist, I'm sure somebody would out of necessity find a way to make the economy work.
I had to manually lower security settings on a computer to get to a Flash game the other day. I think this comp had SP2 installed, and the installer got a bit overexcited.
Whoops. This security thing starts breaking down when you turn it off.
This is the same computer that wouldn't follow through on this redirect page. I had put in 2 or 3 different redirects to the new SSI version of that page. Apparently, the computer blocked all the methods -- even the META refresh. This makes the computer about as "secure" as unplugging the cable.
At least give the reference: this is from Dr. Strangelove. I guess space is today's nuclear war?
how will we blast it out of the sky with our Planetary Orbital Defense Network?
Um, the planet's orbiting defense against small asteroids is the sky, pretty much.
If he's threatening to obfuscate his changelog...keep his changes you want rolled into a single patchfile, and apply the patch with the next major release. Credit the changes, surely, but don't make them whenever you see them. Do it all at once, or as a .1 release to the program.
Rejecting?
In Louisiana, we state that if no candidate receieves a majority, it goes to runoff between the top two (or something like that; I'm not voting age yet). We tend to have a runoff every year for some important race or another.
A runoff is a recognition that these two candidates were preferred by the people, and it's a request to see which of these two would most approve of.
That still doesn't exactly explain what role (other than the aforementioned) Microsoft played in this.
The same. All major game console makers have a policy of licensing, authorizing, and publishing games for their consoles. The PS2 versions were published by Sony, the Xbox versions by Microsoft. The publishers had the option to go the PC route - open up the programming interface and make their platform simply a tool. But no, they had to approve it, mint it, market it...and they thus took responsibility for this material that turned out to be illegal.
There, now IE is approximately as secure as Firefox.
And approximately as useful as Firefox, with respect to ActiveX-requiring sites. Anything else can probably be rendered equally well by the two of them.
Incidentally, how do you plan on running Windows Update without ActiveX? And apparently Flash and so forth require ActiveX in IE...I had to manually lower security settings on a computer to get to a Flash game the other day. I think this comp had SP2 installed, and the installer got a bit overexcited.
Sorry, you seem a bit short-sighted:
Sony was not sued because a Playstation can play this game.
Sony was sued because they published the game, and the game developer contracted for them. They are thus technically the representative of a child pornographer and publishers of child pornography.
Frankly, I'm surprised Sony was willing to publish so stupid a game. Anyway, they should know you have to be extra careful with releases on content like this. Sony wouldn't've had legal liability if they didn't act as publisher/approver (that's why Dell et. al aren't being sued for the PC version of this); they chose to have their own publishing and content standard rules, and managed to approve something illegal.
The end users could probably be technically sued, but they'll probably be able to get off due to not knowing about this -- incidentally, anyone who buys the game in response to this story is a prime target for a legal attack due to intentional purchase of child porn.
Don't forget Poland & Jan Sobieski III in 1683 at Vienna -- Europe could be Islamic today!
That wouldn't be half bad. At least that way, there'd be a lot less motivation to threaten radical-Islam terror attacks in Europe. And if that was before the 1700s, they might've influenced America enough...
Not that having over half the world under Islamic theocratic empire would be a necessarily good (or stable) thing, but...it's always interesting to speculate.
When the web browser crashes, it doesn't kill part of the user environment.
It does what? IE hasn't crashed recently in my memory, and I've never seen Active Desktop Recovery from an IE crash. Besides, you're always running IE in the form of Active Desktop and so forth.
Security holes are fewer, farther betwee, and quicker to be patched
He doesn't care. Who's going to hax0r his computer for the information on it? At worst, they'll try to stick an open relay on, but he should have a firewall anyway, since there are more attack vectors than just IE.
Type-ahead-find is GREAT
Typeahead find is great for hyper teens whose brains work faster than their connection. No insult meant, but I'm not sure he's going to appreciate the page being scrolled faster than he can read it. He'd probably read the whole thing top-to-bottom.
The web pages are standards-based, which will make the web run better for everyone.
Urm? Whose web pages? If your reason is "This will increase the market share of Firefox", I guess that's acceptable. Otherwise, your statement can be rephrased as "Firefox doesn't support the IE quirks that a few web pages use". I don't know of any web pages (other than CSS proofs-of-concept and XUL stuff) that work on Firefox but not IE.
Les partitions NTFS sont supportées à travers l'utilisation de captive-ntfs
In other words, oui. NTFS is supported through Captive (which, I might add, works well from personal experience on Knoppix). Captive requires using NTFS drivers on an existing Windows installation, but does anyone have an NTFS drive without Windows installed on it? (Even if your install is b0rked, the drivers are still there.)
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet.
You mean, when you do installations for others, you don't rename the icon to "Internet (Firefox)"!? Depending on my experiennce with the person, I may even change the icon to Iexplore.exe's.
Frankly, I think making their computer safe from malware is far more important than any brand recognition of Firefox.
Our legislators pass laws without reading them, in some cases without being allowed to read them and/or discuss them, and we pass laws which average citizens are not allowed to own a copy of.
Would you care to mention any recorded case of this happening? Sorry, but I can't see legislators of one party willing to pass hidden legislation from another party, no matter what the subject. PATRIOT ACT I can kinda blame on mass hysteria and groupthink, but AFAIK that was public. And in the split political climate that developed shortly after 9/11, I can hardly see any other hidden legislation about security and foreign affairs getting through committee. Oh, wait. You said they're not discussed. Then what about committees?
If you think there are no images censored from the US, you are nuts.
That I agree with. There are plenty of censored images. There are of course classified documents (military abilities + specifications, ongoing investigations, etc.) that can be described as censored. Even my calc teacher, a retired Cold War lieutenant colonel, can't tell us half the abilities of his now-abandoned missile silo because he was never told if they were declassified yet. Half of this is censored because they don't want it to support the enemy, and half is censored as propaganda so that we don't stop supporting them.
As a side question, why exactly do you care to see these images? I'm sure they exist; I don't have the interest in seeing them. I don't even have the interest to see the released Abu Ghraib pictures...it's not my business. It's war; of course abuses happen. What did you expect, that we give people CPR after shooting them?
Did you offer him the sources? No? Then you're infringing. ;-)
Speaking of Microsoft Access....
.mdb file for a small website that I'd like to edit and run SELECT queries on from a Macintosh (or X Window) laptop. Is there any (preferably Free) software I can use to edit the files -- other than MS Access:mac or a homebuilt interface on the website's ASP itself? ...would it be worth the effort to build such an ASP interface seeing as not much exists in the way of Free .mdb editors?
I've got a
I can't believe people are still giving that guy money.
Me neither. I just checked out the 9th book from the public library. Other than the researchers, who'd want to read these books more than once? Reading the sequels is enough repetition....
(The library's purchases don't count.)
I'm finally done reading the Wheel of Time series
You are never done reading WoT. I'm assuming you're done with the 10 books + 1 prequel that are out. As far as I know, Robert Jordan plans to write at least 2 more books and 2 more prequels. He hadn't earlier mentioned the third prequel, so you never know if he'll add more to his schedule. He might even do another 15 books on some other story arc: Hawkwing's exploits, Lews Therin's story, another Age he hasn't mentioned...there's a lot to be explored.
Read and find out, I guess.
This is funny, in a way, but it's also extremely true.
When you've got IP that somebody doesn't want to release, the company will only pay for driver development where they'll have the most use -- in Windows. ATI will suffer very little monetary loss from not supporting Linux, and barring turning over the IP to the OSS community, they may have to spend more than their potential profits to bring their drivers to Linux.
Free software works better with Linux and other Free systems (c.f. Cygwin's difficulty in porting software); conversely, proprietary software is much more likely to work fully with the most common proprietary system: Windows. I'm not saying Windows is better; I'm just saying that you'll get your performance much more easily under Windows, and this is simply a fact of the market.
Has anyone used Moogle?
Kupo!
belief in god is as valid as belief in unicorns. You do believe in unicorns, right?
I have never had any experiences involving unicorns. To be honest, I cannot disbelieve in unicorns, since I cannot disprove their hypothetical existence. However, a unicorn is a claim for a specific type of equine within this world. A god is a supernatural entity. There's an important difference.
to risk pressing a point a little too far, have you ever considered the idea that your 'religious experiences' are little more than a firing of neurotransmitters in a particular way, caused by perhaps a particular mental and physical state?
Yeah. But why did our brain bother to create neurotransmitters that do this in response to religion? You yourself admit this is "strange". I prefer to rationalize this as the work of the Holy Spirit.
"Lots of people" do have this mistaken assumption. But not *my* physics students, I assure you. I tell them, "The models used in physics are *useful*. Are they true? I have no idea. And I don't care."
That is a lot better than trying to argue evolutionism or creationism. Maybe the laws passed should merely make all teachers follow roughly your example, instead of trying to ban evolutionism or teach creationism.