The only party that truly believes in small government anymore is the Libertarians. Republicans gave up on the idea of small government years ago, and now the only thing separating republicans and democrats is their excuses for creating bigger government. There is no longer a great divide between the parties because it has become more about who can we get into office then pushing their ideas. It is this sort of who is or what opinion is more electable that resulted in Kerry instead of Dean. Democrats began to waiver when they realized that Dean was a true leftist that held true to most all party ideas (and took a real leftist stance), while everyone else was holding that nice centrist line to get elected.
I mean look at Bush, when he first started running, we were all enlightened with the term 'compassionate conservative'. Of course it also does not help that we traditionally have low voter turnouts for elections because of some gross voter apathy with the state of things.
Well to get in on the geek-fest of old computers, I have an old Compaq Laptop, which I think is a 386 (it might be a 486), with its nice monochrome monitor (all like 8" of it) and tiny keyboard, and little rollerball. It has a hard drive that is at least a couple of hundred MBs and maybe 16 MB of memory, if I am lucky, more likely only 8 MB. I will definitely update this once I am home and can check for sure. It came with Windows 3.1 and thanks to some update disks and a PCMCIA floppy is running Windows 95 for now. I have definitely considered running linux with a minimal install and maybe a light graphical interface.
Hope I can find my serial mouse though, because that rollerball has actually seen better days. Now, I only need to find a 5.25" floppy drive to play the old DOS Batman game I have.
it will still take hours and hours to back up (if not longer)
Let me introduce you to Mr. Tape Drive. This reel of magnetic tape is quite possibly the largest method of data backup used, and last I checked, it takes hours and hours (if not longer) to do full data backup of disks. This is why most companies implement RAID 1 or 5 solutions and use tape backup as a weekly or monthly system.
Actually if I remember the procedure correctly for one of my previous places of employ, there were monthly full backups and weekly differential backups. The new system included software that even created differential backups on the disk every couple of hours, for those emergencies when someone would accidentally delete that important file they needed.
I am pretty sure none of these methods required any downtime for data. It would backup the data on the disk as it was read and stored to the tape. Now this would cause problems if you were working on file X while it was being backed up, but did not effect the other files on the system. Granted this solution would not work too well with systems with very large database files, since those files would get locked for several hours. Of course, I have also worked at locations, including one telephone order location, where access to the entry program is blocked from several hours between midnight and early the next morning, to run backups and various reports.
Once again, depending on the method(s) used, recovery is going to vary with time; however, the chance of total data recovery being needed is low. Most every large network storage solution will exist in a RAID setup and failure of enough drives to completely ruin that system is rare. The backups are most often used for those files that are missing, or to retrieve files which may have somehow been corrupted, and are typically not meant to be used, commonly, for full data retrieval.
Re:If I had a million dollars...
on
Barenaked USB Drive
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· Score: 3, Informative
*goes to his room to make sure his BS in ECE is still there*
Yep, so I can honestly say, SHUT UP! You are going after the same old arguments that every audiophile (or audio-dope) uses. The fact is analog has its great number of problems, including more artifact issues. I am sure you know of what I speak, all those popping type sounds you get from your cassette or record. Real nice analog audio. Copying analog repeatedly obviously has its problems as well because analog has more susceptibility to interferences, which goes back to your sound artifacts.
To answer your question about the video, the sibling to this has it right. It has to do with the way video is drawn on a CRT versus the way video is drawn on a standard television and why video game consoles still typically run at 30 fps and computers run video at 60 fps and up. DVD audio is mostly a dumb idea to sale items multiple times, though it has added the ability for, get this, multiple channel audio.
On the line of video, are you going to contend that VCR or Laser Disc look better then DVDs. I love the age old argument but my analog sounds better argument, the audio-phile constant fall back that they swear it sounds better. I will guarantee that most everyone would not be able to tell the difference in the audio signals or would choose the digital ones as superior. If you have a specific example, it is quite possible that the specific example is one of those aberrations where someone did not properly do their sampling. For some reason I am reminded of a video about being emo...
Ok let us start with an easy enough reference point, in this case dinosaurs. Here we have a set of creatures we know existed millions of years ago and which is now believed to be the progenitors to the reptiles and birds. We know there were dinosaurs with some ability of flight and some land and some water based dinosaurs. Why did they choose these different habitats and travel methods? Location! Environment has a great deal to do with the evolution of a species.
You have to remember there are plenty of evolutionary paths for any organism to follow. Humans arguably have evolved somewhat separately while still maintaining compatible DNA. Let us take a look at the case of skin pigmentation. People in the northern most extremes of the world like Scandinavia and Russia developed light skin pigmentations because our bodies did not require as much protection from sun light in these areas. The days were shorter and sunlight exposure as such was also shorter, because of locality. Look at people as you move further south, skin tones begin to get darker the longer your days and more direct your sunlight begins to get. You have people in the Mediterranean and Middle East with darker, "olive" skin and as you move into Africa you begin to get individuals with even darker skin.
The Evolution of man is actually well documented from early ape-like humans to modern man of today. Evolution is a long process and not something you can expect to see overnight. Animals and plants have adapted to their environments and find ways to survive, and the ones that survive go on to breed until the new traits have replaced the older ones completely, or a divergence occurs and a new species incompatible with the previous occurs.
Please check out this site and if you come up with a new argument that actually attempts to present fact then please feel free.
My complaint is with the temperature benchmarking. Why on earth use a 6600 GT? I mean we are talking about an HTPC case, and maybe I am alone in thinking this, but if I am making a PC for home theater use, I want a card with some power, but I also want a card with TV tuning.
This test should've used an AIW either the AIW 2006 edition (overpriced AIW 9600), the X600-AIW or the newer X1800XL AIW (for the truly crazy people). For an HTPC where power is not the ultimate requirement the AIW 2006 edition should suffice for true testing.
How come every time I see a comment with these sentiments modded up to a 5, the user number of the poster is a bigger number than I have ever seen on the site?
Brother Hank, the reason for this is because of Meta-Moderating. You see the people with 800000+ numbers have managed to Meta-Moderate away the sensible peoples mod points. There is a great divide at present between people who have been here a while (I had another account before I setup this one) and the people who have arrived more recently proclaiming to know what is best for the hole.
I guess the fact is, people just cannot come to accept that there is going to be a bias no matter what news media they use, and slashdot is no exception. After all, it is not like most of the people here do not seem to agree with a vast majority of the more biased news stories. I am often the lone voice of sanity when it comes to patent related news.
I do believe my only complaint at present involves the over abundance people submitting links to their own blogs by using inflammatory articles to drive up traffic and slashdot accepting these blatantly absurd (and sometimes downright stupid) stories.
Reliability, well in order to improve that much more you need to change the technology all together. The inherent problem with a hard disk drive is its multitude of moving parts. More times then not when your drive fails it is a mechanical problem of some sort affecting the drive and preventing it from reading/writing properly.
Now, some people would begin to point to FLASH memory systems. While this could eventually become a good replacement for the hard drive for standard home users in several years, if prices continue to drop, there are still issues and concerns about the write limitations of flash. The speed of drives would also increase greatly by using FLASH as a hard drive replacement.
Another thing to note is that most home users do not need faster hard drives then what they currently have. They only access data of the disc on a few occassions and so long they are using the computer memory more then swap/page files nothing is really going to be that noticeable to them.
BTW, if you want your data to be safer may I recommend a RAID solution to help maintain your data, if that is too expensive a solution you can probably save some cost with DVD back-ups since I doubt you have a tape drive lying around and they aren't exactly cheap.
see my other post above, to which I would add the following statement: since all the other major patent offices are using the first to file system, it would probably be safe to say it is the better system. Removing steps from the patent process makes the job of the office easier and gives examiners more time to focus on the patent work.
In the US it would clear up many potential problems and would get rid of several procedures currently in place in the patent system and patent laws. This would include interference practices since they would no longer be necessary to determine the first inventor. This could also lead to more companies using the WIPO PCT application process since they get the benefit of its filing date as their US filing date. There are some people who still forego this, possibly because they believe they do not file in enough different countries, or because their country is not part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
20 yr old patent, that is due to expire next year. Yes donate your money for them to run off to kill an almost dead patent. This is probably why the EFF just doesn't care in this case, and the fact the EFF realizes the company is simply enforcing their rights to the patent under law.
Selling patents is a good way to make money. You would limit inventors to only being able to license their patent; however, in the case of a really good patent, a large company may wish to pay a large sum of money to the small inventor in order to ensure they have the protection right guaranteed by the patent. This would also raise questions about how patent ownership would occur when companies are purchased. You must remember, the US is the only country that is part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty that does not allow companies to file for patents, the inventors must apply and assign the rights as such to the corporation. Look at WIPO patents, and there is a category for inventors that has in parentheses, for the United State only. A similar counter to this is by the applicant section.
This is actually being proposed as a change in the Patent Reform Act in congress; however, it seems to be one of the things that some inventors' groups have a problem (including the first to file system change). About first to file, in the US we have a process whereby the first to invent gets a patent, and people can overcome some prior art by showing they invented first. Once again the US is pretty much alone on this as the rest of the world uses a first to file system, where first one to the office gets the patent, you can see why some small inventors might dislike this, but it is really important to bring us inline with the rest of the world.
But I digress a bit. The problem with your "minimum reasonable usage" is that you start running into the "fair use" area where it begins to be questioned how much is reasonable, what is minimum, and what type of usage. It is not as simple as it might sound.
So on your argument NTP can sue every user of one of RIM's Blackberry devices?
EOLAS can sue everyone using M$ Internet Explorer.
I do not think the courts would much agree with you on this one. The companies are not infringing the patent, the producer/distributor of the software are by making products that infringe on the patent.
So they say that Linux potential violates 283 software patents? Now I do not know that they went through every software patent, but that is WELL below the number of issued software patents I am sure, so was there really much of a threat anyway? Besides that there is always the potential of any patents being invalidated in court even if it ever happened.
I do not see why a corporation would be scared from Linux by this potential though. You are talking about a patent infringement that would affect the companies and people distributing Linux and not the people using it. I really think everyone sort of got scared about this at first, but realized the threat was not as bad as everyone was originally stating.
Since we are back on this discussion of the cost of music, I am hoping someone who might be in the know will be able to answer a question or two. I have, over the past two years, begun to by most all my music (with a few rare exceptions) at used stores and as such have gotten albums that are in good shape and several years old for almost 1/2 or 1/4 as much as they are selling for in stores (even after they have been out for 5+ years).
So now to my question. Do these stores that sell used CDs, DVDs, etc. have to pay anything back to the **AA or do they actual make all their money on the items they sell without having to cut money back to the big corporations? I have always worked on the assumption that they don't pay money back, but it seems with how the RIAA keeps pressing Apple to adjust the prices on iTunes that they wouldn't pester these places too...
So does anyone in the know have the information I seek?
I hate to break it to you, but people actually seem to agree that Diamond v. Diehr is what opened the door for software patents. It said well you cannot patent the algorithm, but you can patent the system using it. Therefore, through testing in the court, particularly the CAFC, software patents began to become allowable matter despite USPTO attempts. There is no official law that saw software is patentable, by the letter of 35 USC 101 it quite possibly isn't, but the courts have said otherwise.
It seems that no one has really been willing to make much of a move on changing this since then, including Congress. Ideally it would probably be desired that law was made or SCOTUS re-examine the decision if an appropriate case were to arrive.
This message is directed to Florian Mueller, hopefully a more reasonable individual then most the/. anti-patent zealots.
Your comment about IBMs patents is borderline FUD. While some of the patents may have nothing to do with software, those that do and are up for "renewal" (in the US you just pay your maintenance fee at 3, 7, and 11 years post grant) are usually only renewed if the continued protection is sought. In this case, by turning over those patents and not paying fees, they become fully public; however, most people in the public don't understand this system and simple add 20 yrs to the filing date and forget about it. This shows those patents are clearly available for individuals to use.
Another comment is the one about being limited to only certain licenses or as you say specific projects like Linux. Now clarify something for me, does that mean that individuals can then only release code under certain licenses? If so, which ones? Why is this really bad if the license limitations prevent people from using restrictive licenses. Ones specific to project (ie the Linux Kernel) may only really apply to those one things, and may not have much or any scope outside said project(s).
You bring up the combination patent idea where A and B are in the system, but your combination exists as Patent C. If there exists the proper measures as set out by SCOTUS and CAFC that A and B could be combined for C the patent can invalidated in court. If it cannot be invalidated, then you might actually have a problem...but in most cases an invalidation can be done unless combining A and B would be totally unheard of.
You mention that this doesn't reduce the number of enemies you might face. However, having your own patents at hand is good in the event of a court case, because you have your own protection there against their threats, particularly if you can show that their patent is either invalid or that your creation is along the lines of this patent and not theirs. It is also good because companies change regimes. Just because IBM is friendly with Open Source now does not mean they will be in 10 or 15 years.
The troll is a seriously problem, but the key to the troll is they are out to make a lot of money. The fact is that in the software world open-source does not necessarily have the money. There are bigger and better targets worth much more money. Large companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, Google, etc. are far juicier targets then Redhat, Novell, etc. IBM is a nice big target, but in many peoples minds almost too big. Microsoft has been too quick to settle in the past (possibly because they know they will lose) with various cases (with maybe the exception of EOLAS). However, IBM is fighting SCO tooth and nail and not just sending them on their way to get rid of the pest. When IBM wins this case, they will be much less tempting targets because people will understand that IBM is not going anywhere. Oh and IBM has one of the biggest (actually it might be the biggest) patent portfolio in the US.
I think software patents are not all the gross evil that everyone sees them, and that certain well written ones are just fine especially in cases where a hardware or software implementation of a process can be used with equal efficiency. I do believe the problem with the US system lies in the fact that the addition was not made by lawmakers or the Patent Office, but by a panel of judges known as SCOTUS, actually the USPTO has tried their best to limit software patents and more particularly business method patents as best as they can without overstepping the SCOTUS ruling.
I just hope that you have a bit more of an open-mind then the zealots I see speaking most frequently on this topic, and have enough since to understand the need for rational debate and discussion and not just one-sided bashing.
This is so true it is not even funny. These kind of stories bring out the know-it-all zealots who are in fact the know-nothing zealots. Simply put, I have never met a great many people more misinformed on an issue then the/. community is in regards to patents and patent law. Not only that but they are completely ignorant to the facts and not willing to have a true discussion on the topic and are more willing to spend countless ages writing posts that do nothing but say the system is broken...it doesn't work...cause Bob over there says it doesn't.
The simple fact is most the readers have never taken the time to find out about topics, and to decide that it is or is not a problem. If memory serves me, you can technically say there are two types of software patents. Type 1 is the business method implemented on a machine, and these are quite possibly the worst kind. The second is an actual process designed to run for some real purpose in a software function. Now the problem with rejecting the ideas of number 2 is that a great many problems can be solved in both a hardware and a software enviroment. So if I designed a system that took this logic circuit and then took that output to some memory device or other logic based circuit and that perform task A it would be patentable. However, I would not be able to patent the same implementation (under everyones arguments) in the software world.
One last little note. Stop bitching at the USPTO or your Senate or whoever for Software and Business Method patents. You know why? Because their inclusion was created by a SCOTUS ruling. In which they decided just about anything created by man can be patented. The USPTO has tried rather valiently to try to stem these patents as much as possible, but there is only so much they can do with the money and resources available to them (because Congress keeps stealing their money).
Trust me there are plenty of things that can be done to improve the patent system, I understand this. There are plenty of people opposed to software patents (albeit Microsoft themselves might actually hate them in some deep dark secret memo because most their software patents are of the anti-troll variety).
If you really want to get your hands dirty, I have a few recommendations for the whiners who want to fix things. First, if you have an engineering degree, go work at the PTO and use your vast knowledge of all this existent prior art to reject as many of these patents as you see fit (within the letter of the law). Second, go to law school and become a patent attorney and then fight all these "bad" patents you believe are not legitimate. Or Third, go into politics and try to make the reforms to law from within Congress. I get tired of people screaming at the top of their lungs about problems but not willing to take any sort of action in order to actually work to fix the problem.
The closest to a launch title for an RPG for X-Box was going to be Oblivion, I believe. Unfortunately, it appears as though the game has hit a delay and won't make it for Dec. 6 but probably early Winter '06.
However, I will just play Oblivion on the PC, like any sane person would.
who won the dvd format war? +r or -r? ahh thats right, they both won and every drive sold now includes both technologies.
Actually you are a bit off here. You see, go to the store and you will probably find a few more spaces of +R then -R. You know who might truly have won the battle, +R because they decided to implement dual-layer burning while -R decided it was unnecessary. For people who honestly believe in making perfect backup copies of their movies, +R actually did win the "war".
The only way this does not become a true war is if inexpensive Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives come out so you can buy either format and only need a single player. If that happens, then yes the war will only be what movies use what formats.
ummm...that is 16-bit color. Not too bad for smaller devices. Actually not sure how many devices with screens that size support more then 16-bit color though...
B-Shows? While I will admit some of the shows on the list are anything but quality, many of these were top-rated shows in their day. This list is actually a decent mix of classic pre-80s TV and a few 80s and 90s classics. I am sorry if you missed out on TV of the time, but the shows that were the very tops during their time (Cheers, MASH, etc.) can still make more money in syndication and DVD sales and will probably never see a format like this, until they start charging for epsidoe downloads.
I will admit some of the other, newer, shows are probably a bit less rememberable, but they actually targetted the right audiences. Most users who will catch on to this are undoubtedly going to be the people who use the internet most, for lack of better words, nerds and geeks.
If I were targetting those people, I would say the inclusion of Babylon 5, Pinky and the Brain, and Lois and Clark are some good shows to have on the list. It is not like they are force-feeding us truly crappy B-Shows: Xena, Hercules, Beastmaster, Cleopatra 2025 (or whatever it is, but I don't get how this show has a DVD), or any of those other "original" shows that show on TV during the day on certain cable channels, or late late at night on broadcast networks.
A great many of these shows, if not all, were broadcast shows which means they had at least a bit more substance then some cable shows do. This is actually a great idea for shows that are a bit too old to have the necessary money-making potential to be syndicated or to get DVDs. This is really good if we get more Warner produced shows, because it seems they are one of the worst studios at getting their TV shows onto DVD. (Though I am not sure if I should blame ABC or WB for no Whose Line on DVD.)
Slashdot Mirror
The only party that truly believes in small government anymore is the Libertarians. Republicans gave up on the idea of small government years ago, and now the only thing separating republicans and democrats is their excuses for creating bigger government. There is no longer a great divide between the parties because it has become more about who can we get into office then pushing their ideas. It is this sort of who is or what opinion is more electable that resulted in Kerry instead of Dean. Democrats began to waiver when they realized that Dean was a true leftist that held true to most all party ideas (and took a real leftist stance), while everyone else was holding that nice centrist line to get elected.
I mean look at Bush, when he first started running, we were all enlightened with the term 'compassionate conservative'. Of course it also does not help that we traditionally have low voter turnouts for elections because of some gross voter apathy with the state of things.
Well to get in on the geek-fest of old computers, I have an old Compaq Laptop, which I think is a 386 (it might be a 486), with its nice monochrome monitor (all like 8" of it) and tiny keyboard, and little rollerball. It has a hard drive that is at least a couple of hundred MBs and maybe 16 MB of memory, if I am lucky, more likely only 8 MB. I will definitely update this once I am home and can check for sure. It came with Windows 3.1 and thanks to some update disks and a PCMCIA floppy is running Windows 95 for now. I have definitely considered running linux with a minimal install and maybe a light graphical interface.
Hope I can find my serial mouse though, because that rollerball has actually seen better days. Now, I only need to find a 5.25" floppy drive to play the old DOS Batman game I have.
it will still take hours and hours to back up (if not longer)
Let me introduce you to Mr. Tape Drive. This reel of magnetic tape is quite possibly the largest method of data backup used, and last I checked, it takes hours and hours (if not longer) to do full data backup of disks. This is why most companies implement RAID 1 or 5 solutions and use tape backup as a weekly or monthly system.
Actually if I remember the procedure correctly for one of my previous places of employ, there were monthly full backups and weekly differential backups. The new system included software that even created differential backups on the disk every couple of hours, for those emergencies when someone would accidentally delete that important file they needed.
I am pretty sure none of these methods required any downtime for data. It would backup the data on the disk as it was read and stored to the tape. Now this would cause problems if you were working on file X while it was being backed up, but did not effect the other files on the system. Granted this solution would not work too well with systems with very large database files, since those files would get locked for several hours. Of course, I have also worked at locations, including one telephone order location, where access to the entry program is blocked from several hours between midnight and early the next morning, to run backups and various reports.
Once again, depending on the method(s) used, recovery is going to vary with time; however, the chance of total data recovery being needed is low. Most every large network storage solution will exist in a RAID setup and failure of enough drives to completely ruin that system is rare. The backups are most often used for those files that are missing, or to retrieve files which may have somehow been corrupted, and are typically not meant to be used, commonly, for full data retrieval.
*goes to his room to make sure his BS in ECE is still there*
Yep, so I can honestly say, SHUT UP! You are going after the same old arguments that every audiophile (or audio-dope) uses. The fact is analog has its great number of problems, including more artifact issues. I am sure you know of what I speak, all those popping type sounds you get from your cassette or record. Real nice analog audio. Copying analog repeatedly obviously has its problems as well because analog has more susceptibility to interferences, which goes back to your sound artifacts.
To answer your question about the video, the sibling to this has it right. It has to do with the way video is drawn on a CRT versus the way video is drawn on a standard television and why video game consoles still typically run at 30 fps and computers run video at 60 fps and up. DVD audio is mostly a dumb idea to sale items multiple times, though it has added the ability for, get this, multiple channel audio.
On the line of video, are you going to contend that VCR or Laser Disc look better then DVDs. I love the age old argument but my analog sounds better argument, the audio-phile constant fall back that they swear it sounds better. I will guarantee that most everyone would not be able to tell the difference in the audio signals or would choose the digital ones as superior. If you have a specific example, it is quite possible that the specific example is one of those aberrations where someone did not properly do their sampling. For some reason I am reminded of a video about being emo...
Ok let us start with an easy enough reference point, in this case dinosaurs. Here we have a set of creatures we know existed millions of years ago and which is now believed to be the progenitors to the reptiles and birds. We know there were dinosaurs with some ability of flight and some land and some water based dinosaurs. Why did they choose these different habitats and travel methods? Location! Environment has a great deal to do with the evolution of a species.
You have to remember there are plenty of evolutionary paths for any organism to follow. Humans arguably have evolved somewhat separately while still maintaining compatible DNA. Let us take a look at the case of skin pigmentation. People in the northern most extremes of the world like Scandinavia and Russia developed light skin pigmentations because our bodies did not require as much protection from sun light in these areas. The days were shorter and sunlight exposure as such was also shorter, because of locality. Look at people as you move further south, skin tones begin to get darker the longer your days and more direct your sunlight begins to get. You have people in the Mediterranean and Middle East with darker, "olive" skin and as you move into Africa you begin to get individuals with even darker skin.
The Evolution of man is actually well documented from early ape-like humans to modern man of today. Evolution is a long process and not something you can expect to see overnight. Animals and plants have adapted to their environments and find ways to survive, and the ones that survive go on to breed until the new traits have replaced the older ones completely, or a divergence occurs and a new species incompatible with the previous occurs.
Please check out this site and if you come up with a new argument that actually attempts to present fact then please feel free.
My complaint is with the temperature benchmarking. Why on earth use a 6600 GT? I mean we are talking about an HTPC case, and maybe I am alone in thinking this, but if I am making a PC for home theater use, I want a card with some power, but I also want a card with TV tuning.
This test should've used an AIW either the AIW 2006 edition (overpriced AIW 9600), the X600-AIW or the newer X1800XL AIW (for the truly crazy people). For an HTPC where power is not the ultimate requirement the AIW 2006 edition should suffice for true testing.
How come every time I see a comment with these sentiments modded up to a 5, the user number of the poster is a bigger number than I have ever seen on the site?
Brother Hank, the reason for this is because of Meta-Moderating. You see the people with 800000+ numbers have managed to Meta-Moderate away the sensible peoples mod points. There is a great divide at present between people who have been here a while (I had another account before I setup this one) and the people who have arrived more recently proclaiming to know what is best for the hole.
I guess the fact is, people just cannot come to accept that there is going to be a bias no matter what news media they use, and slashdot is no exception. After all, it is not like most of the people here do not seem to agree with a vast majority of the more biased news stories. I am often the lone voice of sanity when it comes to patent related news.
I do believe my only complaint at present involves the over abundance people submitting links to their own blogs by using inflammatory articles to drive up traffic and slashdot accepting these blatantly absurd (and sometimes downright stupid) stories.
To you and your sibling:
mathematics n. (used with a sing. verb) The study of the measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols.
Brought to you courtesy of dictionary.com
If you are going to harass the british about something get on them about excessive use of the letter 'u'.
has been just been released
I hear the new RC has a grammar and spell check that automatically fixes slashdot before it loads...
Reliability, well in order to improve that much more you need to change the technology all together. The inherent problem with a hard disk drive is its multitude of moving parts. More times then not when your drive fails it is a mechanical problem of some sort affecting the drive and preventing it from reading/writing properly.
Now, some people would begin to point to FLASH memory systems. While this could eventually become a good replacement for the hard drive for standard home users in several years, if prices continue to drop, there are still issues and concerns about the write limitations of flash. The speed of drives would also increase greatly by using FLASH as a hard drive replacement.
Another thing to note is that most home users do not need faster hard drives then what they currently have. They only access data of the disc on a few occassions and so long they are using the computer memory more then swap/page files nothing is really going to be that noticeable to them.
BTW, if you want your data to be safer may I recommend a RAID solution to help maintain your data, if that is too expensive a solution you can probably save some cost with DVD back-ups since I doubt you have a tape drive lying around and they aren't exactly cheap.
see my other post above, to which I would add the following statement: since all the other major patent offices are using the first to file system, it would probably be safe to say it is the better system. Removing steps from the patent process makes the job of the office easier and gives examiners more time to focus on the patent work.
In the US it would clear up many potential problems and would get rid of several procedures currently in place in the patent system and patent laws. This would include interference practices since they would no longer be necessary to determine the first inventor. This could also lead to more companies using the WIPO PCT application process since they get the benefit of its filing date as their US filing date. There are some people who still forego this, possibly because they believe they do not file in enough different countries, or because their country is not part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
20 yr old patent, that is due to expire next year. Yes donate your money for them to run off to kill an almost dead patent. This is probably why the EFF just doesn't care in this case, and the fact the EFF realizes the company is simply enforcing their rights to the patent under law.
Selling patents is a good way to make money. You would limit inventors to only being able to license their patent; however, in the case of a really good patent, a large company may wish to pay a large sum of money to the small inventor in order to ensure they have the protection right guaranteed by the patent. This would also raise questions about how patent ownership would occur when companies are purchased. You must remember, the US is the only country that is part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty that does not allow companies to file for patents, the inventors must apply and assign the rights as such to the corporation. Look at WIPO patents, and there is a category for inventors that has in parentheses, for the United State only. A similar counter to this is by the applicant section.
This is actually being proposed as a change in the Patent Reform Act in congress; however, it seems to be one of the things that some inventors' groups have a problem (including the first to file system change). About first to file, in the US we have a process whereby the first to invent gets a patent, and people can overcome some prior art by showing they invented first. Once again the US is pretty much alone on this as the rest of the world uses a first to file system, where first one to the office gets the patent, you can see why some small inventors might dislike this, but it is really important to bring us inline with the rest of the world.
But I digress a bit. The problem with your "minimum reasonable usage" is that you start running into the "fair use" area where it begins to be questioned how much is reasonable, what is minimum, and what type of usage. It is not as simple as it might sound.
So on your argument NTP can sue every user of one of RIM's Blackberry devices?
EOLAS can sue everyone using M$ Internet Explorer.
I do not think the courts would much agree with you on this one. The companies are not infringing the patent, the producer/distributor of the software are by making products that infringe on the patent.
So they say that Linux potential violates 283 software patents? Now I do not know that they went through every software patent, but that is WELL below the number of issued software patents I am sure, so was there really much of a threat anyway? Besides that there is always the potential of any patents being invalidated in court even if it ever happened.
I do not see why a corporation would be scared from Linux by this potential though. You are talking about a patent infringement that would affect the companies and people distributing Linux and not the people using it. I really think everyone sort of got scared about this at first, but realized the threat was not as bad as everyone was originally stating.
Since we are back on this discussion of the cost of music, I am hoping someone who might be in the know will be able to answer a question or two. I have, over the past two years, begun to by most all my music (with a few rare exceptions) at used stores and as such have gotten albums that are in good shape and several years old for almost 1/2 or 1/4 as much as they are selling for in stores (even after they have been out for 5+ years).
So now to my question. Do these stores that sell used CDs, DVDs, etc. have to pay anything back to the **AA or do they actual make all their money on the items they sell without having to cut money back to the big corporations? I have always worked on the assumption that they don't pay money back, but it seems with how the RIAA keeps pressing Apple to adjust the prices on iTunes that they wouldn't pester these places too...
So does anyone in the know have the information I seek?
I hate to break it to you, but people actually seem to agree that Diamond v. Diehr is what opened the door for software patents. It said well you cannot patent the algorithm, but you can patent the system using it. Therefore, through testing in the court, particularly the CAFC, software patents began to become allowable matter despite USPTO attempts. There is no official law that saw software is patentable, by the letter of 35 USC 101 it quite possibly isn't, but the courts have said otherwise.
It seems that no one has really been willing to make much of a move on changing this since then, including Congress. Ideally it would probably be desired that law was made or SCOTUS re-examine the decision if an appropriate case were to arrive.
This message is directed to Florian Mueller, hopefully a more reasonable individual then most the /. anti-patent zealots.
Your comment about IBMs patents is borderline FUD. While some of the patents may have nothing to do with software, those that do and are up for "renewal" (in the US you just pay your maintenance fee at 3, 7, and 11 years post grant) are usually only renewed if the continued protection is sought. In this case, by turning over those patents and not paying fees, they become fully public; however, most people in the public don't understand this system and simple add 20 yrs to the filing date and forget about it. This shows those patents are clearly available for individuals to use.
Another comment is the one about being limited to only certain licenses or as you say specific projects like Linux. Now clarify something for me, does that mean that individuals can then only release code under certain licenses? If so, which ones? Why is this really bad if the license limitations prevent people from using restrictive licenses. Ones specific to project (ie the Linux Kernel) may only really apply to those one things, and may not have much or any scope outside said project(s).
You bring up the combination patent idea where A and B are in the system, but your combination exists as Patent C. If there exists the proper measures as set out by SCOTUS and CAFC that A and B could be combined for C the patent can invalidated in court. If it cannot be invalidated, then you might actually have a problem...but in most cases an invalidation can be done unless combining A and B would be totally unheard of.
You mention that this doesn't reduce the number of enemies you might face. However, having your own patents at hand is good in the event of a court case, because you have your own protection there against their threats, particularly if you can show that their patent is either invalid or that your creation is along the lines of this patent and not theirs. It is also good because companies change regimes. Just because IBM is friendly with Open Source now does not mean they will be in 10 or 15 years.
The troll is a seriously problem, but the key to the troll is they are out to make a lot of money. The fact is that in the software world open-source does not necessarily have the money. There are bigger and better targets worth much more money. Large companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, Google, etc. are far juicier targets then Redhat, Novell, etc. IBM is a nice big target, but in many peoples minds almost too big. Microsoft has been too quick to settle in the past (possibly because they know they will lose) with various cases (with maybe the exception of EOLAS). However, IBM is fighting SCO tooth and nail and not just sending them on their way to get rid of the pest. When IBM wins this case, they will be much less tempting targets because people will understand that IBM is not going anywhere. Oh and IBM has one of the biggest (actually it might be the biggest) patent portfolio in the US.
I think software patents are not all the gross evil that everyone sees them, and that certain well written ones are just fine especially in cases where a hardware or software implementation of a process can be used with equal efficiency. I do believe the problem with the US system lies in the fact that the addition was not made by lawmakers or the Patent Office, but by a panel of judges known as SCOTUS, actually the USPTO has tried their best to limit software patents and more particularly business method patents as best as they can without overstepping the SCOTUS ruling.
I just hope that you have a bit more of an open-mind then the zealots I see speaking most frequently on this topic, and have enough since to understand the need for rational debate and discussion and not just one-sided bashing.
This is so true it is not even funny. These kind of stories bring out the know-it-all zealots who are in fact the know-nothing zealots. Simply put, I have never met a great many people more misinformed on an issue then the /. community is in regards to patents and patent law. Not only that but they are completely ignorant to the facts and not willing to have a true discussion on the topic and are more willing to spend countless ages writing posts that do nothing but say the system is broken...it doesn't work...cause Bob over there says it doesn't.
The simple fact is most the readers have never taken the time to find out about topics, and to decide that it is or is not a problem. If memory serves me, you can technically say there are two types of software patents. Type 1 is the business method implemented on a machine, and these are quite possibly the worst kind. The second is an actual process designed to run for some real purpose in a software function. Now the problem with rejecting the ideas of number 2 is that a great many problems can be solved in both a hardware and a software enviroment. So if I designed a system that took this logic circuit and then took that output to some memory device or other logic based circuit and that perform task A it would be patentable. However, I would not be able to patent the same implementation (under everyones arguments) in the software world.
One last little note. Stop bitching at the USPTO or your Senate or whoever for Software and Business Method patents. You know why? Because their inclusion was created by a SCOTUS ruling. In which they decided just about anything created by man can be patented. The USPTO has tried rather valiently to try to stem these patents as much as possible, but there is only so much they can do with the money and resources available to them (because Congress keeps stealing their money).
Trust me there are plenty of things that can be done to improve the patent system, I understand this. There are plenty of people opposed to software patents (albeit Microsoft themselves might actually hate them in some deep dark secret memo because most their software patents are of the anti-troll variety).
If you really want to get your hands dirty, I have a few recommendations for the whiners who want to fix things. First, if you have an engineering degree, go work at the PTO and use your vast knowledge of all this existent prior art to reject as many of these patents as you see fit (within the letter of the law). Second, go to law school and become a patent attorney and then fight all these "bad" patents you believe are not legitimate. Or Third, go into politics and try to make the reforms to law from within Congress. I get tired of people screaming at the top of their lungs about problems but not willing to take any sort of action in order to actually work to fix the problem.
The closest to a launch title for an RPG for X-Box was going to be Oblivion, I believe. Unfortunately, it appears as though the game has hit a delay and won't make it for Dec. 6 but probably early Winter '06.
However, I will just play Oblivion on the PC, like any sane person would.
who won the dvd format war? +r or -r? ahh thats right, they both won and every drive sold now includes both technologies.
Actually you are a bit off here. You see, go to the store and you will probably find a few more spaces of +R then -R. You know who might truly have won the battle, +R because they decided to implement dual-layer burning while -R decided it was unnecessary. For people who honestly believe in making perfect backup copies of their movies, +R actually did win the "war".
The only way this does not become a true war is if inexpensive Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives come out so you can buy either format and only need a single player. If that happens, then yes the war will only be what movies use what formats.
ummm...that is 16-bit color. Not too bad for smaller devices. Actually not sure how many devices with screens that size support more then 16-bit color though...
Those are the 30 launch titles...the rest of the shows will come with time...like I mentioned...
B-Shows? While I will admit some of the shows on the list are anything but quality, many of these were top-rated shows in their day. This list is actually a decent mix of classic pre-80s TV and a few 80s and 90s classics. I am sorry if you missed out on TV of the time, but the shows that were the very tops during their time (Cheers, MASH, etc.) can still make more money in syndication and DVD sales and will probably never see a format like this, until they start charging for epsidoe downloads.
I will admit some of the other, newer, shows are probably a bit less rememberable, but they actually targetted the right audiences. Most users who will catch on to this are undoubtedly going to be the people who use the internet most, for lack of better words, nerds and geeks.
If I were targetting those people, I would say the inclusion of Babylon 5, Pinky and the Brain, and Lois and Clark are some good shows to have on the list. It is not like they are force-feeding us truly crappy B-Shows: Xena, Hercules, Beastmaster, Cleopatra 2025 (or whatever it is, but I don't get how this show has a DVD), or any of those other "original" shows that show on TV during the day on certain cable channels, or late late at night on broadcast networks.
A great many of these shows, if not all, were broadcast shows which means they had at least a bit more substance then some cable shows do. This is actually a great idea for shows that are a bit too old to have the necessary money-making potential to be syndicated or to get DVDs. This is really good if we get more Warner produced shows, because it seems they are one of the worst studios at getting their TV shows onto DVD. (Though I am not sure if I should blame ABC or WB for no Whose Line on DVD.)