Yeah did this guy miss the memo on how he should be comparing the desktop interfaces with the windows desktop and then comparing the actual usability and strengths of the kernels? Maybe he is just another one of those ignorant sots who thinks he knows something about computers and can therefore explain them oh so perfectly.
The fact is simple, the majority of Linux distros have adopted KDE or Gnome. If you want simpler interfaces you have Englightenment, Blackbox, and Windowmaker to name a few. Does he not realize how simple the Mac OS X interface is? Both Linux and Mac have simpler and more user friendly interfaces available to users then M$ does. I mean they talk about revolutionizing things with Vista, shit it is XP with some prettiness on top. Why not innovate the interface a bit more instead of taking the Mac polished metal look and throwing it into the existing Windows GUI.
To be honest, I use to hate Mac in the days of OS 9 and older. It wasn't a good interface IMO and the hardware was still fairly sluggish. My only complain about Mac today is they won't sell me OS X so I can run it on my Desktop. Their loss I suppose, since instead I run Windows (probably changing to Mandriva soon) on my desktop, and Mandriva on my laptop. I really wish they would change this policy but I really doubt that will ever happen.
But hey, slashdot will continue to push crappy blog posts on us to drive up peoples ad revenue at the expense of our own sanity...
Yes, you are one of those people who want the government to do everything for you right? Listen, they do a good job of self-regulation. I do not know many (if any) retailers that sell 'M' rated games to children. It is not the ESRB's fault or the fault of the retailers if kids wind up playing these games. It is the fault of their parents for not doing their job.
Let's look at the game rating system in the same light as the movie rating system. We have the 'AO' games. These arguably cover NC-17 which is a movies most dreaded rating because you just knocked out a lot of people who would otherwise not go see it. You also have the 'M' which more or less the 'R' of movie industry fame. Very, very few games ever get tabbed 'AO' and very few actually get 'M' ratings. If you take a peak at game sales the best selling games fall into the 'T' and lower category. So they are typically no worse then PG-13 movies, a rating only added after complaints about Temple of Doom and Gremlins, the first PG-13 movie being "Red Dawn" and the only reason anyone will ever remember that horrid movie, but I digress.
The point is this game violence issue is blown WAY out of proportion, and many parents didn't seem to mind their kids playing GTA until the 'Hot Coffee' BS. There is a line from South Park about this that basically says parent's don't care about violence when they have sex issues to worry about. Especially here in the good ol' US of A this is VERY TRUE. What is worse is that parents expect the government to protect their kids! Parents would rather hide behind a big rock and say keep that evil video game, movie, pornograph, etc. away from my child.
Inevitably parents shirk all responsibility because they do not want to have to worry about raising their children. Every generation has found something new to complain about. Almost 50 years ago is was rock and roll being 'devil music'. Now we have Rap taking its place. Anyone who has ever worked for a government will tell you why you don't want them regulating anything. The simple fact of the matter of it is they do a horrible job of regulating themselves.
Listen, whether the regulation is done by an independent group, like the movie industry, or by the government, like alcohol, there are still people who will beat the system. A kid who wants to see an 'R' rated movie can get another adult to take them, or wait for it to be out on DVD and use the same scenario. Trust me, I went to college and know for a fact that underaged drinking happens, and in high school is was underaged smoking. When someone really wants something, they will get it and blaming the industry and sticking the government into a place it does not belong is wrong. This is the same reason I hate government instituted smoking bans, because they have no place enforcing ideas and beliefs for any reason on private business and industry.
Multiple reasons. M$'s closed format that OpenOffice had to work around to get to open Excel (and other format files) in a somewhat proper fashion. You notice you get those may not open correctly or appear properly messages with OpenOffice. Oh and then there is the fact that the Office Suite programs have hooks into the OS. I mean when you have the source code for the OS available to you, of course you know how to treat it just right to open files faster.
Besides, what are you using that takes 3 minutes to open a spreadsheet anyway?
What I want to know is why simple text files and comma separated files aren't more popular. I mean how often do you seriously need all the formatting that you use in Word/Excel (or the OpenOffice equivalents)?
And this is why us Linux folk just stuck with something nice and cute like a penguin. But I want to get me a shirt with the BSD daemon on it and go about causing some hell, so to speak.
People are so ignorant...
It would be kind of hard to call Ultima Underworld FPS...since the 'S' does stand for SHOOTER. Other then that, it might be one of the first (or the first) First Person game.
SCO Attorney 1: You know this is a waste of time right?
SCO Attorney 2: Yeah but those idiots are still paying us.
SCO Attorney 1: How much longer can they pay us to do this?
SCO Attorney 2: Maybe another year or two.
SCO Attorney 1: What then?
SCO Attorney 2: Well we will either win the case and be filthy rich while they are still broke, or we'll just apply for jobs with Microsoft and repeat the process with someone else.
SCO Attorney 1: BRILLIANT!
Is actually a good idea. I mean I cannot count the number of times I see commercials for the same things over and over again in which I have no interest. Yes, Google can track your television viewing habits, but who is to say that the Cable company can't already do that with those fancy digital cable boxes many of us already have in our homes or apartments?
At least in this case they would be using the information to actually direct advertising better so that I do not need to see the same commercials over and over again. Actually there is nothing quite as annoying at some of the Comcast commercial. I mean I already have cable with you and you are not selling any services I do not already have, so why do you insist on continuing to sell them with those annoying commercials (and WTF is Comcastic?). Seriously Time-Warner wasn't this bad when I had them for a Cable company in Columbus.
Oh, and since I am a single guy I can do without the feminine care product commercials. Shit if Google wants to direct commercials for products and television programs that I would never see because they don't warrant usual advertising during primetime, then sign me up.
My question is will they be powered by alcohol like in Futurama?
or will they be powered by old people's medicine like Sam Waterston said in the 'Old Glory Insurance commercial' on SNL?
I personally like the alcohol option. Finally a drinking buddy who gets stronger the more he drinks....
Unfortunately it probably wouldn't kill SBC (who will be changing the name to AT&T before too long). They have plenty of money, I mean they are a HUGE telecom and hold over half the share of Cingular. Their DSL subscriptions might lower, but if they ever come through on the idea of fibre, well people will start switching for larger bandwidth (at least those who care). Not to mention if they follow the plan Verizon is taking with FIOS and intend on offering TV through the service, well I hope the cable companies will be a bit scared at least.
Of course if SBC gets caught in their old ways, all we need is for Verizon to start working to expand land based service further west and before you know it competition (which has sorely been lacking even post original Ma Bell) might take place. Reminds me about how much it irks me. They break up AT&T into smaller telecoms, but in their individual regions they still held monopolies. I guess regionalized monopolies are OK, because yeah no choice helps us all.
The telecoms are rightly worried about VOIP since it is becoming a more acceptable solution (though it has some glaring issues still in certain markets). This is why the Verizon (and presumably SBC) are wanting to cut into the cable turf, because after all they are cutting into their turf with VOIP services. So maybe we will wind up with some huge like Cable and Phone conglomerate and I can pay like $200 a month to one company for cell phone, land line and cable...damn expensive services...
Actually according to your own article hard science fiction can leave "known science" if they leave "known universe." If hard science fiction relies too much on the known science then really is it "science fiction" any more.
I mean we can arguably point to the technological devices of today in Star Trek that would have seemed completely ridiculous to people in the 1960s and some things from TNG that might have seemed crazy to us just 15 years ago. While FTL might be a bit absurd and impossible, there is a great line from Star Trek TNG I heard the other day. "Things are only impossible until they're not" - Jean-Luc Picard.
We can argue they have thrown Einstein out, but remember Einstein's Theories are just that, theories. Like the theory of evolution there is a great deal of empirical evidence to support it; however, it has not become a "Law" because the science community hasn't deemed it to such a level yet. You know something though, it doesn't matter if FTL is impossible because most fans do not care. They will still dream about living in the world of Star Trek and of the more bright future it portrays as a sort of utopia; I mean I prefer it to most the dystopias I have seen/read.
If people here on slashdot and you included really think it is so easy to get a patent you obviously have never gone through patent litigation. The process is anything but easy.
Step 1: Invent something (or don't and try anyway).
Step 2: Write up a good specification and claims, this is best accomplished by a law firm.
Step 3: Send application the USPTO along with the necessary fees.
Step 4: Wait anywhere from 1 to 2 years (possibly more) for your patent to even be looked at by an examiner.
Step 5: Receive a first office action that usually rejects your claims.
Step 6: Respond to the arguments or amend your claims to get around the reference.
Step 7a: Examiner accepts arguments and send another "non-final" action, go back to step 6.
Step 7b: Examiner upholds rejection, or creates new ones for amended claims and sends "final rejection".
Step 8: Send "After-Final" either arguing rejections again, or amending claims to be allowable, no other amendments allowed.
Step 9a: Rejection is upheld, file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) and start process again (this does cost money).
Step 9b: Rejection is upheld, Give up and abandon the case.
Step 9c: Rejection is upheld, File Notice of Appeal.
Step 9d: Case made allowable, wait for Notice of Allowance.
Step 10a: After filing RCE, go back to step 4.
Step 10b: After Notice of Appeal, wait for Examiner's Answer to Appeal (there are several conferences that may occur before an Appeal is even filed.
Step 10c: After Notice of Allowance, pay Allowance Fee to receive patent. (There are further fees down the road to maintain the patent.)
Step 11: After Examiner's Answer, wait for Board of Patent Appeals and Interference (BPAI) to look over the case.
Step 12a: BPAI upholds examiner's rejection, abandon the case.
Step 12b: BPAI upholds examiner's rejection, file appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).
Step 12c: BPAI reverses examiner's rejection, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Step 13: Argue case before the CAFC.
Step 14a: CAFC finds in favor of the USPTO, file appeal with SCOTUS.
Step 14b: CAFC finds in favor of the applicant, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Step 15: Argue case before SCOTUS (assuming they will hear the case).
Step 16a: SCOTUS upholds CAFC and USPTO, you are dead in the water now.
Step 16b: SCOTUS finds in your favor, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Wow, 16 steps and a few forks in there. Plenty of fees to pay with the office and even more in attorney's fees. I might have even forgot some steps. Trust me, IT IS a lot harder to get a patent the you or the people at groklaw realize. Are there problems in the patent process? Undeniably yes. I think the Director even admitted that some degree of reform is probably needed. I just don't want you to all think that the USPTO rubber stamps everything that comes through the door because that isn't the case.
So you are of the belief that a software patent is a "tool of oppression"? You say there is no cost except for time to write and debug code. Yes let us ignore the fact said code still needs a computer or some piece of hardware to interpret said code, so during the design at least there is that cost as well. To be honest I am not sure that I really support or hate software patents, but I do believe the problem with software patents is that they were allowed after software was already well around. This created a problem with finding prior art because under limited search times, you really only can spend so much time looking.
I like to use the following argument: say you can implement process one as a solely hardware only device, with digital logic or other passive/non-passive electronic devices or you can implement the process on a microprocessor or computer using software and get the same effects, speed differences being negligible. So under the no software patents idea, I can patent the hardware implementation but not the software one. This is somewhat troublesome because if you invent the process and implement it both ways you deserve the right to own a patent on it. Copyrights do not provide enough protection, because as many of us know there are several ways to write code to perform the same process sometimes.
Much of the problem with software patents comes with the fact that the exact mode of operation of closed source code that has never had a patent filed on it, or older code in general that is either poorly documented or hard to locate is that you cannot reasonably prove in all circumstances that it reads on the same lines as the patent. It also is not an easy matter to determine if something of that nature is really prior art. It is important to remember that prior art has to be available to the PUBLIC to be prior art, so many of those closed source programs that might qualify fail because they did not document the process they used and without their source code it is not known whether or not they actually read on the claims of the invention.
I think you are misunderstanding, and probably your friends on/. and groklaw are misunderstanding the use of 35 USC 112,1st paragraph. It does not prevent the applicant from applying from an unfulfilled idea. It simply states that the specification must be enabling. In that regards, it means that from the specification, a person of ordinary skill in the art should be able to take the patent and realize the invention. In order to reject a patent as not being an invention you would reject it under 35 USC 101. This is a very serious rejection because you are claiming that no invention has been made or the invention as claimed is not possible (which would be like saying no invention was made). This is because it states "Whoever invents..."
I will not go into my usual discussion on 35 USC 103 here, so instead I will say...take the time to actually read 35 USC 101, 102, 103 and 112. Since that is where rejections lie. Also if you are really interested I might get around to writing my explanation of patent law sooner then I think (see my journal).
As a sibling said there are a great many inherent problems with CRTs. If you fail to recognize the refresh rate flicker then the headache you get from it surely will tell you, not to mention the far worse eye strain (though this may just be me).
The idea is to make technology smaller and faster. LCDs have actually caught up to CRTs in many respects and the ability to avoid the rare, but still existent burn-in is an advantage. Contrast is the biggest "color" related problem LCDs have faced and that is by and large because liquid crystals block light and do not emit light. I think this is part of the reason for pushing OLED technology slowly towards a viable replacement for LCD. It is less power hungry (no backlight to fuel), it is electroluminescent (it gives off light in case you don't know "big" words), and it allows you to make smaller/thinner displays (mostly because it is EL and requires no backlight).
Now I cannot attest for how much better the color representation is on an OLED to an LCD or to a CRT, but I believe in the end they are considerably close and perfectly fine for 99.99% of the population. The 0.01% who say they can see flicker at 85Hz and who will continue to claim big problems with LCDs are not a majority and never will be.
You mention other hardware which is gradually catching up with current technology. With MP3 formats you will have people say they can tell the difference between CD (and WAV) and MP3, but of course you have your audio-nuts who still like their analog since anything digital has some degree of sampling it isn't "perfect."
Digital cameras are beginning to catch "analog" cameras because they are getting to the point where they contain even more pixels. Most the image loss in prints comes from poor print equipment of users then poor camera quality anymore and surely a few professionals might be tricked by a nice high end digital cam and photo printer. Even professional photographers are beginning to adopt Digital Photography into their lives.
Trust me, most hardware is driven at a market that only casually uses the devices sold and only the professionals are the ones who require the higher quality to avoid seeing/hearing the imperfections they claim.
I don't get your fashionability statement either. At the speed which technology changes people would be buying new TVs and new Computers and new cameras and new everything on a 6month to 2 year rotating cycle. This just does not happen. People still buy things expecting them to last an expected amount of time to their predecessors. Most televisions are considered long living if they last 10 years and the same is true for computer monitors and the like. I mean within 10 years the standard for computer monitors was 15" and smaller. Now I see 17" and 19" becoming the most common and 15" are rare. The problem isn't always a fashionability as it is a marketing perspective of why make object X for as much when we can make object Y for just as much and sell it for a bit more.
I like my technology, and will admit my computer is on a two year rotating replacement cycle. The only thing in my PC to be upgraded since it was built was the hard drives and my space needs changed twice. I expect my current PC to work just fine for several years to come and possibly still be in some strange use in 10 or 15 years. The same goes for my HDTV. I expect when I decide to purchase a new TV (hoping for a day of available and cheap OLED TVs) that my current one will still be working and used as a TV in my bedroom, or kids room...or rec rom. Trust me people expect things to last and have for some time, it is actually rare for many things to last 30 years, including appliances, which most people will tell you are 10 to 15 year cycles.
Oh trust me there is plenty of governmental blame to go around here on this one. Anyone who claims that FEMA is not responsible at all is naive and needs to pull their head out of their nether regions and anyone who claims that city and state governments had nothing to do with the problem need to do the same.
The fact is there is a fair amount of stupidity to go around, including our president who said in a live interview that no one could foresee the levee's breaking, which as I recall everyone was predicting as the worst case scenario. Both groups keep going back and forth as to who is to blame here, the state and city government keep pointing at FEMA and FEMA keeps pointing back.
I do not know if an "independent" investigation would reveal the true problem, since any investigation led by the federal government would try to soften its own blaim however it could. The fact is people reacted poorly to the situation and some people managed to give us weeks of humor and total stupidity too. (See Barbara Bush's quote about the residents put up in the Astrodome and Bush's by and large ignoring the issue before finally being told to head back to DC and act like he was working.)
I personally thought the levee's would give way, and to be honest was laughing at the people hording in the Super Dome (yeah, I know I have no heart.), but I mean it was hard not to do it. Here you have a storm that everyone has said is going to slam the below sea-level city, possibly break a levee and flood the whole town and everyone seems to ignore that fact. I think using Florida as an example of why FEMA is not the problem is BAD. Because a few things will happen with that argument: 1) People will make the Bush-Bush connection claim and act up the conspiracy theory, 2) People will continue to play the race card with New Orleans and the considerably reacher areas of Southern Florida, and 3) You are going to get people who will tell you that NO is a much more vulnerable area because of its geography below sea-level, at the mouth of a major river...with a big lake there too...
I think there are enough difference to make FL to LA/MS comparisons bad.
Wasn't Half-Life 1 a Quake engine game? Which brings me to a point...look at the number of games that used the Q3/TA engine, these include MoH series, CoD series JK2 series, RTCW. You can bet a good number will probably be using the Q4 engine.
Of course there are also a ton of games using the various iterations of the Unreal Engine. There is one game with its own engine that will get me to upgrade though.
i think the reason most companies do this is because they expect most the people looking for a PII 450 to be some unlucky sap who still has that running as their server at work and they know no better then to pay Dell $457 for a new CPU because they HAVE to keep the server up. Sometimes it is said how dense some IT departments and their managers are when it comes to parts...
Ok, you are actually quite off on the FEMA comment. There is a big difference between what happened in Florida with hurricanes and what happened in Louisianna. There was poor response from FEMA and most everyone notices it.
It was FEMA who turned away Wal-Mart trucks with water and supplies.
It was FEMA who told Amtrak they didn't want evacuation help.
It was FEMA who did not use available Navy ships and sent away the Coast Guard with diesel fuel.
It was FEMA who turned away volunteers with boats and hovercraft.
The recent Florida situation doesn't count because FEMA is trying to overcompensate now. Also your conspiracy theorist will tell you to look at who is Governor of Florida...
The fact is both governments screwed up, but FEMA is looking worst in this because they are the ones who are suppose to have the resources to provide aid. I point you to about 1/2 the way down the story here. An example of government preventing aid, and why I think (as a libertarian) that FEMA is nothing more then a unnecessary entity that has only gotten in the way of volunteer efforts.
I can probably find a few local and state government screw ups too (there was a Doctor licensing issue involving the state govt. I think). There is plenty of blame to go around, the fact is FEMA does share a lot of blame and to ignore that fact is pure ignorance.
You have to remember that many people purchase DVDs for extra content as well. In this regard, the extra space will allow for movies to gain back for of the bitrate they sometimes have to sacrifice for the sake of extra features, while at the same time allowing extra features to get more space and quality.
With the advent of HDTV and high definition cameras becoming more prominent, we are not only talking about storing movies in high definition on a disc, but bonus features could be recorded and displayed in the same high definition as well. This would require the extra space, since using the MPEG-2 standard you are going to need more space for the improvement of video from the standard 480 lines to 720 or 1080.
There are several encodings that can be used for video, however, it is often the case in compression that the smaller you make something the more quality-loss you get. The idea is that you have to sample with a certain degree of frequency or your quality will go down. You then need to keep quality up by keeping the bit rates up as well. The idea of a higher bitrate for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is also taking into account the idea of pushing more DTS and Dolby tracks that contain 6.1 or 7.1 audio.
The idea is to plan for the future, and in this case blue laser technology was a logical and rather "simple" step compared to spending time researching and testing new encoding schemes. The idea was actually a simple one, take a laser with a smaller wavelength and we should be able to burn more data into a smaller space. While the design was obviously not THAT simple, it was logically a next step forward from the present technology.
Now on the assumption that the only revolutions in blue laser media storage will be more layers, it would be fairly safe to say that the next step will be improving encodings. Though I do not know the standards of the other approved encodings for Blu-Ray, I do believe they have better storage usage then the standard MPEG-2.
And I think I made the point of saying that assuming they use the full media. The idea of the next generation Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is to be able to provide movies at higher resolutions then the standard 480 lines you get now. The idea is to give the same HD quality on DVD-esque media that you get on HDTV. So yes the people who will mostly be purchasing the new media are people with HDTV's (and the idiots who know no better). I think we will see this being adopted a bit slower rather than faster, since the quality increase will not be apparent to most people. Even as a media for computer usage it is pretty pointless since most games and the like are often still getting onto single DVDs. I mean how many people would want a game that had so much content it could fill a majority of your HDD with the install...
that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use their full dual-layer storage capacities of 50GB and 30GB respectively. Now, the largest currently available 3.5" internal HDD is 500 GB. Presently that would mean a maximum of ~10 Blu-Ray movies or ~16 HD-DVD movies. This is not a lot considering I counted over 200 DVDs on my shelf, making over the 500GB alone.
Another mentioned problem is distribution. The largest "widely" available download speeds available from Verizon via FIOS (which I will admit is not that widely available), is 30 Mbps. Now assuming you get the peak download speeds, we are talking about downloading 400,000 Mb or 240,000 Mb depending on the media. This would result in download times of 3 to 4 hours for Blu-Ray type media and of 2 to 3 hours for HD-DVD Media. On the more standard 6 Mbps connection these times would be nearly 5x larger. I think I can get to Best Bu,y Circuit City, or some other store and home in about 30 minutes tops. You have to remember a great number of consumers still pay for convenience, even in DVD purchases.
I think the hard drive storage Bill is hoping for is a pipe dream, unless of course he is planning on HDDs becoming so cheap you can sell a movie on one and then just pop it into your "player" and let it go...but HDDs are so big, and they do come with a host of their own problems...
1. It doesn't have enough manpower to do what it's being asked to do
2. It has quotas
3. It doesn't have the money to expand
1. This comes down to money, see your #3.
2. This comes down to the huge number of patent applications and in particular large number of "continuations" something the Director has said he'd like to see cut down. Approximately 1/3 of all patents last year were continuations. This means 1/3 of the work is "re-work".
3. This is the fault of congress, who only release more of the money the patent office makes if quality improvements are promised. Many millions (if not billions) of dollars are distributed to other government agencies from USPTO earned dollars. I believe part of the Patent Reform Act before Congress involves releasing all the funds to the PTO.
Presently with a few exceptions all patents are published after 18 months. The aforementioned Patent Reform Act addresses publishing all applications after 18 months (with the backlog in many arts this should result in your situation of published pending applications). The public currently can send prior art to the office. There are provisions for it, though it does cost money, and expecting it not to would be insane. If you cannot afford to present obvious prior art to the office, trust me there are probably people who would be willing to pay to do it for you (i.e. Logitech, Apple, etc. for a Microsoft pending patent). Thank you for bringing up obviousness...
There is a big problem many people forget about or just don't know about 35 USC 103(a) obvious type rejections. In order to combine two references the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) determined that you must have a motivation for combining the two items. This often increases the burden on the Office to make an obvious type rejection. There is presently a case attempting to challenge the standard before the Supreme Court (KSR International vs. Keleflex). The Supreme Court has asked for the input from the Solicitor General and are currently awaiting his word before deciding on whether or not to hear the case. If the SCOTUS overturns the CAFC then many patents will become more easily rejected, and thousands more will be invalidated if challenged.
On the matter of software and business method patents that mess up falls squarely on SCOTUS. For years the office pushed many business method patents aside by restricting them computers for the software usage and rejecting the others as outside the technical arts under 35 USC 101. This recently will change now that the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) overturned rejections of this type, basically opening the door for more broad business method claims.
To address the final part of your question about claim broadness, there is not a lot that can be done to limit. I am sure you could ask many examiners and they will tell you they hate broad claims much more then narrow ones, because if you cannot find art for it you risk issuing a very broad reaching patent. However, you cannot limit the broadness because when someone does invent some grand new device then you have to ensure they can earn the maximum projections they deserve.
If you are truly interested in learning more about patents, please reply to this post and I will see what light I can help shed on the subject.
I know what GD-Rom is the point is your sentence also makes zero sense. You were saying GD-Rom was suppose to be proprietary, and it was. I was stating the problem wasn't an issue with it no longer being propietary, it was the fact the extra space at the time wasn't needed, and when it was used people found ways to tweak audio and video to get them back down onto CD-Roms.
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Yeah did this guy miss the memo on how he should be comparing the desktop interfaces with the windows desktop and then comparing the actual usability and strengths of the kernels? Maybe he is just another one of those ignorant sots who thinks he knows something about computers and can therefore explain them oh so perfectly.
The fact is simple, the majority of Linux distros have adopted KDE or Gnome. If you want simpler interfaces you have Englightenment, Blackbox, and Windowmaker to name a few. Does he not realize how simple the Mac OS X interface is? Both Linux and Mac have simpler and more user friendly interfaces available to users then M$ does. I mean they talk about revolutionizing things with Vista, shit it is XP with some prettiness on top. Why not innovate the interface a bit more instead of taking the Mac polished metal look and throwing it into the existing Windows GUI.
To be honest, I use to hate Mac in the days of OS 9 and older. It wasn't a good interface IMO and the hardware was still fairly sluggish. My only complain about Mac today is they won't sell me OS X so I can run it on my Desktop. Their loss I suppose, since instead I run Windows (probably changing to Mandriva soon) on my desktop, and Mandriva on my laptop. I really wish they would change this policy but I really doubt that will ever happen.
But hey, slashdot will continue to push crappy blog posts on us to drive up peoples ad revenue at the expense of our own sanity...
Yes, you are one of those people who want the government to do everything for you right? Listen, they do a good job of self-regulation. I do not know many (if any) retailers that sell 'M' rated games to children. It is not the ESRB's fault or the fault of the retailers if kids wind up playing these games. It is the fault of their parents for not doing their job.
Let's look at the game rating system in the same light as the movie rating system. We have the 'AO' games. These arguably cover NC-17 which is a movies most dreaded rating because you just knocked out a lot of people who would otherwise not go see it. You also have the 'M' which more or less the 'R' of movie industry fame. Very, very few games ever get tabbed 'AO' and very few actually get 'M' ratings. If you take a peak at game sales the best selling games fall into the 'T' and lower category. So they are typically no worse then PG-13 movies, a rating only added after complaints about Temple of Doom and Gremlins, the first PG-13 movie being "Red Dawn" and the only reason anyone will ever remember that horrid movie, but I digress.
The point is this game violence issue is blown WAY out of proportion, and many parents didn't seem to mind their kids playing GTA until the 'Hot Coffee' BS. There is a line from South Park about this that basically says parent's don't care about violence when they have sex issues to worry about. Especially here in the good ol' US of A this is VERY TRUE. What is worse is that parents expect the government to protect their kids! Parents would rather hide behind a big rock and say keep that evil video game, movie, pornograph, etc. away from my child.
Inevitably parents shirk all responsibility because they do not want to have to worry about raising their children. Every generation has found something new to complain about. Almost 50 years ago is was rock and roll being 'devil music'. Now we have Rap taking its place. Anyone who has ever worked for a government will tell you why you don't want them regulating anything. The simple fact of the matter of it is they do a horrible job of regulating themselves.
Listen, whether the regulation is done by an independent group, like the movie industry, or by the government, like alcohol, there are still people who will beat the system. A kid who wants to see an 'R' rated movie can get another adult to take them, or wait for it to be out on DVD and use the same scenario. Trust me, I went to college and know for a fact that underaged drinking happens, and in high school is was underaged smoking. When someone really wants something, they will get it and blaming the industry and sticking the government into a place it does not belong is wrong. This is the same reason I hate government instituted smoking bans, because they have no place enforcing ideas and beliefs for any reason on private business and industry.
History is written by the victors
Multiple reasons. M$'s closed format that OpenOffice had to work around to get to open Excel (and other format files) in a somewhat proper fashion. You notice you get those may not open correctly or appear properly messages with OpenOffice. Oh and then there is the fact that the Office Suite programs have hooks into the OS. I mean when you have the source code for the OS available to you, of course you know how to treat it just right to open files faster.
Besides, what are you using that takes 3 minutes to open a spreadsheet anyway?
What I want to know is why simple text files and comma separated files aren't more popular. I mean how often do you seriously need all the formatting that you use in Word/Excel (or the OpenOffice equivalents)?
And this is why us Linux folk just stuck with something nice and cute like a penguin. But I want to get me a shirt with the BSD daemon on it and go about causing some hell, so to speak.
People are so ignorant...
It would be kind of hard to call Ultima Underworld FPS...since the 'S' does stand for SHOOTER. Other then that, it might be one of the first (or the first) First Person game.
SCO Attorney 1: You know this is a waste of time right?
SCO Attorney 2: Yeah but those idiots are still paying us.
SCO Attorney 1: How much longer can they pay us to do this?
SCO Attorney 2: Maybe another year or two.
SCO Attorney 1: What then?
SCO Attorney 2: Well we will either win the case and be filthy rich while they are still broke, or we'll just apply for jobs with Microsoft and repeat the process with someone else.
SCO Attorney 1: BRILLIANT!
Is actually a good idea. I mean I cannot count the number of times I see commercials for the same things over and over again in which I have no interest. Yes, Google can track your television viewing habits, but who is to say that the Cable company can't already do that with those fancy digital cable boxes many of us already have in our homes or apartments?
At least in this case they would be using the information to actually direct advertising better so that I do not need to see the same commercials over and over again. Actually there is nothing quite as annoying at some of the Comcast commercial. I mean I already have cable with you and you are not selling any services I do not already have, so why do you insist on continuing to sell them with those annoying commercials (and WTF is Comcastic?). Seriously Time-Warner wasn't this bad when I had them for a Cable company in Columbus.
Oh, and since I am a single guy I can do without the feminine care product commercials. Shit if Google wants to direct commercials for products and television programs that I would never see because they don't warrant usual advertising during primetime, then sign me up.
My question is will they be powered by alcohol like in Futurama?
or will they be powered by old people's medicine like Sam Waterston said in the 'Old Glory Insurance commercial' on SNL?
I personally like the alcohol option. Finally a drinking buddy who gets stronger the more he drinks....
Unfortunately it probably wouldn't kill SBC (who will be changing the name to AT&T before too long). They have plenty of money, I mean they are a HUGE telecom and hold over half the share of Cingular. Their DSL subscriptions might lower, but if they ever come through on the idea of fibre, well people will start switching for larger bandwidth (at least those who care). Not to mention if they follow the plan Verizon is taking with FIOS and intend on offering TV through the service, well I hope the cable companies will be a bit scared at least.
Of course if SBC gets caught in their old ways, all we need is for Verizon to start working to expand land based service further west and before you know it competition (which has sorely been lacking even post original Ma Bell) might take place. Reminds me about how much it irks me. They break up AT&T into smaller telecoms, but in their individual regions they still held monopolies. I guess regionalized monopolies are OK, because yeah no choice helps us all.
The telecoms are rightly worried about VOIP since it is becoming a more acceptable solution (though it has some glaring issues still in certain markets). This is why the Verizon (and presumably SBC) are wanting to cut into the cable turf, because after all they are cutting into their turf with VOIP services. So maybe we will wind up with some huge like Cable and Phone conglomerate and I can pay like $200 a month to one company for cell phone, land line and cable...damn expensive services...
Actually according to your own article hard science fiction can leave "known science" if they leave "known universe." If hard science fiction relies too much on the known science then really is it "science fiction" any more.
I mean we can arguably point to the technological devices of today in Star Trek that would have seemed completely ridiculous to people in the 1960s and some things from TNG that might have seemed crazy to us just 15 years ago. While FTL might be a bit absurd and impossible, there is a great line from Star Trek TNG I heard the other day. "Things are only impossible until they're not" - Jean-Luc Picard.
We can argue they have thrown Einstein out, but remember Einstein's Theories are just that, theories. Like the theory of evolution there is a great deal of empirical evidence to support it; however, it has not become a "Law" because the science community hasn't deemed it to such a level yet. You know something though, it doesn't matter if FTL is impossible because most fans do not care. They will still dream about living in the world of Star Trek and of the more bright future it portrays as a sort of utopia; I mean I prefer it to most the dystopias I have seen/read.
If people here on slashdot and you included really think it is so easy to get a patent you obviously have never gone through patent litigation. The process is anything but easy.
Step 1: Invent something (or don't and try anyway).
Step 2: Write up a good specification and claims, this is best accomplished by a law firm.
Step 3: Send application the USPTO along with the necessary fees.
Step 4: Wait anywhere from 1 to 2 years (possibly more) for your patent to even be looked at by an examiner.
Step 5: Receive a first office action that usually rejects your claims.
Step 6: Respond to the arguments or amend your claims to get around the reference.
Step 7a: Examiner accepts arguments and send another "non-final" action, go back to step 6.
Step 7b: Examiner upholds rejection, or creates new ones for amended claims and sends "final rejection".
Step 8: Send "After-Final" either arguing rejections again, or amending claims to be allowable, no other amendments allowed.
Step 9a: Rejection is upheld, file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) and start process again (this does cost money).
Step 9b: Rejection is upheld, Give up and abandon the case.
Step 9c: Rejection is upheld, File Notice of Appeal.
Step 9d: Case made allowable, wait for Notice of Allowance.
Step 10a: After filing RCE, go back to step 4.
Step 10b: After Notice of Appeal, wait for Examiner's Answer to Appeal (there are several conferences that may occur before an Appeal is even filed.
Step 10c: After Notice of Allowance, pay Allowance Fee to receive patent. (There are further fees down the road to maintain the patent.)
Step 11: After Examiner's Answer, wait for Board of Patent Appeals and Interference (BPAI) to look over the case.
Step 12a: BPAI upholds examiner's rejection, abandon the case.
Step 12b: BPAI upholds examiner's rejection, file appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).
Step 12c: BPAI reverses examiner's rejection, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Step 13: Argue case before the CAFC.
Step 14a: CAFC finds in favor of the USPTO, file appeal with SCOTUS.
Step 14b: CAFC finds in favor of the applicant, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Step 15: Argue case before SCOTUS (assuming they will hear the case).
Step 16a: SCOTUS upholds CAFC and USPTO, you are dead in the water now.
Step 16b: SCOTUS finds in your favor, go back to step 5 or 8 or possibly 9d.
Wow, 16 steps and a few forks in there. Plenty of fees to pay with the office and even more in attorney's fees. I might have even forgot some steps. Trust me, IT IS a lot harder to get a patent the you or the people at groklaw realize. Are there problems in the patent process? Undeniably yes. I think the Director even admitted that some degree of reform is probably needed. I just don't want you to all think that the USPTO rubber stamps everything that comes through the door because that isn't the case.
So you are of the belief that a software patent is a "tool of oppression"? You say there is no cost except for time to write and debug code. Yes let us ignore the fact said code still needs a computer or some piece of hardware to interpret said code, so during the design at least there is that cost as well. To be honest I am not sure that I really support or hate software patents, but I do believe the problem with software patents is that they were allowed after software was already well around. This created a problem with finding prior art because under limited search times, you really only can spend so much time looking.
/. and groklaw are misunderstanding the use of 35 USC 112,1st paragraph. It does not prevent the applicant from applying from an unfulfilled idea. It simply states that the specification must be enabling. In that regards, it means that from the specification, a person of ordinary skill in the art should be able to take the patent and realize the invention. In order to reject a patent as not being an invention you would reject it under 35 USC 101. This is a very serious rejection because you are claiming that no invention has been made or the invention as claimed is not possible (which would be like saying no invention was made). This is because it states "Whoever invents..."
I like to use the following argument: say you can implement process one as a solely hardware only device, with digital logic or other passive/non-passive electronic devices or you can implement the process on a microprocessor or computer using software and get the same effects, speed differences being negligible. So under the no software patents idea, I can patent the hardware implementation but not the software one. This is somewhat troublesome because if you invent the process and implement it both ways you deserve the right to own a patent on it. Copyrights do not provide enough protection, because as many of us know there are several ways to write code to perform the same process sometimes.
Much of the problem with software patents comes with the fact that the exact mode of operation of closed source code that has never had a patent filed on it, or older code in general that is either poorly documented or hard to locate is that you cannot reasonably prove in all circumstances that it reads on the same lines as the patent. It also is not an easy matter to determine if something of that nature is really prior art. It is important to remember that prior art has to be available to the PUBLIC to be prior art, so many of those closed source programs that might qualify fail because they did not document the process they used and without their source code it is not known whether or not they actually read on the claims of the invention.
I think you are misunderstanding, and probably your friends on
I will not go into my usual discussion on 35 USC 103 here, so instead I will say...take the time to actually read 35 USC 101, 102, 103 and 112. Since that is where rejections lie. Also if you are really interested I might get around to writing my explanation of patent law sooner then I think (see my journal).
As a sibling said there are a great many inherent problems with CRTs. If you fail to recognize the refresh rate flicker then the headache you get from it surely will tell you, not to mention the far worse eye strain (though this may just be me).
The idea is to make technology smaller and faster. LCDs have actually caught up to CRTs in many respects and the ability to avoid the rare, but still existent burn-in is an advantage. Contrast is the biggest "color" related problem LCDs have faced and that is by and large because liquid crystals block light and do not emit light. I think this is part of the reason for pushing OLED technology slowly towards a viable replacement for LCD. It is less power hungry (no backlight to fuel), it is electroluminescent (it gives off light in case you don't know "big" words), and it allows you to make smaller/thinner displays (mostly because it is EL and requires no backlight).
Now I cannot attest for how much better the color representation is on an OLED to an LCD or to a CRT, but I believe in the end they are considerably close and perfectly fine for 99.99% of the population. The 0.01% who say they can see flicker at 85Hz and who will continue to claim big problems with LCDs are not a majority and never will be.
You mention other hardware which is gradually catching up with current technology. With MP3 formats you will have people say they can tell the difference between CD (and WAV) and MP3, but of course you have your audio-nuts who still like their analog since anything digital has some degree of sampling it isn't "perfect."
Digital cameras are beginning to catch "analog" cameras because they are getting to the point where they contain even more pixels. Most the image loss in prints comes from poor print equipment of users then poor camera quality anymore and surely a few professionals might be tricked by a nice high end digital cam and photo printer. Even professional photographers are beginning to adopt Digital Photography into their lives.
Trust me, most hardware is driven at a market that only casually uses the devices sold and only the professionals are the ones who require the higher quality to avoid seeing/hearing the imperfections they claim.
I don't get your fashionability statement either. At the speed which technology changes people would be buying new TVs and new Computers and new cameras and new everything on a 6month to 2 year rotating cycle. This just does not happen. People still buy things expecting them to last an expected amount of time to their predecessors. Most televisions are considered long living if they last 10 years and the same is true for computer monitors and the like. I mean within 10 years the standard for computer monitors was 15" and smaller. Now I see 17" and 19" becoming the most common and 15" are rare. The problem isn't always a fashionability as it is a marketing perspective of why make object X for as much when we can make object Y for just as much and sell it for a bit more.
I like my technology, and will admit my computer is on a two year rotating replacement cycle. The only thing in my PC to be upgraded since it was built was the hard drives and my space needs changed twice. I expect my current PC to work just fine for several years to come and possibly still be in some strange use in 10 or 15 years. The same goes for my HDTV. I expect when I decide to purchase a new TV (hoping for a day of available and cheap OLED TVs) that my current one will still be working and used as a TV in my bedroom, or kids room...or rec rom. Trust me people expect things to last and have for some time, it is actually rare for many things to last 30 years, including appliances, which most people will tell you are 10 to 15 year cycles.
Oh trust me there is plenty of governmental blame to go around here on this one. Anyone who claims that FEMA is not responsible at all is naive and needs to pull their head out of their nether regions and anyone who claims that city and state governments had nothing to do with the problem need to do the same.
The fact is there is a fair amount of stupidity to go around, including our president who said in a live interview that no one could foresee the levee's breaking, which as I recall everyone was predicting as the worst case scenario. Both groups keep going back and forth as to who is to blame here, the state and city government keep pointing at FEMA and FEMA keeps pointing back.
I do not know if an "independent" investigation would reveal the true problem, since any investigation led by the federal government would try to soften its own blaim however it could. The fact is people reacted poorly to the situation and some people managed to give us weeks of humor and total stupidity too. (See Barbara Bush's quote about the residents put up in the Astrodome and Bush's by and large ignoring the issue before finally being told to head back to DC and act like he was working.)
I personally thought the levee's would give way, and to be honest was laughing at the people hording in the Super Dome (yeah, I know I have no heart.), but I mean it was hard not to do it. Here you have a storm that everyone has said is going to slam the below sea-level city, possibly break a levee and flood the whole town and everyone seems to ignore that fact. I think using Florida as an example of why FEMA is not the problem is BAD. Because a few things will happen with that argument: 1) People will make the Bush-Bush connection claim and act up the conspiracy theory, 2) People will continue to play the race card with New Orleans and the considerably reacher areas of Southern Florida, and 3) You are going to get people who will tell you that NO is a much more vulnerable area because of its geography below sea-level, at the mouth of a major river...with a big lake there too...
I think there are enough difference to make FL to LA/MS comparisons bad.
Wasn't Half-Life 1 a Quake engine game? Which brings me to a point...look at the number of games that used the Q3/TA engine, these include MoH series, CoD series JK2 series, RTCW. You can bet a good number will probably be using the Q4 engine.
Of course there are also a ton of games using the various iterations of the Unreal Engine. There is one game with its own engine that will get me to upgrade though.
i think the reason most companies do this is because they expect most the people looking for a PII 450 to be some unlucky sap who still has that running as their server at work and they know no better then to pay Dell $457 for a new CPU because they HAVE to keep the server up. Sometimes it is said how dense some IT departments and their managers are when it comes to parts...
He had been charged in April for uploading three Hollywood blockbusters to the net - Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality.
There is no accounting for taste...
If I am getting caught, it damned well better be for "Good" movies...
Ok, you are actually quite off on the FEMA comment. There is a big difference between what happened in Florida with hurricanes and what happened in Louisianna. There was poor response from FEMA and most everyone notices it.
It was FEMA who turned away Wal-Mart trucks with water and supplies.
It was FEMA who told Amtrak they didn't want evacuation help.
It was FEMA who did not use available Navy ships and sent away the Coast Guard with diesel fuel.
It was FEMA who turned away volunteers with boats and hovercraft.
The recent Florida situation doesn't count because FEMA is trying to overcompensate now. Also your conspiracy theorist will tell you to look at who is Governor of Florida...
The fact is both governments screwed up, but FEMA is looking worst in this because they are the ones who are suppose to have the resources to provide aid. I point you to about 1/2 the way down the story here. An example of government preventing aid, and why I think (as a libertarian) that FEMA is nothing more then a unnecessary entity that has only gotten in the way of volunteer efforts.
I can probably find a few local and state government screw ups too (there was a Doctor licensing issue involving the state govt. I think). There is plenty of blame to go around, the fact is FEMA does share a lot of blame and to ignore that fact is pure ignorance.
You have to remember that many people purchase DVDs for extra content as well. In this regard, the extra space will allow for movies to gain back for of the bitrate they sometimes have to sacrifice for the sake of extra features, while at the same time allowing extra features to get more space and quality.
With the advent of HDTV and high definition cameras becoming more prominent, we are not only talking about storing movies in high definition on a disc, but bonus features could be recorded and displayed in the same high definition as well. This would require the extra space, since using the MPEG-2 standard you are going to need more space for the improvement of video from the standard 480 lines to 720 or 1080.
There are several encodings that can be used for video, however, it is often the case in compression that the smaller you make something the more quality-loss you get. The idea is that you have to sample with a certain degree of frequency or your quality will go down. You then need to keep quality up by keeping the bit rates up as well. The idea of a higher bitrate for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is also taking into account the idea of pushing more DTS and Dolby tracks that contain 6.1 or 7.1 audio.
The idea is to plan for the future, and in this case blue laser technology was a logical and rather "simple" step compared to spending time researching and testing new encoding schemes. The idea was actually a simple one, take a laser with a smaller wavelength and we should be able to burn more data into a smaller space. While the design was obviously not THAT simple, it was logically a next step forward from the present technology.
Now on the assumption that the only revolutions in blue laser media storage will be more layers, it would be fairly safe to say that the next step will be improving encodings. Though I do not know the standards of the other approved encodings for Blu-Ray, I do believe they have better storage usage then the standard MPEG-2.
And I think I made the point of saying that assuming they use the full media. The idea of the next generation Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is to be able to provide movies at higher resolutions then the standard 480 lines you get now. The idea is to give the same HD quality on DVD-esque media that you get on HDTV. So yes the people who will mostly be purchasing the new media are people with HDTV's (and the idiots who know no better). I think we will see this being adopted a bit slower rather than faster, since the quality increase will not be apparent to most people. Even as a media for computer usage it is pretty pointless since most games and the like are often still getting onto single DVDs. I mean how many people would want a game that had so much content it could fill a majority of your HDD with the install...
that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use their full dual-layer storage capacities of 50GB and 30GB respectively. Now, the largest currently available 3.5" internal HDD is 500 GB. Presently that would mean a maximum of ~10 Blu-Ray movies or ~16 HD-DVD movies. This is not a lot considering I counted over 200 DVDs on my shelf, making over the 500GB alone.
Another mentioned problem is distribution. The largest "widely" available download speeds available from Verizon via FIOS (which I will admit is not that widely available), is 30 Mbps. Now assuming you get the peak download speeds, we are talking about downloading 400,000 Mb or 240,000 Mb depending on the media. This would result in download times of 3 to 4 hours for Blu-Ray type media and of 2 to 3 hours for HD-DVD Media. On the more standard 6 Mbps connection these times would be nearly 5x larger. I think I can get to Best Bu,y Circuit City, or some other store and home in about 30 minutes tops. You have to remember a great number of consumers still pay for convenience, even in DVD purchases.
I think the hard drive storage Bill is hoping for is a pipe dream, unless of course he is planning on HDDs becoming so cheap you can sell a movie on one and then just pop it into your "player" and let it go...but HDDs are so big, and they do come with a host of their own problems...
Nope. Get your degree then to law school for intellectual property that is where the money is.
1. It doesn't have enough manpower to do what it's being asked to do
2. It has quotas
3. It doesn't have the money to expand
1. This comes down to money, see your #3.
2. This comes down to the huge number of patent applications and in particular large number of "continuations" something the Director has said he'd like to see cut down. Approximately 1/3 of all patents last year were continuations. This means 1/3 of the work is "re-work".
3. This is the fault of congress, who only release more of the money the patent office makes if quality improvements are promised. Many millions (if not billions) of dollars are distributed to other government agencies from USPTO earned dollars. I believe part of the Patent Reform Act before Congress involves releasing all the funds to the PTO.
Presently with a few exceptions all patents are published after 18 months. The aforementioned Patent Reform Act addresses publishing all applications after 18 months (with the backlog in many arts this should result in your situation of published pending applications). The public currently can send prior art to the office. There are provisions for it, though it does cost money, and expecting it not to would be insane. If you cannot afford to present obvious prior art to the office, trust me there are probably people who would be willing to pay to do it for you (i.e. Logitech, Apple, etc. for a Microsoft pending patent). Thank you for bringing up obviousness...
There is a big problem many people forget about or just don't know about 35 USC 103(a) obvious type rejections. In order to combine two references the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) determined that you must have a motivation for combining the two items. This often increases the burden on the Office to make an obvious type rejection. There is presently a case attempting to challenge the standard before the Supreme Court (KSR International vs. Keleflex). The Supreme Court has asked for the input from the Solicitor General and are currently awaiting his word before deciding on whether or not to hear the case. If the SCOTUS overturns the CAFC then many patents will become more easily rejected, and thousands more will be invalidated if challenged.
On the matter of software and business method patents that mess up falls squarely on SCOTUS. For years the office pushed many business method patents aside by restricting them computers for the software usage and rejecting the others as outside the technical arts under 35 USC 101. This recently will change now that the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) overturned rejections of this type, basically opening the door for more broad business method claims.
To address the final part of your question about claim broadness, there is not a lot that can be done to limit. I am sure you could ask many examiners and they will tell you they hate broad claims much more then narrow ones, because if you cannot find art for it you risk issuing a very broad reaching patent. However, you cannot limit the broadness because when someone does invent some grand new device then you have to ensure they can earn the maximum projections they deserve.
If you are truly interested in learning more about patents, please reply to this post and I will see what light I can help shed on the subject.
I know what GD-Rom is the point is your sentence also makes zero sense. You were saying GD-Rom was suppose to be proprietary, and it was. I was stating the problem wasn't an issue with it no longer being propietary, it was the fact the extra space at the time wasn't needed, and when it was used people found ways to tweak audio and video to get them back down onto CD-Roms.