You people should be more careful with the titles you pick for./ articles. To start with, there were no troubles with Firefox development. There were, and there always are, questions regarding how to handle its growth and continued development.
Similar thing with this news article and Mozilla... "trouble"? What trouble?
We don't need mainstream-media-like sensationalism - stick to the news please.
Groove is something that someone around here decided would be cool to use. It's used as groupware, offers file sharing, instant messaging, shared browsing, and lots of other cool features.
Nobody uses it now since we got online a simple phpGroupware. You see, Groove isn't web.;)
But it's a very powerful tool for working in team, specially if some members are teleworking.
Given a pointer to an object, it is not the pointer which is null. The pointer is zero, it is the object which is null, seeing as it is impossible to obtain its value from a pointer with value zero. We just do the trick of using both pointer and its contents to represent incomplete information.
The concept of NULL is an extension to the domain of a variable. It means "no value". In C/C++, we often think of the pointer as the object itself, and as such we do the little trick of using two different operations to get that valuable extension to the domain: we either read the value of the pointer (a memory address) and compare it to zero or we load its content ( the -> operator ). However, why doesn't one usually compare pointers to static values other than zero( eg, ptr != 3 )? In not doing it, we bring to light the fact that we're just using part of the domain of the pointer variable.
To make this clear, think of what you'd have to do to have a null integer. In C you'd likely do:
int * val = malloc( sizeof(int) );
And then you'd use "val" for the null comparison and "*val" for the integer. Funny how in doing that you're spending more memory than if you did:
typedef struct
{
int value;
bool isnull;
} NullableInt;
NullableInt a;
With this you'd spend 5 bytes per variable. With the other approach you spend 4 bytes per variable plus 4 bytes for the pointer, for a total of 8 bytes (on 32 bit architectures).:)
Obviously, these considerations are a bit pointless, and one benefits little from them in the context of C/C++ programming.:=)
On the other hand, some languages have specific support for nullable variables, without having to resort to pointers (at least syntactically). NULLs are famous in SQL, although they are also infamous for being used incorrectly many of the times.;)
I must say I don't agree with the author's remarks on readability. I use
if ( !ptr )
throughout my code for ages and always felt that to be far more readable, and so do my colleagues. It's also faster to type.
It reads "if no pointer" which is far understandable than "if pointer is null". Because pointers aren't really null, they are zero.
Mostly, it's just a matter of style. Imho, if you have trouble reading either of these though, you're using the wrong language - for your own safety stay away from Perl aswell.;)
PLEASE, stop confusing copyright law with patent law! It's such a common confusion that it's starting to get boring.
Take a book as an example. It's text is wide available (code), it tells a story (ideas). You could write another book with a similar story (ideas), not using the same text.
If you write a piece of software, you still own your work, and you can restrict others from copying it (copyright). People who choose to GPL their works aren't giving up their rights on what they wrote, they're just extending those rights to others, but under certain conditions (the gpl license). There are hundreds of licenses, GPL is just one of them.
Think of how stupid it would be if you could patent books, and noone could write about the same things? No more debate of ideas, no evolution, no innovationWell, software patents aren't any better.
We've been doing just fine with copyright law, it works. Let's leave it at that.
A lot of things have been said on that previous news thread, including media costs and other companies subscribing to this technology, so if you're actually interested, reading it is recommended.
Well, I remmember this from a documentary on the History channel. I wrote on the parent that "it has never seen production", but that is not correct. The correct thing to say would be "has not seen production while the patent was valid".
On Magnetic levitation train it reads:
The first patent for a magnetic levitation train propelled by linear motors was US patent 3,470,828, issued in October 1969 to James R. Powell and Gordon T. Danby.
What said TV documentary said was that the initial patent was granted to one of these systems (electromagnetic
suspension if I rememmber right), and the fee was so high that researchers preferred to investigate alternate means. Still from wikipedia, one can see that the first actual running system is more than 15 years past that initial patent.
I can't seem to find any article online that actually draws the same conclusions as that documentary, but the facts seem to support it. I'll dig a bit further - in the meantime if anyone finds it... we're here.:)
You're talking about the FIF format. Another fine example of patents stiffling inovation and development. That's a patented format, so it never really took flight. Sure it's way better than JPG, but the royalties are insane, so nobody cares for it industry-wise, even though it's technologically superior.
Who comes to loss? Us users, stuck with inferior technology. And yes, they patented the whole idea of using fractal algorithms to describe an image - even though it's similar to JPG in spirit. Yay for patents.:)
Precisely, you have very good points there, and I completly agree.
But the problem is that is how patents should ideally work - but when you patent trivial things, it's hard not to step on them or base work on them. And that's what's currently happening. How can Amazon patent "one click shopping"? How can Apple patent "making windows translucent when they lose relevance" ( this is implemented in game clients like AO for instance ). The fact that they're patenting the idea is what gives me the creeps - they're not patenting a process. Around here, things like "one click shopping" would be called an "usage model", aren't patenteable and they last for 2 years - that's for picking things that already exist and applying them in new contexts - that shouldn't be patentable, as you're not actually creating anything new.
That is really not the problem, those scenarios are fine. My problem is with scenarios such as these:
- Jane Schmoe is working on her garage, developing a product. She releases it, and sells a bunch of copies for an year. Someone then comes up with a patent that she's infringing, and sues for damages. Even if the patent is invalid, just fighting will be really expensive, so Jane settles.
- Joe Schmoe is working for a small company in their R&D department. He comes up with a pretty neat idea, and they come up with a good product, only to find out that the idea is partially based (say 20%) on someone else's idea which is patented, even though Joe thought it all up by himself.
The problem is that by patenting ideas, is that you're assuming noone else can have them or reach the same conclusion. Although that might be true for some things that involve a lot of research, that is not true for most of the patents out there.
For instance, HP recently came up with LightScribe technology - props for them. It's something that involved some research to develop a coating that could be used for the scribing - that's a fine use for patents.
My problem is with people who do not invent stuff yet get to patent it.
My problem with software patents is non-triviality - and the fact that ideas are usually building blocks, not final structures. If you put monetary barriers in the building blocks, then you are reducing the possibilities of society as a whole to produce new ideas and new technologies.
I would like to have the legal right to invent and not have my stuff stolen by same lame ass who is nothing more then a hack and then I can't touch him cause some douchebag decided patents shouldn't apply to software.
Reading this I wonder wether you actually have ever programmed over a couple lines, or even ever invented anything worth patenting. Give another 10.000 people the same problem, and someone is bound to come up with the same idea you had - or better. And if you have a patent on a worse version of their idea, they won't be able to patent it, due to some douchbag w/o the amount of brain required to finish an idea.
As an example, there's one form of Maglev devices which is far better than what we have running, that has never seen production, because the owners of the patent charge too much for it. Even though they never did anything useful with it, noone can build something even similar - by releasing their patent they infact "poluted" the world by locking in an idea.
Seems like./ doesn't like the euro symbol. Those figures above should be in Euros, respectively 50e and 30e. Bear in mind that the national average wage is around 750e, so it's not inexpensive.
I am currently in Portugal, which reportedly has the worst situation in terms of broadband offers in Europe. The best in the market offers 8MBPs/768Kbps with 60GB cap for international traffic and no limits for national traffic, for about 50. There is a similar offer at 4MBPs at 30 with 30GB cap. Extra (international) traffic is paid at about 1/1GB.
Everybody I know has moved from dialup to DSL, although reportedly, there's lots of people w/o a connection at home.
It seems like my post was seen like a bit of a flamebait. Lots of people answered with their personal experiences, apparently missing the point that we're talking about broadband. Here's food for thought.
To start with, I'm having a hard time understanding how was that "propaganda". I think you're confusing "increase in penetration rate" (which is what the article is all about) with "total penetration rate".
Moreover, you're confusing "broadband access" with "internet access". You're talking quantity, I'm talking quality. And just so you can see where I'm comming, those 75%ish where you're comparing the US and Sweden... in Sweden you'll be hard pressed to find a non-broadband access - you should give it some further thought.
This means several things. To start with, it makes perfect sense in conjunction with these news.
It also means that the US, despite all their assumptions, are far behind the rest of the world in matters of broandband. France, for instance, you can get a T1 line for values near 50$/month, similar thing in Sweden. Even in Portugal, which is easily in the tail of Europe in terms of broadband, it's now quite hard finding someone still not connected via DSL or Cable. In Estonia, it's in their constitution that having access to the internet is a human right. In Tawain, 2mbps connection is nearly free, and as common as electricity (you'd be hard pressed to find a house w/o connection).
My question for the conspiracy theorists, is this on purpose? We're all aware that an online population is much more likely to be better informed and free from the shackles of internal manipulation and mass media, by picking news from other sources. Is broadband adoption being purposefully slowed down? It's a humorous question of course, but it does bear to mind... why is a technological giant like the US so far behind in broadband, why are they rather investing in military networks instead of public ones? While at it, why is their power grid system so OLD and crumbling?
Well, I enjoyed your comment, and given the rate of patents submitted per time unit, I agree a lot with your point of view. You'd need a large amount of motivated and skilled people to be able to fulfil that role, and the adjudicated budget is certainly largely not enough - in particular the value paid for each patent application is probably quite small for an extensive background search.
How about making patent reviewing a matter of public forum? One would submit a patent, then a troup of volunteers/interested people would review the patent for a period of... a month? The assembled group would probably be formed by people with enough expertise and fully volunteer. Basically, open source the patent review system.:)
Daydreaming and simplistic I know, but come to think about it, would it work?
It's not having a patent that's the problem. It really wouldn't matter a bit wether MS had that patent or not if it was easy for people to tell them shove it whenever they tried to enforce it.
If disproving a patent was easy, you wouldn't see as many bogus patents. If it's more cost effective dismissing a patent lawsuit by paying 50K, then actually going to court and dismissing the patent once and for all should cost way below those 50K.
So, a suggestion, is leave the USPTO as it is, and have taxes pay the legal fees for patent cases. *grin* It'd probably come out more cost-effective.
>> Have any of you even been in a court of law, let alone a patent case?
You'll find that people feel pretty confident in expressing their ideas even though many are completly ignorant about the issues they are discussing.
I'm willing to bet that the ratio of people that actually understand a thing about IP law on Slashdot is quite below the ratio of people who understand a thing about computer systems and programming. And as we all know, that rate is already low enough, hence the term "troll" was introduced.;)
But hei, people don't really have to understand a thing about what they're saying to criticize or to pass judgment - which is why I'm not surprised at the patent office reviewers' work - they're just being human and judging things they are actually ignorant about.
To be honest, the patent system would be perfect if proving a patent invalid in court was a straightforward and inexpensive process. Patents should be automatically approved after a fee (2K is ok), but disproving the patent shouldn't be an expensive legal process. You would have no patents, just "patent claims". That way you'd spare on the work of the patent reviewers (whou wouldn't have to run a thorough search) and let those interested in the outcome disprove the patent. People wouldn't spend money on stupid patents if they knew they could be easily invalidated.
I've read around this thread that US economy is down. Is that a surprise to anyone, considering:
- Firms not really producing anything, just capitalizing on broad and generic ideas that alone really mean nothing.
- The time and resources spent on patent litigation.
It only makes sense to me that if a considerable chunk of the corporative tissue is spending resources trying to float above the sea of crap around patents, those are resources that could be applied to other areas - ones that would actually produce income?
And there are REAL uses for patents - take the LightScribe technology developed by HP - that's an example of a novel idea that deserves some protection and some credit. That's the sort of thing patents were created for. And even that could survive w/o patents, if there was true honor among companies and some sort of a meritocracy. But let's not even go there - it's always the same problem - people rather compete and everyone loses big instead of cooperating and everyone gaining some.
Erm, excuse me, but where did you read "trademark" in this thread? Trademarks have NOTHING to do with patents. Neither do copyrights. It's a whole different issue.
Trademarks are important, they deal with designations and brands, NOT contents. Trademarks have worked well for centuries now.
Similar deal with copyright. Why on earth are you mixing these issues? Copyright has to do with the right to copy, it has nothing to do with patents, which cover ideas and concepts that do not necessarily have to be materialized or implemented.
If Tolkien patented the concept of fantasy literature (with elves, dwarfs n stuff) noone could write fantasy literature, regardless of the fact that Tolkien didn't really invent the genre - he merely patented it, he wouldn't even have had to write LotR - that's patents. Copyright has to do with someone copying or adapting from his writings, trademarks has to do with using the Tolkien name, "Middle Earth" or other names.
Trademarks and copyrights are a different issue, and they're working fine the way they are. Patents are an artifitial mechanism. Patents do not cope with the fact that different people can have the same idea - it benefits those who register the idea first, with the added problem of not forcing the registree to demonstrate or describe their idea in a way people can understand and compare to existing things.
In short, patents are a bureucratic, artifitial imposement, that makes no sense in REAL world - only in courts or in deep corporative pockets.
The way I see it, if you have a novell idea, go ahead and do something with it. If someone else improves on your idea, or happens to think of the same, it's your fault that you failed to do anything with it.
But please, do not confuse people by mixing trademark and copyright law with patent law.
I started reading the whole thread of replies, and I couldn't find a better comment than the one made by the first poster: "Java isn't slow,.NET is not insecure".
A programmer worth its weight knows that each language has its niche, and for specific tasks there are enviroments that work best. Then there are those who believe the hype and form a concept of things without actually ever having a 1st hand impression. It's a bit like racism, applied to programming languages, and it has a common origin: ignorance. I hope this doesn't sound ecletic, but it probably could inspire flames, since people usually have a hard time admitting their ignorance. But the next time you feel like writing something about Java,.NET, C or C++, try to think wether you have solid facts and a really large experience to support it, or just your idea of how things are, read elsewhere from someone you don't really know.
Also, the belief that a programmer can only be good in one language is ridiculous. Give a good programmer a month and he'll excel in whatever you throw at him in a given language. And what he doesn't know, he'll learn. Give him a project and a couple months and he'll know things inside out. Maybe he'll have a preferred language, but who's to say that won't change over time? Evolving oneself as a programmer sometimes involves changing paradigms.
That said, I consider myself mainly a C programmer, then converted to C++. Nowadays I use C/C++ very little, for very specific things or for my private projects (involving OpenGL & C++). I've worked extensively with Java, Perl, PHP, Prolog and bit in a dozen others. I'm in the process of learning everything possible about Mono/C#, and I'm enjoying it.
I don't really enjoy Java mainly because I find developing in it to be a real pain. When you have learned over 20 different languages, you value freedom of expression, and Java doesn't give you that - it locks you into a syntax that is archaic and not very flexible. I don't like the Sun Java team making choices for me, like not allowing operator overloading and not having propper syntactic support for modern OO concepts like properties. Maybe one day they'll understand the language syntax itself isn't important - just convenient - and will follow the road of Parrot or MSIDL (argh).
I like.NET for the way it's architectured, but the freedom it gives you in development it takes away in vendor lockin. I initially saw Mono with lots of suspicion, mostly regarding its legal status and possible future implications. Then I spent some time reading about it and ended up dismissing those fears.
I have recently gone through a process I consider similar to yours, and I don't envy you. It's a though choice. I recently spent almost two weeks studying the whole issue, experimenting with RAD systems for Java, Delphi, C++ and C#. In the end, I ended up adopting a solution based on LAMP2 (Linux, Apache2, PostgreSQL, Mono) - which should not be confused with LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP). Here's the reasons and thoughts:
- We find C# to be quite more expressive as a language. Mono is in a state good enough for us to use it, which satisfies our needs for platform independance.
- Java is not modern enough syntactically. It wasn't designed for some of the things it's used for nowadays, namedly GUIs, and that shows. Nowadays, having to write 'a.setLabel( a.getLabel() + "..." )' instead of 'a.label += "..."' looks stupid, and just shows what happens when people make decisions on your behalf based on their beliefs: on this I agree with Anders Hejlsberg.
- We prefer open source solutions whenever possible. We have many people with skills on PostgreSQL and its internals (we've had to extend it before).
- Apache is rock solid.
- Global input from the rest of the team.
There were, of course, lots of small decisions related t
>> Are the US and British forces truely worse than the suicide bombers who kill civilians packed in buses, restaurants, and crowded Israeli markets
The fact that you feel you can compare them is, in itself, remarkable.
So, Iraq was ruled by fascists and Islamic fundamentalists, right? Did you ever stop to ponder how much Iraq has EVOLVED in the last 20 years? Did you know Saddam was considered atheist, and definitly NOT a fundamentalist? Did you know that it's because of him that there is no Taliban regime like in Afeghanistan? Get your facts right.
Yes, there were many things wrong in Iraq, but definitly there have been worse things in history, and those countries weren't invaded. WHAT gives you the right to invade their country? Righetousness? Yeah, right.
What if I told you that I don't agree with what the US is doing in many areas and going against their own Constitution while lying to the American very people? Would that give any country the right to set foot in America to try and fix things? I'd like to see them try - americans would do exactly what iraquis are doing: defend their way of life, regardless of it being "wrong" or "right".
Slashdot Mirror
You people should be more careful with the titles you pick for ./ articles. To start with, there were no troubles with Firefox development. There were, and there always are, questions regarding how to handle its growth and continued development.
Similar thing with this news article and Mozilla... "trouble"? What trouble?
We don't need mainstream-media-like sensationalism - stick to the news please.
Groove is something that someone around here decided would be cool to use. It's used as groupware, offers file sharing, instant messaging, shared browsing, and lots of other cool features.
;)
Nobody uses it now since we got online a simple phpGroupware. You see, Groove isn't web.
But it's a very powerful tool for working in team, specially if some members are teleworking.
Given a pointer to an object, it is not the pointer which is null. The pointer is zero, it is the object which is null, seeing as it is impossible to obtain its value from a pointer with value zero. We just do the trick of using both pointer and its contents to represent incomplete information.
:)
:=)
;)
The concept of NULL is an extension to the domain of a variable. It means "no value". In C/C++, we often think of the pointer as the object itself, and as such we do the little trick of using two different operations to get that valuable extension to the domain: we either read the value of the pointer (a memory address) and compare it to zero or we load its content ( the -> operator ). However, why doesn't one usually compare pointers to static values other than zero( eg, ptr != 3 )? In not doing it, we bring to light the fact that we're just using part of the domain of the pointer variable.
To make this clear, think of what you'd have to do to have a null integer. In C you'd likely do:
int * val = malloc( sizeof(int) );
And then you'd use "val" for the null comparison and "*val" for the integer. Funny how in doing that you're spending more memory than if you did:
typedef struct { int value; bool isnull; } NullableInt;
NullableInt a;
With this you'd spend 5 bytes per variable. With the other approach you spend 4 bytes per variable plus 4 bytes for the pointer, for a total of 8 bytes (on 32 bit architectures).
Obviously, these considerations are a bit pointless, and one benefits little from them in the context of C/C++ programming.
On the other hand, some languages have specific support for nullable variables, without having to resort to pointers (at least syntactically). NULLs are famous in SQL, although they are also infamous for being used incorrectly many of the times.
I must say I don't agree with the author's remarks on readability. I use
;)
if ( !ptr )
throughout my code for ages and always felt that to be far more readable, and so do my colleagues. It's also faster to type.
It reads "if no pointer" which is far understandable than "if pointer is null". Because pointers aren't really null, they are zero.
Mostly, it's just a matter of style. Imho, if you have trouble reading either of these though, you're using the wrong language - for your own safety stay away from Perl aswell.
PLEASE, stop confusing copyright law with patent law! It's such a common confusion that it's starting to get boring.
Take a book as an example. It's text is wide available (code), it tells a story (ideas). You could write another book with a similar story (ideas), not using the same text.
If you write a piece of software, you still own your work, and you can restrict others from copying it (copyright). People who choose to GPL their works aren't giving up their rights on what they wrote, they're just extending those rights to others, but under certain conditions (the gpl license). There are hundreds of licenses, GPL is just one of them.
Think of how stupid it would be if you could patent books, and noone could write about the same things? No more debate of ideas, no evolution, no innovationWell, software patents aren't any better.
We've been doing just fine with copyright law, it works. Let's leave it at that.
When I log into ./ and check the latest news, I sometimes wonder wether by some twist of caching I am watching a page from ages ago...
:)
Exactly how many times do news on LightScribe have to be reported?
Oh well.
A lot of things have been said on that previous news thread, including media costs and other companies subscribing to this technology, so if you're actually interested, reading it is recommended.
Well, I remmember this from a documentary on the History channel. I wrote on the parent that "it has never seen production", but that is not correct. The correct thing to say would be "has not seen production while the patent was valid".
:)
On Magnetic levitation train it reads: The first patent for a magnetic levitation train propelled by linear motors was US patent 3,470,828, issued in October 1969 to James R. Powell and Gordon T. Danby.
Near the beggining it says: There are three primary types of maglev technology: One that relies on superconducting magnets (electrodynamic suspension), one that relies on feedback controlled electromagnets (electromagnetic suspension), and a newer, potentially more economical system that uses permanent magnets (Inductrack).
What said TV documentary said was that the initial patent was granted to one of these systems (electromagnetic suspension if I rememmber right), and the fee was so high that researchers preferred to investigate alternate means. Still from wikipedia, one can see that the first actual running system is more than 15 years past that initial patent.
I can't seem to find any article online that actually draws the same conclusions as that documentary, but the facts seem to support it. I'll dig a bit further - in the meantime if anyone finds it... we're here.
You're talking about the FIF format. Another fine example of patents stiffling inovation and development. That's a patented format, so it never really took flight. Sure it's way better than JPG, but the royalties are insane, so nobody cares for it industry-wise, even though it's technologically superior.
:)
Who comes to loss? Us users, stuck with inferior technology. And yes, they patented the whole idea of using fractal algorithms to describe an image - even though it's similar to JPG in spirit. Yay for patents.
Precisely, you have very good points there, and I completly agree.
But the problem is that is how patents should ideally work - but when you patent trivial things, it's hard not to step on them or base work on them. And that's what's currently happening. How can Amazon patent "one click shopping"? How can Apple patent "making windows translucent when they lose relevance" ( this is implemented in game clients like AO for instance ). The fact that they're patenting the idea is what gives me the creeps - they're not patenting a process. Around here, things like "one click shopping" would be called an "usage model", aren't patenteable and they last for 2 years - that's for picking things that already exist and applying them in new contexts - that shouldn't be patentable, as you're not actually creating anything new.
That is really not the problem, those scenarios are fine. My problem is with scenarios such as these:
- Jane Schmoe is working on her garage, developing a product. She releases it, and sells a bunch of copies for an year. Someone then comes up with a patent that she's infringing, and sues for damages. Even if the patent is invalid, just fighting will be really expensive, so Jane settles.
- Joe Schmoe is working for a small company in their R&D department. He comes up with a pretty neat idea, and they come up with a good product, only to find out that the idea is partially based (say 20%) on someone else's idea which is patented, even though Joe thought it all up by himself.
The problem is that by patenting ideas, is that you're assuming noone else can have them or reach the same conclusion. Although that might be true for some things that involve a lot of research, that is not true for most of the patents out there.
For instance, HP recently came up with LightScribe technology - props for them. It's something that involved some research to develop a coating that could be used for the scribing - that's a fine use for patents.
My problem is with people who do not invent stuff yet get to patent it.
My problem with software patents is non-triviality - and the fact that ideas are usually building blocks, not final structures. If you put monetary barriers in the building blocks, then you are reducing the possibilities of society as a whole to produce new ideas and new technologies.
I would like to have the legal right to invent and not have my stuff stolen by same lame ass who is nothing more then a hack and then I can't touch him cause some douchebag decided patents shouldn't apply to software.
Reading this I wonder wether you actually have ever programmed over a couple lines, or even ever invented anything worth patenting. Give another 10.000 people the same problem, and someone is bound to come up with the same idea you had - or better. And if you have a patent on a worse version of their idea, they won't be able to patent it, due to some douchbag w/o the amount of brain required to finish an idea.
As an example, there's one form of Maglev devices which is far better than what we have running, that has never seen production, because the owners of the patent charge too much for it. Even though they never did anything useful with it, noone can build something even similar - by releasing their patent they infact "poluted" the world by locking in an idea.
Thank you. I must admit I was a bit disappointed with receiving an "overrated". I was hoping the original post would come across as midly humorous. :)
Seems like ./ doesn't like the euro symbol. Those figures above should be in Euros, respectively 50e and 30e. Bear in mind that the national average wage is around 750e, so it's not inexpensive.
I am currently in Portugal, which reportedly has the worst situation in terms of broadband offers in Europe. The best in the market offers 8MBPs/768Kbps with 60GB cap for international traffic and no limits for national traffic, for about 50. There is a similar offer at 4MBPs at 30 with 30GB cap. Extra (international) traffic is paid at about 1/1GB.
Everybody I know has moved from dialup to DSL, although reportedly, there's lots of people w/o a connection at home.
It seems like my post was seen like a bit of a flamebait. Lots of people answered with their personal experiences, apparently missing the point that we're talking about broadband. Here's food for thought.
:)
Sorry if the original post went too far .
To start with, I'm having a hard time understanding how was that "propaganda". I think you're confusing "increase in penetration rate" (which is what the article is all about) with "total penetration rate".
Moreover, you're confusing "broadband access" with "internet access". You're talking quantity, I'm talking quality. And just so you can see where I'm comming, those 75%ish where you're comparing the US and Sweden... in Sweden you'll be hard pressed to find a non-broadband access - you should give it some further thought.
Read the report U.S. a Generation Behind in High-Speed Broadband instead of just reading BBC news.
This means several things. To start with, it makes perfect sense in conjunction with these news.
It also means that the US, despite all their assumptions, are far behind the rest of the world in matters of broandband. France, for instance, you can get a T1 line for values near 50$/month, similar thing in Sweden. Even in Portugal, which is easily in the tail of Europe in terms of broadband, it's now quite hard finding someone still not connected via DSL or Cable. In Estonia, it's in their constitution that having access to the internet is a human right. In Tawain, 2mbps connection is nearly free, and as common as electricity (you'd be hard pressed to find a house w/o connection).
My question for the conspiracy theorists, is this on purpose? We're all aware that an online population is much more likely to be better informed and free from the shackles of internal manipulation and mass media, by picking news from other sources. Is broadband adoption being purposefully slowed down? It's a humorous question of course, but it does bear to mind... why is a technological giant like the US so far behind in broadband, why are they rather investing in military networks instead of public ones? While at it, why is their power grid system so OLD and crumbling?
Well, I enjoyed your comment, and given the rate of patents submitted per time unit, I agree a lot with your point of view. You'd need a large amount of motivated and skilled people to be able to fulfil that role, and the adjudicated budget is certainly largely not enough - in particular the value paid for each patent application is probably quite small for an extensive background search.
:)
How about making patent reviewing a matter of public forum? One would submit a patent, then a troup of volunteers/interested people would review the patent for a period of... a month? The assembled group would probably be formed by people with enough expertise and fully volunteer. Basically, open source the patent review system.
Daydreaming and simplistic I know, but come to think about it, would it work?
It's not having a patent that's the problem. It really wouldn't matter a bit wether MS had that patent or not if it was easy for people to tell them shove it whenever they tried to enforce it.
If disproving a patent was easy, you wouldn't see as many bogus patents. If it's more cost effective dismissing a patent lawsuit by paying 50K, then actually going to court and dismissing the patent once and for all should cost way below those 50K.
So, a suggestion, is leave the USPTO as it is, and have taxes pay the legal fees for patent cases. *grin* It'd probably come out more cost-effective.
>> Have any of you even been in a court of law, let alone a patent case?
;)
You'll find that people feel pretty confident in expressing their ideas even though many are completly ignorant about the issues they are discussing.
I'm willing to bet that the ratio of people that actually understand a thing about IP law on Slashdot is quite below the ratio of people who understand a thing about computer systems and programming. And as we all know, that rate is already low enough, hence the term "troll" was introduced.
But hei, people don't really have to understand a thing about what they're saying to criticize or to pass judgment - which is why I'm not surprised at the patent office reviewers' work - they're just being human and judging things they are actually ignorant about.
To be honest, the patent system would be perfect if proving a patent invalid in court was a straightforward and inexpensive process. Patents should be automatically approved after a fee (2K is ok), but disproving the patent shouldn't be an expensive legal process. You would have no patents, just "patent claims". That way you'd spare on the work of the patent reviewers (whou wouldn't have to run a thorough search) and let those interested in the outcome disprove the patent. People wouldn't spend money on stupid patents if they knew they could be easily invalidated.
I've read around this thread that US economy is down. Is that a surprise to anyone, considering:
- Firms not really producing anything, just capitalizing on broad and generic ideas that alone really mean nothing.
- The time and resources spent on patent litigation.
It only makes sense to me that if a considerable chunk of the corporative tissue is spending resources trying to float above the sea of crap around patents, those are resources that could be applied to other areas - ones that would actually produce income?
And there are REAL uses for patents - take the LightScribe technology developed by HP - that's an example of a novel idea that deserves some protection and some credit. That's the sort of thing patents were created for. And even that could survive w/o patents, if there was true honor among companies and some sort of a meritocracy. But let's not even go there - it's always the same problem - people rather compete and everyone loses big instead of cooperating and everyone gaining some.
Erm, excuse me, but where did you read "trademark" in this thread? Trademarks have NOTHING to do with patents. Neither do copyrights. It's a whole different issue.
Trademarks are important, they deal with designations and brands, NOT contents. Trademarks have worked well for centuries now.
Similar deal with copyright. Why on earth are you mixing these issues? Copyright has to do with the right to copy, it has nothing to do with patents, which cover ideas and concepts that do not necessarily have to be materialized or implemented.
If Tolkien patented the concept of fantasy literature (with elves, dwarfs n stuff) noone could write fantasy literature, regardless of the fact that Tolkien didn't really invent the genre - he merely patented it, he wouldn't even have had to write LotR - that's patents. Copyright has to do with someone copying or adapting from his writings, trademarks has to do with using the Tolkien name, "Middle Earth" or other names.
Trademarks and copyrights are a different issue, and they're working fine the way they are. Patents are an artifitial mechanism. Patents do not cope with the fact that different people can have the same idea - it benefits those who register the idea first, with the added problem of not forcing the registree to demonstrate or describe their idea in a way people can understand and compare to existing things.
In short, patents are a bureucratic, artifitial imposement, that makes no sense in REAL world - only in courts or in deep corporative pockets.
The way I see it, if you have a novell idea, go ahead and do something with it. If someone else improves on your idea, or happens to think of the same, it's your fault that you failed to do anything with it.
But please, do not confuse people by mixing trademark and copyright law with patent law.
I started reading the whole thread of replies, and I couldn't find a better comment than the one made by the first poster: "Java isn't slow, .NET is not insecure".
.NET, C or C++, try to think wether you have solid facts and a really large experience to support it, or just your idea of how things are, read elsewhere from someone you don't really know.
.NET for the way it's architectured, but the freedom it gives you in development it takes away in vendor lockin. I initially saw Mono with lots of suspicion, mostly regarding its legal status and possible future implications. Then I spent some time reading about it and ended up dismissing those fears.
A programmer worth its weight knows that each language has its niche, and for specific tasks there are enviroments that work best. Then there are those who believe the hype and form a concept of things without actually ever having a 1st hand impression. It's a bit like racism, applied to programming languages, and it has a common origin: ignorance. I hope this doesn't sound ecletic, but it probably could inspire flames, since people usually have a hard time admitting their ignorance. But the next time you feel like writing something about Java,
Also, the belief that a programmer can only be good in one language is ridiculous. Give a good programmer a month and he'll excel in whatever you throw at him in a given language. And what he doesn't know, he'll learn. Give him a project and a couple months and he'll know things inside out. Maybe he'll have a preferred language, but who's to say that won't change over time? Evolving oneself as a programmer sometimes involves changing paradigms.
That said, I consider myself mainly a C programmer, then converted to C++. Nowadays I use C/C++ very little, for very specific things or for my private projects (involving OpenGL & C++). I've worked extensively with Java, Perl, PHP, Prolog and bit in a dozen others. I'm in the process of learning everything possible about Mono/C#, and I'm enjoying it.
I don't really enjoy Java mainly because I find developing in it to be a real pain. When you have learned over 20 different languages, you value freedom of expression, and Java doesn't give you that - it locks you into a syntax that is archaic and not very flexible. I don't like the Sun Java team making choices for me, like not allowing operator overloading and not having propper syntactic support for modern OO concepts like properties. Maybe one day they'll understand the language syntax itself isn't important - just convenient - and will follow the road of Parrot or MSIDL (argh).
I like
I have recently gone through a process I consider similar to yours, and I don't envy you. It's a though choice. I recently spent almost two weeks studying the whole issue, experimenting with RAD systems for Java, Delphi, C++ and C#. In the end, I ended up adopting a solution based on LAMP2 (Linux, Apache2, PostgreSQL, Mono) - which should not be confused with LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP). Here's the reasons and thoughts:
- We find C# to be quite more expressive as a language. Mono is in a state good enough for us to use it, which satisfies our needs for platform independance.
- Java is not modern enough syntactically. It wasn't designed for some of the things it's used for nowadays, namedly GUIs, and that shows. Nowadays, having to write 'a.setLabel( a.getLabel() + "..." )' instead of 'a.label += "..."' looks stupid, and just shows what happens when people make decisions on your behalf based on their beliefs: on this I agree with Anders Hejlsberg.
- We prefer open source solutions whenever possible. We have many people with skills on PostgreSQL and its internals (we've had to extend it before).
- Apache is rock solid.
- Global input from the rest of the team.
There were, of course, lots of small decisions related t
>> Are the US and British forces truely worse than the suicide bombers who kill civilians packed in buses, restaurants, and crowded Israeli markets
The fact that you feel you can compare them is, in itself, remarkable.
So, Iraq was ruled by fascists and Islamic fundamentalists, right? Did you ever stop to ponder how much Iraq has EVOLVED in the last 20 years? Did you know Saddam was considered atheist, and definitly NOT a fundamentalist? Did you know that it's because of him that there is no Taliban regime like in Afeghanistan? Get your facts right.
Yes, there were many things wrong in Iraq, but definitly there have been worse things in history, and those countries weren't invaded. WHAT gives you the right to invade their country? Righetousness? Yeah, right.
What if I told you that I don't agree with what the US is doing in many areas and going against their own Constitution while lying to the American very people? Would that give any country the right to set foot in America to try and fix things? I'd like to see them try - americans would do exactly what iraquis are doing: defend their way of life, regardless of it being "wrong" or "right".