Woolston took steps to protect his patents almost immediately after he got his first one in 1998--No. 5,845,265, covering a method of creating a marketplace for used or collectible goods over the Internet.
I.e. he was aware of patent infringments, and he has acting on them for several years now.
(Not that it really matters -- as others pointed out, your argument was related to trademarks, not patents)
Nothing else else about Java fundamentally requires more "advanced" programming structures than C++ or Perl.
I cannot agree with that. (First, I never mentioned C++, I'm talking about perl vs. java here. C++ is a whole different story.)
To use most of the Java built-in features, you have to understand OO enough to be able to instantiate new objects, call public methods, and handle the exceptions they return. And this is the case if you wrote your hole program as one "public static void main" function. Otherwise, you'd have to know how to define a class, use interfaces, etc.
Basically, it's OO+Exceptions vs. functional interepreted script. I know several Perl programmers who can do wonderful things in Perl, but Java is way out of their league -- you probably know some, as well. Do you know any Java programmers who wouldn't be able to handle a scripting language like Perl?
Irrelevant. Just because a person copies "public static void main" out of example 1.1 in Learn Java in 24 hours doesn't mean they understand what it means.
By that logic, you don't need to know how to program at all, you can just copy full programs from open source projects.
The underlying argument is that Java requires more "advanced" programming structures to do simple tasks than Perl. Whether beginners understand them or not is irrelevant.
Re:My Question
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Doesn't look like you need to know much about inheritance, polymorphism, and static class methods to me." -- says the man as he defines a static class method.
Well, of course that the experienced players will beat the newbies that make bad decisions. What I'm saying is that after you've gone through your "newbie" period, and learned some basics of the game and the units, you'll never have situations such as skeletons vs. grenadiers. It will always be down to the question of who can build faster, at which point it becomes more of a management game than strategy. Which can be fun, but I might as well play Civ, then, which has a much better management system.
Besides, how radical of a concept are you looking for?
How about a strategy game where a year after the game came out, people still come out with new and improved strategies? A game where you can't blindly build up same armies over and over again, without a care about what the opponent has waiting for you.
It's almost like the game authors had a novel idea, but just couldn't push it through all the way. It feels like a brand new RTS game when you start off, but after a while you realize that it doesn't really matter how you group your units, you just need more of them than the opponent. And, then, it's just back to the old "build up and attack once you have enough units" game.
Re:Tom's Hardware
on
nForce2 Preview
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
DDR400 "corresponds to a performance level that SDRAM could only achieve at 400 MHz,"
Why is this inaccurate? DDR400 is DDR running at 200MHz, which is equivalent to SDR running at 400MHz.
According to this site, element 112, Ununbium, was also discovered by this guy, V. Ninov, who forged the results of the discovery of 116 and 118.
It begs the question -- is 112 bogus as well? If not, it makes you wonder why he did this, after previously discovering a new element already. One was not enough?:)
What's the progress?
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The official web site. The quality and the amount of information on this web site seems to indicate that this project is in a very early stage, i.e. they haven't really done much. The links on the side mostly go to other UCLA departments. Altough, they do have some interesting looking demo units available. They don't seem to pack much of a punch, though;).
Maybe somebody from the project is reading this, and can provide some real information?
Want a little evidence of how badly ATI stinks? Tom's hardware did a great job testing all of the cards in one huge benchmark here
That's your evidence? 8500 gets slightly lower scores than Ti4200, and costs almost 50% less. True, 4400 and 4600 are faster, but price/performance easily goes to 8500.
I don't know where you shop, but 8500 is significantly cheaper at every store you can find, and the performance is almost the same! (Tom's Hardware VGA charts).
It would be called hedging if you bought some puts on the stock, or sold some covered calls. Or shorted another stock in the same market. Or performed any other action along the same lines, that reduces your risk.
Selling the stock that you own is just that, selling.
Have you read about how much effort JC has put into pushing polygons in Doom 3? We're hardly at a point where companies don't have to worry about speed issues..
If anything, companies have to put in even more effort into producing some stunning results, because everybody has been spoiled by recent titles.
No, the article says that the camera stores 52 images in either 640x480 or 1027x768 format. Which means, it really only stores in 640x480 format, and does scaling as you download images from it.
Yes, there's people all over the place racing in Nascar-style cars! Not. Sure, Nascar is popular for *watching*, not *playing*. The whole discussion is about which sports people like to *play*.
But, if forced to make an estimate, most white trash and rednecks like baseball and football, both of which require a much higher level of initial investment...
How does football require more initial investment than soccer? Both only require a ball!
I'll agree baseball requires a little more, but it's been around for so long that almost every kid's father has a glove and a bat lying around, so no investment is required most of the time.
So, you say the number of service provider coders grossly outnumber the code-for-sale coders. I have no numbers available to contest that, so I'll believe you for now -- I hope you can provide some reference, though?
That still does not mean that there is no place for code-for-sale coders. I work in a hardware development company, and we use a hundred or so software tools to do our job. A good percentage of them are *not* tools that solve the same problem and just need to be repatched for a new OS. They are tools that solve very specific problems without which we wouldn't exist.
To create these tools, a very large number of talented software developers are needed to work for many years. My question to you is -- where do these people fit into your definition of the profession? If these tools can not be produced to be sold, how can they be created in the first place? Not every company can afford to hire an army of programmers to provide this service to us!
I guess my view of the software industry is that there are two professions -- one that provides the service, such as yourself, and those that create software tools and sell them. I don't see how the latter group sets back IT 20 years -- they are needed, and wihtout them there would be a void in other industries that depend on them!
As soon as one company does it, all the other would have to follow suit. The net result would be that every company would make less money, and nobody would increase their market share. And, that's probably nobody does it in the first place.
Also, I'm not so sure I'd buy a $300 printer instead of a $50, knowing that the ink is much cheaper. It takes a while for the expensive printer to pay off if you're just a casual printer user.
Kazaa downloads from multiple sources, as well, and simply has more users with more files available. Even if I can find everything with some other tool, there are better chances that I'll find more sites having the same file with Kazaa, and the "multiple sources" download will run faster.
Well, you could use the system that's used widely in sports.. I.e. your batting avrage in MLB is "valid" only if you have a certain number of at-bats. You GAA in NHL counts only if you've started certain number of games..
So, using the same sytem -- your "quality" is only valid once you have more than X posts (15? 50? 100?).
A 2-channel 266MHz DDR memory controller has the bandwidth of 2x266x64/8 = 4.2GB/s. P4 front-side bus has the bandwidth of 4x100x64/8 = 3.2GB/s.
Even a single-channel of the new 333MHz DDR has the bandwidth of 2.7GB/s, almost enough to keep up with P4. Once the 400MHz DDR shows up, a single channel will have the same bandwidth as the P4 bus.
So, in a well designed DDR system, P4 will not have any bandwidth problems -- if anything, RDRAM systems will be slower because of RDRAM's lower latency.
Springboard cool thing of the month is MemPlugs [memplug.com] which allow your Handspring to have up to 256MB of RAM. Now that is cool and very usefull for walknetting things from point a to point b.
Yeah, right. Try transferring 256MB through the cradle twice without getting a few gray hairs..
Re:Issues with the euro in day-to-day life
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2
As for buying a car.. if someone buys a car without doing some *careful* calculations, he deserves to get stung. C'mon.. this is simple math.
It's not the problem with math, it's the problem with rounding. Say the car used to cost 500,000 in the old currency, and converted to euros, that's equal to 39,173. To make the price more euro-friendly, the car dealership will round the price to 39,500 or 40,000, not 39,000. Therefore, the price of the car is likely to go up just because of the currency change.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest you read the article:
Woolston took steps to protect his patents almost immediately after he got his first one in 1998--No. 5,845,265, covering a method of creating a marketplace for used or collectible goods over the Internet.
I.e. he was aware of patent infringments, and he has acting on them for several years now.
(Not that it really matters -- as others pointed out, your argument was related to trademarks, not patents)
Nothing else else about Java fundamentally requires more "advanced" programming structures than C++ or Perl.
I cannot agree with that. (First, I never mentioned C++, I'm talking about perl vs. java here. C++ is a whole different story.)
To use most of the Java built-in features, you have to understand OO enough to be able to instantiate new objects, call public methods, and handle the exceptions they return. And this is the case if you wrote your hole program as one "public static void main" function. Otherwise, you'd have to know how to define a class, use interfaces, etc.
Basically, it's OO+Exceptions vs. functional interepreted script. I know several Perl programmers who can do wonderful things in Perl, but Java is way out of their league -- you probably know some, as well. Do you know any Java programmers who wouldn't be able to handle a scripting language like Perl?
Irrelevant. Just because a person copies "public static void main" out of example 1.1 in Learn Java in 24 hours doesn't mean they understand what it means.
By that logic, you don't need to know how to program at all, you can just copy full programs from open source projects.
The underlying argument is that Java requires more "advanced" programming structures to do simple tasks than Perl. Whether beginners understand them or not is irrelevant.
"Doesn't look like you need to know much about inheritance, polymorphism, and static class methods to me." -- says the man as he defines a static class method.
Well, of course that the experienced players will beat the newbies that make bad decisions. What I'm saying is that after you've gone through your "newbie" period, and learned some basics of the game and the units, you'll never have situations such as skeletons vs. grenadiers. It will always be down to the question of who can build faster, at which point it becomes more of a management game than strategy. Which can be fun, but I might as well play Civ, then, which has a much better management system.
Besides, how radical of a concept are you looking for?
How about a strategy game where a year after the game came out, people still come out with new and improved strategies? A game where you can't blindly build up same armies over and over again, without a care about what the opponent has waiting for you.
It's almost like the game authors had a novel idea, but just couldn't push it through all the way. It feels like a brand new RTS game when you start off, but after a while you realize that it doesn't really matter how you group your units, you just need more of them than the opponent. And, then, it's just back to the old "build up and attack once you have enough units" game.
DDR400 "corresponds to a performance level that SDRAM could only achieve at 400 MHz,"
Why is this inaccurate? DDR400 is DDR running at 200MHz, which is equivalent to SDR running at 400MHz.
This page explains why all of the new elements have this strange Unun-something names, and how they are determined.
According to this site, element 112, Ununbium, was also discovered by this guy, V. Ninov, who forged the results of the discovery of 116 and 118.
:)
It begs the question -- is 112 bogus as well? If not, it makes you wonder why he did this, after previously discovering a new element already. One was not enough?
The official web site. The quality and the amount of information on this web site seems to indicate that this project is in a very early stage, i.e. they haven't really done much. The links on the side mostly go to other UCLA departments. Altough, they do have some interesting looking demo units available. They don't seem to pack much of a punch, though ;).
Maybe somebody from the project is reading this, and can provide some real information?
Want a little evidence of how badly ATI stinks? Tom's hardware did a great job testing all of the cards in one huge benchmark here
That's your evidence? 8500 gets slightly lower scores than Ti4200, and costs almost 50% less. True, 4400 and 4600 are faster, but price/performance easily goes to 8500.
I don't know where you shop, but 8500 is significantly cheaper at every store you can find, and the performance is almost the same! (Tom's Hardware VGA charts).
It's not. It's called selling.
It would be called hedging if you bought some puts on the stock, or sold some covered calls. Or shorted another stock in the same market. Or performed any other action along the same lines, that reduces your risk.
Selling the stock that you own is just that, selling.
You can't short sell a stock that you already hold in large quantities, by definition. You are just plain old selling, in that case.
Have you seen what ID has been up to lately?
Have you read about how much effort JC has put into pushing polygons in Doom 3? We're hardly at a point where companies don't have to worry about speed issues..
If anything, companies have to put in even more effort into producing some stunning results, because everybody has been spoiled by recent titles.
This one is even smaller, in the same price range ($139).
Or, something just slightly larger for 1 megapixel resolution.
No, the article says that the camera stores 52 images in either 640x480 or 1027x768 format. Which means, it really only stores in 640x480 format, and does scaling as you download images from it.
And, how's that explain the popularity of Nascar?
Yes, there's people all over the place racing in Nascar-style cars! Not. Sure, Nascar is popular for *watching*, not *playing*. The whole discussion is about which sports people like to *play*.
But, if forced to make an estimate, most white trash and rednecks like baseball and football, both of which require a much higher level of initial investment...
How does football require more initial investment than soccer? Both only require a ball!
I'll agree baseball requires a little more, but it's been around for so long that almost every kid's father has a glove and a bat lying around, so no investment is required most of the time.
So, you say the number of service provider coders grossly outnumber the code-for-sale coders. I have no numbers available to contest that, so I'll believe you for now -- I hope you can provide some reference, though?
That still does not mean that there is no place for code-for-sale coders. I work in a hardware development company, and we use a hundred or so software tools to do our job. A good percentage of them are *not* tools that solve the same problem and just need to be repatched for a new OS. They are tools that solve very specific problems without which we wouldn't exist.
To create these tools, a very large number of talented software developers are needed to work for many years. My question to you is -- where do these people fit into your definition of the profession? If these tools can not be produced to be sold, how can they be created in the first place? Not every company can afford to hire an army of programmers to provide this service to us!
I guess my view of the software industry is that there are two professions -- one that provides the service, such as yourself, and those that create software tools and sell them. I don't see how the latter group sets back IT 20 years -- they are needed, and wihtout them there would be a void in other industries that depend on them!
As soon as one company does it, all the other would have to follow suit. The net result would be that every company would make less money, and nobody would increase their market share. And, that's probably nobody does it in the first place.
Also, I'm not so sure I'd buy a $300 printer instead of a $50, knowing that the ink is much cheaper. It takes a while for the expensive printer to pay off if you're just a casual printer user.
Kazaa downloads from multiple sources, as well, and simply has more users with more files available. Even if I can find everything with some other tool, there are better chances that I'll find more sites having the same file with Kazaa, and the "multiple sources" download will run faster.
Well, you could use the system that's used widely in sports.. I.e. your batting avrage in MLB is "valid" only if you have a certain number of at-bats. You GAA in NHL counts only if you've started certain number of games..
So, using the same sytem -- your "quality" is only valid once you have more than X posts (15? 50? 100?).
A 2-channel 266MHz DDR memory controller has the bandwidth of 2x266x64/8 = 4.2GB/s. P4 front-side bus has the bandwidth of 4x100x64/8 = 3.2GB/s.
Even a single-channel of the new 333MHz DDR has the bandwidth of 2.7GB/s, almost enough to keep up with P4. Once the 400MHz DDR shows up, a single channel will have the same bandwidth as the P4 bus.
So, in a well designed DDR system, P4 will not have any bandwidth problems -- if anything, RDRAM systems will be slower because of RDRAM's lower latency.
Springboard cool thing of the month is MemPlugs [memplug.com] which allow your Handspring to have up to 256MB of RAM. Now that is cool and very usefull for walknetting things from point a to point b.
Yeah, right. Try transferring 256MB through the cradle twice without getting a few gray hairs..
As for buying a car.. if someone buys a car without doing some *careful* calculations, he deserves to get stung. C'mon.. this is simple math.
It's not the problem with math, it's the problem with rounding. Say the car used to cost 500,000 in the old currency, and converted to euros, that's equal to 39,173. To make the price more euro-friendly, the car dealership will round the price to 39,500 or 40,000, not 39,000. Therefore, the price of the car is likely to go up just because of the currency change.
That's what people are worried about, anyway.