"been a failure because they couldn't run at a cold temperature."
I have yet to see any semiconductor device that had problems running at a 'not hot' temperature. (we're not talking cold temps here. with silicon, you don't get cold temp issues until well below room temp).
how about "providing a tool to enable disabling of DRM when it has become obsolete"? IIRC, under the DMCA it's still technically never legal to distribute any tools that will accomplish this task.
The bill was just approved and signed last week. Please show me anything that says money has left the gov't coffers yet. Banks still can't lend if all their cash is tied up with mark-to-market.
It's all about too little liquidity. But where did their money go? It went into the Mark-to-Market system, or at least got tied up in the related regulations.
Basically, these banks have tons of cash tied up in different types of loans, which have a certain estimated street value. Then *BAM*, bank X finds out it overvalued a bunch of those loans because the risk was MUCH MUCH higher than it had either pretended or been made to believe. All of a sudden Bank X more-or-less goes out of business because of that major cock-up.
Now for the kicker. Bank X just had to devalue tons of 'loan assets'. They're having a fire sale on derivatives. This becomes a huge problem for Banks A, B, C, W, Y, and Z. Why? Because they have a lot of similar loan assets, which might or might not have been similarly overvalued (or under-risk-assessed). According to SEC Mark-to-Market regulations, these banks have to set aside enough cash to cover the difference between their assets' "fair market value" and Bank X's "going out of business sale" rock bottom prices, whether or not those items were actually improperly valued.
All of a sudden, all that money that these banks would have been lending to each other and to businesses gets locked down by the accounting system. Hence, a lack of banking liquidity, and there's the mess we're in.
So, when they talk about all this bailout money to 'buy troubled assets', they're referring to the bank assets that are currently tying up the banks' lend-able cash reserves. Taxpayers buy them, and some of them may be perfectly good assets. Some might be crap.
Some people suggest the SEC should relax the mark-to-market reserve regulation. not sure I completely support that. It's there to do what it is doing now, prevent banks from giving away all of their cash reserves to the point where they can't make good on loans that go bad. There could be a lot of loans going bad, but it's hard to tell when and how many really are bad. Getting rid of mark-to-market would allow even the 'good banks' to drive themselves out of business. if that happened en masse, it would be like a nuclear event hitting wall street instead of just the current quagmire.
I would just like to know more about how all of these loan and derivative or hedge assets are valued in the first place. Is it that hard to re-rate all of these loan products that were sold as lower risk than they really were? There seems to be this persistent uncertainty about banks not being sure which assets are good and which are fool's gold.
Yes, topposting because the knee-jerk patent-troll comments below are annoying.
The patent: Multimedia time warping system
Talks about circular buffers for viewing and recording at the same time, maintaining audio synch, running the clock FWD and back while moving through the data. (borrowing from BLKMGK's comment below) Combination of software and hardware (circuit implementation) to get the function working.
NO, your VHS/Betamax player did not have this first, unless it could record the show and play it back at the same time, allowing you to watch different segments of the show while it kept recording. IIRC, Tivo was in negotiations with Echostar/Dish before Dish released a DVR. Tivo let them see a demo unit under NDA. Dish suddenly broke off talks with Tivo, and shortly after came out with their own DishDVR hardware. Sure enough, components infringing on the Tivo patent were found in the hardware.
This kind of crap is exactly what the patent system is supposed to prevent, or at least provide recourse for. The system is working correctly in this case. I'm a Dish subscriber, and love using DVR (even though DishDVR is far inferior to Tivo) because the TV service is the least expensive available where I'm at. It'll be interesting to see if prices change when this settles down.
you = fail. they were specific circuit implementations. i.e., hardware patents. It wasn't just patenting 'a vague method of recording and replaying live video'.
they were specific circuit implementations. i.e., hardware patents. It wasn't just patenting 'a vague method of recording and replaying live video' so yes, they're okay.
Re:What the problem with Gmail?
on
Good Email For Kids?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
my 7 year old's best friend just moved to N.C. we let them chat on the phone a few times, and they've sent a few emails back and forth via parents' email accounts. My daughter asked the other day why she can't have her own email to write from instead of having to use mine. I said she wasn't old enough. The spam folder thing has been the main reason. I've had quite a few get through gmails filters and land in my inbox.
I recall some anecdotal stories from Qualcomm back when phones were going digital. Engineers who knew how to tinker with their phone settings would force analog operation at all times. They were greatly annoyed by the fact that a weak analog signal was fully intelligible (just fuzzy or static-y) while a weak digital signal became unintelligible very quickly.
ok, a little roundabout, but still if the USPTO was to 'do its job better' and give more rigorous review as people want, it would take more man-hours under the current rule-set. This would require more funds that are currently allocated to the USPTO for this purpose. That would reduce the extra-money going to non-USPTO uses, which would then require more taxpayer funding for support.
Thuso,the uspto doing a better job without needing much more funding = lower money from the taxpayer.
it's a government office. if you're a U.S. taxpayer, we are already responsible for their job getting done. either we give them money to do it, or we pick up some of the labor ourselves. The patent system is such that the current dollars thrown at the USPTO are inadequate to supply enough bodies at the applications to properly vet them. Either (a) more money, or (b) open source it. I like (b). we just too to get someone to teach them to set up an RSS feed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll email google and ask for some of their company proprietary server operating statistics for use in a public slashdot discussion.
no. it's duct tape. the oil does nothing.
"been a failure because they couldn't run at a cold temperature."
I have yet to see any semiconductor device that had problems running at a 'not hot' temperature. (we're not talking cold temps here. with silicon, you don't get cold temp issues until well below room temp).
that's what you think.
or both
how about "providing a tool to enable disabling of DRM when it has become obsolete"? IIRC, under the DMCA it's still technically never legal to distribute any tools that will accomplish this task.
really? they have the money?
The bill was just approved and signed last week. Please show me anything that says money has left the gov't coffers yet. Banks still can't lend if all their cash is tied up with mark-to-market.
It's all about too little liquidity. But where did their money go? It went into the Mark-to-Market system, or at least got tied up in the related regulations.
Basically, these banks have tons of cash tied up in different types of loans, which have a certain estimated street value. Then *BAM*, bank X finds out it overvalued a bunch of those loans because the risk was MUCH MUCH higher than it had either pretended or been made to believe. All of a sudden Bank X more-or-less goes out of business because of that major cock-up.
Now for the kicker. Bank X just had to devalue tons of 'loan assets'. They're having a fire sale on derivatives. This becomes a huge problem for Banks A, B, C, W, Y, and Z. Why? Because they have a lot of similar loan assets, which might or might not have been similarly overvalued (or under-risk-assessed). According to SEC Mark-to-Market regulations, these banks have to set aside enough cash to cover the difference between their assets' "fair market value" and Bank X's "going out of business sale" rock bottom prices, whether or not those items were actually improperly valued.
All of a sudden, all that money that these banks would have been lending to each other and to businesses gets locked down by the accounting system. Hence, a lack of banking liquidity, and there's the mess we're in.
So, when they talk about all this bailout money to 'buy troubled assets', they're referring to the bank assets that are currently tying up the banks' lend-able cash reserves. Taxpayers buy them, and some of them may be perfectly good assets. Some might be crap.
Some people suggest the SEC should relax the mark-to-market reserve regulation. not sure I completely support that. It's there to do what it is doing now, prevent banks from giving away all of their cash reserves to the point where they can't make good on loans that go bad. There could be a lot of loans going bad, but it's hard to tell when and how many really are bad. Getting rid of mark-to-market would allow even the 'good banks' to drive themselves out of business. if that happened en masse, it would be like a nuclear event hitting wall street instead of just the current quagmire.
I would just like to know more about how all of these loan and derivative or hedge assets are valued in the first place. Is it that hard to re-rate all of these loan products that were sold as lower risk than they really were? There seems to be this persistent uncertainty about banks not being sure which assets are good and which are fool's gold.
Yes, topposting because the knee-jerk patent-troll comments below are annoying.
The patent: Multimedia time warping system
Talks about circular buffers for viewing and recording at the same time, maintaining audio synch, running the clock FWD and back while moving through the data. (borrowing from BLKMGK's comment below) Combination of software and hardware (circuit implementation) to get the function working.
NO, your VHS/Betamax player did not have this first, unless it could record the show and play it back at the same time, allowing you to watch different segments of the show while it kept recording. IIRC, Tivo was in negotiations with Echostar/Dish before Dish released a DVR. Tivo let them see a demo unit under NDA. Dish suddenly broke off talks with Tivo, and shortly after came out with their own DishDVR hardware. Sure enough, components infringing on the Tivo patent were found in the hardware.
This kind of crap is exactly what the patent system is supposed to prevent, or at least provide recourse for. The system is working correctly in this case. I'm a Dish subscriber, and love using DVR (even though DishDVR is far inferior to Tivo) because the TV service is the least expensive available where I'm at. It'll be interesting to see if prices change when this settles down.
no, it was a circuit implementation to enable realtime record/replay. read the claims before you make invalid ones.
you = fail. they were specific circuit implementations. i.e., hardware patents. It wasn't just patenting 'a vague method of recording and replaying live video'.
they were specific circuit implementations. i.e., hardware patents. It wasn't just patenting 'a vague method of recording and replaying live video' so yes, they're okay.
A better word: plagiarism.
openorifice... if only we could come up with a new graphic for their logo...
don't forget Octave! (it's more-or-less a FOSS Matlab clone, and follows more closely to Matlab syntax than SciLab)
"You can't be a referee if you don't know the Game"
http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/003343.php
my 7 year old's best friend just moved to N.C. we let them chat on the phone a few times, and they've sent a few emails back and forth via parents' email accounts. My daughter asked the other day why she can't have her own email to write from instead of having to use mine. I said she wasn't old enough. The spam folder thing has been the main reason. I've had quite a few get through gmails filters and land in my inbox.
enterprise level licensing is a wonderful thing.
Can everyone please stop saying 'they' and start saying 'we'?
Or are we playing to the self-delusion that everyone except us is broken?
but you'll sound hilarious. Wilhelm scream FTW!
crap... why didn't we think of that before. Let me check my watch. Yeah, I've got some time before dinner. I'll see what I can throw together.
I recall some anecdotal stories from Qualcomm back when phones were going digital. Engineers who knew how to tinker with their phone settings would force analog operation at all times. They were greatly annoyed by the fact that a weak analog signal was fully intelligible (just fuzzy or static-y) while a weak digital signal became unintelligible very quickly.
soon people will tell me I can't use Gopher anymore.
ok, a little roundabout, but still if the USPTO was to 'do its job better' and give more rigorous review as people want, it would take more man-hours under the current rule-set. This would require more funds that are currently allocated to the USPTO for this purpose. That would reduce the extra-money going to non-USPTO uses, which would then require more taxpayer funding for support.
Thuso ,the uspto doing a better job without needing much more funding = lower money from the taxpayer.
it's a government office. if you're a U.S. taxpayer, we are already responsible for their job getting done. either we give them money to do it, or we pick up some of the labor ourselves. The patent system is such that the current dollars thrown at the USPTO are inadequate to supply enough bodies at the applications to properly vet them. Either (a) more money, or (b) open source it. I like (b). we just too to get someone to teach them to set up an RSS feed.