1) There's no such thing as a straightforward patent in days when the patent office pays people on the number they approve per month.
Excuse me? A quick check with the USPTO web site shows that patent examiners are paid on the GS scale (grades 5 to 11), just like the majority of the federal government. These are annual salaries -- their pay has nothing to do with "the number they approve per month." Where did you hear that piece of information? Or did you just make it up?
BTW, GS-5 is a ridiculously low salary for the work they do (starts at $21,370 a year) so it's no wonder they're understaffed..
I was a Commodore guy in those days, too. The PET was certainly an awesome machine for its day.
I think, though, that it is undeniable that the Apple I and II have had a much bigger impact on computing than the PET did. I mean... the Apple II had seven expansion slots, for god's sake! Name another pre-1980 home computer that had that. The Apple machines were nothing less than works of art, created essentially by one man -- Woz.
I agree that the Commodore machines tend to be rather unfairly overlooked in the history books, and they were influential in their way. But I really think you're missing the big picture here. Which machine singlehandedly created the mass market for PCs? Which machine had the world's first spreadsheet, which created enough of a business market that IBM was practically forced to create its PC or become totally irrelevant? It wasn't the PET.
To say that a difference of a few months is more important than all this, and therefore Chuck Peddle should be inducted into this Hall of Fame before Woz because his forgotten machine came out slightly before the ubiquitous Apple II is, IMHO, just silly.
The whole thing reminds me of the horrible copy protection schemes for games back in the day. The code wheels, disks with a bad sector, etc. All it does is annoy the paying customers, the pirates broke thru all that shit and disabled it. Same thing here.
I really think copy protection is self-defeating. DVD players have Macrovision copy protection (which the disk can turn on or not), which unfortunately causes small but definitely noticeable blue streaks to appear on the left side of the screen. This annoyed me (a paying customer) to no end, so I bought a device that defeats Macrovision.
I probably wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for the blue streaks. I wasn't really that interested in copying tapes, but hey, now that I bought that device.. heh.
In my case and in others, the "copy protection" serves no real purpose other than to degrade the quality of the product. The harder they try to protect something, the harder people are going to try to defeat that protection.
A movie costs about 3 bux to rent and on a rought estimate it'll probably be rented at least 20 times in its lifetime. So that makes 60 dollars for the rental store. which means to turn a profit, a movie must cost them 50 bux or less to buy (it'd be more than it'd cost a normal person cuz of licensing). Where as it costs a normal consumer 20 dollars to buy the vhs. Lets say most of the people renting it are one time.. so that its actually 20 different people renting. If movie makers made VHS recordings cost only about 5 dollars i think most ppl would buy instead of rent. So what's 20 people times 5 dollars? 100 dollars where the movie company would have made 50 or 60 (whatever, less than 100)
Actually, although your facts are wrong, something like this is already happening. It used to be that all VHS tapes were $100 (or so) when they first came out, until the prime video rental period was over. Then they would lower the price to something more reasonable so that Joe Public could buy them.
The problem with this was, Joe Public had already seen the movie when he rented it six months ago, so he wasn't terribly interested in buying it. So somebody came up with the idea to pick out the titles that would potentially be the hottest sellers among the public (e.g., Titanic or The Matrix) and release them at the lower ("sellthrough") price immediately. That way, instead of selling only to video rental stores at $100, they sell to Joe Public and video rental stores at $20. This, indeed, has turned out to be quite a profitable thing for the movie studios.
However, it wouldn't make much sense to sell something at $20 that the average person isn't interested in buying. Video rental stores have proven themselves willing to buy movies at $100, and if nobody other than video stores is going to buy it anyway, they might as well jack up the price. This is why the vast majority of VHS releases are priced so expensively -- nobody wants to buy a movie they've never heard of, but many people will rent a movie they've never heard of.
As an aside, the situation for DVDs has been quite different. All DVDs to date have been released at sellthrough prices ($25-$30), in order to boost sales. However, now that DVD is starting to take a hold, and many video rental stores now rent DVDs, the movie studios are starting to gravitate back to the VHS pricing standard, so the days of being able to buy your favorite obscure new release DVD at a reasonable price will soon be over. A very sad thing, IMHO.
Read the damn article, man. It clearly says that the mice who weren't exposed to microwave ratiation could find the platform just fine. If your theory were true, all of the mice would be swimming around randomly, not being able to find the platform.
Again, the group exposed to radiation could not find the platform, and the group not exposed to radiation could find the platform.
This is what is called a "control" group. They do this specifically to rule out the sort of effect you're describing.
I can't believe this post was moderated up so high. This guy didn't even read the article...
2) Competition -- There would certainly be more compeittion of there was a lot of demand. Economics teaches us that people don't leave $20 bills lying on the sidewalk.
That's right, folks! You heard it here on slashdot first! There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to go into any market that hasn't been tapped yet. After all, economics teaches us that demand for a certain type of product automatically implies supply of such products, with no need for such silly things as entrepreneurs or innovation. Gee, you've sure taught me a few things.
This isn't targeted at the "average computer user." Nor is it targeted at people who want to run an OS other than Windows. It's targeted at people who don't already have a computer and want an Internet appliance.
I can see this being positioned similarly to the iMac, which is first an Internet device, second a computer (according to Steve Jobs, anyway). The advertising for this device will just delete the "computer" part. It will probably also be like the iMac in that it will be all in one case and won't really look like a traditional computer. I bet it'll have a tiny hard drive and will probably be in other ways unsuitable for people who want to run a real OS anyway. I don't think this is quite the victory for the anti-MS crowd some people around here think it is.
I seriously doubt they'll ship any flavor of Linux. The article said the machines "will be designed mainly to surf the Internet" which indicates to me that they'll be targeting people who don't want a computer -- they just want something to browse that "web" that they hear everyone buzzing about. For that market segment, Linux would be about the worst possible choice; contrary to what some people around here might believe, Linux is *not* ready for the average computer newbie.
No, they'll probably ship it with some proprietary system (perhaps even based on Linux) that boots right into a web browser (probably Netscape, particularly since the article mentioned that AOL might be involved in one of the ventures) and does literally nothing else.
ii. Amiga will establish a claims fund in the amount of $3,902,500 for the purpose of reimbursing anyone who had to make out-of-warranty repairs due to a previously used part being included in an Amiga computer sold as new. For any claim in excess of $100, Amiga may require such additional information as it believes appropriate, including documentation that the claimed damage or repair was necessary due to the presence of a previously used part that was reinstalled in the computer. If claims exceed or are expected to exceed $3,902,500, the claims fund will be apportioned among claimants in a manner to be determined by the Court. Any unclaimed balance in the claims fund after one year will be returned to Amiga, except as follows: any amounts up to $100,000 will be donated to public schools or charitable organizations as chosen by Class Counsel (with Amiga's approval, which shall not be unreasonably withheld) and approved by the Court for the purchase of computer hardware and/or software, or, at Amiga's option, Amiga will instead donate an equivalent amount (up to $100,000) worth of computer hardware and/or software (valued at wholesale prices) etc etc.
So who wins here? Amiga certainly doesn't lose. They manufactured computers with used parts fraudulently advertised as new. In court, they probably would have been required to pay punitive damages as well, but here they pay only the actual cost of repairs, and anyone who has a repair claim over $100 has to prove that the damage was due to a used part. Any amount that is left over after a year Amiga gets to keep, and they under no circumstances have to pay more than the $3.9M in the fund. There is the $100,000 donation bit, but they don't have to pay that in cash; rather they can choose to unload some of their old Amiga inventory sitting around gathering dust. So Amiga wins in the respect that they have to pay significantly less than they may very well have been forced to otherwise.
But who are the real winners? Well, reading on a bit in the settlement:
As part of this Settlement, Amiga has also agreed to pay all costs of notice and administration of this Settlement, as well as attorneys' fees and reimbursement of expenses to Class Counsel in the aggregate amount of $964,000, subject to Court approval.
So as you can see, the real winners are the lawyers for the Amiga dealers, who get paid nearly $1,000,000 for negotiating a settlement which clearly favors Amiga, Inc!
Imagine, if Java were implemented as widely and as generically as everyone hoped, we'd get to run everything at one quarter speed. Whee!
This certainly is cool, for novelty's sake, but why would you go out and buy a digital camera just so you can run an emulator which runs much quicker (and with sound) on a real computer?
So according to you, you can "verify measurements down to 1/100 inch," which we can convert to metric thus: .01 inch =.254 mm
So we have a choice between the English system, with which we can measure to an accuracy of.254 mm, or the metric system, which gives us an accuracy (again, according to you) of.100 mm.
Obviously, the English system is MUCH more accurate and allows MUCH finer adjustments than that crappy metric system.
Is it possible that "shop workers" and "applications engineers" are really that stupid?
Well, yeah, they probably are, come to think of it.
Slashdot Mirror
1) There's no such thing as a straightforward patent in days when the patent office pays people on the number they approve per month.
Excuse me? A quick check with the USPTO web site shows that patent examiners are paid on the GS scale (grades 5 to 11), just like the majority of the federal government. These are annual salaries -- their pay has nothing to do with "the number they approve per month." Where did you hear that piece of information? Or did you just make it up?
BTW, GS-5 is a ridiculously low salary for the work they do (starts at $21,370 a year) so it's no wonder they're understaffed..
-Orion, PS-5 government employee
..perhaps there could be a competing line of cars named by Apple..
Ford iCar
Ford iCar
Ford iCar
Ford iCar
Ford Power Car
Ford Power Car
Ford Power Car
-Orion, longtime Apple fan (but not too much of one to make fun of their idiotic habit of giving all their models the same name)
I was a Commodore guy in those days, too. The PET was certainly an awesome machine for its day.
I think, though, that it is undeniable that the Apple I and II have had a much bigger impact on computing than the PET did. I mean... the Apple II had seven expansion slots, for god's sake! Name another pre-1980 home computer that had that. The Apple machines were nothing less than works of art, created essentially by one man -- Woz.
I agree that the Commodore machines tend to be rather unfairly overlooked in the history books, and they were influential in their way. But I really think you're missing the big picture here. Which machine singlehandedly created the mass market for PCs? Which machine had the world's first spreadsheet, which created enough of a business market that IBM was practically forced to create its PC or become totally irrelevant? It wasn't the PET.
To say that a difference of a few months is more important than all this, and therefore Chuck Peddle should be inducted into this Hall of Fame before Woz because his forgotten machine came out slightly before the ubiquitous Apple II is, IMHO, just silly.
The whole thing reminds me of the horrible copy protection schemes for games back in the day. The code wheels, disks with a bad sector, etc. All it does is annoy the paying customers, the pirates broke thru all that shit and disabled it. Same thing here.
I really think copy protection is self-defeating. DVD players have Macrovision copy protection (which the disk can turn on or not), which unfortunately causes small but definitely noticeable blue streaks to appear on the left side of the screen. This annoyed me (a paying customer) to no end, so I bought a device that defeats Macrovision.
I probably wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for the blue streaks. I wasn't really that interested in copying tapes, but hey, now that I bought that device.. heh.
In my case and in others, the "copy protection" serves no real purpose other than to degrade the quality of the product. The harder they try to protect something, the harder people are going to try to defeat that protection.
A movie costs about 3 bux to rent and on a rought estimate it'll probably be rented at least 20 times in its lifetime. So that makes 60 dollars for the rental store. which means to turn a profit, a movie must cost them 50 bux or less to buy (it'd be more than it'd cost a normal person cuz of licensing). Where as it costs a normal consumer 20 dollars to buy the vhs. Lets say most of the people renting it are one time.. so that its actually 20 different people renting. If movie makers made VHS recordings cost only about 5 dollars i think most ppl would buy instead of rent. So what's 20 people times 5 dollars? 100 dollars where the movie company would have made 50 or 60 (whatever, less than 100)
Actually, although your facts are wrong, something like this is already happening. It used to be that all VHS tapes were $100 (or so) when they first came out, until the prime video rental period was over. Then they would lower the price to something more reasonable so that Joe Public could buy them.
The problem with this was, Joe Public had already seen the movie when he rented it six months ago, so he wasn't terribly interested in buying it. So somebody came up with the idea to pick out the titles that would potentially be the hottest sellers among the public (e.g., Titanic or The Matrix) and release them at the lower ("sellthrough") price immediately. That way, instead of selling only to video rental stores at $100, they sell to Joe Public and video rental stores at $20. This, indeed, has turned out to be quite a profitable thing for the movie studios.
However, it wouldn't make much sense to sell something at $20 that the average person isn't interested in buying. Video rental stores have proven themselves willing to buy movies at $100, and if nobody other than video stores is going to buy it anyway, they might as well jack up the price. This is why the vast majority of VHS releases are priced so expensively -- nobody wants to buy a movie they've never heard of, but many people will rent a movie they've never heard of.
As an aside, the situation for DVDs has been quite different. All DVDs to date have been released at sellthrough prices ($25-$30), in order to boost sales. However, now that DVD is starting to take a hold, and many video rental stores now rent DVDs, the movie studios are starting to gravitate back to the VHS pricing standard, so the days of being able to buy your favorite obscure new release DVD at a reasonable price will soon be over. A very sad thing, IMHO.
If you were joking, I apologize. I didn't read that as "Funny," though apparently some moderator did. Maybe I missed something.
Read the damn article, man. It clearly says that the mice who weren't exposed to microwave ratiation could find the platform just fine. If your theory were true, all of the mice would be swimming around randomly, not being able to find the platform.
Again, the group exposed to radiation could not find the platform, and the group not exposed to radiation could find the platform.
This is what is called a "control" group. They do this specifically to rule out the sort of effect you're describing.
I can't believe this post was moderated up so high. This guy didn't even read the article...
2) Competition -- There would certainly be more compeittion of there was a lot of demand. Economics teaches us that people don't leave $20 bills lying on the sidewalk.
That's right, folks! You heard it here on slashdot first! There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to go into any market that hasn't been tapped yet. After all, economics teaches us that demand for a certain type of product automatically implies supply of such products, with no need for such silly things as entrepreneurs or innovation. Gee, you've sure taught me a few things.
Idiot. Go back to economics 101.
Of course, this site isn't really mono.. it's grayscale. On a true monochrome screen (like an old Mac) it would all be dithered to hell.
This isn't targeted at the "average computer user." Nor is it targeted at people who want to run an OS other than Windows. It's targeted at people who don't already have a computer and want an Internet appliance.
I can see this being positioned similarly to the iMac, which is first an Internet device, second a computer (according to Steve Jobs, anyway). The advertising for this device will just delete the "computer" part. It will probably also be like the iMac in that it will be all in one case and won't really look like a traditional computer. I bet it'll have a tiny hard drive and will probably be in other ways unsuitable for people who want to run a real OS anyway. I don't think this is quite the victory for the anti-MS crowd some people around here think it is.
I seriously doubt they'll ship any flavor of Linux. The article said the machines "will be designed mainly to surf the Internet" which indicates to me that they'll be targeting people who don't want a computer -- they just want something to browse that "web" that they hear everyone buzzing about. For that market segment, Linux would be about the worst possible choice; contrary to what some people around here might believe, Linux is *not* ready for the average computer newbie.
No, they'll probably ship it with some proprietary system (perhaps even based on Linux) that boots right into a web browser (probably Netscape, particularly since the article mentioned that AOL might be involved in one of the ventures) and does literally nothing else.
ii. Amiga will establish a claims fund in the amount of $3,902,500 for the purpose of reimbursing anyone who had to make out-of-warranty repairs due to a previously used part being included in an Amiga computer sold as new. For any claim in excess of $100, Amiga may require such additional information as it believes appropriate, including documentation that the claimed damage or repair was necessary due to the presence of a previously used part that was reinstalled in the computer. If claims exceed or are expected to exceed $3,902,500, the claims fund will be apportioned among claimants in a manner to be determined by the Court. Any unclaimed balance in the claims fund after one year will be returned to Amiga, except as follows: any amounts up to $100,000 will be donated to public schools or charitable organizations as chosen by Class Counsel (with Amiga's approval, which shall not be unreasonably withheld) and approved by the Court for the purchase of computer hardware and/or software, or, at Amiga's option, Amiga will instead donate an equivalent amount (up to $100,000) worth of computer hardware and/or software (valued at wholesale prices) etc etc.
So who wins here? Amiga certainly doesn't lose. They manufactured computers with used parts fraudulently advertised as new. In court, they probably would have been required to pay punitive damages as well, but here they pay only the actual cost of repairs, and anyone who has a repair claim over $100 has to prove that the damage was due to a used part. Any amount that is left over after a year Amiga gets to keep, and they under no circumstances have to pay more than the $3.9M in the fund. There is the $100,000 donation bit, but they don't have to pay that in cash; rather they can choose to unload some of their old Amiga inventory sitting around gathering dust. So Amiga wins in the respect that they have to pay significantly less than they may very well have been forced to otherwise.
But who are the real winners? Well, reading on a bit in the settlement:
As part of this Settlement, Amiga has also agreed to pay all costs of notice and administration of this Settlement, as well as attorneys' fees and reimbursement of expenses to Class Counsel in the aggregate amount of $964,000, subject to Court approval.
So as you can see, the real winners are the lawyers for the Amiga dealers, who get paid nearly $1,000,000 for negotiating a settlement which clearly favors Amiga, Inc!
Imagine, if Java were implemented as widely and as generically as everyone hoped, we'd get to run everything at one quarter speed. Whee!
This certainly is cool, for novelty's sake, but why would you go out and buy a digital camera just so you can run an emulator which runs much quicker (and with sound) on a real computer?
You twit.
.254 mm
.254 mm, or the metric system, which gives us an accuracy (again, according to you) of .100 mm.
1 inch = 2.54 cm = 25.4 mm
So according to you, you can "verify measurements down to 1/100 inch," which we can convert to metric thus:
.01 inch =
So we have a choice between the English system, with which we can measure to an accuracy of
Obviously, the English system is MUCH more accurate and allows MUCH finer adjustments than that crappy metric system.
Is it possible that "shop workers" and "applications engineers" are really that stupid?
Well, yeah, they probably are, come to think of it.