Thanks for the links. My fear initially was that this was just another craptastic submarine patent.
But here's a question. 802.11a has been a standard a long time, in development long before its acceptance. Why is it that the patents that apply to the technology that this standard is based off just NOW coming to light? Why were patent/royalty issue not brought up in 1999 or earlier?
It seems kind of shady to me to wait until after the standard was released (1999), after wide spread US adoption (2001), after world wide adoption (2003), until years later when the technology is so prolific that companies that have based their entire success on the technologies covered by the patents have no option to change to a non-infringing technology. Or has this been a 7+ year long court case?
Let's make something clear, here: You're not hiring computer scientists. You're hiring developers.
Which weighs in even MORE heavily on the orginal question. There are far more application/software developer employment oppertunities in the world than there are computer scientist. If you are looking to produce graduates who can work well in the vast majority of environments, you should focus more on fundamentals (proofs, proofs, and yet more proofs). If you're looking to produce graduates specializing in computer science fields associated with other science fields, then in ADDITION to fundamentals (once again: proofs, proofs, and more proofs) you sould cover the specific math courses that they are likely to encounter in the field they are working in.
The odd part is that it is a beta on a console. Something that is usually considered a black box solution. If they are running a beta in an environment where lockups and crashes are not acceptable, they have to be pretty confident in the condition of the engine.
The only thing I can figure is that they will be looking more for playability issues (run speed, reload timers, choke points, etc...) and balancing just prior to launch.
I've seen some that are limits on advertising. They track when the last time you had an add on the page so that you only see adds every few minutes, instead of constantly.
Cookies are a tool. They can be used for cool things, or crappy things.
Algebra, geometry, calc, who cares. It's the Proofs that make math apply to Comp Sci. Having obscure formulas memorized means squat. But being able to look at a problem and break it down into the most simple of building blocks, that is a critical skill.
The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'
OK, so they are stating that they can't be in violation of copyright laws because the property is given away for free. That they are only chargeable with the violation of the contract.
So how would this president carry into other copyright disputes? If a radio station broad casts a song, they are 'giving it away for free.' So If I make a copy of that broadcast and sample, or re-release it, would I be exempt from copyright violations as well? Only liable for a breach of contract with the original vendor?
Starting tomorrow, customers who preordered a PS3 will be contacted personally by phone and updated on the status of their reservation, the rep said.
Hello sir or ma'am. My name is John Smith and I work for the EB in Silver Dollar City mall. We have received our first batch of PS3 and we are contacting the people who preordered early enough to get one from this batch. For verification reasons can I get your full name, mailing address, credit card number and security code?
-Rick
Only fun until someone loses and eye!
on
Blu-ray Laser Gadget
·
· Score: 3, Funny
$2k for a laser to show off to your friends.
$10k for corrected surgery to attempt to salvage vision after someone peeks at the source.
That's actually what the coal industry lobbiest are saying.
Clean coal burning power plants can be made. Gasification, scrubbers, hydrocarbon eating algees, these are technologies that exist. The problem is that they are expencive! And grand father clauses. The EPA ratchets down limits every year so that NEW coal burning plants must be cleaner. The problem is that it is so much more expensive to build a clean efficient plant than to repair and continue in the old plant, that most companies just keep pushing more and more coal through the old plants.
1) Lik Sang did not go to court. There were no rulings. They were not found guilty.
2) Not all European countries have precedence. In France, even if Lik Sang had been found guilty (or liable) it would have no bearing on any future cases, related or other-whys.
My recommendation then would be to start grooming someone in the department that you think could hold the role. The second presenter for example. You seemed to indicate he performed much better in the role of demonstrating how investments could improve IT Alignment for you. There is a common problem in the American workforce where people are promoted because of seniority. We wind up in situations where middle management is made up of people who haven't quit or been fired for 5 years. This results in promotion to the lowest level of incompetence.
For example, the Network Support supervisor/BSA/project coordinator for my organization was an above average technologist. A little on the cowboy side, but over all, a solid performer. As positions changed and people left the company he was promoted from a tech, to a coordinator, and finally to a supervisor. While he may have excellent skills in the IT arena, his management style and skills are greatly lacking. To the point that he has created a hostile work environment and an 80% turn over rate in under 2 years.
Promoting from below will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers, but grooming and training a skilled employee from scratch for a role as a CIO can save you a huge investment later when you are struggling to keep IT costs and liabilities in check due to poor management.
1) The world needs more well trained and skilled CIOs. 2) The corporate boards need to empower and listen to their CIOs.
There is no reason Peon McJimmy from IT should be presenting a budget and implementation plan to a board. That's what the CIO is for, they have the knowledge, training, and experience to make that translation work well. Sure, the CIO may bring Peon McJimmy along to field any technical questions (the inevitable 'can we do [X]?'). But having a network admin with a tech degree and no experience in budgets, project management, or the upper echelons of the corporate environment make the presentation is just begging for trouble. It presents the vary situation you described: a board making bad decisions. Those decisions are based on a poor presentation, but when the lawsuits come in, it's not that IT guy's name on the line.
I believe both you, and the original author are on opposite ends of the same hyperbole.
While yes, upper management has to balance the needs of the company against the financial ability of the company. But at the same time you can't look solely at profit potential for investment. You must also look at risk vs reward and opportune costs.
risk vs reward, if your company is dependant on 5 delivery trucks for their revenue, and one of those trucks dies, you are out 20% of your revenue. If your company (like pretty much all mid and large sized companies are) is dependant on a computer network for their revenue, if the network fails, you are out 100% of your revenue. Regardless of whether the truck or network is the services or goods that produce a profit.
opportune costs, as some of the other people have mentioned, you don't NEED IT to do most of your business processes. But you have to look at it as an opportune cost. Is it cheaper in the long run to hire more employees, or to improve the efficiency of your IT systems? Sure, that new software package may cost 3/4 of a million dollars, but the alternative is expanding your human resources budget by $100,000/year for enough manpower to maintain growth. In under 4 years you would be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by depending on the IT solution to scale with growth as opposed to increasing human resources.
The big threat though is not failure, but theft. If a competitor were to get a hold of my organization's customers and contract information, they could literally crush our company. 3rd party buyouts and undercutting prices on goods and services. We could easily lose $100 million dollars in annual revenue due to a breach like that.
Does that mean that we should go balls to the wall with security? No. But it does mean that the needs of IT must be weighed with a lot more in mind that the numerical value they bring to (or take from) the books.
That t-shirt missed the point of the jest. The lions/sheep have to be voting one dinner.
"Benjamin Franklin observed that democracy is two wolves and a sheep holding an election to decide what to have for dinner, and that liberty is a well-armed sheep vigorously contesting the election result."
The problem with that statement in today's government is that if you were to do so, you would be labeled a domestic terrorist. You would be detained, your rights to habias corpus stripped, shipped overseas, tortured, and then locked away.
Web 2.0 is not on our side! Look at Web 2.0's track record:
Web 2.0 has done nothing to protect the environment. Under Web 2.0's watch our harmful green house gas emissions have INCREASED!
Web 2.0 has never prosecuted violent offenders!
Web 2.0 failed to vote for a resolution that would put child molesters behind bars!
Web 2.0 funnels millions of dollars through thousands of corporations and special interest groups. There have even been ties to Phillip Morris (big tabacco)!
Web 2.0 stood by doing nothing while America went to war!
I worked at a bank once with "no" internal connection to the internet for security reasons. I also work at the State for a while where we had limited access. No Google, but I could still get to places like http://www.tek-tips.com/ and other tech knowledge sites.
"Are there other computer programmers out there who don't have internet access at work?"
Due to an incompotent network supervisor's actions, we inadvertantly lost 90% of internet access. He basicly put the entire organization behind the filtering tools most limited filter. One of the sites cut off was Google...
Complete work shutdown. Us developers complained, nothing happened. 20 minutes later the Officers from the company started walking in wonder why they couldn't get out. It wasn't until the 3rd officer came in that he finally got spurred into action. It turns out that the denied message included words like "control" and "disallowed". Nothing like a balding man in a thousand dollar suit shouting obscenities to motivate the incompotent.
The solution was great though. The moron shut down the entire web access filter and logging system. One of my buddies over on the network side of the house was in the process of testing the filter when it was taken down. It was one of those 'oh crap' moments when Penthouse.com actually came up!
I don't have a EULA/Warning or anything. I don't get warnings if I go to inappropriate sites. I signed a contract at the begining of my employment that specified exceptable online activity. If I violate that contract, I'm out a job.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Not to understate the threat of security breaches in corporations, but most of those weeknesses are not corrected by crappy software like Symantic's Stuite.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the links. My fear initially was that this was just another craptastic submarine patent.
But here's a question. 802.11a has been a standard a long time, in development long before its acceptance. Why is it that the patents that apply to the technology that this standard is based off just NOW coming to light? Why were patent/royalty issue not brought up in 1999 or earlier?
It seems kind of shady to me to wait until after the standard was released (1999), after wide spread US adoption (2001), after world wide adoption (2003), until years later when the technology is so prolific that companies that have based their entire success on the technologies covered by the patents have no option to change to a non-infringing technology. Or has this been a 7+ year long court case?
-Rick
Let's make something clear, here: You're not hiring computer scientists. You're hiring developers.
Which weighs in even MORE heavily on the orginal question. There are far more application/software developer employment oppertunities in the world than there are computer scientist. If you are looking to produce graduates who can work well in the vast majority of environments, you should focus more on fundamentals (proofs, proofs, and yet more proofs). If you're looking to produce graduates specializing in computer science fields associated with other science fields, then in ADDITION to fundamentals (once again: proofs, proofs, and more proofs) you sould cover the specific math courses that they are likely to encounter in the field they are working in.
-Rick
The odd part is that it is a beta on a console. Something that is usually considered a black box solution. If they are running a beta in an environment where lockups and crashes are not acceptable, they have to be pretty confident in the condition of the engine.
The only thing I can figure is that they will be looking more for playability issues (run speed, reload timers, choke points, etc...) and balancing just prior to launch.
-Rick
I've seen some that are limits on advertising. They track when the last time you had an add on the page so that you only see adds every few minutes, instead of constantly.
Cookies are a tool. They can be used for cool things, or crappy things.
-Rick
Proofs. Proofs. Proofs.
Algebra, geometry, calc, who cares. It's the Proofs that make math apply to Comp Sci. Having obscure formulas memorized means squat. But being able to look at a problem and break it down into the most simple of building blocks, that is a critical skill.
-Rick
Greg Bear from the Johnny and Greg morning show in Madison, WI. http://www.wjjo.com/morning.php3
-Rick
The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'
OK, so they are stating that they can't be in violation of copyright laws because the property is given away for free. That they are only chargeable with the violation of the contract.
So how would this president carry into other copyright disputes? If a radio station broad casts a song, they are 'giving it away for free.' So If I make a copy of that broadcast and sample, or re-release it, would I be exempt from copyright violations as well? Only liable for a breach of contract with the original vendor?
-Rick
Starting tomorrow, customers who preordered a PS3 will be contacted personally by phone and updated on the status of their reservation, the rep said.
Hello sir or ma'am. My name is John Smith and I work for the EB in Silver Dollar City mall. We have received our first batch of PS3 and we are contacting the people who preordered early enough to get one from this batch. For verification reasons can I get your full name, mailing address, credit card number and security code?
-Rick
$2k for a laser to show off to your friends.
$10k for corrected surgery to attempt to salvage vision after someone peeks at the source.
-Rick
no text.
Wow, the link is dead before the article is even up.
-Rick
hope he doesn't slice it!
-Rick
"Clean Coal" is a bunch of BS;
That's actually what the coal industry lobbiest are saying.
Clean coal burning power plants can be made. Gasification, scrubbers, hydrocarbon eating algees, these are technologies that exist. The problem is that they are expencive! And grand father clauses. The EPA ratchets down limits every year so that NEW coal burning plants must be cleaner. The problem is that it is so much more expensive to build a clean efficient plant than to repair and continue in the old plant, that most companies just keep pushing more and more coal through the old plants.
-Rick
2 items:
1) Lik Sang did not go to court. There were no rulings. They were not found guilty.
2) Not all European countries have precedence. In France, even if Lik Sang had been found guilty (or liable) it would have no bearing on any future cases, related or other-whys.
-Rick
My recommendation then would be to start grooming someone in the department that you think could hold the role. The second presenter for example. You seemed to indicate he performed much better in the role of demonstrating how investments could improve IT Alignment for you. There is a common problem in the American workforce where people are promoted because of seniority. We wind up in situations where middle management is made up of people who haven't quit or been fired for 5 years. This results in promotion to the lowest level of incompetence.
For example, the Network Support supervisor/BSA/project coordinator for my organization was an above average technologist. A little on the cowboy side, but over all, a solid performer. As positions changed and people left the company he was promoted from a tech, to a coordinator, and finally to a supervisor. While he may have excellent skills in the IT arena, his management style and skills are greatly lacking. To the point that he has created a hostile work environment and an 80% turn over rate in under 2 years.
Promoting from below will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers, but grooming and training a skilled employee from scratch for a role as a CIO can save you a huge investment later when you are struggling to keep IT costs and liabilities in check due to poor management.
-Rick
Which brings up a wonderful point, or two even.
1) The world needs more well trained and skilled CIOs.
2) The corporate boards need to empower and listen to their CIOs.
There is no reason Peon McJimmy from IT should be presenting a budget and implementation plan to a board. That's what the CIO is for, they have the knowledge, training, and experience to make that translation work well. Sure, the CIO may bring Peon McJimmy along to field any technical questions (the inevitable 'can we do [X]?'). But having a network admin with a tech degree and no experience in budgets, project management, or the upper echelons of the corporate environment make the presentation is just begging for trouble. It presents the vary situation you described: a board making bad decisions. Those decisions are based on a poor presentation, but when the lawsuits come in, it's not that IT guy's name on the line.
-Rick
I believe both you, and the original author are on opposite ends of the same hyperbole.
While yes, upper management has to balance the needs of the company against the financial ability of the company. But at the same time you can't look solely at profit potential for investment. You must also look at risk vs reward and opportune costs.
risk vs reward, if your company is dependant on 5 delivery trucks for their revenue, and one of those trucks dies, you are out 20% of your revenue. If your company (like pretty much all mid and large sized companies are) is dependant on a computer network for their revenue, if the network fails, you are out 100% of your revenue. Regardless of whether the truck or network is the services or goods that produce a profit.
opportune costs, as some of the other people have mentioned, you don't NEED IT to do most of your business processes. But you have to look at it as an opportune cost. Is it cheaper in the long run to hire more employees, or to improve the efficiency of your IT systems? Sure, that new software package may cost 3/4 of a million dollars, but the alternative is expanding your human resources budget by $100,000/year for enough manpower to maintain growth. In under 4 years you would be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by depending on the IT solution to scale with growth as opposed to increasing human resources.
The big threat though is not failure, but theft. If a competitor were to get a hold of my organization's customers and contract information, they could literally crush our company. 3rd party buyouts and undercutting prices on goods and services. We could easily lose $100 million dollars in annual revenue due to a breach like that.
Does that mean that we should go balls to the wall with security? No. But it does mean that the needs of IT must be weighed with a lot more in mind that the numerical value they bring to (or take from) the books.
-Rick
That t-shirt missed the point of the jest. The lions/sheep have to be voting one dinner.
"Benjamin Franklin observed that democracy is two wolves and a sheep holding an election to decide what to have for dinner, and that liberty is a well-armed sheep vigorously contesting the election result."
The problem with that statement in today's government is that if you were to do so, you would be labeled a domestic terrorist. You would be detained, your rights to habias corpus stripped, shipped overseas, tortured, and then locked away.
-Rick
Web 2.0 is not on our side! Look at Web 2.0's track record:
Web 2.0 has done nothing to protect the environment. Under Web 2.0's watch our harmful green house gas emissions have INCREASED!
Web 2.0 has never prosecuted violent offenders!
Web 2.0 failed to vote for a resolution that would put child molesters behind bars!
Web 2.0 funnels millions of dollars through thousands of corporations and special interest groups. There have even been ties to Phillip Morris (big tabacco)!
Web 2.0 stood by doing nothing while America went to war!
Gotta love the campaign season commercials.
-Rick
So your contract only listed the exceptions? That sounds fairly acceptable to me.
LOL, that's what I get for posting while sick. That should be ACCEPTABLE online activity, not EXCEPTABLE online activity. My bust.
-Rick
I worked at a bank once with "no" internal connection to the internet for security reasons. I also work at the State for a while where we had limited access. No Google, but I could still get to places like http://www.tek-tips.com/ and other tech knowledge sites.
-Rick
"Are there other computer programmers out there who don't have internet access at work?"
Due to an incompotent network supervisor's actions, we inadvertantly lost 90% of internet access. He basicly put the entire organization behind the filtering tools most limited filter. One of the sites cut off was Google...
Complete work shutdown. Us developers complained, nothing happened. 20 minutes later the Officers from the company started walking in wonder why they couldn't get out. It wasn't until the 3rd officer came in that he finally got spurred into action. It turns out that the denied message included words like "control" and "disallowed". Nothing like a balding man in a thousand dollar suit shouting obscenities to motivate the incompotent.
The solution was great though. The moron shut down the entire web access filter and logging system. One of my buddies over on the network side of the house was in the process of testing the filter when it was taken down. It was one of those 'oh crap' moments when Penthouse.com actually came up!
-Rick
I don't have a EULA/Warning or anything. I don't get warnings if I go to inappropriate sites. I signed a contract at the begining of my employment that specified exceptable online activity. If I violate that contract, I'm out a job.
-Rick
This one I can actually see as being a decent article. If for nothing else than trendspotting.
-Rick
Couldn't have said it better myself. Not to understate the threat of security breaches in corporations, but most of those weeknesses are not corrected by crappy software like Symantic's Stuite.
-Rick