Since i AM an Einstein, my suggestions to management would be this...
because of our inflated self worths... you have to stroke our egos by paying at the highest salarys possible. Barry Bonds gets around 15,000,000 per year, so 10% of that for your Einsteins is a good starting point.
Einsteins, because we can't tolerate dealing with the less intelegent, need the oppurtunity of working from home and telecommuting. So let us...
Bills, car payments, rent all tend to stress us Einsteins, because the pettyness of these concerns frustrate us, pay all our bills for us.
Einsteins also need to feel attractive to the opposite sex, so when thinking of cars/ apartments think porsches, ferarris and penthouses. Also don't skimp on Escorts (not the ford kind) if we still can't attract a girl... Two or more at a time is better...
Again, it can never forgotton to not stress us Einsteins out, so NEVER press deadlines! They know about them so don't let them worry about them! If its really pressing on time, hire some extra grunt workers to do any work that the we don't want to do.
As well, make sure you pay at least 5-6 months in advance, and give 8-12 months notice if you feel you can't keep the payments up. As well give us Einsteins some personal information about yourself (you don't want us to stress and have to dig it up ourselves) so that we can blackmail you into keeping us employed.
As well, its often known that plain hackers need supplies of Mountain Dew, it only goes that this is more so for your Einsteins. So provide plenty of Coke, Extacy, Speed handy... this also helps with the girl problems....
Then, at the end, you can keep your Einsteins employeed and happy...
Certainly, if I was to merely comment on the content of a recording i would not need a perfect copy.
However, if I were to perform a comparison of digital compression methods, a technically perfect copy of the media would be required as a demonstration of different methods. Now one might suppose that such a requirment wouldn't require a particular copyrighted work. But a research paper, as described, would be best served if it replicated various methods and content used in the commercial field.
In my opinion, the purpose of the copyright laws, and their effectiveness in procesuting offenders have not changed in the digital era. But, such as the ability with colour scanners and colour printers to counterfiet, the digital era has just made the already illegal practice easier. If my scanner doesn't call the police if I were to try to scan a $20, my cd burner shouldn't call the police if i burn a music cd. It would be my act of using the $20 or selling my burned cd that should be alerted to the police.
I think that is the real issue, I think alot of people here realize this. I also think there has always been people, agressively confident in their future morality, who consistantly try to find the criminals before their acts. What they fail to realize is there are no criminals before the criminal act and a judgment from a jury.
Unfortunatly these people are now managing to pass their laws.
If I hadn't posted, I think I would have used my moderation points to rate this as a troll.
What is inheriantly wrong about shooting in Canada? (I am canadian btw) I think many people would say Xfiles changed for the worse when it moved from Vancouver, and a lot of good films are made. I would put "The Sweet Hereafter" as one of the most powerful films made.
Again, the 'subsidies' you mention are primarily the lower canadian dollar and the lower cost of living in Vancouver compared major american cities. And a government that encourages development by giving Movie Production a level tax field with the US, compared to the incredibly restrictive ones put on other industries.
And at its core, I still think your basic logic is still flawed. The more money that is put on the line, the more likely that investors will demand some gaurantees as to their investment. These can be given by frequent test audiences to 'gaurantee' that the public will like the show.
Re:For the writer's-eye-view
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Review: Showtime
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· Score: 3, Informative
Its funny how you say that Hollywood's direction towards safe, predictable formula films is a result of the flight of films from Hollywood to areas such as Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.
First, the prime reason Canada is atractive is that you can pay someone in Vancouver $40,000/yr Canadian, and they'll have a killer apartment downtown and live large on the town. Most likley a salary like that means you are into the realm of owning a condo. Thus, you are getting cheap, highly skilled labour at a fraction (63%) of the cost of the same american labour.
But then what about the stars and higher paid folk? Well, up to last year, in British Columbia the top tax bracket (55%) started at $75,000/yr Canadian. (Thats around $40k us). Plus the numerous other taxes, 13% sales tax for example, in order to get the american talent to work up in canada, the government gives producers tax breaks and low interest loans.
All in all it works out. At first all of the production came from US companys, but quite a few Canadian production company's are starting to produce content that is doing well in the US market. You have to ask yourself, why in this global economy does all prodcution of film/video have to be centered in one small area (LA)? Why is it 'bad' that other areas in the world are starting to produce?
And as this pertains to the quality of entertainment. Alot of producers have used the lower cost to produce in Canada as an oppurtunity to try riskier more independant films. The more that something costs, the less likely people are going to take a risk.
As far as Canadians getting sick of the gazigabucks tax subsidy. Given the outcry over XFiles leaving Vancouver, the fact that the Liberal party won all but 3 seats (over the labour party NDP) on a promise to lower taxes and bring in more business, I don't know for whom you are speaking.
Allcin can make the claim 100% and not 90% or even 99.9%.
Why?
Its not because of all his indepth knowledge of how each individual piece is programmed. Thus figuring out, it would be pretty damn tough to do.
Its because as VP, he ordered it so.
Re:The Unneccesarily Long Road to Profitability
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Amazon Makes a Profit
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· Score: 1
I worked for a unsuccessful opensource based compnay in San Mateo Ca, our 3 floor office space supposedly cost around $110,000/mnth
Re:though the suggestions might be usefull...
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Homepage Usability
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Imagine you drive into a service station to get some gas. You know your car uses gas because you put some in last week. However this fuel pump has a square nozzle and your gas tank has a round hole. When you try to jam the square nozzle in up flashes a sign that says "you drive a Dodge so go away!"
No I think the better description is... you drive up to a gas station with your old 69 bonneville and try getting leaded gas... Wait... I can't? You mean we've progressed past needing lead in the gas as an aditional lubricant?
If your browser is 'compatible' with the current standard... yet can't see many web sites.... it sounds like your browser isn't compatitble with the current standard. Its just that the current stanard isn't being dictated by W3C, its being dictated by microsoft. Complain as you might, their winning and browsers will have to be IE-complaiant and not W3C complaiant.
Some attempts to standardize by large multination bodies.. don't work. When downloading code, do you worry that it's POSIX complaiant? Or that it just compiles on Linux. Do you know the differnece? WinNt 4.0 was POSIX complaiant btw, did that change Anything?
Ok then, you are missing out... too bad for you. I guess when presented with a jigsaw puzzle you say 'I want to see the picture... this putting it together stuff is unusable!'
As far as business websites, you made no distinction in your reply and in your java/flash die statement you also make no such disclaimer.
As far as businesss I suggest maybe checking out http://www.warprecords.com which shows off their artists..... wait you don't have flash... oh well forget it. I supose you don't have any support for playing audio files other then.au?
But, in the end, I don't have to convince you of anything, because your choice NOT to see these sites does not affect me, if you wanted to you could.
What I get upset about is people telling me what I should see or not... don't think you are?
Well I think flight404 is brilliant and dark, the visual ideas that praystation shows are extremely interesting and the soda site keeps me busy for a long time just playing.... but of course all should be banished because they aren't what the designers of the web 'wanted'.
But I shouldn't be able to view these, because u can't? When you get soda to work with just plain html, tell me about it please?
Re:though the suggestions might be usefull...
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Homepage Usability
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· Score: 1
Any worthwhile standard is and old standard.
Sure... HTTP 1.0 forever and get rid of the nasty FORM. (do you make a seperate page, for form incompatible browsers?)
No, there is no magic adjective you can put before a standard to make it 'worthwhile'. A standards worth, though can be deterimined by how closly people follow it. Ie the http protocol is worthwhile, because people use it and don't need to change or modify it to do basically what they want to do.
HTTP 1.0 is worth less then HTTP4.0 because its use is less and people felt they had to ignore it.
As far as browsers go, having used IE 5.0 around the time of the nimda worm... I have suggested in my project that we FLATLY regect anyone who doesn't have THE most up to date web browser, AS A PUBLIC SERVICE!
Please, not keeping up with the current level of tech is NOT an excuse. If everyone stopped catering to these ludites with netscape 4.0 or ie 4.0, when they realized they can't use many web pages they'd upgrade!
Whaa whaa.... I can't see any of the cool internet sites with my C64 anymore! When everything was telnet, gopher and ftp I had no problem... its not fair!
Jakob Nielson on the evils of the crt
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Homepage Usability
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· Score: 1
I can see Neilson advoating using punchcards instead of crts/keyboards in the 60's.
THe new fangled CRTS are hard to read,
only a select few have them,
typing is an art that only secretaries have mastered,
when your poor at typing you are distracted between the screen and the keyboard
The CRTS have only one colour, so you can't colour code like you can with printed material.
The resolution of a crt will take eons to match that of printers, so type will be indistinct at smaller type sizes.
etc
etc
Imagine if everyone had followed his advice?
With the web, you can see the active delvelopment of tomorrow's user interfaces through the expiraments and failures. However, because there are failures in adapting new technology, that does not mean people should stop trying!
The most efficient Jakobian interface to information over the internet is GOPHER!
Jakob seems to be stuck on information delivery in its distilled form, which simply isn't paying the bills for many sites out there.
And just what do you think the web is? Some kind of place where people pay good money to see your blinking flashy popup crap? No. People use the web to find information. Anything else is secondary. If people can easily find what they want, they will buy it, and that's where the money comes from. They won't buy it because your ad blinks more than the next guy's
I would recomend you to try out the excelent flash/java sites such as
http://www.praystation.com
http://www.flight404.com
http://sodaplay.com/index.htm
etc....
perhaps the notion of ART escapes you, or that you think that pure computation and data retrieval should be the only uses for any computer system.
I would suggest stop thinking aobut what a computer system or network should do and start thinking about what it can do.
Sorry to keep harping on this, but nothing in either of the qouted portions of your post (the law or the treaty) indicate the *transfer* of any rights to the original invention to the inventor of an improvement to the original.
No need for apologizing, I'm not taking anything personally, rather I am in this process learning quite a bit about what I know about patents and what I don't. A vigerious debate is how things are hashed out.
The first merely states what can be patented (which includes improvements to process, machines, etc. -- whether or not the thing they improve is covered by a patent, BTW).
I included this quote as it shows the US law is generally vague as to what constitutes a new invention or what is an improvement.
The second (GATT excerpt) merely says that the patent must involve an inventive step, i.e. you can't just randomly throw things together, but have to have reasoned that the specific arrangement is better.
The second quote is to show that a patent needs to be:
new - what is the definition of new...
that is the question that defines whether the superfrombizer is 'new' or not... 'Superfrombizer' is a bad name for it. I'm going to call it instead the 'fractilizer'. Where in the fractilizing process is a new and superior process to the old frombizering process. It creates diferent widgets better because its 10% faster, burns 20% less calories, creates widgits in 3 different colours and they slice. It is a 'NEW' process and a 'New' type of machine.
It is similar in many ways to the steps that the frombizering process, but it now has the fractiliator step which also makes alot of intermediate fromizering steps obsolete. Which now makes it a fractilizing process which is...
an inventive step.
it works so it has
industrial capability.
Therefore, I should get a patent. Yeah the frombozing people might get upset and say the fractilizing is a invfringement but that would be a tough call.. there are many inventions that work in a similar fashion, that may create similar items but are different because... well the designers made them different enough so they could get a patent.
The superfrombizer isn't a very good example because its too obvious and because in order to make points it is too easy to mold this invention to the purposes we want it to be. I've tried to introduce examples using my patent in particular. Which I think does a good job. It shows that a patent existed on a process that is similar.. yet a patent was granted because the processes 'actually' do different things. An imaginary extension of the similar process wasn't made.
We spent alot of work into figuring out how to deal with Lirf and Hirf combined (read the patent), so people who mistakely create a very expensive drum that's too small to image a size the market demands, will have to licence the patent from my old company in order to create a larger image.
Again if you are working today in a field where you are creating software, hardware or anything really and take a careless regard to existing patents you will get burned by having to redo your work. My old boss got us to come up with ideas, then find the idea in the USPTO database, because it will be there. read the patents.. find out what they're doing wrong, learn from their mistakes... and build a better widget for the market their missing.
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
further more
GATT 1994
Subject to the provisions of paragraphs 2 and 3, patents shall be available for any inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, involve an inventive step and are capable of industrial application. Subject to paragraph 4 of Article 65 , paragraph 8 of Article 70 and paragraph 3 of this Article, patents shall be available and patent rights enjoyable without discrimination as to the place of invention, the field of technology and whether products are imported or locally produced
Paragraphs 2,3 cover the grounds for inadmissability by member nations on 'moral' grounds (2) moral can be a moral responce to the destruction of the earth btw, and for(3) it covers medical 'methods' and clarify some rules on admissibility for plants.
Since super frobinator with cheeze is a complete product that does all that a frobinator but better faster and with a significant feature addition ie inventive step, my patented super frobinator is a seperate 'in whole' patent. If I make a product that 'superizes' a frobinator that is an improvment. Whether you get the superfrobinator or the superizer is up to the USPTO...
The law for an improvment is that you don't get rights to the original and the person who does the original doesn't have rights to your improvment, they are sepearate patents. This could be used overtop a very generic patent as a bargaining chip to licence the product. Free software advocates could start patenting improvment patents to the generic business patents giving themselves a bargaining chip or a place at the table in future decisions involving those technologies.
I think, and I havn't read down this path far enough, that antitrust laws or decisions around them prevent withholding of reasonable licence grants from the original patent to the improvement. I think this is in commonlaw as its a court decision and not a writen law.
There is alot of other laws and decisions regarding this.. In my personal expirence there are patents could cover my patent, those are from kodak etc... however by getting the patent to our process as a whole, we cover ourselves from those previous patents as we don't just do what those patents do, but we are much more specific in our use, and our use/purpose of the invention is different from theirs. And we are not a improvment patent, but a patent on the process as a whole.
Ie using a reference mark to determine film location... for the purpose of imaging the next frame in a motion picture, is a different patent then using a reference mark to deterime film location... for the purpose of blending two images into one. We were rejected in trying to patent the process of using a reference mark and lasers to determin the position of film for the purposes of imaging btw. (One of the drawbacks is that out of the 12 or so people mentioned in my patent, only 4-5 are from the blending team, the others primarily did the hole finding work)
Looking at patents the surround physical objects or actual developed and produced commerical processes that are specific, I think the patent process works. The problem seems to be the extension of the patent process to newly 'discovered' areas, without many established processes, by giving broad patents for non specific and/or unproduced ideas.
20 years from now, the idea of software patents will make much more sense, as the specificy of the inventions needed to be granted a patent will be great.. as well as the current body of patents will be pushed into the public domain.
The true goal of patent reform should be IMHO to recognize industry specific timelines for patents. Software should be shorter.
I think much of the complaining about patents is simular to something that happened to me when I made some realizations about Einstines theories (I was 8 or so)... You CAN'T go faster then light? But I want to! How can we explore the next stars without being able to! We Should be able to! Its been 'promised' by sci fi.
Sometimes real life is different. Sometimes after the initial gasp, you can calm down and see that there still is room to work given the limitations brought upon by laws, whether physical or man made. Sometimes those limitations turn out to be tools as well. Its just not going to be as fun as if we had warp. But no where is it writen that life is always going to be fun.
Re:We're talking about Free Software alternatives
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Freedom or Power Redux
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· Score: 1
And if you manage to take the GIVEN documentation and improve
substantialy on the idea, you can patent over the patent
and give it away for free if you wish.
Yes that's right...
which, though nice of me, doesn't probably benefit the users since they still can't use a free version of the original invention, with or without my improvements. The ability to patent improvements on other patents is great for inventors, especially ones rich enough to enter cross licensing agreements. It's less great for people who want Free Software...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by improving on a patent to get a new patent you don't just get to distribute the diff, you get the rights to the whole. Checkout barbed wire vrs single strand wire as a case in point (yes in the wild wild west, someone got a patent on using a 'single' strand of wire as a fence)
I would suggest that if all software was patented, no copyrights what so ever, and the condition of getting the patent is to give out the source code. A limited life span (I agree 20 years is too long, but that's a fault of the implementation of an idea) the ability to see someone's code, to improve upon it, to reference the original authors and redistribute your new product, would be alot closer to the FSF invisioned world then the world we life in....
And if you can't improve on it, you have to abide by the authors wishes. For some this might be $$, for others it might be the GPL.
Indeed, it looks interesting, but I can't help but notice it's not a software patent...
If you read closer its not just a hardware patent.. it covers any alogirthm used to blend two subsiquent exposures of radiation to a radtiation sensitive material with the intent (or not) of mimicing a single exposure. There might be something about lasers in there because of prior art.. but we went back and forth for a year and a half just getting the application ready.
The hardware point was just to line up the two exposures, we combined the two ideas.... to improve upon many kodak patents that did the hardware only.
The fact that he doesn't choose what software his cellphone or other embedded processor runs
He is free to create a new cellphone that uses an operating system that he can fix... wait... he can't come up with the $$ to create a whole new cellphone that is as small and protable as the others with the features he wants and keep up with the evil corporations... why's that? The Evil Corps bribe good developers to working for there evil ends with blood money they get from selling their products?.... Perhaps
The fact that his friends and aquaintances (may) use proprietary software which uses proprietary data formats;
He's free to get new friends that support him, or at least can save as a plain text file or XML.....
The fact that companies which produce software are free under current US law to patent their so-called "invention" and block independant creation, distribution and use of a free alternative;
Yep, that's right.... for a limited time, only in return for disclosing how the invention works.... what's that? You have to 'Open Source' your invention in order to get patent power? And if you manage to take the GIVEN documentation and improve substantialy on the idea, you can patent over the patent and give it away for free if you wish. Yes that's right...
The fact that this power has abeen abused by insane grants given to vague ideas only tarnishes one of the first 'Open Source' licences.... the patent.
You'll probably complain until you get your own... I've got one... and I'm proud of it. And we waited til it worked to get it.
Please tell me what extroverts want to hear when they ask "hows it going?", when they don't know you..... At least the headphones project, "Don't bother asking"
I think many people need to recognize this fact. People seem to turn blinders on and make a knee jerk reaction when the question comes to licencing.
I used to work for an GPL ecommerce company, we were talking with one of our potential clients, a famous name, about integrating our product as a sales mechanism using their content delivery system. This would have meant major dough and tonnes (millions) of end users. They were willing to give up any modifications/additions to the code they would have had to make in order to both, get the product up n running and to get the features they desired yet weren't in the product.
As well they'd pay us a big hunk'o'money to give consulting and for our development part. Now we weren't that well rounded so we definatly coulda used the programming help and the cash.
Their problem? There were many many people dieing to figure out their content delivery system, to sell products that would enable anybody to get content without paying.
Well, it basically boiled down to integrating their software with ours, then selling it to their clients. (they were middle men) Well, under the GPL, they were afraid that they would have to give up their propriatary delivery mechanism in source code by integrating it with ours. And they probably were right. At the upper level, we didn't want to split off and relicence it because we had a little RMS as well. GPL or nothing...
Result?
nothing... and i'm off to another job.
Now doing consulting work I make sure the work I do for a company doesn't use ANY gpl stuff in my code. Why? Because all the software I will have writen will be gpled. Ie, if your doing some Perl glue, make sure that library you picked up off the internet isn't GPLed, or that c library.
I'm fine with contributing the libraries that fix global problems to the community, I'm fine for moving the general products to the community. I know the thrill of finding people using your code, and i know the thrill of having people improve it for you.When I release my software I let it go, at most leave a line in there that says I did it, and make sure your critisims are constructive. But I go by a rule that EVERY piece of software that is to be made, does not HAVE to be open.
Futhermore I state as a Law..
At no point in the future will every piece of software created be under the GPL
I think this is unprovable but I think most people (even RMS) would agree on this in principal. Therefore, using a licence that expects every piece eventually to be so is not productive.
And don't think that the GPL has any other purpose but to make ALL software GPLed. RTFM! Its not a hidden agenda or a straw man that Micro$oft is bringing up to defeat Linux. Its the stated and from the questionare, primary goal. If that bugs you, don't use GPL, don't GPL all of your software. Figure out what YOU want for your piece of software and choose THAT licence. There are plenty to choose from. And you can GPL some and not others, LGPL, Artistic, BSD etc etc its your choice.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
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Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 1
So what's your problem with harry potter then, the same complaint you post towards them could/ and probably was pointed towards Tarzan, hardy boys etc etc...
The flaw was, kids stopping at Harry Potter was a straw man you propped up to critize the books. No where was that suggested in previous posts, infact it was suggested that harry potter would be the cataylst towards previously mentioned books. WHich is your identical to your final post.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
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Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 1
I was going to post something long, with many questions, pointing out the flaws in your argument. But instead I'm going to give you just one question.
How would you propose to get kids to read and keep reading for a long time, so that it isn't a sham, facade, etc?
The legal structures do not yet exist for the rest of the mission...so why buy insurance if you don't have to, when you know it'll be overpriced relative to the true risk?
I wonder what parts of the 'rest of the mission' you think wouldn't be covered by existing law?
Plus, without insurance on the whole mission, you certainly wouldn't be able to raise the money to get the first rocket up.
If you were to go to a nation state to finance the launch and you have a mishap where a chunk of the asteroid takes out a good chunk of a city... i think you'd at the minimum would have mass UN sanctions, the head of the country or person responsible for launch up for crimes against humanity.
And thats not considering the threats countries would give before launch... "If this comes down on any part of the US mainland, a few hundred bombs will be coming down on you"
Probably the only use for asteroid minerals, would be for space based manufacturing. Keep it in space, where if you wanted to launch 100000 tonnes of steel from earth it would cost you trillions of dollars.
I made the move to Silicon Valley and ran into a friend here. We were comparing notes on who from our school in Vancouver (ECIAD) made it down. We started talking about one guy who was a great animator and got a job at I.L.M.! Instantly we felt envious.
I see your point, because the increased security after TWA800 failed to stop the WTC bombings we should do away with all security at airports what-so-ever. I'll leave it as an excersise for the reader to continue the logic to rape/murder and getting rid of police.
Look, yes getting searched is annoying, yes your joke was funny. However, before anyone else tries this let me tell you, if I was the guard and someone pulled that on me, they're getting ALL there cavaties searched.
Why? Because THE PURPOSE OF YOUR ACTION WAS TO AVOID GETTING SEARCHED, there is NO GREATER RISK then the person avoiding getting searched.
In fact, the idea that they didn't make you clean all your crap up, and that they let you through at all, seems to make me feel that your story is completely fabricated.
Slashdot Mirror
Since i AM an Einstein, my suggestions to management would be this ...
... you have to stroke our egos by paying at the highest salarys possible. Barry Bonds gets around 15,000,000 per year, so 10% of that for your Einsteins is a good starting point.
because of our inflated self worths
Einsteins, because we can't tolerate dealing with the less intelegent, need the oppurtunity of working from home and telecommuting. So let us...
Bills, car payments, rent all tend to stress us Einsteins, because the pettyness of these concerns frustrate us, pay all our bills for us.
Einsteins also need to feel attractive to the opposite sex, so when thinking of cars/ apartments think porsches, ferarris and penthouses. Also don't skimp on Escorts (not the ford kind) if we still can't attract a girl... Two or more at a time is better...
Again, it can never forgotton to not stress us Einsteins out, so NEVER press deadlines! They know about them so don't let them worry about them! If its really pressing on time, hire some extra grunt workers to do any work that the we don't want to do.
As well, make sure you pay at least 5-6 months in advance, and give 8-12 months notice if you feel you can't keep the payments up. As well give us Einsteins some personal information about yourself (you don't want us to stress and have to dig it up ourselves) so that we can blackmail you into keeping us employed.
As well, its often known that plain hackers need supplies of Mountain Dew, it only goes that this is more so for your Einsteins. So provide plenty of Coke, Extacy, Speed handy... this also helps with the girl problems....
Then, at the end, you can keep your Einsteins employeed and happy...
Good luck
Certainly, if I was to merely comment on the content of a recording i would not need a perfect copy.
However, if I were to perform a comparison of digital compression methods, a technically perfect copy of the media would be required as a demonstration of different methods. Now one might suppose that such a requirment wouldn't require a particular copyrighted work. But a research paper, as described, would be best served if it replicated various methods and content used in the commercial field.
In my opinion, the purpose of the copyright laws, and their effectiveness in procesuting offenders have not changed in the digital era. But, such as the ability with colour scanners and colour printers to counterfiet, the digital era has just made the already illegal practice easier. If my scanner doesn't call the police if I were to try to scan a $20, my cd burner shouldn't call the police if i burn a music cd. It would be my act of using the $20 or selling my burned cd that should be alerted to the police.
I think that is the real issue, I think alot of people here realize this. I also think there has always been people, agressively confident in their future morality, who consistantly try to find the criminals before their acts. What they fail to realize is there are no criminals before the criminal act and a judgment from a jury.
Unfortunatly these people are now managing to pass their laws.
I never see a blue screen of death on Windows 2000. What is this you are speaking of?
...
....
If we're swapping blue screen stories... My girlfriend plugged her laptop in to the docking station for the first time... BAM! BSOD...
Reboots, works fine..
takes it out of the docking station....
BSOD!
BTW the computer was off as well...
Takes it out, now Norton won't scan the disk 100% without bombing, she can't run any software that will use wowexe
Looks like its time for the monthly, reinstall 2000, spend all weekend updating all the patches
If I hadn't posted, I think I would have used my moderation points to rate this as a troll.
What is inheriantly wrong about shooting in Canada? (I am canadian btw) I think many people would say Xfiles changed for the worse when it moved from Vancouver, and a lot of good films are made. I would put "The Sweet Hereafter" as one of the most powerful films made.
Again, the 'subsidies' you mention are primarily the lower canadian dollar and the lower cost of living in Vancouver compared major american cities. And a government that encourages development by giving Movie Production a level tax field with the US, compared to the incredibly restrictive ones put on other industries.
And at its core, I still think your basic logic is still flawed. The more money that is put on the line, the more likely that investors will demand some gaurantees as to their investment. These can be given by frequent test audiences to 'gaurantee' that the public will like the show.
Its funny how you say that Hollywood's direction towards safe, predictable formula films is a result of the flight of films from Hollywood to areas such as Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.
First, the prime reason Canada is atractive is that you can pay someone in Vancouver $40,000/yr Canadian, and they'll have a killer apartment downtown and live large on the town. Most likley a salary like that means you are into the realm of owning a condo.
Thus, you are getting cheap, highly skilled labour at a fraction (63%) of the cost of the same american labour.
But then what about the stars and higher paid folk? Well, up to last year, in British Columbia the top tax bracket (55%) started at $75,000/yr Canadian. (Thats around $40k us). Plus the numerous other taxes, 13% sales tax for example, in order to get the american talent to work up in canada, the government gives producers tax breaks and low interest loans.
All in all it works out. At first all of the production came from US companys, but quite a few Canadian production company's are starting to produce content that is doing well in the US market. You have to ask yourself, why in this global economy does all prodcution of film/video have to be centered in one small area (LA)? Why is it 'bad' that other areas in the world are starting to produce?
And as this pertains to the quality of entertainment. Alot of producers have used the lower cost to produce in Canada as an oppurtunity to try riskier more independant films. The more that something costs, the less likely people are going to take a risk.
As far as Canadians getting sick of the gazigabucks tax subsidy. Given the outcry over XFiles leaving Vancouver, the fact that the Liberal party won all but 3 seats (over the labour party NDP) on a promise to lower taxes and bring in more business, I don't know for whom you are speaking.
Allcin can make the claim 100% and not 90% or even 99.9%.
Why?
Its not because of all his indepth knowledge of how each individual piece is programmed. Thus figuring out, it would be pretty damn tough to do.
Its because as VP, he ordered it so.
I worked for a unsuccessful opensource based compnay in San Mateo Ca, our 3 floor office space supposedly cost around $110,000/mnth
Imagine you drive into a service station to get some gas. You know your car uses gas because you put some in last week. However this fuel pump has a square nozzle and your gas tank has a round hole. When you try to jam the square nozzle in up flashes a sign that says "you drive a Dodge so go away!"
No I think the better description is... you drive up to a gas station with your old 69 bonneville and try getting leaded gas... Wait... I can't? You mean we've progressed past needing lead in the gas as an aditional lubricant?
If your browser is 'compatible' with the current standard... yet can't see many web sites.... it sounds like your browser isn't compatitble with the current standard. Its just that the current stanard isn't being dictated by W3C, its being dictated by microsoft. Complain as you might, their winning and browsers will have to be IE-complaiant and not W3C complaiant.
Some attempts to standardize by large multination bodies.. don't work. When downloading code, do you worry that it's POSIX complaiant? Or that it just compiles on Linux. Do you know the differnece? WinNt 4.0 was POSIX complaiant btw, did that change Anything?
LOL!
..... wait you don't have flash... oh well forget it. I supose you don't have any support for playing audio files other then .au?
Ok then, you are missing out... too bad for you. I guess when presented with a jigsaw puzzle you say 'I want to see the picture... this putting it together stuff is unusable!'
As far as business websites, you made no distinction in your reply and in your java/flash die statement you also make no such disclaimer.
As far as businesss I suggest maybe checking out http://www.warprecords.com which shows off their artists
But, in the end, I don't have to convince you of anything, because your choice NOT to see these sites does not affect me, if you wanted to you could.
What I get upset about is people telling me what I should see or not... don't think you are?
Well I think flight404 is brilliant and dark, the visual ideas that praystation shows are extremely interesting and the soda site keeps me busy for a long time just playing.... but of course all should be banished because they aren't what the designers of the web 'wanted'.
But I shouldn't be able to view these, because u can't? When you get soda to work with just plain html, tell me about it please?
Any worthwhile standard is and old standard.
Sure... HTTP 1.0 forever and get rid of the nasty FORM. (do you make a seperate page, for form incompatible browsers?)
No, there is no magic adjective you can put before a standard to make it 'worthwhile'. A standards worth, though can be deterimined by how closly people follow it. Ie the http protocol is worthwhile, because people use it and don't need to change or modify it to do basically what they want to do.
HTTP 1.0 is worth less then HTTP4.0 because its use is less and people felt they had to ignore it.
As far as browsers go, having used IE 5.0 around the time of the nimda worm... I have suggested in my project that we FLATLY regect anyone who doesn't have THE most up to date web browser, AS A PUBLIC SERVICE!
Please, not keeping up with the current level of tech is NOT an excuse. If everyone stopped catering to these ludites with netscape 4.0 or ie 4.0, when they realized they can't use many web pages they'd upgrade!
Whaa whaa.... I can't see any of the cool internet sites with my C64 anymore! When everything was telnet, gopher and ftp I had no problem... its not fair!
I can see Neilson advoating using punchcards instead of crts/keyboards in the 60's.
THe new fangled CRTS are hard to read,
only a select few have them,
typing is an art that only secretaries have mastered,
when your poor at typing you are distracted between the screen and the keyboard
The CRTS have only one colour, so you can't colour code like you can with printed material.
The resolution of a crt will take eons to match that of printers, so type will be indistinct at smaller type sizes.
etc
etc
Imagine if everyone had followed his advice?
With the web, you can see the active delvelopment of tomorrow's user interfaces through the expiraments and failures. However, because there are failures in adapting new technology, that does not mean people should stop trying!
The most efficient Jakobian interface to information over the internet is GOPHER!
And just what do you think the web is? Some kind of place where people pay good money to see your blinking flashy popup crap? No. People use the web to find information. Anything else is secondary. If people can easily find what they want, they will buy it, and that's where the money comes from. They won't buy it because your ad blinks more than the next guy's
I would recomend you to try out the excelent flash/java sites such as
http://www.praystation.com
http://www.flight404.com
http://sodaplay.com/index.htm
etc....
perhaps the notion of ART escapes you, or that you think that pure computation and data retrieval should be the only uses for any computer system.
I would suggest stop thinking aobut what a computer system or network should do and start thinking about what it can do.
No need for apologizing, I'm not taking anything personally, rather I am in this process learning quite a bit about what I know about patents and what I don't. A vigerious debate is how things are hashed out.
I included this quote as it shows the US law is generally vague as to what constitutes a new invention or what is an improvement.
The second quote is to show that a patent needs to be:
new - what is the definition of new...
that is the question that defines whether the superfrombizer is 'new' or not... 'Superfrombizer' is a bad name for it. I'm going to call it instead the 'fractilizer'. Where in the fractilizing process is a new and superior process to the old frombizering process. It creates diferent widgets better because its 10% faster, burns 20% less calories, creates widgits in 3 different colours and they slice. It is a 'NEW' process and a 'New' type of machine.
It is similar in many ways to the steps that the frombizering process, but it now has the fractiliator step which also makes alot of intermediate fromizering steps obsolete. Which now makes it a fractilizing process which is...
an inventive step.
it works so it has
industrial capability.
Therefore, I should get a patent. Yeah the frombozing people might get upset and say the fractilizing is a invfringement but that would be a tough call.. there are many inventions that work in a similar fashion, that may create similar items but are different because
The superfrombizer isn't a very good example because its too obvious and because in order to make points it is too easy to mold this invention to the purposes we want it to be. I've tried to introduce examples using my patent in particular. Which I think does a good job. It shows that a patent existed on a process that is similar.. yet a patent was granted because the processes 'actually' do different things. An imaginary extension of the similar process wasn't made.
We spent alot of work into figuring out how to deal with Lirf and Hirf combined (read the patent), so people who mistakely create a very expensive drum that's too small to image a size the market demands, will have to licence the patent from my old company in order to create a larger image.
Again if you are working today in a field where you are creating software, hardware or anything really and take a careless regard to existing patents you will get burned by having to redo your work. My old boss got us to come up with ideas, then find the idea in the USPTO database, because it will be there. read the patents.. find out what they're doing wrong, learn from their mistakes... and build a better widget for the market their missing.
further more
GATT 1994
Paragraphs 2,3 cover the grounds for inadmissability by member nations on 'moral' grounds (2) moral can be a moral responce to the destruction of the earth btw, and for(3) it covers medical 'methods' and clarify some rules on admissibility for plants.
Since super frobinator with cheeze is a complete product that does all that a frobinator but better faster and with a significant feature addition ie inventive step, my patented super frobinator is a seperate 'in whole' patent. If I make a product that 'superizes' a frobinator that is an improvment. Whether you get the superfrobinator or the superizer is up to the USPTO...
The law for an improvment is that you don't get rights to the original and the person who does the original doesn't have rights to your improvment, they are sepearate patents. This could be used overtop a very generic patent as a bargaining chip to licence the product. Free software advocates could start patenting improvment patents to the generic business patents giving themselves a bargaining chip or a place at the table in future decisions involving those technologies.
I think, and I havn't read down this path far enough, that antitrust laws or decisions around them prevent withholding of reasonable licence grants from the original patent to the improvement. I think this is in commonlaw as its a court decision and not a writen law.
There is alot of other laws and decisions regarding this
Ie using a reference mark to determine film location
Looking at patents the surround physical objects or actual developed and produced commerical processes that are specific, I think the patent process works. The problem seems to be the extension of the patent process to newly 'discovered' areas, without many established processes, by giving broad patents for non specific and/or unproduced ideas.
20 years from now, the idea of software patents will make much more sense, as the specificy of the inventions needed to be granted a patent will be great.. as well as the current body of patents will be pushed into the public domain.
The true goal of patent reform should be IMHO to recognize industry specific timelines for patents. Software should be shorter.
I think much of the complaining about patents is simular to something that happened to me when I made some realizations about Einstines theories (I was 8 or so)... You CAN'T go faster then light? But I want to! How can we explore the next stars without being able to! We Should be able to! Its been 'promised' by sci fi.
Sometimes real life is different. Sometimes after the initial gasp, you can calm down and see that there still is room to work given the limitations brought upon by laws, whether physical or man made. Sometimes those limitations turn out to be tools as well. Its just not going to be as fun as if we had warp. But no where is it writen that life is always going to be fun.
And if you manage to take the GIVEN documentation and improve
.. but we went back and forth for a year and a half just getting the application ready.
.... to improve upon many kodak patents that did the hardware only.
...
substantialy on the idea, you can patent over the patent
and give it away for free if you wish.
Yes that's right...
which, though nice of me, doesn't probably benefit the users since they still can't use a free version of the original invention, with or without my improvements. The ability to patent improvements on other patents is great for inventors, especially ones rich enough to enter cross licensing agreements. It's less great for people who want Free Software...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by improving on a patent to get a new patent you don't just get to distribute the diff, you get the rights to the whole. Checkout barbed wire vrs single strand wire as a case in point (yes in the wild wild west, someone got a patent on using a 'single' strand of wire as a fence)
I would suggest that if all software was patented, no copyrights what so ever, and the condition of getting the patent is to give out the source code. A limited life span (I agree 20 years is too long, but that's a fault of the implementation of an idea) the ability to see someone's code, to improve upon it, to reference the original authors and redistribute your new product, would be alot closer to the FSF invisioned world then the world we life in....
And if you can't improve on it, you have to abide by the authors wishes. For some this might be $$, for others it might be the GPL.
Indeed, it looks interesting, but I can't help but notice it's not a software patent...
If you read closer its not just a hardware patent.. it covers any alogirthm used to blend two subsiquent exposures of radiation to a radtiation sensitive material with the intent (or not) of mimicing a single exposure. There might be something about lasers in there because of prior art
The hardware point was just to line up the two exposures, we combined the two ideas
But we get all the claims now
The fact that he doesn't choose what software his cellphone or other embedded processor runs
... wait ... he can't come up with the $$ to create a whole new cellphone that is as small and protable as the others with the features he wants and keep up with the evil corporations... why's that? The Evil Corps bribe good developers to working for there evil ends with blood money they get from selling their products? .... Perhaps
.... the patent.
... I've got one ... and I'm proud of it. And we waited til it worked to get it.
He is free to create a new cellphone that uses an operating system that he can fix
The fact that his friends and aquaintances (may) use proprietary software which uses proprietary data formats;
He's free to get new friends that support him, or at least can save as a plain text file or XML.....
The fact that companies which produce software are free under current US law to patent their so-called "invention" and block independant creation, distribution and use of a free alternative;
Yep, that's right.... for a limited time, only in return for disclosing how the invention works.... what's that? You have to 'Open Source' your invention in order to get patent power? And if you manage to take the GIVEN documentation and improve substantialy on the idea, you can patent over the patent and give it away for free if you wish. Yes that's right...
The fact that this power has abeen abused by insane grants given to vague ideas only tarnishes one of the first 'Open Source' licences
You'll probably complain until you get your own
6,117,625
Ummm.... its not considered proper to mention names in a public forum, when the topic on hand doesn't require them.
I wish I could moderate this up...
Please tell me what extroverts want to hear when they ask "hows it going?", when they don't know you..... At least the headphones project, "Don't bother asking"
I think many people need to recognize this fact. People seem to turn blinders on and make a knee jerk reaction when the question comes to licencing.
I used to work for an GPL ecommerce company, we were talking with one of our potential clients, a famous name, about integrating our product as a sales mechanism using their content delivery system. This would have meant major dough and tonnes (millions) of end users. They were willing to give up any modifications/additions to the code they would have had to make in order to both, get the product up n running and to get the features they desired yet weren't in the product.
As well they'd pay us a big hunk'o'money to give consulting and for our development part. Now we weren't that well rounded so we definatly coulda used the programming help and the cash.
Their problem? There were many many people dieing to figure out their content delivery system, to sell products that would enable anybody to get content without paying.
Well, it basically boiled down to integrating their software with ours, then selling it to their clients. (they were middle men) Well, under the GPL, they were afraid that they would have to give up their propriatary delivery mechanism in source code by integrating it with ours. And they probably were right. At the upper level, we didn't want to split off and relicence it because we had a little RMS as well. GPL or nothing...
Result?
nothing... and i'm off to another job.
Now doing consulting work I make sure the work I do for a company doesn't use ANY gpl stuff in my code. Why? Because all the software I will have writen will be gpled. Ie, if your doing some Perl glue, make sure that library you picked up off the internet isn't GPLed, or that c library.
I'm fine with contributing the libraries that fix global problems to the community, I'm fine for moving the general products to the community. I know the thrill of finding people using your code, and i know the thrill of having people improve it for you.When I release my software I let it go, at most leave a line in there that says I did it, and make sure your critisims are constructive. But I go by a rule that EVERY piece of software that is to be made, does not HAVE to be open.
Futhermore I state as a Law..
At no point in the future will every piece of software created be under the GPL
I think this is unprovable but I think most people (even RMS) would agree on this in principal. Therefore, using a licence that expects every piece eventually to be so is not productive.
And don't think that the GPL has any other purpose but to make ALL software GPLed. RTFM! Its not a hidden agenda or a straw man that Micro$oft is bringing up to defeat Linux. Its the stated and from the questionare, primary goal. If that bugs you, don't use GPL, don't GPL all of your software. Figure out what YOU want for your piece of software and choose THAT licence. There are plenty to choose from. And you can GPL some and not others, LGPL, Artistic, BSD etc etc its your choice.
So what's your problem with harry potter then, the same complaint you post towards them could/ and probably was pointed towards Tarzan, hardy boys etc etc...
The flaw was, kids stopping at Harry Potter was a straw man you propped up to critize the books. No where was that suggested in previous posts, infact it was suggested that harry potter would be the cataylst towards previously mentioned books. WHich is your identical to your final post.
I was going to post something long, with many questions, pointing out the flaws in your argument. But instead I'm going to give you just one question.
How would you propose to get kids to read and keep reading for a long time, so that it isn't a sham, facade, etc?
I would suggest checking out the local movie theaters. Probably the remaining 22 will be there in line to see harry potter with excuses like ...
... points to anonymous (not related) little boy standing infront of her, as if he was a cousin, nephew or brother
this time my fake ID didn't work to get my into 13 Ghosts
I'm here with
its better than Monsters Inc!
There's nothing else to watch I guess
My dad locked out showtime and the playboy channel again
The legal structures do not yet exist for the rest of the mission...so why buy insurance if you don't have to, when you know it'll be overpriced relative to the true risk?
... i think you'd at the minimum would have mass UN sanctions, the head of the country or person responsible for launch up for crimes against humanity.
... "If this comes down on any part of the US mainland, a few hundred bombs will be coming down on you"
I wonder what parts of the 'rest of the mission' you think wouldn't be covered by existing law?
Plus, without insurance on the whole mission, you certainly wouldn't be able to raise the money to get the first rocket up.
If you were to go to a nation state to finance the launch and you have a mishap where a chunk of the asteroid takes out a good chunk of a city
And thats not considering the threats countries would give before launch
Probably the only use for asteroid minerals, would be for space based manufacturing. Keep it in space, where if you wanted to launch 100000 tonnes of steel from earth it would cost you trillions of dollars.
I made the move to Silicon Valley and ran into a friend here. We were comparing notes on who from our school in Vancouver (ECIAD) made it down. We started talking about one guy who was a great animator and got a job at I.L.M.! Instantly we felt envious.
....
Turns out he has to animate Jar Jar
Poor, poor guy.... I feel sooo sorry for him.
I see your point, because the increased security after TWA800 failed to stop the WTC bombings we should do away with all security at airports what-so-ever. I'll leave it as an excersise for the reader to continue the logic to rape/murder and getting rid of police.
Look, yes getting searched is annoying, yes your joke was funny. However, before anyone else tries this let me tell you, if I was the guard and someone pulled that on me, they're getting ALL there cavaties searched.
Why? Because THE PURPOSE OF YOUR ACTION WAS TO AVOID GETTING SEARCHED, there is NO GREATER RISK then the person avoiding getting searched.
In fact, the idea that they didn't make you clean all your crap up, and that they let you through at all, seems to make me feel that your story is completely fabricated.