As the author of TFA states, changes to our cultural ideas of "how things get done" are indeed glacial. But that's no reason that business in the 21st Century can't take a couple small steps in the right direction.
I have been lucky enough in the past to work for a forward-thinking company that understood that allowing their employees to follow the threads of their own ideas could be enormously profitable overall to the company. Job descriptions are far too restrictive, IMHO, and should only be used as base guidelines. This is not to say that management should push employees outside of the job description and expect more, but that they should allow and encourage employees to explore new methods and ideas.
I've written quite a bit of software over the years for employers with this "Go ahead, give it a try" mindset -- software that was completely off the track of what I was actually "hired to do." Yes, I did my job, but by allowing my job to morph as my interests drove it, the company ultimately ended up with new products and services to offer that they hadn't envisaged. I was paid well for the work that I'd prefer to be doing, and everyone was happy on both sides of the equation.
So, managers of the world, loosen the grip on the reins a bit. Let a little entropy into the system and see what gets produced...
...Amazon is attempting to patent the business practice of being both the owner of the mall and the payment processor rolled into one.
No, not a lot of new ideas here. No, not patent worthy in my estimation.
That being said, I do believe there is a market for a web services aggregator like this model - small web services, independently operated, but tied together through a unified interface and payment system would offer a lot of convenience for the non-/. crowd out there. There's a reason that the Yellow Pages continues to make money, and there's a reason that PayPal is successful. Amazon wants to position yet another incarnation of themselves there; kudos. But patenting the concept seems like a decent waste of government resources and time.
But if it'll get the Federal Government off of the Hot Coffee bandwagon, eh, what's a little more damage to the patent system...
... it would probably be classified as pornography...
Having seen the original mini-game as unlocked from the original media (NOT the modified textures that are also being distributed), only the most Puritanical of local laws could deem this pornographic. It's fully clothed dry humping. That's all.
By movie standards, it'd be PG-13 using actual actors.
It's obvious that all these large companies with massive infrastructure want to extend the use of said infrastructure as much as possible.
But what I'm really waiting to see is whether or not any new/fringe players will make a move to implement a WiMAX grid that has decent redundancy and large-scale coverage and move away from the "ground-based" bandwidth carriers.
IMHO, that's where the really interesting dynamics come into play. FTTH, increased cable speed/features, expanded DSL offerings, that's all great. But show me a completely tetherless solution for my voice/data/entertainment needs with mass coverage and you've got me hooked for your hundreds a month, with probably less cost to you than to (insert cable co./telco here).
(a) will Rockstar report her to the local Dept of Social Services for providing the game to the 14 year old,
(b) will Rockstar turn around, if this lawsuit actually proceeds, and sue the modders for violating EULAs, and
(c) will Rockstar bite the bullet and start refusing to submit their games voluntarily to the ESRB for rating at all?
As far as I'm concerned, the hype surrounding this, the Congressional involvement, and the lack of parental responsibility in the equation are far more criminal than anything that Rockstar has done.
It may not be obvious to you -- or to Neal Stephenson, for that matter -- but today's Unix shells represent an extraordinary level of abstraction from the underlying bare metal.
Actually, in Snowcrash, Stephenson specifically notes that when a hacker (in the classic sense) wants to get something done, he does it not in a virtual environment or a GUI, but in a command line.
See? These guys are willing to go so far to skew the results of a study, they actually threw in extra letters so your anagram wouldn't come out right! The NERVE!
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As the author of TFA states, changes to our cultural ideas of "how things get done" are indeed glacial. But that's no reason that business in the 21st Century can't take a couple small steps in the right direction.
I have been lucky enough in the past to work for a forward-thinking company that understood that allowing their employees to follow the threads of their own ideas could be enormously profitable overall to the company. Job descriptions are far too restrictive, IMHO, and should only be used as base guidelines. This is not to say that management should push employees outside of the job description and expect more, but that they should allow and encourage employees to explore new methods and ideas.
I've written quite a bit of software over the years for employers with this "Go ahead, give it a try" mindset -- software that was completely off the track of what I was actually "hired to do." Yes, I did my job, but by allowing my job to morph as my interests drove it, the company ultimately ended up with new products and services to offer that they hadn't envisaged. I was paid well for the work that I'd prefer to be doing, and everyone was happy on both sides of the equation.
So, managers of the world, loosen the grip on the reins a bit. Let a little entropy into the system and see what gets produced...
...Amazon is attempting to patent the business practice of being both the owner of the mall and the payment processor rolled into one.
No, not a lot of new ideas here. No, not patent worthy in my estimation.
That being said, I do believe there is a market for a web services aggregator like this model - small web services, independently operated, but tied together through a unified interface and payment system would offer a lot of convenience for the non-/. crowd out there. There's a reason that the Yellow Pages continues to make money, and there's a reason that PayPal is successful. Amazon wants to position yet another incarnation of themselves there; kudos. But patenting the concept seems like a decent waste of government resources and time.
But if it'll get the Federal Government off of the Hot Coffee bandwagon, eh, what's a little more damage to the patent system...
... it would probably be classified as pornography...
Having seen the original mini-game as unlocked from the original media (NOT the modified textures that are also being distributed), only the most Puritanical of local laws could deem this pornographic. It's fully clothed dry humping. That's all.
By movie standards, it'd be PG-13 using actual actors.
It's obvious that all these large companies with massive infrastructure want to extend the use of said infrastructure as much as possible.
But what I'm really waiting to see is whether or not any new/fringe players will make a move to implement a WiMAX grid that has decent redundancy and large-scale coverage and move away from the "ground-based" bandwidth carriers.
IMHO, that's where the really interesting dynamics come into play. FTTH, increased cable speed/features, expanded DSL offerings, that's all great. But show me a completely tetherless solution for my voice/data/entertainment needs with mass coverage and you've got me hooked for your hundreds a month, with probably less cost to you than to (insert cable co./telco here).
...using the IE engine. Putting the javascript line into the location bar seems to automagically flip it to Firefox rendering.
Hm, you'd think that the folks at AOL believe IE's javascript handling is sub-standard or something...
...will be:
(a) will Rockstar report her to the local Dept of Social Services for providing the game to the 14 year old,
(b) will Rockstar turn around, if this lawsuit actually proceeds, and sue the modders for violating EULAs, and
(c) will Rockstar bite the bullet and start refusing to submit their games voluntarily to the ESRB for rating at all?
As far as I'm concerned, the hype surrounding this, the Congressional involvement, and the lack of parental responsibility in the equation are far more criminal than anything that Rockstar has done.
Some unheard of hack working at Wired...
That unheard-of hack actually was one of the co-founders of Wired.
You remember, back when they weren't owned by Conde Nast and published actual cutting-edge articles...
It may not be obvious to you -- or to Neal Stephenson, for that matter -- but today's Unix shells represent an extraordinary level of abstraction from the underlying bare metal.
Actually, in Snowcrash, Stephenson specifically notes that when a hacker (in the classic sense) wants to get something done, he does it not in a virtual environment or a GUI, but in a command line.
See? These guys are willing to go so far to skew the results of a study, they actually threw in extra letters so your anagram wouldn't come out right! The NERVE!
...much like http://www.google.com/alerts, hm?