> I think the better approach is to first ask yourself whether or not the employer has a history of doing this kind of thing. Do > they treat you well when times are good and call on you to step up when times are bad?
I would say this is the point you should consider: can you trust your employer -- i.e., your boss, your boss's boss, & anyone else you can identify in the food chain, NOT the company or corporation itself -- to pull these kinds of stunts, or is this standard operating procedure where you work?
My guess about the person who submitted this question is that she/he is either: brand new to the company, & this is the first time she/he has been confronted with this kind of work environment; or probably has sensed this company has a tendency to ``manage by chaos" in every situation.
This all comes down to a matter of trust: do you trust the people who are putting you in this situation to remember that you are going the extra distance for them, or will they forget about this the minute the project is out the door? Decide accordingly.
Geoff
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 1
> For the most part younger kids learn piano better simply because they put in the time and are willing try new things. My > adult students often progress much faster than my younger students. Its only that most adults also have complex lifes already > and can't put in the time a little kid can.
I've had this exact point drumed in on me in the last month. I have an old Sparc 10 that I've been meaning to get working, install Linux or NetBSD, but have not been able to find the time. (I know I could get this done if I had a free Saturday afternoon, but my wife wants me to help with chores, go shopping or do something fun with her every weekend.) So the computer sits off in the corner, with all of the parts I have collected for it, & I hope that when I finally get the time, I don't have work too hard in finding the instructions once again.
And also hope that something else has not come along in the meantime to claim my free time, & force me to conclude that all of these goodies would be best enjoyed by someone else.
(Why play around with 12-year old, obsolete technology? Why not? Intel architecture may not always rule the roost, & it's nice to learn about another way to solve some problems.)
FWIW, I find the best book to curl up with before going to sleep is an academic history on Ancient or Medieval history -- the same kind of thing I read when I was younger.
> Well, ESR's ego is so big that he genuinely doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't recognize his genius. Shater's > ego is so big that he doesn't care if anyone else thinks he's a genius. Therefore 1 ESR != 1 Shatner, because they're > different enough that neither is a subset of the other.
Great. Now we have units of measure that are at non-Euclidean angles to each other. (Or is this something only a hacker would appreciate?)
> IMESHO the NDA is safe to sign because The SCO Group are about to become a memory, a bad dream.
Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it. Consider the following conversation:
SCO Flunky: Boss, we've got $16.28 in the corporate bank account, & paychecks are going out Friday.
McBride: Damn, I should've not taken that cruse in the Carrabean & billed it to the company! Aw well, what do we have that we can sell quickly for cash?
SF: Microsoft has a standing offer of $15 million for our rights to the UNIX code.
McBride: Naw, if we sell them that, it's the end of our business, & we might as well kiss that billion we're suing IBM for good-bye. I'll get heck from the Canopy group for doing that.
SF: Thrillbert has raised his buy-out offer for the SCO Group to $61.-- & the complete DVD collection of ``Star Trek: the Next Generation".
McBride: Nope, that won't make the nut either.
SF: Hmm. What if we sell a number of potential outstanding NDA violations to another company for a few hundred thousand dollars. That'll pay the salaries of the remaining employees: you, me & that cute blonde you claim is just your personal secretary.
McBride: How about this -- what if we sell a number of potential outstanding NDA violations to another company for a few hundred thousand dollars. That'll pay the salaries of the remaining employees: you, me & that cute blonde who is just my personal secretary.
SF: But that's what I just suggested!
McBride: Silly rabbit! (punches SF in the arm) Haven't you figured out yet that CEO's always take credit for every good idea?
Geoff
Re:Same comments in code?
on
Latest SCO News
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> That would be pretty interesting. If the comments are worded the same, that could be pretty convicing evidence.
Unless in the SCO Group's code there's plenty of examples like this one from lib/vsprintf.c --
``/* Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up:-) */"
Easy one. As the ancients used to say, ``The only difference between a king & bandits is justice."
And as a more recent writer once stated, ``whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
[Rant follows] I am more than sick & tired of various persons whining that politicians are corrupt, bought by corporations or special interests, & are only interested in stealing their liberties. If you believe this is the case FSCKING DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! You have the rights of petitioning the government or taking up arms (at least in the US -- it is different in other countries, who are excused from this rant). If you ARE NOT going to bother to do either, then check out & shut up. you are annoying those who are.
The politicians will continue to be corrupt as long as you allow them. [end of rant]
> The real measure of bloat is how many features are provided to you with no real reason to believe that you want them.
I think that gets to the heart of the matter: bloat is the stuff included in a program that you do not want, & cannot get rid of. Some programmers have faced this problem, & offer solutions (e.g., the case of emacs in the parent post). Other programmers only realize this is an issue late, & leave it to their non-programming colleagues to address (e.g., the typical PR response by a company many people here hate, ``But our customers have asked for these features!")
The reason I like Linux is that I know I always have a way to trim the stuff I don't want from the programs I run; the reason I dislike almost every distribution is that they were created without this requirement clearly addressed to my satisfaction.
YMMV.
Geoff
IBM has addressed this
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Actually I do not quite understand IBM. Why the hell are they giving this a chance to be viewed in Utah?
Actually, IBM has moved that this lawsuit be tried in federal court. Both the court & IBM are waiting for the SCO Group's reponse. Evidentally, the SCO Group is too busy talking to the press, rather than talking to the judge.
In any case, MacBride & his ilk have to deal with this motion before it can go to trial. No telling how much it will cost them in legal fees to respond; obviously less for them than IBM.
Geoff
It's not as Funny as You Might Think
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I just had a look at SCOX's stock on Yahoo. They closed up about 12% from yesterday's close.
I can't help but suspect this increase in price was due to thrillbert's buyout offer.
At a time when any sane, intelligent individual would be lying low & planning a way out of this mess, McBride has decided to commit career suicide in the most visible & gory manner imaginable.
Most executives have no problem with McBride's attempt to sue IBM for alleged property theft -- it's a stunt many of them have wet dreams of pulling off. And many have no problem with the fact he failed in this attempt. What I expect almost all of them have a problem with was that he didn't do his homework: he knew Novell still owned enough of the UNIX intellectual property treasure box to undercut his case, & failed to get that part in hand before he went hunting for bear. (And the Open Group also happened to own the UNIX trademark & standard, which further dilutes the SCO Group's lawsuit.)
At this rate, McBride better hope he'd got a fat severence package from his employer & that it's well-sheltered from the SCO Group's eventual bankrupcy. Because not only has he just ended his career as a corporate executive (PHB or otherwise), he's working on limiting his other career options.
Obviously he's definitely not getting a job at IBM or any other company that does work for IBM -- & that covers a lot of potential employers. And showing that he failed to make this deal work isn't going give any other potential employer -- either in the high-tech industry or outside of it -- a warm feeling about him. This loose talk about suing Torvalds is only going to alienate more potential employers.
Threatening to sue Linus Torvalds at this point, frankly, suggests that McBride is mentally unstable. Torvalds has stated many times that this whole lawsuit is barely on his radar, & has only an off-the-cuff opinion about the whole matter. And even if McBride could prove Torvalds intentionally harmed his company, how much money could he get out of him? More than a few hundred thousand dollars?
I wouldn't be surprised if McBride appears in public later this week rolling a pair of ball-bearings in his hand & threatening to sue an unnamed SCO Group employee for stealing the strawberries from the company kitchen.
Geoff
ESR's Errors
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> There have been several posts from people who are upset with what they say is revisionist history from ESR.
There are numerous places in this paper where ESR gets his facts wrong, & not a few typos (e.g. the genealogical chart he provides for UNIX post-v.7 out _does_ show the lineage of AIX). And he can't help but add a section or two about his pet theory about how wonderful Open Source is.
HOWEVER, there are far less errors in ESR's history of UNIX than in the SCO Group's. The biases in their narrative distort the facts; ESR's bias does not. If the two or three sections where he waxes prophetic about Open Source are removed, the basic facts of the relationship between SCO UNIX, IBM & Linux remain.
I only hope that people bring these errors to ESR's attention, & that he proves his assertion of the superiority of Open Source by making the nescessary bug fixes. (Or someone else will prove it by forking his white paper, with the necessary improvements.;-)
> Phil was kind enough to tell me I was an idiot (in those words) and told me he personally worked on that driver and it > was flawless.
A Microsoft programmer actually doing phone support???
Heh, I doubt even the people who work tier 1 & 2 support for Microsoft C & the other programming packages are even Microsoft employees anymore. (From what little I hear on the grapevine concerning MS, they've outsourced almost all of their phone support since 1995, if not earlier.) More likely, he was just some guy making a buck over minimum wage with delusions of adequacy. (Although you were correct to take the effort to put him in his place.)
And the probability is still higher that you were talking to Zaphod Beeblebrox, just before he left for London to pick up Trillian.
I know something about Dianetics & Scientology, & I looked for any sign of these inventions of Hubbard in the movie, & I could not see any. Unless achieving ``Clear" somehow involves having a bad haircut.
FWIW, the most common criticism I've encountered of Battlefield Earth was that it strained the viewer's credulity too many times.
> Not to start a flame war here, but if you think all cops in the US, > or perhaps even the overwhelming majority of cops in the US, > really actually know the difference between 'Right' and 'Wrong,' think again.
Actually, this probably applies to police officers anywhere. ISTR a study of racial attitudes done on policemen in the UK, & they discovered that a large number of them had racial views TO THE RIGHT of the National Front! (In US terms, this would be the equivalent of the KKK.)
Using this item to write about my principal point, what fascinates me is the fact he gave up a good income as a cop to become an entrepreneur -- a step backwards in income. Perhaps he failed to convince many -- if any -- of his colleagues that he was stable enough to be relied on in a pinch, & they ``encouraged" him to find employment elsewhere.
There are a lot of wanna-bes who dream of being a cop that even the most nightmarish department wouldn't hire if that guy was the only one available. Maybe this spammer was one of them who somehow slipped thru the filters created to keep his ilk out.
>But I assure you, he wrote these answers himself instead of having them laundered by a PT team.
Hmm. Most CEOs wouldn't think of having a bunch of PT Cruiser drivers write their speech material, but may have a Public Relations consultant or two help them write what they say. Obviously Robertson has done neither.
I guess both Robertson & Roblimo both think outside of the box.
> Actually, seeing as Navigator 2.0 was released in February, 1996, and the patents have invention dates of May, 1996 at > the earliest, Netscape seems to be prior art.
Err, IIRC Netscape 2.0 came out in the summer of 1995. And as I was working at Stream at the time, answering calls about Netscape's box edition, it's likely that my memory is correct.
In any case, googling comp.lang.javascript ought to furnish clear evidence when Netscape first implemented frames in their browser.
Unfortunately, your answer is very close to what Chairman Mao wrote in his Little Red Book: he tells the ancient Chinese tale of the old man who enlisted his family to move a mountain, one stone at a time. And since your answer is so close to something a famous Communist said, obviously you must be a Communist.
Your mention of ``Open Source" is just more confirmation of this conclusion. (Although had you said ``Free software", your Microsoft interviewer would be on the phone to Ashcroft immediately.)
Sorry, there is no opening for you at MS -- you're doomed to remaining part of the human race.
> Anybody stop to think about what might happen is Larry Ellison buys them instead?
I can imagine the press conference:
``We decided a suicidally stupid strategy wasn't enough. We sold ourselves to an egocentric CEO who has misunderstood most of the technology trends for the last 10 years. We believe he will take our already noteworthy actions to the next level. He will answer questions in just a moment, after he's done putting the moves on our receptionist."
Heh. What came first to my mind when I saw this was the punchline to an old joke about the guy who finds his wife in bed with another man & puts a gun to his head:
Seriously. From reading the claims in this patent, he appears to be describing SMTP, with its use of human-readable text in handshaking, & the messages exchanged when transfering the body of the mail or a uuencoded attachment. (Note: this protocol -- including the handshaking & confirmation message codes -- is the basis for almost every other network protocol out there, such as FTP & HTTP.)
Then again, he lists a number of claims such as the ISO 7-layer networking model, & the ability of a daemon or service on one computer to assign a port for the daemon or service on another computer to send data to. In other words, running SMTP on a multitasking system like UNIX.
(More reading.)
Sheesh! It looks like he's attempting to patent the concept of interacting with a multitasking computer over a network above the transport layer.
If that's the case, he's going to need a lot of luck to enforce that patent. RFC 821, which described one part of what he's claiming, has been around since 1982. And it was implimented on multitasking computers like UNIX & VMS almost immediately.
Unless he's thinking of one specific application of all of this technology that does not infringe on existing art. Claim 3 might explain it:
``The method of claim 1, wherein said registration information includes general user information, said general user information including one or more of a user name, address, telephone number, beeper number, pager number, fax number, cellular number, email ID."
In other words, his invention is certified email -- which will put an end to this address spoofing that spammers indulge in!
> Beating that will take some major innovation (AI or some sort of highly intelligent ranking system)
Yes, and we all know Microsoft's track record with AI --
* Microsoft Bob * Clippy
Frankly, I don't like MS, nor how the people there ``innovate", but I hope they don't return to using that technology. I'm not looking forward to the collateral damage.
``Mathematicians described the advance -- announced at a conference in Germany -- as the most important breakthrough in the field in decades."
Oh, & proving Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995 was just another undergraduate exercise?
(For the non-math-nerds, proving true Fermat's Theorem -- that the formula a^n * b^n = c^n was insolveable where n is greater than 2 -- was considered for three _centuries_ to be _the_ principal challenge in mathematics. The man who did this -- Andrew Wiles -- spent about 30 years working on this, & succeeded only after a second try.)
I saw it when it first came out in the theatre, & I never thought it was overlooked, unlike your average foreign film like, say Klimat's ``Come and See".
Besides being an excellent movie, I like ``Miller's Crossing" for a very special reason -- it allowed me to state that ``Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer" was *NOT* the best film released in 1990.
``Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer", however, is underrated. What if they filmed a slasher movie (e.g., ``Friday the 13th") seriously, no tongue-in-cheek campiness, but an attempt to present a killer so believeable & frightening that you have to work to get the movie out of your head? That's what ``Henry" is, in a nutshell: a brilliantly done movie that affects you so much that you never want to see it again.
Slashdot Mirror
> I think the better approach is to first ask yourself whether or not the employer has a history of doing this kind of thing. Do
> they treat you well when times are good and call on you to step up when times are bad?
I would say this is the point you should consider: can you trust your employer -- i.e., your boss, your boss's boss, & anyone else you can identify in the food chain, NOT the company or corporation itself -- to pull these kinds of stunts, or is this standard operating procedure where you work?
My guess about the person who submitted this question is that she/he is either: brand new to the company, & this is the first time she/he has been confronted with this kind of work environment; or probably has sensed this company has a tendency to ``manage by chaos" in every situation.
This all comes down to a matter of trust: do you trust the people who are putting you in this situation to remember that you are going the extra distance for them, or will they forget about this the minute the project is out the door? Decide accordingly.
Geoff
> For the most part younger kids learn piano better simply because they put in the time and are willing try new things. My
> adult students often progress much faster than my younger students. Its only that most adults also have complex lifes already
> and can't put in the time a little kid can.
I've had this exact point drumed in on me in the last month. I have an old Sparc 10 that I've been meaning to get working, install Linux or NetBSD, but have not been able to find the time. (I know I could get this done if I had a free Saturday afternoon, but my wife wants me to help with chores, go shopping or do something fun with her every weekend.) So the computer sits off in the corner, with all of the parts I have collected for it, & I hope that when I finally get the time, I don't have work too hard in finding the instructions once again.
And also hope that something else has not come along in the meantime to claim my free time, & force me to conclude that all of these goodies would be best enjoyed by someone else.
(Why play around with 12-year old, obsolete technology? Why not? Intel architecture may not always rule the roost, & it's nice to learn about another way to solve some problems.)
FWIW, I find the best book to curl up with before going to sleep is an academic history on Ancient or Medieval history -- the same kind of thing I read when I was younger.
Geoff
> Well, ESR's ego is so big that he genuinely doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't recognize his genius. Shater's
> ego is so big that he doesn't care if anyone else thinks he's a genius. Therefore 1 ESR != 1 Shatner, because they're
> different enough that neither is a subset of the other.
Great. Now we have units of measure that are at non-Euclidean angles to each other. (Or is this something only a hacker would appreciate?)
Geoff
> IMESHO the NDA is safe to sign because The SCO Group are about to become a memory, a bad dream.
Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it. Consider the following conversation:
SCO Flunky: Boss, we've got $16.28 in the corporate bank account, & paychecks are going out Friday.
McBride: Damn, I should've not taken that cruse in the Carrabean & billed it to the company! Aw well, what do we have that we can sell quickly for cash?
SF: Microsoft has a standing offer of $15 million for our rights to the UNIX code.
McBride: Naw, if we sell them that, it's the end of our business, & we might as well kiss that billion we're suing IBM for good-bye. I'll get heck from the Canopy group for doing that.
SF: Thrillbert has raised his buy-out offer for the SCO Group to $61.-- & the complete DVD collection of ``Star Trek: the Next Generation".
McBride: Nope, that won't make the nut either.
SF: Hmm. What if we sell a number of potential outstanding NDA violations to another company for a few hundred thousand dollars. That'll pay the salaries of the remaining employees: you, me & that cute blonde you claim is just your personal secretary.
McBride: How about this -- what if we sell a number of potential outstanding NDA violations to another company for a few hundred thousand dollars. That'll pay the salaries of the remaining employees: you, me & that cute blonde who is just my personal secretary.
SF: But that's what I just suggested!
McBride: Silly rabbit! (punches SF in the arm) Haven't you figured out yet that CEO's always take credit for every good idea?
Geoff
> That would be pretty interesting. If the comments are worded the same, that could be pretty convicing evidence.
:-) */"
Unless in the SCO Group's code there's plenty of examples like this one from lib/vsprintf.c --
``/* Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
Geoff
> No, we do not have the right to take up arms.
Odd. I didn't know the Declaration of Independence had been revoked.
Geoff
> And the mafia?
Easy one. As the ancients used to say, ``The only difference between a king & bandits is justice."
And as a more recent writer once stated, ``whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
[Rant follows]
I am more than sick & tired of various persons whining that politicians are corrupt, bought by corporations or special interests, & are only interested in stealing their liberties. If you believe this is the case FSCKING DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! You have the rights of petitioning the government or taking up arms (at least in the US -- it is different in other countries, who are excused from this rant). If you ARE NOT going to bother to do either, then check out & shut up. you are annoying those who are.
The politicians will continue to be corrupt as long as you allow them.
[end of rant]
Geoff
> The real measure of bloat is how many features are provided to you with no real reason to believe that you want them.
I think that gets to the heart of the matter: bloat is the stuff included in a program that you do not want, & cannot get rid of. Some programmers have faced this problem, & offer solutions (e.g., the case of emacs in the parent post). Other programmers only realize this is an issue late, & leave it to their non-programming colleagues to address (e.g., the typical PR response by a company many people here hate, ``But our customers have asked for these features!")
The reason I like Linux is that I know I always have a way to trim the stuff I don't want from the programs I run; the reason I dislike almost every distribution is that they were created without this requirement clearly addressed to my satisfaction.
YMMV.
Geoff
> Actually I do not quite understand IBM. Why the hell are they giving this a chance to be viewed in Utah?
Actually, IBM has moved that this lawsuit be tried in federal court. Both the court & IBM are waiting for the SCO Group's reponse. Evidentally, the SCO Group is too busy talking to the press, rather than talking to the judge.
In any case, MacBride & his ilk have to deal with this motion before it can go to trial. No telling how much it will cost them in legal fees to respond; obviously less for them than IBM.
Geoff
I just had a look at SCOX's stock on Yahoo. They closed up about 12% from yesterday's close.
I can't help but suspect this increase in price was due to thrillbert's buyout offer.
Geoff
But he doesn't deny saying that.
Informative link. Thanks for sharing!
Geoff
At a time when any sane, intelligent individual would be lying low & planning a way out of this mess, McBride has decided to commit career suicide in the most visible & gory manner imaginable.
Most executives have no problem with McBride's attempt to sue IBM for alleged property theft -- it's a stunt many of them have wet dreams of pulling off. And many have no problem with the fact he failed in this attempt. What I expect almost all of them have a problem with was that he didn't do his homework: he knew Novell still owned enough of the UNIX intellectual property treasure box to undercut his case, & failed to get that part in hand before he went hunting for bear. (And the Open Group also happened to own the UNIX trademark & standard, which further dilutes the SCO Group's lawsuit.)
At this rate, McBride better hope he'd got a fat severence package from his employer & that it's well-sheltered from the SCO Group's eventual bankrupcy. Because not only has he just ended his career as a corporate executive (PHB or otherwise), he's working on limiting his other career options.
Obviously he's definitely not getting a job at IBM or any other company that does work for IBM -- & that covers a lot of potential employers. And showing that he failed to make this deal work isn't going give any other potential employer -- either in the high-tech industry or outside of it -- a warm feeling about him. This loose talk about suing Torvalds is only going to alienate more potential employers.
Threatening to sue Linus Torvalds at this point, frankly, suggests that McBride is mentally unstable. Torvalds has stated many times that this whole lawsuit is barely on his radar, & has only an off-the-cuff opinion about the whole matter. And even if McBride could prove Torvalds intentionally harmed his company, how much money could he get out of him? More than a few hundred thousand dollars?
I wouldn't be surprised if McBride appears in public later this week rolling a pair of ball-bearings in his hand & threatening to sue an unnamed SCO Group employee for stealing the strawberries from the company kitchen.
Geoff
> There have been several posts from people who are upset with what they say is revisionist history from ESR.
;-)
There are numerous places in this paper where ESR gets his facts wrong, & not a few typos (e.g. the genealogical chart he provides for UNIX post-v.7 out _does_ show the lineage of AIX). And he can't help but add a section or two about his pet theory about how wonderful Open Source is.
HOWEVER, there are far less errors in ESR's history of UNIX than in the SCO Group's. The biases in their narrative distort the facts; ESR's bias does not. If the two or three sections where he waxes prophetic about Open Source are removed, the basic facts of the relationship between SCO UNIX, IBM & Linux remain.
I only hope that people bring these errors to ESR's attention, & that he proves his assertion of the superiority of Open Source by making the nescessary bug fixes. (Or someone else will prove it by forking his white paper, with the necessary improvements.
Geoff
> Phil was kind enough to tell me I was an idiot (in those words) and told me he personally worked on that driver and it
> was flawless.
A Microsoft programmer actually doing phone support???
Heh, I doubt even the people who work tier 1 & 2 support for Microsoft C & the other programming packages are even Microsoft employees anymore. (From what little I hear on the grapevine concerning MS, they've outsourced almost all of their phone support since 1995, if not earlier.) More likely, he was just some guy making a buck over minimum wage with delusions of adequacy. (Although you were correct to take the effort to put him in his place.)
And the probability is still higher that you were talking to Zaphod Beeblebrox, just before he left for London to pick up Trillian.
Geoff
I know something about Dianetics & Scientology, & I looked for any sign of these inventions of Hubbard in the movie, & I could not see any. Unless achieving ``Clear" somehow involves having a bad haircut.
FWIW, the most common criticism I've encountered of Battlefield Earth was that it strained the viewer's credulity too many times.
Geoff
> Not to start a flame war here, but if you think all cops in the US,
> or perhaps even the overwhelming majority of cops in the US,
> really actually know the difference between 'Right' and 'Wrong,' think again.
Actually, this probably applies to police officers anywhere. ISTR a study of racial attitudes done on policemen in the UK, & they discovered that a large number of them had racial views TO THE RIGHT of the National Front! (In US terms, this would be the equivalent of the KKK.)
Using this item to write about my principal point, what fascinates me is the fact he gave up a good income as a cop to become an entrepreneur -- a step backwards in income. Perhaps he failed to convince many -- if any -- of his colleagues that he was stable enough to be relied on in a pinch, & they ``encouraged" him to find employment elsewhere.
There are a lot of wanna-bes who dream of being a cop that even the most nightmarish department wouldn't hire if that guy was the only one available. Maybe this spammer was one of them who somehow slipped thru the filters created to keep his ilk out.
Geoff
Roblimo writes:
>But I assure you, he wrote these answers himself instead of having them laundered by a PT team.
Hmm. Most CEOs wouldn't think of having a bunch of PT Cruiser drivers write their speech material, but may have a Public Relations consultant or two help them write what they say. Obviously Robertson has done neither.
I guess both Robertson & Roblimo both think outside of the box.
Geoff
> Actually, seeing as Navigator 2.0 was released in February, 1996, and the patents have invention dates of May, 1996 at
> the earliest, Netscape seems to be prior art.
Err, IIRC Netscape 2.0 came out in the summer of 1995. And as I was working at Stream at the time, answering calls about Netscape's box edition, it's likely that my memory is correct.
In any case, googling comp.lang.javascript ought to furnish clear evidence when Netscape first implemented frames in their browser.
Geoff
Unfortunately, your answer is very close to what Chairman Mao wrote in his Little Red Book: he tells the ancient Chinese tale of the old man who enlisted his family to move a mountain, one stone at a time. And since your answer is so close to something a famous Communist said, obviously you must be a Communist.
Your mention of ``Open Source" is just more confirmation of this conclusion. (Although had you said ``Free software", your Microsoft interviewer would be on the phone to Ashcroft immediately.)
Sorry, there is no opening for you at MS -- you're doomed to remaining part of the human race.
Geoff
> Anybody stop to think about what might happen is Larry Ellison buys them instead?
I can imagine the press conference:
``We decided a suicidally stupid strategy wasn't enough. We sold ourselves to an egocentric CEO who has misunderstood most of the technology trends for the last 10 years. We believe he will take our already noteworthy actions to the next level. He will answer questions in just a moment, after he's done putting the moves on our receptionist."
Geoff
Heh. What came first to my mind when I saw this was the punchline to an old joke about the guy who finds his wife in bed with another man & puts a gun to his head:
``Don't laugh -- you're next."
Geoff
Seriously. From reading the claims in this patent, he appears to be describing SMTP, with its use of human-readable text in handshaking, & the messages exchanged when transfering the body of the mail or a uuencoded attachment. (Note: this protocol -- including the handshaking & confirmation message codes -- is the basis for almost every other network protocol out there, such as FTP & HTTP.)
Then again, he lists a number of claims such as the ISO 7-layer networking model, & the ability of a daemon or service on one computer to assign a port for the daemon or service on another computer to send data to. In other words, running SMTP on a multitasking system like UNIX.
(More reading.)
Sheesh! It looks like he's attempting to patent the concept of interacting with a multitasking computer over a network above the transport layer.
If that's the case, he's going to need a lot of luck to enforce that patent. RFC 821, which described one part of what he's claiming, has been around since 1982. And it was implimented on multitasking computers like UNIX & VMS almost immediately.
Unless he's thinking of one specific application of all of this technology that does not infringe on existing art. Claim 3 might explain it:
``The method of claim 1, wherein said registration information includes general user information, said general user information including one or more of a user name, address, telephone number, beeper number, pager number, fax number, cellular number, email ID."
In other words, his invention is certified email -- which will put an end to this address spoofing that spammers indulge in!
Geoff
> Beating that will take some major innovation (AI or some sort of highly intelligent ranking system)
Yes, and we all know Microsoft's track record with AI --
* Microsoft Bob
* Clippy
Frankly, I don't like MS, nor how the people there ``innovate", but I hope they don't return to using that technology. I'm not looking forward to the collateral damage.
Geoff
From the Mercury News:
``Mathematicians described the advance -- announced at a conference in Germany -- as the most important breakthrough in the field in decades."
Oh, & proving Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995 was just another undergraduate exercise?
(For the non-math-nerds, proving true Fermat's Theorem -- that the formula a^n * b^n = c^n was insolveable where n is greater than 2 -- was considered for three _centuries_ to be _the_ principal challenge in mathematics. The man who did this -- Andrew Wiles -- spent about 30 years working on this, & succeeded only after a second try.)
Geoff
I saw it when it first came out in the theatre, & I never thought it was overlooked, unlike your average foreign film like, say Klimat's ``Come and See".
Besides being an excellent movie, I like ``Miller's Crossing" for a very special reason -- it allowed me to state that ``Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer" was *NOT* the best film released in 1990.
``Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer", however, is underrated. What if they filmed a slasher movie (e.g., ``Friday the 13th") seriously, no tongue-in-cheek campiness, but an attempt to present a killer so believeable & frightening that you have to work to get the movie out of your head? That's what ``Henry" is, in a nutshell: a brilliantly done movie that affects you so much that you never want to see it again.
Geoff