It is not that Samsung's patents are "so essential" it is that Samsung chose to share their patents in the definition of a standard. In doing so they committed to licensing only those patents under FRAND terms. The remainder of their patent portfolio is theirs to license, or not, as they please. They may have an essential patent to curved glass and Apple will never be able to use it, that is fine. This only applies to the patents that were submitted to a standards pool with a contractual obligation to non-discriminatory licensing.
Yes, usda.gov is down because of a DOS attack. But I don't think this attack can be measured in Gbits, GB/sec, GB/sec^2... In this case the attack is coming from a well known zombie botnet called congress. They measure bandwidth in tubes.
I honestly don't think FEMA came in and told them to leave just to be bossy. They are in charge of the area, and having drones flying around their airspace is just one more thing they have to worry about / deal with / be at risk of running into. Could this have been handled better? Yes. It sounds like the drones were providing a valuable service, and in hindsight it would probably make sense for FEMA to try to collaborate here.
The most likely scenario in my mind is that FEMA has a plan on how they will handle this situation. The plan comes from tons of experience with disaster relief. While these [don't call them] drones provide functionality that is useful, they do not know how to work them in with the things they know they have to do. If they take time to figure out how to leverage the option available they risk dropping the ball on issues that they know are time critical. And we all know how well that will go over in the press and popular opinion.
I think it is unfortunate that they were not able to be more flexible with their plan - obviously all plans have to react to the realities of the situation, so they have some flexibility, just not enough in this case. It will be interesting to see if they do a postmortem and add [don't call them] drones to their future response plans.
Did you say the same thing when Apple switch to x86 and started offering Bootcamp for people to use Windows on their Macs?
No. They were still providing Mac, with the Mac OS experience. If Apple provides an iPhone with iOS that can dual boot to Android, I won't be spelling doom and gloom for them either.
Why would you think that Apple making Android phones would be successful? If Apple was to provide the iPhone hardware with the same experience as the Nexus, why would people pay Apple for something they can get cheaper? I would argue that if Apple makes Android phones they will be in a world of hurt.
Now it might prove true that at some point Android dominance is sufficiently large that iOS ceases to be profitable. At which point I would argue that Apple would leave the phone business. Look at Apple 7 years ago, they were making money hand over fist with the iPod. Today the iPod is dead product walking. Apple isn't exactly dead just because they lost their cash cow. Apple can do more than phones, and there may come a day when they don't do phones. But the day they make Android phones is the day that I worry that they have lost their raison d'être.
How about a compromise (that should get both sides to down vote me to oblivion...)
Patent law should be about technical merits. Tort law covers ethics. It is ok to own a patent on "insert some horrible and amoral process here", but it is illegal to use it. This is the legal equivalent to breaking a function into two separate functions, each one serves a purpose and is not overly obfuscated. We just have to remember to call both functions.
The average game developer leaves the industry after 5 years. The reason is that as much fun as it is to play a game at the end of the day, you are never able to play your game until it is complete and by then you are exhausted and burned out and the last thing you want to do is play your game. Of all the games that I have shipped I have never played one of them after they shipped.This is a hard industry and it is not for everyone (most)
The next consideration is that just because you qualified for a job offer outside of the game industry doesn't mean that you'll get an offer in the game industry. Do you have any demos that show that you can make a video game. I can promise you that I won't look twice at a college applicant that doesn't have his own project. It doesn't have to be big, it has to show polish. It can not be a class project, it has to be something that shows me what you can do and are passionate about. If you are not passionate enough to be making games on your own you won't survive the first year.
So if you have an offer, but are considering going into games, the clock is ticking to get an offer from a game developer. If you can't get one before your current offer expires, then take the current offer. If you still have a dream of making games, keep working on your demo (i.e. continue learning) and apply for jobs. It is always easier to find a job when you have a job already.
That way, everyone who's interested gets a good look at it and come up with the appropriate patches.
The only appropriate patch that I'm willing to trust is one that comes from a recall from my manufacturer. I'm not willing to look for a curated nightly on git for my car breaks. There might be one or two in the/. community that would consider this, but the 99.9999% case is not going to do this.
going to the automotive companies first (and hoping that someone there realizes the potential and doesn't just try to hide it), just delays an effective roll-out of patches, and puts countermeasures dangerously behind the initial attempts at exploits.
Not giving it to the auto makers delays the only roll out of patches and counter measures. This isn't a linux distro that was installed by people who think they are competent to install their own patches, this is the automobile industry whose customers will be looking to them and no one else for a fix.
If your assumption that they might try to ignore the problem happens, then they'll need more time not less time to implement a fix. I can see an argument for "Hey automakers, here is a vulnerability in your braking system we will be reporting on it in 2 months time but wanted to let you know first" And if the automakers get back with you and show that they are actually working on a fix and that they need some more time you work in good faith with them. But I can't see any good reason to give the automakers any less time.
Current mobile seems to cap out at 2MB of RAM. There is a reason for this - power consumption. RAM requires a continuous trickle of power to maintain state. An increase in RAM leads to a direct increase in power consumption. Mobile improvements are going to be focused on power consumption rather than raw power. Moore's law will be followed, but it will not result in something that is 2x more RAM, it will result in something that is 2x less power drain. Ok, I will grant you that it will probably be a mix - some increase in RAM, some increase in computation, but a significant increase in battery life.
To go from 2GB to 30GB following Moore's law would take 8 years. I contend that it will take longer than that because we won't see exact doubling of specs due to improvements in power. Either way, 10 years is far enough out that I think the summary claiming that this will come to mobile is far fetched for now.
I quoted the summary, and pointed out that it is ridiculous to expect that this tech will be coming to mobile anytime soon. I pointed out that the only "mobile" that I can see this working on is something that I would have to lug around. So to use your socratic method, Why are you asking if my phone can decode video in realtime and why where you asking about weight and power, when I specifically was saying that this is not anything close to a mobile configuration?
One day this tech will be able to run on mobile, that's just the nature of progress. But one day I will also have the power of today's super computer in my pocket. Today, and for the foreseeable future this tech requires high end desktop level computers. When we get that level of computational power in mobile it will be far enough in the future that trying to predict that this tech is specifically going to be used for image processing is ludicrous.
"...might bring high power visual recognition to simple desktops and even mobile computers... computed in less than 20 seconds using nothing but a single, multi-core machine with 20GB of RAM."
Right... and by mobile computers you mean computers that I can lug from one desk to another.
Like F1, software also has a high iteration rate. And reverse engineering software is not easy, cheap or fast. It is easier to just develop your own solution.
Sorry I was being sarcastic, patent trolls try to project an image of inventors on the defensive despite the obvious "you have nothing except vague patents". (well, enough of them do)
Although true, that "industry" does not analogize to the rest of the world. From your article, F1 doesn't use patents because, if they get a patent on a technology, all of the other competitors will vote to have that technology disallowed. That simply doesn't exist in other industries, and without that sort of punitive over-arching regulation of an industry, there's no reason to suspect that the F1 experience should apply elsewhere.
Why they don't have patents is immaterial. The point is that they spend tons of money each week on innovation knowing that they do not have patent protections. This disproves the claim that unless we have patents companies will stop investing in research and innovation.
Put another way, here is an example of an industry where the patent lawyers showed up and said "hey, let us help protect your investment" and the collective response was "no thank you, we'll take the money and time saved in lawyer fees and invest it in more innovation". Meanwhile, the software industry under the protection of patents is not showing a dramatic increase in innovation from 1990 - 2010 compared to what happened before patents from 1960 - 1990.
Yes, but that's mostly out of date. The law on willful infringement is changing, quite reasonably too. At this point, merely reading a patent application will not be enough to support a finding of willful infringement.
As to your point, sure, a part supplier might have a patent on something, but the teams do not use patents. The teams are the ones doing the innovation to the tune of multiple millions per year. They innovate with a vigor rarely seen in industries and have no desire to seek patent protection.
I also understand the disclosure part. Sure some people talk about their patents, but because of the risk of triple damages most try to avoid listening. I'm not saying that there is 0 public discourse, I'm saying that there is far less of it than intended or useful.
To recap - two big justifications for patents are
1) protect innovation
2) prevent trade secrets, to make the sate of the art public
I've provided a reference that clearly states that highly competitive industries can survive just fine without patents, [even if as you point out, related industries use patents]. And there are plenty of references here on/. that corroborate my statement that people do not look through the patent applications due to the risk of triple damages.
Formula 1 has zero use for patents. If a team invents something useful they try to keep it secret. If a team were to apply for a patent for one of their inventions, the other teams would simply band together and change the rules to explicitly ban that patent from use in the race cars. Despite this, the teams spend tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) every year on the development of their cars. Top teams bring changes and innovations every two weeks (average time between races). Relax Corporate America, innovation will survive just fine without software patents.
Now if someone points out that what F1 does is employ Trade Secrets, and the idea behind patents is that they allow for the state of the art to be shared in the public domain, I have to agree. But the actual result of the patent system is that no one reads about patents (knowingly infringing a patent results in triple damages), so the patent system isn't even achieving that goal.
These large corporations are claiming to have the people's interests in mind, yet they are only asking for a very narrow change that really doesn't affect the status quo. If they really are concerned with the extent of the surveillance, why don't they use their extensive lobbying clout to propose actual changes to the laws that would require transparency to the entire process starting with requiring judicial approval for any monitoring.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not that Samsung's patents are "so essential" it is that Samsung chose to share their patents in the definition of a standard. In doing so they committed to licensing only those patents under FRAND terms. The remainder of their patent portfolio is theirs to license, or not, as they please. They may have an essential patent to curved glass and Apple will never be able to use it, that is fine. This only applies to the patents that were submitted to a standards pool with a contractual obligation to non-discriminatory licensing.
Yes, usda.gov is down because of a DOS attack. But I don't think this attack can be measured in Gbits, GB/sec, GB/sec^2... In this case the attack is coming from a well known zombie botnet called congress. They measure bandwidth in tubes.
Oh, I don't know... maybe in 2011? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-fema-response_n_939545.html
It made my head hurt, but I can understand why it mad your head hurt.
This.
I honestly don't think FEMA came in and told them to leave just to be bossy. They are in charge of the area, and having drones flying around their airspace is just one more thing they have to worry about / deal with / be at risk of running into. Could this have been handled better? Yes. It sounds like the drones were providing a valuable service, and in hindsight it would probably make sense for FEMA to try to collaborate here.
The most likely scenario in my mind is that FEMA has a plan on how they will handle this situation. The plan comes from tons of experience with disaster relief. While these [don't call them] drones provide functionality that is useful, they do not know how to work them in with the things they know they have to do. If they take time to figure out how to leverage the option available they risk dropping the ball on issues that they know are time critical. And we all know how well that will go over in the press and popular opinion.
I think it is unfortunate that they were not able to be more flexible with their plan - obviously all plans have to react to the realities of the situation, so they have some flexibility, just not enough in this case. It will be interesting to see if they do a postmortem and add [don't call them] drones to their future response plans.
Did you say the same thing when Apple switch to x86 and started offering Bootcamp for people to use Windows on their Macs?
No. They were still providing Mac, with the Mac OS experience. If Apple provides an iPhone with iOS that can dual boot to Android, I won't be spelling doom and gloom for them either.
Why would you think that Apple making Android phones would be successful? If Apple was to provide the iPhone hardware with the same experience as the Nexus, why would people pay Apple for something they can get cheaper? I would argue that if Apple makes Android phones they will be in a world of hurt.
Now it might prove true that at some point Android dominance is sufficiently large that iOS ceases to be profitable. At which point I would argue that Apple would leave the phone business. Look at Apple 7 years ago, they were making money hand over fist with the iPod. Today the iPod is dead product walking. Apple isn't exactly dead just because they lost their cash cow. Apple can do more than phones, and there may come a day when they don't do phones. But the day they make Android phones is the day that I worry that they have lost their raison d'être.
How about a compromise (that should get both sides to down vote me to oblivion...) Patent law should be about technical merits. Tort law covers ethics. It is ok to own a patent on "insert some horrible and amoral process here", but it is illegal to use it. This is the legal equivalent to breaking a function into two separate functions, each one serves a purpose and is not overly obfuscated. We just have to remember to call both functions.
The average game developer leaves the industry after 5 years. The reason is that as much fun as it is to play a game at the end of the day, you are never able to play your game until it is complete and by then you are exhausted and burned out and the last thing you want to do is play your game. Of all the games that I have shipped I have never played one of them after they shipped.This is a hard industry and it is not for everyone (most)
The next consideration is that just because you qualified for a job offer outside of the game industry doesn't mean that you'll get an offer in the game industry. Do you have any demos that show that you can make a video game. I can promise you that I won't look twice at a college applicant that doesn't have his own project. It doesn't have to be big, it has to show polish. It can not be a class project, it has to be something that shows me what you can do and are passionate about. If you are not passionate enough to be making games on your own you won't survive the first year.
So if you have an offer, but are considering going into games, the clock is ticking to get an offer from a game developer. If you can't get one before your current offer expires, then take the current offer. If you still have a dream of making games, keep working on your demo (i.e. continue learning) and apply for jobs. It is always easier to find a job when you have a job already.
That way, everyone who's interested gets a good look at it and come up with the appropriate patches.
The only appropriate patch that I'm willing to trust is one that comes from a recall from my manufacturer. I'm not willing to look for a curated nightly on git for my car breaks. There might be one or two in the /. community that would consider this, but the 99.9999% case is not going to do this.
going to the automotive companies first (and hoping that someone there realizes the potential and doesn't just try to hide it), just delays an effective roll-out of patches, and puts countermeasures dangerously behind the initial attempts at exploits.
Not giving it to the auto makers delays the only roll out of patches and counter measures. This isn't a linux distro that was installed by people who think they are competent to install their own patches, this is the automobile industry whose customers will be looking to them and no one else for a fix.
If your assumption that they might try to ignore the problem happens, then they'll need more time not less time to implement a fix. I can see an argument for "Hey automakers, here is a vulnerability in your braking system we will be reporting on it in 2 months time but wanted to let you know first" And if the automakers get back with you and show that they are actually working on a fix and that they need some more time you work in good faith with them. But I can't see any good reason to give the automakers any less time.
Current mobile seems to cap out at 2MB of RAM. There is a reason for this - power consumption. RAM requires a continuous trickle of power to maintain state. An increase in RAM leads to a direct increase in power consumption. Mobile improvements are going to be focused on power consumption rather than raw power. Moore's law will be followed, but it will not result in something that is 2x more RAM, it will result in something that is 2x less power drain. Ok, I will grant you that it will probably be a mix - some increase in RAM, some increase in computation, but a significant increase in battery life.
To go from 2GB to 30GB following Moore's law would take 8 years. I contend that it will take longer than that because we won't see exact doubling of specs due to improvements in power. Either way, 10 years is far enough out that I think the summary claiming that this will come to mobile is far fetched for now.
I quoted the summary, and pointed out that it is ridiculous to expect that this tech will be coming to mobile anytime soon. I pointed out that the only "mobile" that I can see this working on is something that I would have to lug around. So to use your socratic method, Why are you asking if my phone can decode video in realtime and why where you asking about weight and power, when I specifically was saying that this is not anything close to a mobile configuration?
One day this tech will be able to run on mobile, that's just the nature of progress. But one day I will also have the power of today's super computer in my pocket. Today, and for the foreseeable future this tech requires high end desktop level computers. When we get that level of computational power in mobile it will be far enough in the future that trying to predict that this tech is specifically going to be used for image processing is ludicrous.
"...might bring high power visual recognition to simple desktops and even mobile computers... computed in less than 20 seconds using nothing but a single, multi-core machine with 20GB of RAM."
Right... and by mobile computers you mean computers that I can lug from one desk to another.
Like F1, software also has a high iteration rate. And reverse engineering software is not easy, cheap or fast. It is easier to just develop your own solution.
Sorry I was being sarcastic, patent trolls try to project an image of inventors on the defensive despite the obvious "you have nothing except vague patents". (well, enough of them do)
Although true, that "industry" does not analogize to the rest of the world. From your article, F1 doesn't use patents because, if they get a patent on a technology, all of the other competitors will vote to have that technology disallowed. That simply doesn't exist in other industries, and without that sort of punitive over-arching regulation of an industry, there's no reason to suspect that the F1 experience should apply elsewhere.
Why they don't have patents is immaterial. The point is that they spend tons of money each week on innovation knowing that they do not have patent protections. This disproves the claim that unless we have patents companies will stop investing in research and innovation.
Put another way, here is an example of an industry where the patent lawyers showed up and said "hey, let us help protect your investment" and the collective response was "no thank you, we'll take the money and time saved in lawyer fees and invest it in more innovation". Meanwhile, the software industry under the protection of patents is not showing a dramatic increase in innovation from 1990 - 2010 compared to what happened before patents from 1960 - 1990.
Yes, but that's mostly out of date. The law on willful infringement is changing, quite reasonably too. At this point, merely reading a patent application will not be enough to support a finding of willful infringement.
Good to know, I will have to read up on that.
Alright, here is a reference: http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2012/01/patents-in-f1-explained/
/. that corroborate my statement that people do not look through the patent applications due to the risk of triple damages.
As to your point, sure, a part supplier might have a patent on something, but the teams do not use patents. The teams are the ones doing the innovation to the tune of multiple millions per year. They innovate with a vigor rarely seen in industries and have no desire to seek patent protection.
I also understand the disclosure part. Sure some people talk about their patents, but because of the risk of triple damages most try to avoid listening. I'm not saying that there is 0 public discourse, I'm saying that there is far less of it than intended or useful.
To recap - two big justifications for patents are
1) protect innovation
2) prevent trade secrets, to make the sate of the art public
I've provided a reference that clearly states that highly competitive industries can survive just fine without patents, [even if as you point out, related industries use patents]. And there are plenty of references here on
Formula 1 has zero use for patents. If a team invents something useful they try to keep it secret. If a team were to apply for a patent for one of their inventions, the other teams would simply band together and change the rules to explicitly ban that patent from use in the race cars. Despite this, the teams spend tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) every year on the development of their cars. Top teams bring changes and innovations every two weeks (average time between races). Relax Corporate America, innovation will survive just fine without software patents.
Now if someone points out that what F1 does is employ Trade Secrets, and the idea behind patents is that they allow for the state of the art to be shared in the public domain, I have to agree. But the actual result of the patent system is that no one reads about patents (knowingly infringing a patent results in triple damages), so the patent system isn't even achieving that goal.
[...] is there any company which says that it relies on software patents to do business in software, rather than as a defensive/offensive mechanism?
Yes, they are called patent trolls.
These large corporations are claiming to have the people's interests in mind, yet they are only asking for a very narrow change that really doesn't affect the status quo. If they really are concerned with the extent of the surveillance, why don't they use their extensive lobbying clout to propose actual changes to the laws that would require transparency to the entire process starting with requiring judicial approval for any monitoring.
Ya, the "1%" rich people totally didnt exist and take advantage of political favors prior to Reagan being elected. It was like POOF! Like magic.
The 1% did exist before Reagan, but they are a lot more oneprecenty today. Regardless of why.
Did you look at the numbers that I provided a link for? In the 80's we we much closer to what you are advocating than we are today.
Unless you have a perfect distribution of wealth there will always be a top 1%. What has happened to the top 1% in the country since the '80's is what the parent was talking about. http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/25-graphics-showing-upward-redistribution-of-income-and-wealth-in-usa-since-1979/
Hopefully my reply to your comment is moderated as less boneheaded than my previous comment...
Nice. so much for the preview then...