A patent has to explain how the system works in written language, down to the individual components...
Yes, yes, quite correct for a regular patent.
But we are talking about a "design patent". They are an entirely different animal. From wikipedia "A US design patent covers the ornamental design for an object having practical utility."
I don't know of any other language that doesn't require you to download and install some sort of compiler, interpreter, SDK, or whatever, all of which are barriers to entry.
You are allegedly learning "computer science" or at the very least "computer programming". Being able to perform rudimentary tasks, such as file download and software installation on a computer is a reasonable prerequisite.
Just as someone taking a course in "toaster repair" or "toaster design principles" should already be familiar with toaster operation.
Plus, you have the advantage of using one of the most widely used languages on a platform that can distribute your code very easily and very portably.
Because after a few course hours on Javascript your main concern is how to distribute your apps? That's pretty optimistic.;)
The problem with javascript is 2 fold:
a) its a pretty warty language that's easy to hang yourself with, that's not a good teaching language.
b) the DOM is still pretty messy as a platform. Javascript on its own isn't the worst thing in the world, but the last thing you want for while your are teaching programming fundamentals is to get side tracked by some browser specific DOM issue.
The benefits of javascript that you highlighted are what make it a good language for consumer application development. But that is orthogonal to being a good language for learning how to program.
The fact that its everywhere really has no bearing on it being any good to learn with.
I'd honestly recommend anyone serious about learning to program start with something with a strong IDE (code formatting, syntax highlihgting) and an integrated debugger, good variable watch windows, good code stepping tools, accurate complilation error reporting, compilation warnings (unreachable code etc; assignment where equality testing is likely, etc), ability to set breakpoints/conditional breakpoints, and so forth.
Keep the focus on writing code, and watching it run.
A text editor and a browser and some "developer plugins"
is simply NOT a good learning environment, nor a good development environment. It may be what a lot of us are stuck with in the real world, and it maybe everywhere but that's not important.
if for no other reason than that the start-up cost is very close to negligible
Any number of languages and environements are free Eclipse for Java; Visual Studio Express for C#.
Like many of us here I self taught myself programming with Turbo Pascal after graduating from BASIC. And I consider Turbo Pascal to have been pretty much an ideal teaching language and environment.
The university I went to taught its first year programming in Modula-2; which in hindsight was a fine teaching language. (The language itself was fine, the debugging tools we had access to were non-existent).
Looking at the curriculum now, it appears they've updated to Python. I don't personally care for python as a language due to my objection to semantic whitespace, but that aside, I'd say its a decent teaching language and environment.
fair enough. and good point. But the use cases where people cite "twitter is really useful" tends to be to follow a particular news feed.
retweeting is rarely more than just noise, unless the rt is through an aggregator account... but then its really being used as news feed by its followers and the rt functionality isn't much more than a couple seconds of copy/paste with any RSS feed/aggregator.
As soon as "normal users" start retweeting; its usually just worthless noise.
reply/dm -- true enough that they are features not in RSS. But again, replies tend to be more noise than news, and DM -is little more than than what sms/email already does.
Text only (so worked with even simple phones via text message)
RSS subject lines are text only as well.
I'm not sure I could figure out, in a short time, how to set up an RSS feed that can be updated via SMS.
Yes, and one of the big features of iOS6 is that Siri will be able to tweet for you too... but this is not something I can imagine needing.
SMS -> RSS gateway isn't the most natural way of updating a news feed anyway.
If I were hosting an RSS feed (or more likely multiple feeds), I'd surely have an app on my phone to update it (them) and it would be dead simple to setup and use.
The event was doomed to fail anyway, if the organizers can't figure out how to keep one "hold-out" (for lack of a better word) in the loop through other means.
Who said the event failed? The point was that planning and organizing it on fb when you have hold outs doesn't work. As soon as they stopped using fb to coordinate, everything worked just fine.
I don't have a facebook account and refused to get one.
The whole platform falls on its face as an event organization platform if even one key person refuses to sign up to having their personal lives data mined.
I love facebook. It's an awesome idea. It'll survive and thrive.
I despise facebook. Its got potential as a concept. Social networks will survive and thrive -- but hopefully facebook will crash and burn to be replaced by something good.
Get some fresh minds working on more cool shit.
If your entire platform is the shit that is privacy invasion and advertising no matter what you build on it, it will eventually sink into that shit. Start over. Do it differently.
Facebook has changed all our lives whether you want to admit it or not.
It actually has had virtually zero impact on mine; but then I declined to get an account.
The sum total of its impact on me is that i see little blue "f" icons on a bunch of stuff that i ignore, and companies jibber about their facebook pages instead of their websites now. I don't visit their fb pages... and nothing of value was lost.
The fact that they DON'T have this is why iOS runs better (and IS better in all ways) then Android.
That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. The changes I'm suggesting wouldn't make the iOS experience one iota different for the vast majority of people.
Does the fact that my car's hood is unlocked and I can tinker with the engine make the car run any differently for the VAST majority of the people who don't tinker? Of course not.
Apples wants to make great products that customers love
They'd have more customer and more love if they added the ability to have a few more options.
The customers who like them the way they are would be fine. They don't go into settings -> advanced settings and change things that they don't understand anyway.
The inability to add 3rd party app stores, or to install 3rd party apps that "duplicate functionality but better" is that way because that is what "customers love".
Because I present, for my case of man being inherently flawed and evil unless taught not to be and enforced with laws and social codes,
Which side are you on. Those laws and social codes, especially the latter arise on their own.
All the evil you are referencing is usually sociopaths grabbing for power. The average person was content to provide for thier family, and party with their mates.
This kind of programming constitutes about 1% of the available jobs and 98% of the chest thumping on slashdot.
Haha, yeah! I work with contact lens design software, and I've written a couple applications to design rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses for fairly advanced scenarios (eyes with lasik scarring, diseases, extreme near/farsightedness, etc...) and the applications... yup there's a few thousand lines of mathematics... optics, ray tracing, geometry, etc. Fun.
And yup even here 99% of the actual code is wizards, input validation/error handling, menu, user prefrerences, data import/export, etc. "Counting beans and keeping records".
Google deliberately avoids the more challenging situations, and a LOT of those miles are highway.
There's a reason insurance rates for someone living in a small town in the country are lower. Right now, google is pretty much "that guy".
That's not to disparage what google has accomplished, but its premature to compare it to the safety record of a downtown urban commuter; driving through rush hour traffic to and from work in a major city daily.
I suppose you believe you are creating some kind of thoughtful response by making a trivial variation of what I posted.
disappointingly, you're not nearly as thoughtful as you thought you are.
more compellingly, you have not rebutted or even undermined my point. Indeed, you've carelessly (uncaringly!) demonstrated an example to support it.
Another original post brought to you by Zynga
(And indeed, this -would- violate copyright. While the idea itself cannot be copy protected, my expression of it too closely resembles yours, even though it is different, even if I change all the words, and even the sentence structure... suppose I were to translate it to Chinese.
You do realize that there are other ways to get software on your computer than "Steam", right?
I'm sure he does.
Just wondering because you sound like you believe that "Steam" and "piracy" are your only two options.
Why would anyone explore any option other than piracy after they already paid for the game on steam?
Oh... you mean "new games that he doesn't already have..." sure, for that looking at alternatives is reasonable. But if I've got 100 titles on steam, and they up and change the EULA on me and hold everything I bought for ransom against me agreeing to whatever new terms they've imagined for themselves then piracy is really the only option I consider reasonable.
Here are some choice quotes: "For the most part, Apple is replicating and expanding on existing features from the currently Google Maps version."
"Another new feature on iOS â" and one that Android users have also had in similar form for a while already â" is the ability to use voice commands."
"Transit directions â" another useful Google Maps feature â" is thankfully coming back in the form of Appleâ(TM)s own version of this service."
"Stand-alone turn-by-turn navigation apps from incumbents like TomTom and startups like Waze will likely become a niche product on iOS soon as well"
(so not only do they take something that already exists, and replicate it, but then they bundle it with their OS and completely marginalize the incumbents.)
In this case, what you suggested amounts to "government should punish itself" - something not very common for the US govt, wouldn't you say?
Nor terribly productive.
At best, they increase their budget by the amount of the fines, and then raise taxes to cover the increased budget.
At worst, they pay the fine without increasing their budget, and make cuts elsewhere... thereby ensuring that not only is there no money to improve the security that led to the first breach, but now they are probably running shorthanded increasing the odds of a second breach...
Punishing governement and large corporations is generally meaningless. We have to pierce the veil and go after individuals within them... fine or even imprison them personally.
Read the whole thread. The thread topic had drifted away from this specific case, to the more general question of whether or not anonomous speech was actually protected.
He responded that anonymous speech was in fact protected.
He never said the specific case at hand with Google and Oracle is actually anonomous speech.
After all, if somebody higher in the supply chain found out about one of their underlings poisoning his product and damaging not only his reputation, but his boss's reputation, and inviting law enforcement investigations into sudden deaths, what do you think the reaction would be?
The true job creators are the people who do real work to create real capital and wealth.
But the simple truth is that without someone buying it, Best Buy and all the jobs it offers now will go away in a few years. With a fresh multi-billions of dollars, and a good plan those jobs could be around indefinitely.
And if all the 'job creators' just went away, the market would solve the problem. That is what the free market is actually good at. We'd have a rush of new startups... without billionaires backing things we'd have smaller scale specialized appliance shops instead of a single big-box supermarket because that's all a regular person could put together. The more successful ones will absorb or destroy the less successful ones, and eventually we have a new best-buy. (Or not... if the market no longer needs one...)
Point remains -- Ayn Rand was wrong -- a so-called "job creators" caste isn't actually necessary. There will always be 'job creators'; remove the current crop and a new crop will take its place. Always.
Well its easy to commiserate with diminutive autonomous developers, even they don't get to possess an idea.
Zynga may be duplicating "ideas" from everyone but provided they author their own realization including drawing their own pictures, they are lawfully allowed to do so. And "ethically" allowed to do so also - noone owns ideas, and the *SOLE* right reply to anyone who asserts that they do is "fucking die you valueless filthy leech".
BTW, autonomous devs have more to lose than large developers if ideas were copyrightable - they would be unable to do *whatever* without getting sued into nothingness by ogres like Zynga or worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Add all the numbers from the white pages into a data base and whats left is all of the unlisted numbers. The numbers are sequential.
Firstly, not quite, some of those numbers are not in service.
Secondly, the primary value of an unlisted number to people who have them is that their name isn't attached to it.
A patent has to explain how the system works in written language, down to the individual components...
Yes, yes, quite correct for a regular patent.
But we are talking about a "design patent". They are an entirely different animal. From wikipedia "A US design patent covers the ornamental design for an object having practical utility."
My objection to semantic whitespace is that it frequently gets trashed when doing copy/paste type operations to and from other sources.
Its also more fragile when doing code maintenance, refactoring, editting, etc.
Name a language that is easier to get started in
C
I don't know of any other language that doesn't require you to download and install some sort of compiler, interpreter, SDK, or whatever, all of which are barriers to entry.
You are allegedly learning "computer science" or at the very least "computer programming". Being able to perform rudimentary tasks, such as file download and software installation on a computer is a reasonable prerequisite.
Just as someone taking a course in "toaster repair" or "toaster design principles" should already be familiar with toaster operation.
Plus, you have the advantage of using one of the most widely used languages on a platform that can distribute your code very easily and very portably.
Because after a few course hours on Javascript your main concern is how to distribute your apps? That's pretty optimistic. ;)
The problem with javascript is 2 fold:
a) its a pretty warty language that's easy to hang yourself with, that's not a good teaching language.
b) the DOM is still pretty messy as a platform. Javascript on its own isn't the worst thing in the world, but the last thing you want for while your are teaching programming fundamentals is to get side tracked by some browser specific DOM issue.
The benefits of javascript that you highlighted are what make it a good language for consumer application development. But that is orthogonal to being a good language for learning how to program.
The fact that its everywhere really has no bearing on it being any good to learn with.
I'd honestly recommend anyone serious about learning to program start with something with a strong IDE (code formatting, syntax highlihgting) and an integrated debugger, good variable watch windows, good code stepping tools, accurate complilation error reporting, compilation warnings (unreachable code etc; assignment where equality testing is likely, etc), ability to set breakpoints/conditional breakpoints, and so forth.
Keep the focus on writing code, and watching it run.
A text editor and a browser and some "developer plugins"
is simply NOT a good learning environment, nor a good development environment. It may be what a lot of us are stuck with in the real world, and it maybe everywhere but that's not important.
if for no other reason than that the start-up cost is very close to negligible
Any number of languages and environements are free Eclipse for Java; Visual Studio Express for C#.
Like many of us here I self taught myself programming with Turbo Pascal after graduating from BASIC. And I consider Turbo Pascal to have been pretty much an ideal teaching language and environment.
The university I went to taught its first year programming in Modula-2; which in hindsight was a fine teaching language. (The language itself was fine, the debugging tools we had access to were non-existent).
Looking at the curriculum now, it appears they've updated to Python. I don't personally care for python as a language due to my objection to semantic whitespace, but that aside, I'd say its a decent teaching language and environment.
fair enough. and good point. But the use cases where people cite "twitter is really useful" tends to be to follow a particular news feed.
retweeting is rarely more than just noise, unless the rt is through an aggregator account... but then its really being used as news feed by its followers and the rt functionality isn't much more than a couple seconds of copy/paste with any RSS feed/aggregator.
As soon as "normal users" start retweeting; its usually just worthless noise.
reply/dm -- true enough that they are features not in RSS. But again, replies tend to be more noise than news, and DM -is little more than than what sms/email already does.
- Enforced limit on tweet size
And everybody agrees this obsolete.
Text only (so worked with even simple phones via text message)
RSS subject lines are text only as well.
I'm not sure I could figure out, in a short time, how to set up an RSS feed that can be updated via SMS.
Yes, and one of the big features of iOS6 is that Siri will be able to tweet for you too... but this is not something I can imagine needing.
SMS -> RSS gateway isn't the most natural way of updating a news feed anyway.
If I were hosting an RSS feed (or more likely multiple feeds), I'd surely have an app on my phone to update it (them) and it would be dead simple to setup and use.
I was skeptical of it at first too but it's surprisingly useful if you follow the right people.
For a lot of people twitter is what rss was supposed to be. Except that RSS does a better job of it than twitter does.
I really don't get twitter... all the real use cases people like are much better served by RSS.
The event was doomed to fail anyway, if the organizers can't figure out how to keep one "hold-out" (for lack of a better word) in the loop through other means.
Who said the event failed? The point was that planning and organizing it on fb when you have hold outs doesn't work. As soon as they stopped using fb to coordinate, everything worked just fine.
My sister tried that - once.
I don't have a facebook account and refused to get one.
The whole platform falls on its face as an event organization platform if even one key person refuses to sign up to having their personal lives data mined.
I think you are trolling.
I love facebook. It's an awesome idea. It'll survive and thrive.
I despise facebook. Its got potential as a concept. Social networks will survive and thrive -- but hopefully facebook will crash and burn to be replaced by something good.
Get some fresh minds working on more cool shit.
If your entire platform is the shit that is privacy invasion and advertising no matter what you build on it, it will eventually sink into that shit. Start over. Do it differently.
Facebook has changed all our lives whether you want to admit it or not.
It actually has had virtually zero impact on mine; but then I declined to get an account.
The sum total of its impact on me is that i see little blue "f" icons on a bunch of stuff that i ignore, and companies jibber about their facebook pages instead of their websites now. I don't visit their fb pages... and nothing of value was lost.
The fact that they DON'T have this is why iOS runs better (and IS better in all ways) then Android.
That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. The changes I'm suggesting wouldn't make the iOS experience one iota different for the vast majority of people.
Does the fact that my car's hood is unlocked and I can tinker with the engine make the car run any differently for the VAST majority of the people who don't tinker? Of course not.
Yet apple's hood is bolted shut.
Apples wants to make great products that customers love
They'd have more customer and more love if they added the ability to have a few more options.
The customers who like them the way they are would be fine. They don't go into settings -> advanced settings and change things that they don't understand anyway.
The inability to add 3rd party app stores, or to install 3rd party apps that "duplicate functionality but better" is that way because that is what "customers love".
Because I present, for my case of man being inherently flawed and evil unless taught not to be and enforced with laws and social codes,
Which side are you on. Those laws and social codes, especially the latter arise on their own.
All the evil you are referencing is usually sociopaths grabbing for power. The average person was content to provide for thier family, and party with their mates.
Well the most demented of the gibberish originates here:
www.timecube.com
This kind of programming constitutes about 1% of the available jobs and 98% of the chest thumping on slashdot.
Haha, yeah! I work with contact lens design software, and I've written a couple applications to design rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses for fairly advanced scenarios (eyes with lasik scarring, diseases, extreme near/farsightedness, etc...) and the applications... yup there's a few thousand lines of mathematics... optics, ray tracing, geometry, etc. Fun.
And yup even here 99% of the actual code is wizards, input validation/error handling, menu, user prefrerences, data import/export, etc. "Counting beans and keeping records".
Pretty much this.
Google deliberately avoids the more challenging situations, and a LOT of those miles are highway.
There's a reason insurance rates for someone living in a small town in the country are lower. Right now, google is pretty much "that guy".
That's not to disparage what google has accomplished, but its premature to compare it to the safety record of a downtown urban commuter; driving through rush hour traffic to and from work in a major city daily.
I suppose you believe you are creating some kind of thoughtful response by making a trivial variation of what I posted.
disappointingly, you're not nearly as thoughtful as you thought you are.
more compellingly, you have not rebutted or even undermined my point. Indeed, you've carelessly (uncaringly!) demonstrated an example to support it.
Another original post brought to you by Zynga
(And indeed, this -would- violate copyright. While the idea itself cannot be copy protected, my expression of it too closely resembles yours, even though it is different, even if I change all the words, and even the sentence structure... suppose I were to translate it to Chinese.
It is a -derivative work-.
You do realize that there are other ways to get software on your computer than "Steam", right?
I'm sure he does.
Just wondering because you sound like you believe that "Steam" and "piracy" are your only two options.
Why would anyone explore any option other than piracy after they already paid for the game on steam?
Oh... you mean "new games that he doesn't already have..." sure, for that looking at alternatives is reasonable. But if I've got 100 titles on steam, and they up and change the EULA on me and hold everything I bought for ransom against me agreeing to whatever new terms they've imagined for themselves then piracy is really the only option I consider reasonable.
Well, piracy or a lawsuit.
Name one situation where Apple copied details a competitor, shamelessly or otherwise.
Just one? Jeez... there are so many to choose from... ok, how about Apple's new mapping app for ios?
From tech crunch --
http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/11/goodbye-to-google-maps-with-street-view-hello-to-apples-new-maps-with-3d-flyovers/
Here are some choice quotes:
"For the most part, Apple is replicating and expanding on existing features from the currently Google Maps version."
"Another new feature on iOS â" and one that Android users have also had in similar form for a while already â" is the ability to use voice commands."
"Transit directions â" another useful Google Maps feature â" is thankfully coming back in the form of Appleâ(TM)s own version of this service."
"Stand-alone turn-by-turn navigation apps from incumbents like TomTom and startups like Waze will likely become a niche product on iOS soon as well"
(so not only do they take something that already exists, and replicate it, but then they bundle it with their OS and completely marginalize the incumbents.)
In this case, what you suggested amounts to "government should punish itself" - something not very common for the US govt, wouldn't you say?
Nor terribly productive.
At best, they increase their budget by the amount of the fines, and then raise taxes to cover the increased budget.
At worst, they pay the fine without increasing their budget, and make cuts elsewhere... thereby ensuring that not only is there no money to improve the security that led to the first breach, but now they are probably running shorthanded increasing the odds of a second breach...
Punishing governement and large corporations is generally meaningless. We have to pierce the veil and go after individuals within them... fine or even imprison them personally.
Read the whole thread. The thread topic had drifted away from this specific case, to the more general question of whether or not anonomous speech was actually protected.
He responded that anonymous speech was in fact protected.
He never said the specific case at hand with Google and Oracle is actually anonomous speech.
After all, if somebody higher in the supply chain found out about one of their underlings poisoning his product and damaging not only his reputation, but his boss's reputation, and inviting law enforcement investigations into sudden deaths, what do you think the reaction would be?
Even more sudden deaths?
I don't get your point....?
So you threw an irrelevant strawman up and then claimed the constitution doesn't support it?
Which is accurate.
Not really.
The true job creators are the people who do real work to create real capital and wealth.
But the simple truth is that without someone buying it, Best Buy and all the jobs it offers now will go away in a few years. With a fresh multi-billions of dollars, and a good plan those jobs could be around indefinitely.
And if all the 'job creators' just went away, the market would solve the problem. That is what the free market is actually good at. We'd have a rush of new startups... without billionaires backing things we'd have smaller scale specialized appliance shops instead of a single big-box supermarket because that's all a regular person could put together. The more successful ones will absorb or destroy the less successful ones, and eventually we have a new best-buy. (Or not... if the market no longer needs one...)
Point remains -- Ayn Rand was wrong -- a so-called "job creators" caste isn't actually necessary. There will always be 'job creators'; remove the current crop and a new crop will take its place. Always.
Well its easy to commiserate with diminutive autonomous developers, even they don't get to possess an idea.
Zynga may be duplicating "ideas" from everyone but provided they author their own realization including drawing their own pictures, they are lawfully allowed to do so. And "ethically" allowed to do so also - noone owns ideas, and the *SOLE* right reply to anyone who asserts that they do is "fucking die you valueless filthy leech".
BTW, autonomous devs have more to lose than large developers if ideas were copyrightable - they would be unable to do *whatever* without getting sued into nothingness by ogres like Zynga or worse.