It appears to be an intractable, maybe fatal flaw in our system.
That's because you see it as a system, rather than choice, what we choose to do, what we collectively decide society should be. All power is lost at that moment we accept that as truth, and people become passive victims of the sharks that know how to exploit any system.
It's not sustainable for the longer term though. Either your country goes bankrupt, or faces similar fates in the hand of the criminal lyers that have held you in chains for so long, and you again realize you can choose. Or you decide to start believing in change and support those who have integrity and wish the best for the nation (ie. a true president with the best intentions, rather than just corporate and religious-fundamental interests).
Well put post btw. But things are not that hopeless as you put it!
Your UI sounds like something I would run away from screaming.
But maybe you could get it to work. Who knows?:-)
The panel in OS X is pretty simple and customizable. I like that better, but am stuck with the taskbar and silly grouping and hiding everywhere. All "panel" or "virtual desktop" projects on Windows are just horrible hacks. Most defaults in XP works though, but not as simple and powerful as it could have been. Why do we need desktop icons, start menu, "quick launch", task bar and "notification" icons? If you look at exploder in Vista, the redundancy seems only to be exploding, and not diminishing. Searching is a joke and hopeless unless you're know how to start indexing arcane file extensions again and turn off animated characters, and control panel is just a maze of options everywhere.
The designers in Microsoft should copy much more of Apples designs - blindly rather than trying to think too much by themselves. They just have no clue what makes good design - or they're forced by a clueless management to "make things simple" (but getting the opposite effect by cluttering everywhere). Vista is a big pain to navigate through.. Soo much redundancy.. aah. Glad I upgraded back to XP at least;-)
And don't get me started of "hiding" menu items in MS Office and the Start Menu. Could you confuse your users more?? Most people don't even know you can turn such fucked up "features" up even! ("Fuck" in this context is entirely justifiable..;)
Sounds like an UI abonmination, unless you REALLY like to give all your memory to Firefox.
What you need is Tab Mix Plus, and set it to use show multiple tab rows (why its not default beats me). Thus, on the occation you need many windows open, you won't run out of space too fast. I hardly see the need to have more than 10-12 open browser-tabs simultaneously regularly though. A tree structure sounds like a nightmare, but whatever, if you're happy about it that's jolly good! For managing simultaneous projects maybe, but as said, you will be handing over all your Gbs to the Firefox beast..
I *love* tabs. Excel has had'em for a loong time, even before Mozilla and Opera implemented them I think.
I think every application should basically be given the opportunity to have tabs, because it would free up space on the taskbar. Instead of grouping 4-5 windows under one taskbar button, you could have it all tabbed under one process (hopefully with multiple threads).
What I don't like is having to have my taskbar 3 lines high, and whenever Windows arbitrarily decides its time to group Windows. The grouping requires more clicks, and you forget what is under each group and lose overview.
Tabs in Firefox, Notepad++ and other editors is a big plus for me.
MDI was an UI disaster from day one. What seemed like a good idea, was really just a limitation of binding the UI to one "UI-process". On the other hand, GIMP is even more of a disaster, how it "un-MDI" everything. So we have yet to find a general solution for all kinds of different applications.
This tab-thing, if implemented correctly and consistently throughout an OS could actually meld all these half-baked techniques into one workspace, where YOU decide what workspace to work on and what tasks they consists of, or just default to something sane and simple.
Dunno, why you don't like tabs. I really dislike multiple windows and pop-ups in eg. Firefox more. Although I wish MS Office supported multiple processes, because THAT is really half-baked solution.. Often what you do in one Excel worksheet can affect other worksheets, just because they share the same stupid process. That's not right.
This IS what you get. You get to pay money AND be shafted for breaking TOS, even if you had reasonable reason to do so.. Reason doesn't ring with big corporations, only money and more money.
We've been saying this for far too long (10+ years now?), so it's not like you should act surprised or anything.
Some more functions on you XBox has also been crippled. However, there will probaby be some fixes for that in 1-6 months or so..
This is why I never left the PC platform and turned off Windows Update, although like you, haven't been gaming too much the last couple of years..
People like Murdoch are dinosaurs who can't adapt to the new reality.
Why would anyone pay to access a news site when coming from Google when there's still little to no chance you'll revisit the site again within the next half year or so. How many such sites do you have to pay, to be guaranteed access?
So basically, this is lip service from Google, designed to break Murdochs collusion attempts, rather than have any benefits at all for newspapers. It's not really a solution at all, like micropayments or an all-news subscription would be.
With full access and quality articles, I would actually be ok with paying for online news. But not if I have to pay 20 different vendors.. I seriously doubt Murdoch will be thrilled about this though.. I would expect him to trash this offer.
then I would argue the inventor has not "worked" hard enough to earn a state sponsered monopoly on the idea.
Patents only cover the implementation, not the idea. You shoud be able to implement the idea using another implementation than the one specified in the patent. So the whole example of patenting software falls dead to the ground, because any meaningful patent on software, would indeed cover the idea not the implementation (which is covered by copyright already anyway).
You are confusing your concept of "earning" something, and what is granted by the government.
You can "earn" a salary, because it is a contract between you and your company that you work for x hours a day. You can "earn" license fees, because it is a contract between the society and the government that patents grants you a time-limited monopoly on said implementation (not idea, so it should be possible to implement the same idea using a different implementation anyways).
However, all such "earning" is only because of the existing contracts in place! If we change the contracts, we change the whole playing field. As such, there is no natural right to earn anything at all! You can scream and shout for your supposed "earnings" and "rights", but unless there is a contract in place, it is all in vain..
Example: You could work for a month, the company refuses to pay you at the end of the month. The natural way to solve this dilemma, could be to demand half a month advance pay, or a full month. Because of contracts in society though, you can sue the company instead, but many times since the company is bankrupt, you will be the last to get any money anyways. So by not following the natural order, you may in this example, risk not getting your money. You could add a contract in society, a sort-of insurance, which pays your salary, if the company should go bankrupt however. This could solve this dilemma by adding more complexity to the system.
Essentially, we decide how many contracts we want to have, and what they should be. If patents are restricting innovation, then maybe the whole system should be revised on a per-industry basis? All of history shows that the more complex a culture becomes, the faster it falls when it falls..
Not that I really believe that will happen now, but I do think we can do much better at utilizing the power of free information flow that internet is challenging us with, than we're currently doing.
Hehe, before you claim others to be misinformed, I suggest actually trying to see the argument I and the other poster was trying to convey.
Since I think this is a bit important, I'll give you the spoonfeeding. although someone else could probably do a lot better to say it more clearly:
I think you're are a little misinformed, it's the other way around. No one has an inherent right to force an inventor to reveal his invention to the world.
Nobody is forcing an inventor to share any invention with the world in any way. If your inventor wants to stay bitter in a cellar all his life and make stellar inventions, he is free to do so. He doesn't have to show anything to anyone, or give them anything, but he will not receieve much from society either (so he better have a millionaire dad or something).
However, there is absolutely no natural right for said inventor to restrict what others do with what he distributes to them - wether it be information or physical devices.
It is in fact laws like the patent-system that force their way on people, not the other way around. Laws should not deviate too much from the natural order of things, or you will experience such things as the fall of civilizations (which has happened many times before..)
That's what the world was like before patents. Trade secrets were employed to prevent competitors from stealing ideas to maintain monopoly and high profits.
So what?
Today, no company that actually makes something, not those patent-holding companies, can actually read patents, for fear of being sued for triple damages for knowful violation. Of what use is such patents. Where are the benefits of it? To stop other companies from making business, ie. stop competition with artificial government-sanctioned monopolies. Oh yeah, so much for promoting sciences and arts too.
There still are trade secrets.. Do you really believe anybody put anything really worthwhile in patents? They are unreadable crap. Better use as toiletpaper than anything else. The REAL stuff is still in people's heads, in public domain / free software or trade secrets..
But the inventions died with their inventors.
This is a problem with the inventor's altruistic mentality, not the system. Today, the world is entirely different. Information flows much more freely. Any discovery today is usually rediscovered many times, in different parts of the world. What is limiting innovation today though, is a creaking patent system designed for the previous century. Rather than promoting innovation, today the patent system is raising the bar to invent and implement products in a world where a 12 year old kid can make his own computer program. Your glorious patent system could squash such 12 year old kid like RIAA could squash an old lady with Kazaa. RIAA is out of sync with the reality of things, and so is the aging patent system.
If the govt were to remove patent protection, the inventors would go back to trade secrets. And if that won't work, they probably won't release any products using that invention -- they don't want to do free R&D for some big company.
While a small company could have problems, they can still operate under the radar, as they still rely on now anyways. They still have the edge and know-how, and can be bought up, with or without patents. Wether some industries, like medicine, should be awarded patents is up to debate, but the software industry is a totally different industry altogether, with very low barrier to entry. One of the few things blocking progress is the aging patent system.
So good luck! The enterprising part of us can easily reverse engineer most products, or figure it out for ourselves thank you! We don't need litigous bastards to set toll booth on our profession of software engineering. Computer science is built on freely and open information, as is any science. Without this free access, society's progress will be much poorer, and education only beneficial to the already rich
"Where would we be if Taylor had patented his infamous infinite series, for example? I don't really see the difference between this and a Taylor expansion in fact, but maybe I'm missing something?"
Just because it is ingenious, doesn't mean it should be patentable. In fact, you could even say, that's a reason why it should NOT be patentable. Indeed, where would we be if every discoverer / inventor in the world had put restrictions on the knowledge we now take for granted.
Something very big just flew over your head. . There is no inherent right for anyone to restrict others copying / doing with whatever they see and obtain. Patents are a trade-off, a contract in society, but no right.
The only reason we have patent laws, was because people thought it would promote science. Now we see it is only to promote big business to hinder fair competition, or for small companies to hurt the big players through litigation. Nothing useful is produced in a patent, as the knowledge in a patent is legally dangerous knowledge to everybody. Thus it is not being useful for society. Patent-laws should therefore be revised, so it is again in alignment with the original purpose.
Artificial monopoly means "artificial". You can disregard nature only so long. When we have devices that can copy objects. Will you still restrict copying, when it's about physical matter rather than just information?
Rather than seeing the property of information being cheaply clonable, we should be mature about it, and see how such a useful property about software and information technology can further society - both technologically and spiritually (they go hand in hand).
Hello? Which other company have a "do no evil" rule? Being sceptical is healthy, in small doses. Clearly, we should love Google, but make informed decisions how much we want to use just one vendor for everything (may be benefits, but also pitfalls).
Seeing it as a marketing ploy strikes me as silly since people are not yet informed about such things. They hardly understand DRM yet..
If YOU have a problem with someone making money-images of all celebrities, and one of them happen to be "black" then you are the racist. bohoo, what will you do then?
"black", "white", "race", what does it mean? It'll be ridiculous in 50-100 years, we'll all look mostly the same in the end anyway.. Indeed most of us are already mixed up with most other people's genes in the world already, even it it doesn't show.
Some people have bad humour, some are humour impaired;-)
The license is not legal. I never agreed to it prior to purchase. I was never given opportunity to negotiate the terms. I don't even know what terms they have dictated in their silly documents. The terms are draconian and unenforcable.
What is the difference though? Lots of manufacturers like Dell use master copies to clone their PCs.
What you're suggesting is insane. The only difference is having to install everything manually on every computer, or just cloning the same bits and bytes. What's the difference as long as Apple got the same amount of money?
The law should not be stupid, but be interpreted according to common sense. If this is how it is, either this broken legal system needs further fixes, or we just need to stay away from proprietary software altogether - too much risk and arbitrary decisions in the hands of the wrong people..
The problem with your argument is that if IBM had shut down all the clones in the 80/90s, the commodity market for computers might never have taken place. We would be stuck with each our proprietary systems, witht their own proprietary cables and devices.
If I want to buy a device or piece of software, or even computer to put together with my other legally purched devices, I should be able to do that without being stopped by over-zealous and anti-customer corporations.
This case should be dismissed out of hand based on the clone-cases by IBM. EULAs should be forbidden by law, as they have never been agreed upon prior to purchase, and are non-negotiable.
I have bought an (unlocked) iPhone and a 17" Macbook Pro. A few iPods are also on my conscience I must admit. The iPhone had to be unlocked. The Macbook Pro barely runs XP, after alot of fiddling with unofficial Bootcamp versions and whatnot. Why Apple can't seem to make regular updates for such software is beyond me. Maybe I have to buy the latest OS version, along with all the software again, to get updated? Oh yeah, I forgot, I probably have to buy a new computer from them as well then..
If OS X didn't try to screw you on purchasing every software you need, and was faster, it would get used, but I don't like the OS anymore. It's not UNIX either, but a bastard from the netherworlds posing as something great;-)
Although the hardware is great and software pretty decent, I am sick and tired of the restrictions set by Apple in both software and legality. For years they have been screwing over their customers, even their most hardcore fans setting up fansites etc. Everybody seems to be getting visits from Apple's legal team.
I hereby declare I will never ever buy anything from Apple again, for me, or even encourage anybody to buy something from them. In the end I will save money, and I will discourage companies like Apple playing the laws like they do. Oh, yeah, Apple's stocks will be discriminated against also.. They will not get my money again.
In short: fsck / chkdsk Apple!:-)
(If more people want to take similar pledges, that'll be cool)
I just think this will make the world a tad better. Thank you!
Racism is in YOUR head. The people making this picture have been making it for ALL public figures, white or black.
Maybe it's bad taste, not funny. But perhaps some people even find it funny. It's not racism though, that is only your projection (which if you read the article, but this is/. after all;-), you wouldn't make this mistake.
Racism dies the day you decide it isn't real (and you can still fight for equal rights and opportunities for ALL people in society).
The more you know about patents, the more liable you can be for breaking them. If you read about the patent beforehand, you can be awarded triple damages by the brilliant patent system. Innovation at work I guess..
So it's best to know LEAST about patents, and not learn from anything else than free sources of information (which is prior art).
So please don't give more information about patents, because they're a BIG liability!
I don't believe you. Google certainly helps me find stuff, much more than Bling, Altavista or even Lynx, if they're still in business. I haven' checked in for like 10 years. Even Fast with "All the Web", or any other competitor doesn't seem to be able to give as good search results as google, and haven't been able to touch Google's quality in how many years now. With Google, you mostly get results you can trust, especially at the top rankings.
Only thing is link-building / advertisement sites and net catalouges. Google is subject to heavy "google bombing", and it is possible to make enough strange inter-linking, so that Google will still boost your ranking. This happens, but not too often. However, Google have now declared war on net catalouges, which is a good thing IMHO (they're just dilluting the power of a google search). So I guess they have a clue and want to provide quality service.
With Google I can almost trust that whatever is given top ranking, is good quality and safe.
If they stop providing this service, and instead cater to business-paid top rankings and other questionable activity, I and thousands of other people are out like crazy though. They HAVE to keep delivering, and keep the quality somehow.
So advertisement (adsense and adwords) is the money-generating part, among other things, but they also have to keep delivering quality search results, which is paramount to their success for the whole chain.
I don't know if Google's businessmodel of "try everything and keep what works" will succeed. It's certainly a big gamble on talent and hopes for innovation, but their core service, searching, still has got me at hello at least. And they have a good chance of actually providing something useful and innovative, although it's a big gamble to try to "produce it", instead of just buying up successful competitors like Microsoft does.
* Audio, Video conferencing and chat * Share screen / webpages * Present Powerpoint and PDF * Whiteboard and Annotations * Recording functionality * No install to host / join meetings (except if you share your screen as a host of course, but I think the installation works mostly from the browser, so it's easy) * Free online service for personal use up to 20 users (if you don't want to install / run the server yourself)
You can even run your own server, and extend it yourself. It's open source: * Most functionality is available in the open source version!! Webex, go away;) * VMWare image makes it easy to set up your own server quickly and painlessly, to check it out fast You don't need your own server though, that's more for hardcore users.
Friggin' amazing if you love Java (I don't, but if I'd like to setup a server myself I would gladly use it). I have given it a spin, and I believe the latest version should be pretty stable now.
Hey. I'm using lambdas and procs all the time. It helps to make loops and other construct more abstract and shareable between different parts of the code. Basically, lambdas can fit neatly between classes and functions in reducing lines of code (Don't Repeat Yourself principle), making the code more both more readable, more maintainable and less error-prone. Basically, I hardly need to document my code anymore, as the code speaks for itself - due to the expressibility of Ruby and well-chosen design of code and symbol names.
And don't get me started on modules and mixins. So many cool features in Ruby which solves hard problems like multiple inheritance elegantly, it really deserves a more in-depth study.
I don't understand why you're saying Ruby is web-centric. It started out as an executable, then Rails came in many years later as one of many web frameworks and libraries. Any library under the sun is supported in Ruby. Right now, I'm using WIN32OLE, AutoIT and Selenium to automate Internet Explorer and Excel using ruby as a command-process. Thanks to Ruby, all of this is supported through library function calls and iterators. If I want to make a distributed application, all I have to do is require distributed-ruby, and objects can be sent back and forth on the fly. It's usually very quick to do some new stuff, since the syntax is so simple. You can get quickly started by using Google, since examples abound on how to do most common things.
So I'm really impressed of the libraries and gem-system of Ruby. It's easy to use, and they all incorporate native ruby functionality, to give that extra which most other languages are missing, either in their libraries or expressiveness.
Having used many languages, I always smile when I return to Ruby. Yes, it's good to feel good about coding again. Finally a language that lets you program more of what is inherent in the english language. It's really pretty easy once you get used to the concepts, and then you discover how much time you can save.
The best backdoors may be something left by some engineer, on purpose or not. Maybe it was just used for testing, to bypass authentication to get work done in an early state, and now it is still there. The thing is, if it's never being used, it's actually very hard to notice it. I have no trouble imagining all kinds of ways NSA could put in some hidden code, to bypass entry at network / OS level somehow. It's not like you have that many levels of security in hardware or software. Once you gain Ring0 or something similar, your computer is toast.
If it's easy for viruses and hackers, just imagine what a small assembly line could do inside the OS itself! Remember, to crack software often just require to change a few bits (dunno why security is so low.. I would make a VM for running the verification-process, or even the software itself, which scrambled memory in all sorts of random ways *during execution* - but I guess software makers are more greedy than smart..)
Face it, lots of software probably has some backdoors or "hidden" functionality. This is one of the reasons open source is superior. You can still have a compromised compiler or be rooted with a VM, but the chance of that is much slimmer than trusting some binary blob and running as administrator.
However, as desktop, I still favour XP. Haven't tried Win7, and will probably wait until it matures, much like XP which I pretty much like now over both Linux and OS X. The OS itself simply lets me install everything I need and gets out of the way, after installing Firefox, Thunderbird and other portable apps - which can be ported to another computer just by copying the files. Nice setup, and faster than apt-get even, for getting desktop usage done.
Win7 will probably become standard though, as it has enhanced security and you don't have to run as administrator (it's too much of a pain in XP to be a normal user due to buggy sudo-functionality).
But to think Windows or other software has no backdoors, when some companies deliver software with rootkits and spyware, strikes me as very naive.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears to be an intractable, maybe fatal flaw in our system.
That's because you see it as a system, rather than choice, what we choose to do, what we collectively decide society should be. All power is lost at that moment we accept that as truth, and people become passive victims of the sharks that know how to exploit any system.
It's not sustainable for the longer term though. Either your country goes bankrupt, or faces similar fates in the hand of the criminal lyers that have held you in chains for so long, and you again realize you can choose. Or you decide to start believing in change and support those who have integrity and wish the best for the nation (ie. a true president with the best intentions, rather than just corporate and religious-fundamental interests).
Well put post btw. But things are not that hopeless as you put it!
Your UI sounds like something I would run away from screaming.
But maybe you could get it to work. Who knows? :-)
The panel in OS X is pretty simple and customizable. I like that better, but am stuck with the taskbar and silly grouping and hiding everywhere. All "panel" or "virtual desktop" projects on Windows are just horrible hacks. Most defaults in XP works though, but not as simple and powerful as it could have been. Why do we need desktop icons, start menu, "quick launch", task bar and "notification" icons? If you look at exploder in Vista, the redundancy seems only to be exploding, and not diminishing. Searching is a joke and hopeless unless you're know how to start indexing arcane file extensions again and turn off animated characters, and control panel is just a maze of options everywhere.
The designers in Microsoft should copy much more of Apples designs - blindly rather than trying to think too much by themselves. They just have no clue what makes good design - or they're forced by a clueless management to "make things simple" (but getting the opposite effect by cluttering everywhere). Vista is a big pain to navigate through.. Soo much redundancy.. aah. Glad I upgraded back to XP at least ;-)
And don't get me started of "hiding" menu items in MS Office and the Start Menu. Could you confuse your users more?? Most people don't even know you can turn such fucked up "features" up even! ("Fuck" in this context is entirely justifiable.. ;)
Sounds like an UI abonmination, unless you REALLY like to give all your memory to Firefox.
What you need is Tab Mix Plus, and set it to use show multiple tab rows (why its not default beats me). Thus, on the occation you need many windows open, you won't run out of space too fast. I hardly see the need to have more than 10-12 open browser-tabs simultaneously regularly though. A tree structure sounds like a nightmare, but whatever, if you're happy about it that's jolly good! For managing simultaneous projects maybe, but as said, you will be handing over all your Gbs to the Firefox beast..
I *love* tabs. Excel has had'em for a loong time, even before Mozilla and Opera implemented them I think.
I think every application should basically be given the opportunity to have tabs, because it would free up space on the taskbar. Instead of grouping 4-5 windows under one taskbar button, you could have it all tabbed under one process (hopefully with multiple threads).
What I don't like is having to have my taskbar 3 lines high, and whenever Windows arbitrarily decides its time to group Windows. The grouping requires more clicks, and you forget what is under each group and lose overview.
Tabs in Firefox, Notepad++ and other editors is a big plus for me.
MDI was an UI disaster from day one. What seemed like a good idea, was really just a limitation of binding the UI to one "UI-process". On the other hand, GIMP is even more of a disaster, how it "un-MDI" everything. So we have yet to find a general solution for all kinds of different applications.
This tab-thing, if implemented correctly and consistently throughout an OS could actually meld all these half-baked techniques into one workspace, where YOU decide what workspace to work on and what tasks they consists of, or just default to something sane and simple.
Dunno, why you don't like tabs. I really dislike multiple windows and pop-ups in eg. Firefox more. Although I wish MS Office supported multiple processes, because THAT is really half-baked solution.. Often what you do in one Excel worksheet can affect other worksheets, just because they share the same stupid process. That's not right.
Welcome to the world of DRM.
This IS what you get. You get to pay money AND be shafted for breaking TOS, even if you had reasonable reason to do so.. Reason doesn't ring with big corporations, only money and more money.
We've been saying this for far too long (10+ years now?), so it's not like you should act surprised or anything.
Some more functions on you XBox has also been crippled. However, there will probaby be some fixes for that in 1-6 months or so..
This is why I never left the PC platform and turned off Windows Update, although like you, haven't been gaming too much the last couple of years..
Oh yea, Google is evil. That's why they have been the first to have released APIs for nearly every service they provide on the web.
Oh wait..
Which part of this is it that Google != do no evil?
me.bows_down_to(Google)
People like Murdoch are dinosaurs who can't adapt to the new reality.
Why would anyone pay to access a news site when coming from Google when there's still little to no chance you'll revisit the site again within the next half year or so. How many such sites do you have to pay, to be guaranteed access?
So basically, this is lip service from Google, designed to break Murdochs collusion attempts, rather than have any benefits at all for newspapers. It's not really a solution at all, like micropayments or an all-news subscription would be.
With full access and quality articles, I would actually be ok with paying for online news. But not if I have to pay 20 different vendors..
I seriously doubt Murdoch will be thrilled about this though.. I would expect him to trash this offer.
then I would argue the inventor has not "worked" hard enough to earn a state sponsered monopoly on the idea.
Patents only cover the implementation, not the idea. You shoud be able to implement the idea using another implementation than the one specified in the patent. So the whole example of patenting software falls dead to the ground, because any meaningful patent on software, would indeed cover the idea not the implementation (which is covered by copyright already anyway).
Sorry, it's definitely been earned.
You are confusing your concept of "earning" something, and what is granted by the government.
You can "earn" a salary, because it is a contract between you and your company that you work for x hours a day.
You can "earn" license fees, because it is a contract between the society and the government that patents grants you a time-limited monopoly on said implementation (not idea, so it should be possible to implement the same idea using a different implementation anyways).
However, all such "earning" is only because of the existing contracts in place! If we change the contracts, we change the whole playing field. As such, there is no natural right to earn anything at all! You can scream and shout for your supposed "earnings" and "rights", but unless there is a contract in place, it is all in vain..
Example:
You could work for a month, the company refuses to pay you at the end of the month.
The natural way to solve this dilemma, could be to demand half a month advance pay, or a full month.
Because of contracts in society though, you can sue the company instead, but many times since the company is bankrupt, you will be the last to get any money anyways.
So by not following the natural order, you may in this example, risk not getting your money.
You could add a contract in society, a sort-of insurance, which pays your salary, if the company should go bankrupt however. This could solve this dilemma by adding more complexity to the system.
Essentially, we decide how many contracts we want to have, and what they should be. If patents are restricting innovation, then maybe the whole system should be revised on a per-industry basis? All of history shows that the more complex a culture becomes, the faster it falls when it falls..
Not that I really believe that will happen now, but I do think we can do much better at utilizing the power of free information flow that internet is challenging us with, than we're currently doing.
Hehe, before you claim others to be misinformed, I suggest actually trying to see the argument I and the other poster was trying to convey.
Since I think this is a bit important, I'll give you the spoonfeeding. although someone else could probably do a lot better to say it more clearly:
I think you're are a little misinformed, it's the other way around. No one has an inherent right to force an inventor to reveal his invention to the world.
Nobody is forcing an inventor to share any invention with the world in any way. If your inventor wants to stay bitter in a cellar all his life and make stellar inventions, he is free to do so. He doesn't have to show anything to anyone, or give them anything, but he will not receieve much from society either (so he better have a millionaire dad or something).
However, there is absolutely no natural right for said inventor to restrict what others do with what he distributes to them - wether it be information or physical devices.
It is in fact laws like the patent-system that force their way on people, not the other way around. Laws should not deviate too much from the natural order of things, or you will experience such things as the fall of civilizations (which has happened many times before..)
That's what the world was like before patents. Trade secrets were employed to prevent competitors from stealing ideas to maintain monopoly and high profits.
So what?
Today, no company that actually makes something, not those patent-holding companies, can actually read patents, for fear of being sued for triple damages for knowful violation. Of what use is such patents. Where are the benefits of it? To stop other companies from making business, ie. stop competition with artificial government-sanctioned monopolies. Oh yeah, so much for promoting sciences and arts too.
There still are trade secrets.. Do you really believe anybody put anything really worthwhile in patents? They are unreadable crap. Better use as toiletpaper than anything else. The REAL stuff is still in people's heads, in public domain / free software or trade secrets..
But the inventions died with their inventors.
This is a problem with the inventor's altruistic mentality, not the system. Today, the world is entirely different. Information flows much more freely. Any discovery today is usually rediscovered many times, in different parts of the world. What is limiting innovation today though, is a creaking patent system designed for the previous century. Rather than promoting innovation, today the patent system is raising the bar to invent and implement products in a world where a 12 year old kid can make his own computer program. Your glorious patent system could squash such 12 year old kid like RIAA could squash an old lady with Kazaa. RIAA is out of sync with the reality of things, and so is the aging patent system.
If the govt were to remove patent protection, the inventors would go back to trade secrets. And if that won't work, they probably won't release any products using that invention -- they don't want to do free R&D for some big company.
While a small company could have problems, they can still operate under the radar, as they still rely on now anyways. They still have the edge and know-how, and can be bought up, with or without patents. Wether some industries, like medicine, should be awarded patents is up to debate, but the software industry is a totally different industry altogether, with very low barrier to entry. One of the few things blocking progress is the aging patent system.
So good luck! The enterprising part of us can easily reverse engineer most products, or figure it out for ourselves thank you! We don't need litigous bastards to set toll booth on our profession of software engineering. Computer science is built on freely and open information, as is any science. Without this free access, society's progress will be much poorer, and education only beneficial to the already rich
You didn't answer the original posters question:
"Where would we be if Taylor had patented his infamous infinite series, for example? I don't really see the difference between this and a Taylor expansion in fact, but maybe I'm missing something?"
Just because it is ingenious, doesn't mean it should be patentable. In fact, you could even say, that's a reason why it should NOT be patentable. Indeed, where would we be if every discoverer / inventor in the world had put restrictions on the knowledge we now take for granted.
Riding on the back of Giants.
Something very big just flew over your head.
.
There is no inherent right for anyone to restrict others copying / doing with whatever they see and obtain. Patents are a trade-off, a contract in society, but no right.
The only reason we have patent laws, was because people thought it would promote science. Now we see it is only to promote big business to hinder fair competition, or for small companies to hurt the big players through litigation. Nothing useful is produced in a patent, as the knowledge in a patent is legally dangerous knowledge to everybody. Thus it is not being useful for society. Patent-laws should therefore be revised, so it is again in alignment with the original purpose.
Artificial monopoly means "artificial". You can disregard nature only so long. When we have devices that can copy objects. Will you still restrict copying, when it's about physical matter rather than just information?
Rather than seeing the property of information being cheaply clonable, we should be mature about it, and see how such a useful property about software and information technology can further society - both technologically and spiritually (they go hand in hand).
The world is larger than just your own company..
Hello? Which other company have a "do no evil" rule? Being sceptical is healthy, in small doses. Clearly, we should love Google, but make informed decisions how much we want to use just one vendor for everything (may be benefits, but also pitfalls).
Seeing it as a marketing ploy strikes me as silly since people are not yet informed about such things. They hardly understand DRM yet..
If YOU have a problem with someone making money-images of all celebrities, and one of them happen to be "black" then you are the racist. bohoo, what will you do then?
"black", "white", "race", what does it mean? It'll be ridiculous in 50-100 years, we'll all look mostly the same in the end anyway.. Indeed most of us are already mixed up with most other people's genes in the world already, even it it doesn't show.
Some people have bad humour, some are humour impaired ;-)
The license is not legal. I never agreed to it prior to purchase. I was never given opportunity to negotiate the terms. I don't even know what terms they have dictated in their silly documents. The terms are draconian and unenforcable.
What is the difference though? Lots of manufacturers like Dell use master copies to clone their PCs.
What you're suggesting is insane. The only difference is having to install everything manually on every computer, or just cloning the same bits and bytes. What's the difference as long as Apple got the same amount of money?
The law should not be stupid, but be interpreted according to common sense. If this is how it is, either this broken legal system needs further fixes, or we just need to stay away from proprietary software altogether - too much risk and arbitrary decisions in the hands of the wrong people..
The problem with your argument is that if IBM had shut down all the clones in the 80/90s, the commodity market for computers might never have taken place. We would be stuck with each our proprietary systems, witht their own proprietary cables and devices.
If I want to buy a device or piece of software, or even computer to put together with my other legally purched devices, I should be able to do that without being stopped by over-zealous and anti-customer corporations.
This case should be dismissed out of hand based on the clone-cases by IBM. EULAs should be forbidden by law, as they have never been agreed upon prior to purchase, and are non-negotiable.
I have bought an (unlocked) iPhone and a 17" Macbook Pro. A few iPods are also on my conscience I must admit. The iPhone had to be unlocked. The Macbook Pro barely runs XP, after alot of fiddling with unofficial Bootcamp versions and whatnot. Why Apple can't seem to make regular updates for such software is beyond me. Maybe I have to buy the latest OS version, along with all the software again, to get updated? Oh yeah, I forgot, I probably have to buy a new computer from them as well then..
If OS X didn't try to screw you on purchasing every software you need, and was faster, it would get used, but I don't like the OS anymore. It's not UNIX either, but a bastard from the netherworlds posing as something great ;-)
Although the hardware is great and software pretty decent, I am sick and tired of the restrictions set by Apple in both software and legality. For years they have been screwing over their customers, even their most hardcore fans setting up fansites etc. Everybody seems to be getting visits from Apple's legal team.
I hereby declare I will never ever buy anything from Apple again, for me, or even encourage anybody to buy something from them. In the end I will save money, and I will discourage companies like Apple playing the laws like they do. Oh, yeah, Apple's stocks will be discriminated against also.. They will not get my money again.
In short: fsck / chkdsk Apple! :-)
(If more people want to take similar pledges, that'll be cool)
I just think this will make the world a tad better. Thank you!
Racism is in YOUR head. The people making this picture have been making it for ALL public figures, white or black.
Maybe it's bad taste, not funny. But perhaps some people even find it funny. It's not racism though, that is only your projection (which if you read the article, but this is /. after all ;-), you wouldn't make this mistake.
Racism dies the day you decide it isn't real (and you can still fight for equal rights and opportunities for ALL people in society).
The more you know about patents, the more liable you can be for breaking them. If you read about the patent beforehand, you can be awarded triple damages by the brilliant patent system. Innovation at work I guess..
So it's best to know LEAST about patents, and not learn from anything else than free sources of information (which is prior art).
So please don't give more information about patents, because they're a BIG liability!
I don't believe you. Google certainly helps me find stuff, much more than Bling, Altavista or even Lynx, if they're still in business. I haven' checked in for like 10 years. Even Fast with "All the Web", or any other competitor doesn't seem to be able to give as good search results as google, and haven't been able to touch Google's quality in how many years now. With Google, you mostly get results you can trust, especially at the top rankings.
Only thing is link-building / advertisement sites and net catalouges. Google is subject to heavy "google bombing", and it is possible to make enough strange inter-linking, so that Google will still boost your ranking. This happens, but not too often. However, Google have now declared war on net catalouges, which is a good thing IMHO (they're just dilluting the power of a google search). So I guess they have a clue and want to provide quality service.
With Google I can almost trust that whatever is given top ranking, is good quality and safe.
If they stop providing this service, and instead cater to business-paid top rankings and other questionable activity, I and thousands of other people are out like crazy though. They HAVE to keep delivering, and keep the quality somehow.
So advertisement (adsense and adwords) is the money-generating part, among other things, but they also have to keep delivering quality search results, which is paramount to their success for the whole chain.
I don't know if Google's businessmodel of "try everything and keep what works" will succeed. It's certainly a big gamble on talent and hopes for innovation, but their core service, searching, still has got me at hello at least. And they have a good chance of actually providing something useful and innovative, although it's a big gamble to try to "produce it", instead of just buying up successful competitors like Microsoft does.
How about DimDim? Featurelist:
* Audio, Video conferencing and chat
* Share screen / webpages
* Present Powerpoint and PDF
* Whiteboard and Annotations
* Recording functionality
* No install to host / join meetings (except if you share your screen as a host of course, but I think the installation works mostly from the browser, so it's easy)
* Free online service for personal use up to 20 users (if you don't want to install / run the server yourself)
You can even run your own server, and extend it yourself. It's open source: ;)
* Most functionality is available in the open source version!! Webex, go away
* VMWare image makes it easy to set up your own server quickly and painlessly, to check it out fast You don't need your own server though, that's more for hardcore users.
Friggin' amazing if you love Java (I don't, but if I'd like to setup a server myself I would gladly use it). I have given it a spin, and I believe the latest version should be pretty stable now.
http://www.dimdim.com/
Hey. I'm using lambdas and procs all the time. It helps to make loops and other construct more abstract and shareable between different parts of the code. Basically, lambdas can fit neatly between classes and functions in reducing lines of code (Don't Repeat Yourself principle), making the code more both more readable, more maintainable and less error-prone. Basically, I hardly need to document my code anymore, as the code speaks for itself - due to the expressibility of Ruby and well-chosen design of code and symbol names.
And don't get me started on modules and mixins. So many cool features in Ruby which solves hard problems like multiple inheritance elegantly, it really deserves a more in-depth study.
I don't understand why you're saying Ruby is web-centric. It started out as an executable, then Rails came in many years later as one of many web frameworks and libraries. Any library under the sun is supported in Ruby. Right now, I'm using WIN32OLE, AutoIT and Selenium to automate Internet Explorer and Excel using ruby as a command-process. Thanks to Ruby, all of this is supported through library function calls and iterators. If I want to make a distributed application, all I have to do is require distributed-ruby, and objects can be sent back and forth on the fly. It's usually very quick to do some new stuff, since the syntax is so simple. You can get quickly started by using Google, since examples abound on how to do most common things.
So I'm really impressed of the libraries and gem-system of Ruby. It's easy to use, and they all incorporate native ruby functionality, to give that extra which most other languages are missing, either in their libraries or expressiveness.
Having used many languages, I always smile when I return to Ruby. Yes, it's good to feel good about coding again. Finally a language that lets you program more of what is inherent in the english language. It's really pretty easy once you get used to the concepts, and then you discover how much time you can save.
The best backdoors may be something left by some engineer, on purpose or not. Maybe it was just used for testing, to bypass authentication to get work done in an early state, and now it is still there. The thing is, if it's never being used, it's actually very hard to notice it. I have no trouble imagining all kinds of ways NSA could put in some hidden code, to bypass entry at network / OS level somehow. It's not like you have that many levels of security in hardware or software. Once you gain Ring0 or something similar, your computer is toast.
If it's easy for viruses and hackers, just imagine what a small assembly line could do inside the OS itself! Remember, to crack software often just require to change a few bits (dunno why security is so low.. I would make a VM for running the verification-process, or even the software itself, which scrambled memory in all sorts of random ways *during execution* - but I guess software makers are more greedy than smart..)
Face it, lots of software probably has some backdoors or "hidden" functionality. This is one of the reasons open source is superior. You can still have a compromised compiler or be rooted with a VM, but the chance of that is much slimmer than trusting some binary blob and running as administrator.
However, as desktop, I still favour XP. Haven't tried Win7, and will probably wait until it matures, much like XP which I pretty much like now over both Linux and OS X. The OS itself simply lets me install everything I need and gets out of the way, after installing Firefox, Thunderbird and other portable apps - which can be ported to another computer just by copying the files. Nice setup, and faster than apt-get even, for getting desktop usage done.
Win7 will probably become standard though, as it has enhanced security and you don't have to run as administrator (it's too much of a pain in XP to be a normal user due to buggy sudo-functionality).
But to think Windows or other software has no backdoors, when some companies deliver software with rootkits and spyware, strikes me as very naive.