Maintenance of code and the systems surrounding the code often are neglected in the rush to create new features and to fix bugs. Look to these areas as an easy way to get your foot into a project. Most projects have a publicly visible trouble ticket system
Maintenance of the code IS bug fixing, or adding a new feature to old code. From a programming standpoint, what else is there? What is in your trouble ticket system that is NOT a bug of a new feature?
That comic is spot on why I understand when people decide to torrent things. The corporations are making it increasingly hard for customers to give them money for things they are willing to pay for so, out of frustration, the would-be customer goes somewhere they won't get the arse-hole
Increasingly hard? If you mean by hard, you mean much easier than ever before sure. I can't ever remember when a movie or tv show was available on dvd/vhs/bluray immediately. In fact I remember when you couldn't even GET the TV series. And now most series are available.
MOST people I know pirate movies because they are greedy and want it for free. Some people try to rationalize it, as "it is easier" or "it is the only way." But really they mean "it is free."
I also do a fair amount of travelling, and while I have to wait for the guy to fill up 6 trays, I have to always wait for someone to go through the machine. Even though I opt out every time. Of course it doesn't help that there is usually two xray machines per one scanner.
Someone who has actually used one of these could probably confirm or deny this, but I believe they are designed to just have people walk through them in an orderly fashion to not hold up lines
No, they are not designed thusly. They take about a minute to do a scan, and hold up the lines. The medal detectors aren't even designed to have people just walk through them in an orderly fashion.
You can, and plenty do. Of course you need to hire your own editors and researches, and stuff.
But one of the biggest things that a publisher brings to the table is marketing. Book tours and such.
It is the same reason why Hollywood films tend to do better than Indie films.
Why should a publisher/author/whatever not be able to charge whatever they want for an eBook?
There are two issues:
They can charge whatever they want. But I'm not going to buy the more expensive ebook.
The other issue is the SELLER should be able to charge what they want. The publisher shouldn't be able to tell the seller how much the seller can sell it for. The publisher should get their money when the seller purchases it. If the seller wants to sell it for less, they should be able to. It works in the free market for just about everything else.
I run a small publishing company. Our printing and shipping costs are about 1/4 of our overall production costs....None of those costs change if we go to ebooks,.
What? When you print an ebook, 1/4 of your product costs are still printing and shipping? I think you misunderstand how digital works.
I understand that if there are some formatting issues, then you need to get better tools. There really is no excuse to have to spend a significant amount of money to format an ebook. Yes I understand the cost is > 0. But it should be less than the cost of a few books. It should cost any more to format an ebook that it is to format your book for another dead tree format.
And honestly as long as your book is cheaper than the dead tree version, then great. I'm not asking for a dirt cheap book. But I refuse to pay more for an ebook than I can pay for the physical book. Barns and Noble gives me a 10% discount which I can use on a physical book, but not on an ebook. So if the MSRPs are the same price, the physical book is cheaper for me.
And you know what is even cheaper to produce? yes, an ebook. Yet the MSRP is the same or MORE than a paperback. With my 10% discount a paperback is cheaper for me to buy. So why should I buy an ebook?
One argument I've heard is they need to edit and format the ebook. Well they need to edit the book already, and if they are paying any significant amount of money to create an ebook format they are doing something wrong.
I understand they are trying to protect their hardbook profits. There are other ways to do it.
With a physical book they have the cost of materials, printing costs, warehousing costs, shipping costs, retail space costs. An ebook has none of those costs.
But an e-book still has the costs of editing, marketing, royalties, a legal department to track copyright issues, a business development department to manage relationships with e-publishers, accountants, payroll... and for the e-publisher you can add data center costs, bandwidth bills, IT personnel costs, etc.
It really is irrelevant how much the object costs to produce. What it comes down to when I can by book A for X$ and book B for x+y$ I pretty much always will choose book A. In this case book A is the mass market paperback and Book B is an ebook. It doesn't matter how much it cost them to make it.
But if you want to bring up the costs. General consensus is physical books costs $.50 to $2 for the physical component. So the ebook should be cheaper than the cheapest book they sell. It isn't. It is the same price, or MORE. And top it off that I can generally get the physical book for cheaper than the MSRP.
And to continue, why is it that 30+ year old books, the obviously recouped their investment ages ago, are still the same price, or more than the physical version? Shoot why is the physical version the same price as a brand new book?
Well the joke is on them. As much as I would like to read a lot of the modern day books, I stopped buying them. I now read free books, or ebooks that cost less than their physical counterparts.
Obviousness != prior art
Obviousness IS a test. It means "Person having ordinary skill in the art" would know how to solve the problem. That is it, that is all there is too it. Notice how there is no mention to prior art, publications or products.
Prior art is another prong to patents.
Notice that it refers to "ordinary." Which means you can't go to all of the top experts in the field, to see if they know how to solve the problem.
Also curious - but on patents like this one I'm always struck by the fact that there's nothing interesting except for the "put it on a computer" part.
It isn't the concept that is being patented. You can't patent ideas. It is the HOW that is being patented. So yes the "put it one a computer" part IS the interesting part. Or do you propose to take your pen out and write in the margin on the screen?
What kills me is the "on the internet part" because that really isn't interesting. Distributed computing, client/server computing yes, "on the internet" no. Doing distributed computing, doing multiple user is more complicated than interacting with a single user. But many things we do "on the internet" today are similar to things done in the BBS world or on a mainframe. But instead you use tcp/ip instead of whatever technology you used before.
To use your margin note example. Thats like having a patent on using a pencil to write in the margins, then someone else getting a patent on using a pen.
Something I've wondered about, as a non-lawyer, is how exactly the obviousness test works. Some solutions are obvious once you formulate the problem with sufficient specificity. Here the problem is something like: "How to make dynamic annotations by multiple authors, with different preferences about the distribution range for their annotations, usefully available to the user of an electronic work?" Given this formulation of the problem, the solution in this patent is pretty obvious.
What?
The solution to the patent isn't obvious at all. The formulation of the problem does not make the patent. There are lots of concepts out there, how do you do X. They aren't patentable because no one knows how to do X. In this case you state "blah multiple authors blah" Who, right there you have just made the problem very complicated. How do you handle multiple authors, with different preferences. It isn't simple, just because you've given a better "formulation."
Obviousness is about a single person coming up with a solution. It means that it isn't obvious to most practioners of the art. I don't know what the cut off is, but if most people who have some experience can tell you how to do something, then it is obvious.
Patents aren't about WHAT it is, it is about HOW it is done. Otherwise pretty much every thing we have today would be patented by sci fi authors.
Dick Tracy had his video phone on a watch. We essentially have that today in a smart phone. The patent is on the video phone in a watch, but HOW they made a video phone into a watch.
I can also see it being used to patent troll against Microsoft and anyone else that has annotation and comment abilities in their applications.
While I hate the "now we are doing on the internet so it is new" patents... When you use a patent, to protect the device you are making, you are NOT a patent troll. That is the whole point of a patent process.
WOW.
So you think it is ok for someone who isn't the police to take the guys daughter away, because someone else might have put child porn on his computer? No arrests or charges were made, so the police seem to think "it isn't the case." Yet it is still ok for social services to claim he should have no contact with his own child, or any other child?
How long should we wait and see? He called police in November. Yes, the police claim it may take them a year to process the laptop, but seriously, 4-5 months isn't long enough?
It is people like you that make us lose our rights.
but if one has a laptop, I dunno why one would need a tablet. I don't see the point.
I own an iPad because my company has been developing for it.
Before I got an iPad I didn't really see the use, other than it has some cool games (touch screen or that use the accelerometer) My boss pointed out that we likes to sit on the couch watching tv, and uses his iPhone to check emails. The iPad makes that experience better.
Laptops are heavy. They are after you lug them through an airport for hours. An iPad is light. It is a great device to use to check email and surf the web, as long as you don't need to use the keyboard much. I think it makes a great device for short trips.
Tablets in general work much better in meetings, as you can lay them on the table and you don't create a barrier between you and everyone else.
I still wouldn't have purchased one, if I wasn't working on it. My laptop works just fine for me. But a laptop is more than what a lot of people need, and the iPad fills the void decently. It is a little expensive for what it is, but that's Apple.
Did I mention some of the cool games?
Slashdot Mirror
It IS a timely fashion, seeing as how the movie hasn't come out yet. This is about movie merchandising, not the book. I'm not saying it is right.
Except they aren't protecting the BOOK, they are protecting the MOVIE.
Maintenance of code and the systems surrounding the code often are neglected in the rush to create new features and to fix bugs. Look to these areas as an easy way to get your foot into a project. Most projects have a publicly visible trouble ticket system
Maintenance of the code IS bug fixing, or adding a new feature to old code. From a programming standpoint, what else is there? What is in your trouble ticket system that is NOT a bug of a new feature?
That comic is spot on why I understand when people decide to torrent things. The corporations are making it increasingly hard for customers to give them money for things they are willing to pay for so, out of frustration, the would-be customer goes somewhere they won't get the arse-hole
Increasingly hard? If you mean by hard, you mean much easier than ever before sure. I can't ever remember when a movie or tv show was available on dvd/vhs/bluray immediately. In fact I remember when you couldn't even GET the TV series. And now most series are available.
MOST people I know pirate movies because they are greedy and want it for free. Some people try to rationalize it, as "it is easier" or "it is the only way." But really they mean "it is free."
I found this a little troubling because I find innate privacy concerns to be a key attribute of a good sysadmin.
Why? I must hide something to be a good sysadmin? My FB is public. I don't have any private data there, so why should I make it private?
If they don't understand that it's wrong to search without probable cause to suspect wrongdoing, then I don't want them in that job.
If you ask to perform a search, and the person allows you, you don't need probably cause.
Since when are corporations
Since when is a state government a corporation? Or for that matter coaches and administrators?
I also do a fair amount of travelling, and while I have to wait for the guy to fill up 6 trays, I have to always wait for someone to go through the machine. Even though I opt out every time. Of course it doesn't help that there is usually two xray machines per one scanner.
As someone who has actually used one of these (many times),
WHY? WHY are you using the machines? The more people that opt out, the more chance the machines will get junked.
Someone who has actually used one of these could probably confirm or deny this, but I believe they are designed to just have people walk through them in an orderly fashion to not hold up lines
No, they are not designed thusly. They take about a minute to do a scan, and hold up the lines. The medal detectors aren't even designed to have people just walk through them in an orderly fashion.
But it doesn't actually make you safer. /. can't understand that, we have no hope.
It's sad, if the average
>
Today's lesson: anecdotal evidence sucks.
Anecdotal evidence about what? Go to b-n.com or amazon, search for a book. Look at the kindle/nook price. Look at the cheapest physical price.
You can, and plenty do. Of course you need to hire your own editors and researches, and stuff.
But one of the biggest things that a publisher brings to the table is marketing. Book tours and such.
It is the same reason why Hollywood films tend to do better than Indie films.
Why?
Why should a publisher/author/whatever not be able to charge whatever they want for an eBook?
There are two issues:
They can charge whatever they want. But I'm not going to buy the more expensive ebook.
The other issue is the SELLER should be able to charge what they want. The publisher shouldn't be able to tell the seller how much the seller can sell it for. The publisher should get their money when the seller purchases it. If the seller wants to sell it for less, they should be able to. It works in the free market for just about everything else.
I run a small publishing company. Our printing and shipping costs are about 1/4 of our overall production costs. ...None of those costs change if we go to ebooks,.
What? When you print an ebook, 1/4 of your product costs are still printing and shipping? I think you misunderstand how digital works. I understand that if there are some formatting issues, then you need to get better tools. There really is no excuse to have to spend a significant amount of money to format an ebook. Yes I understand the cost is > 0. But it should be less than the cost of a few books. It should cost any more to format an ebook that it is to format your book for another dead tree format.
And honestly as long as your book is cheaper than the dead tree version, then great. I'm not asking for a dirt cheap book. But I refuse to pay more for an ebook than I can pay for the physical book. Barns and Noble gives me a 10% discount which I can use on a physical book, but not on an ebook. So if the MSRPs are the same price, the physical book is cheaper for me.
Paperbacks are cheap to produce
And you know what is even cheaper to produce? yes, an ebook. Yet the MSRP is the same or MORE than a paperback. With my 10% discount a paperback is cheaper for me to buy. So why should I buy an ebook?
One argument I've heard is they need to edit and format the ebook. Well they need to edit the book already, and if they are paying any significant amount of money to create an ebook format they are doing something wrong.
I understand they are trying to protect their hardbook profits. There are other ways to do it.
With a physical book they have the cost of materials, printing costs, warehousing costs, shipping costs, retail space costs. An ebook has none of those costs.
But an e-book still has the costs of editing, marketing, royalties, a legal department to track copyright issues, a business development department to manage relationships with e-publishers, accountants, payroll... and for the e-publisher you can add data center costs, bandwidth bills, IT personnel costs, etc.
It really is irrelevant how much the object costs to produce. What it comes down to when I can by book A for X$ and book B for x+y$ I pretty much always will choose book A. In this case book A is the mass market paperback and Book B is an ebook. It doesn't matter how much it cost them to make it.
But if you want to bring up the costs. General consensus is physical books costs $.50 to $2 for the physical component. So the ebook should be cheaper than the cheapest book they sell. It isn't. It is the same price, or MORE. And top it off that I can generally get the physical book for cheaper than the MSRP.
And to continue, why is it that 30+ year old books, the obviously recouped their investment ages ago, are still the same price, or more than the physical version? Shoot why is the physical version the same price as a brand new book?
Well the joke is on them. As much as I would like to read a lot of the modern day books, I stopped buying them. I now read free books, or ebooks that cost less than their physical counterparts.
Obviousness != prior art
Obviousness IS a test. It means "Person having ordinary skill in the art" would know how to solve the problem. That is it, that is all there is too it. Notice how there is no mention to prior art, publications or products.
Prior art is another prong to patents.
Notice that it refers to "ordinary." Which means you can't go to all of the top experts in the field, to see if they know how to solve the problem.
Also curious - but on patents like this one I'm always struck by the fact that there's nothing interesting except for the "put it on a computer" part.
It isn't the concept that is being patented. You can't patent ideas. It is the HOW that is being patented. So yes the "put it one a computer" part IS the interesting part. Or do you propose to take your pen out and write in the margin on the screen?
What kills me is the "on the internet part" because that really isn't interesting. Distributed computing, client/server computing yes, "on the internet" no. Doing distributed computing, doing multiple user is more complicated than interacting with a single user. But many things we do "on the internet" today are similar to things done in the BBS world or on a mainframe. But instead you use tcp/ip instead of whatever technology you used before.
To use your margin note example. Thats like having a patent on using a pencil to write in the margins, then someone else getting a patent on using a pen.
Something I've wondered about, as a non-lawyer, is how exactly the obviousness test works. Some solutions are obvious once you formulate the problem with sufficient specificity. Here the problem is something like: "How to make dynamic annotations by multiple authors, with different preferences about the distribution range for their annotations, usefully available to the user of an electronic work?" Given this formulation of the problem, the solution in this patent is pretty obvious.
What?
The solution to the patent isn't obvious at all. The formulation of the problem does not make the patent. There are lots of concepts out there, how do you do X. They aren't patentable because no one knows how to do X. In this case you state "blah multiple authors blah" Who, right there you have just made the problem very complicated. How do you handle multiple authors, with different preferences. It isn't simple, just because you've given a better "formulation."
Obviousness is about a single person coming up with a solution. It means that it isn't obvious to most practioners of the art. I don't know what the cut off is, but if most people who have some experience can tell you how to do something, then it is obvious.
Patents aren't about WHAT it is, it is about HOW it is done. Otherwise pretty much every thing we have today would be patented by sci fi authors.
Dick Tracy had his video phone on a watch. We essentially have that today in a smart phone. The patent is on the video phone in a watch, but HOW they made a video phone into a watch.
I can also see it being used to patent troll against Microsoft and anyone else that has annotation and comment abilities in their applications.
While I hate the "now we are doing on the internet so it is new" patents... When you use a patent, to protect the device you are making, you are NOT a patent troll. That is the whole point of a patent process.
WOW. So you think it is ok for someone who isn't the police to take the guys daughter away, because someone else might have put child porn on his computer? No arrests or charges were made, so the police seem to think "it isn't the case." Yet it is still ok for social services to claim he should have no contact with his own child, or any other child?
How long should we wait and see? He called police in November. Yes, the police claim it may take them a year to process the laptop, but seriously, 4-5 months isn't long enough?
It is people like you that make us lose our rights.
, what improvements does it actually offer?
Better pictures.
Better, clearer fonts
I'm not sure why the media is playing down this as non event upgrade. I agree with the parent that the new screen is incredible.
This is the only reason I want to upgrade. Assuming the content is generated to take advantage of the extra pixels, the images will be stunning.
but if one has a laptop, I dunno why one would need a tablet. I don't see the point.
I own an iPad because my company has been developing for it.
Before I got an iPad I didn't really see the use, other than it has some cool games (touch screen or that use the accelerometer) My boss pointed out that we likes to sit on the couch watching tv, and uses his iPhone to check emails. The iPad makes that experience better.
Laptops are heavy. They are after you lug them through an airport for hours. An iPad is light. It is a great device to use to check email and surf the web, as long as you don't need to use the keyboard much. I think it makes a great device for short trips.
Tablets in general work much better in meetings, as you can lay them on the table and you don't create a barrier between you and everyone else.
I still wouldn't have purchased one, if I wasn't working on it. My laptop works just fine for me. But a laptop is more than what a lot of people need, and the iPad fills the void decently. It is a little expensive for what it is, but that's Apple.
Did I mention some of the cool games?