In future, please just give us the relevant links. The editors around here are so bad they don't even notice people giving out about them. Editors sans narcissism, what will they think of next?
I misread the headline, when the author wrote "to fit in a transport helicopter", I thought they were trying to place a transport helicopter into the thigh bone fossil.
I ended up having to get a Windows based PDA simply because I wanted to use CF while having wireless+bluetooth. Palm devices don't support CF, the Zaurus is just too damn expensive/unavailable, so the only options left to me were the winCE based PDAs.
I don't see a shrinking PDA market, it's simply that the two markets are converging. I had no interest is my PDA being able to make GSM calls, but I *do* like the fact that I can use it with Skype.
$deity was indeed a hacker. You see, the alpha version of Human was a 12 tentacled creature with suckers on the end of each tentacle. The number of suckers on each tentacle varied - 31, 28, 31, 30 etc., and ever four years an extra sucker grew on the second tentacle to address the lemming over-population bug. The orbit was then chosen to correspond with this, to match the number system we'd develop based on counting on our suckers.
It then transpired that Cthulhu Inc. has a patent on this design, and the ten fingered human was introduced as a stop-gap measure until the royalties were sorted out. A licensing agreement was drawn up, but it has been held up in the R'lyeh office. IP Lawyers are currently trying to reawaken the Olde Ones so that it may be signed.
When it was realised that the licence wouldn't be available in time for product launch, it would have taken too much time to change the earth orbit as all the weather and plantlife routines would have had to be rewritten. Besides, marketing had already booked Z'Ha'Dum for the launch party, and they would have had to wait a thousand years if they cancelled. Fortunately, $deity stuck in plate tectonics so that cliffs could deal with the lemming problem, although it's a bit of a kludge and runs rather slowly.
Apparently, it should all be sorted out in time for the next release.
Shift+Left Click on any tab, use a mouse gesture over the tab, or right click and select close from the menu. Also, you can drag the tabs about to re-order them in the window, or drag them into a different Opera window altogether. There is also the option of having new tabs open either beside the existing tab, or at the end of the tab list.
Opera doesn't have ad-blocking in the sense of hiding banner ads. It does however have pop-up blocking, with the option of allowing pop-ups that the user requests, so those image galleries will still work.
To the mods: This is a PA/Cthulhu thread. Therefore grandparent by me was *not* Informative, it was, at best, Offtopic; at worst, Troll. (Now watch this get modded 'Insightful')
There is still a case to argue for the inventor who would otherwise be swallowed up without a patent, but that is a rarity, and in software, (possibly others) won't provide the protection in the first place.
And let's not even get into patents on vaccines and other medication...
What does amuse me is that while we are (mostly) moving away from national protectionism, corporate protectionism grows as each day passes.
The patents system is an artificial mechanism intended to encourage inventors by granting a monopoly to inventors, in return for their disclosure to society of how the invention works.
As my post laid out, software inventions are not the same as physical inventions. Most new software 'inventions' are not truly inventive, they are merely first implementations. At the end of the day, all programming reduces to giving a different set of limited instructions to the machine. As such, the percentage of software problems which require real innovative thought is relatively small. Sure, game engines get better and better every year, but that is largely made possible by the underlying hardware advances. Due to this, most software should fail the 'non-obvious' requirement for the granting of a patent.
I don't think I'm being selfish by expecting to be able to hear the show.
If you don't want to turn the phone off, turn it to silent and put it somewhere you can feel it vibrate. If you need to take the call, leave the auditorium. Nobody should have a problem with that.
If you can pull off a whispered phone conversation, fair enough, but be aware that depending on the acoustics of space, sound may carry further than you think. If it is an urgent call however, you'll probably want to take the call outside anyway.
Not all patents are wrong. Broad software patents however are, and that is what is at issue.
One of the main differences is that software is greatly different to physical products. Generally we do not have to deal with issues such as durability and reliability of materials. The entire manufacturing process is limited only by I/O speeds. Most software is an extension of what has gone before.
It is much easier and cheaper to develop a piece of software which comprises of thousands or even millions of components, each of which may only comprise a few lines of code. If broad software patents were allowed, each of these components could be patented. Developers would then have to spend huge resources researching existing patents to see if a particular component is covered. This is an unacceptable strain on small companies and individaul developers. Also, patent applications are kept secret until approved, a process which often takes over 18 months. So even if you did your research, you could have your product developed and in the marketplace before you learn that it infringes somebodies patent.
Another effect of the component-based nature of software is that any particular product can infringe on many different patents - a particular technique for writing data, another for reading it, another for displaying it on the screen, another for linking it with other data, and so on.
Large corporations can build up large patent portfolios and cross-licence with each other to avoid paying royalties between themselves. However, if a small developer receives a patent and tries to sell a product using his invention, his patent does not necessarily protect him from such large competitors. They can usually dig up patents of their own which his product infringes on, and at best he will end up granting them royalty-free licences. At worst, he will end up paying royalties to them. If he ends up infringing 20 patents, and has to pay 5% royalties for each licence, you can see the problem.
Of course, this often doesn't happen, but only because the corporations don't bother to enforce their patent. Legally though, it is their right to do so. Most websites out there infringe on at least a half dozen patents - see http://webshop.ffii.org.
Most computer science boils down to making the most with the resources available. There are many things we would love to be able to do with computers, but are currently impractical due to hardware constraints. Often software 'inventions' are not inventions at all - they are just the first time somebody has implemented an existing idea. Patenting an idea now that may not be possible to implement for another 10 years is unfair, and goes against the idea of patents.
Even if there were a case for broad software patents, the 20 year term is overly restrictive due to the speed of development, and the relative short lifespan of products. Compare software that we have now with that of 1984.
Heh, I only pointed it out as I initially pictured a hairy bespectacled geek sitting out on the Oregon trail with a giant Pringles can trying to crack wireless devices on passing airplanes in order to gain internet access...
This confused me slightly; but then, most things do.
One correction, if you're in the theater/cinema, either leave the auditorium or, better still, reject the call and turn off the phone. Other people have paid money specifically to see and hear the show; it's downright rude to use the phone in such circumstances.
Uh... how about those who were driving exercise due care and diligence? If they are stupid enough to allow a phone to distract them, they shouldn't be driving in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
"Via google news, whilst doing butt-clenches, feeling guilty having had extra marmalade on my toast this morning, I found an article at MSNBC...
In future, please just give us the relevant links. The editors around here are so bad they don't even notice people giving out about them. Editors sans narcissism, what will they think of next?
Er, see that little land-mass between the U.K. and the rest of the Atlantic Ocean? That's Ireland.
I'll assume you're from the U.S. yourself and accept that as an excuse for being geographically challenged.
Unless you're from Canada, in which case I'll still assume you're from the U.s.; the level of insult is equivalent.
Letter of the law, spirit of the law.
Next!
Depends how you cook it. White Zinfandel would probably go quite well with Tandoori Tyrannosaurus.
Ah, but African helicopters are non-migratory.
I misread the headline, when the author wrote "to fit in a transport helicopter", I thought they were trying to place a transport helicopter into the thigh bone fossil.
7. Prophet!
Genius.
For funny values of good, http://www.mingthemerciless.com/
I ended up having to get a Windows based PDA simply because I wanted to use CF while having wireless+bluetooth. Palm devices don't support CF, the Zaurus is just too damn expensive/unavailable, so the only options left to me were the winCE based PDAs.
I don't see a shrinking PDA market, it's simply that the two markets are converging. I had no interest is my PDA being able to make GSM calls, but I *do* like the fact that I can use it with Skype.
Gingerbread motherboard to dip in your (e)SPresso case!
$deity wasn't a real hacker though... if $pronoun were, the commandments would have been numbered 0 to 9.
$deity was indeed a hacker. You see, the alpha version of Human was a 12 tentacled creature with suckers on the end of each tentacle. The number of suckers on each tentacle varied - 31, 28, 31, 30 etc., and ever four years an extra sucker grew on the second tentacle to address the lemming over-population bug. The orbit was then chosen to correspond with this, to match the number system we'd develop based on counting on our suckers.
It then transpired that Cthulhu Inc. has a patent on this design, and the ten fingered human was introduced as a stop-gap measure until the royalties were sorted out. A licensing agreement was drawn up, but it has been held up in the R'lyeh office. IP Lawyers are currently trying to reawaken the Olde Ones so that it may be signed.
When it was realised that the licence wouldn't be available in time for product launch, it would have taken too much time to change the earth orbit as all the weather and plantlife routines would have had to be rewritten. Besides, marketing had already booked Z'Ha'Dum for the launch party, and they would have had to wait a thousand years if they cancelled. Fortunately, $deity stuck in plate tectonics so that cliffs could deal with the lemming problem, although it's a bit of a kludge and runs rather slowly.
Apparently, it should all be sorted out in time for the next release.
Checked his calender, and it turns out this story was posted on the 20th of December...
Shift+Left Click on any tab, use a mouse gesture over the tab, or right click and select close from the menu. Also, you can drag the tabs about to re-order them in the window, or drag them into a different Opera window altogether. There is also the option of having new tabs open either beside the existing tab, or at the end of the tab list.
Opera doesn't have ad-blocking in the sense of hiding banner ads. It does however have pop-up blocking, with the option of allowing pop-ups that the user requests, so those image galleries will still work.
To the mods: This is a PA/Cthulhu thread. Therefore grandparent by me was *not* Informative, it was, at best, Offtopic; at worst, Troll. (Now watch this get modded 'Insightful')
You can do that in Opera.
P.S. Opera has as good if not better tab browsing than other browsers, and they have it activated by default. Go figure.
P.P.S. Ever notice that even with The Almighty, there were (at least) four gospels?
Yeah, that's true, but one battle at a time...
There is still a case to argue for the inventor who would otherwise be swallowed up without a patent, but that is a rarity, and in software, (possibly others) won't provide the protection in the first place.
And let's not even get into patents on vaccines and other medication...
What does amuse me is that while we are (mostly) moving away from national protectionism, corporate protectionism grows as each day passes.
Oh, and yeah - the argument that people went out without cell phones in the past is indeed a silly one.
The patents system is an artificial mechanism intended to encourage inventors by granting a monopoly to inventors, in return for their disclosure to society of how the invention works.
As my post laid out, software inventions are not the same as physical inventions. Most new software 'inventions' are not truly inventive, they are merely first implementations. At the end of the day, all programming reduces to giving a different set of limited instructions to the machine. As such, the percentage of software problems which require real innovative thought is relatively small. Sure, game engines get better and better every year, but that is largely made possible by the underlying hardware advances. Due to this, most software should fail the 'non-obvious' requirement for the granting of a patent.
I don't think I'm being selfish by expecting to be able to hear the show.
If you don't want to turn the phone off, turn it to silent and put it somewhere you can feel it vibrate. If you need to take the call, leave the auditorium. Nobody should have a problem with that.
If you can pull off a whispered phone conversation, fair enough, but be aware that depending on the acoustics of space, sound may carry further than you think. If it is an urgent call however, you'll probably want to take the call outside anyway.
Not all patents are wrong. Broad software patents however are, and that is what is at issue.
One of the main differences is that software is greatly different to physical products. Generally we do not have to deal with issues such as durability and reliability of materials. The entire manufacturing process is limited only by I/O speeds. Most software is an extension of what has gone before.
It is much easier and cheaper to develop a piece of software which comprises of thousands or even millions of components, each of which may only comprise a few lines of code. If broad software patents were allowed, each of these components could be patented. Developers would then have to spend huge resources researching existing patents to see if a particular component is covered. This is an unacceptable strain on small companies and individaul developers. Also, patent applications are kept secret until approved, a process which often takes over 18 months. So even if you did your research, you could have your product developed and in the marketplace before you learn that it infringes somebodies patent.
Another effect of the component-based nature of software is that any particular product can infringe on many different patents - a particular technique for writing data, another for reading it, another for displaying it on the screen, another for linking it with other data, and so on.
Large corporations can build up large patent portfolios and cross-licence with each other to avoid paying royalties between themselves. However, if a small developer receives a patent and tries to sell a product using his invention, his patent does not necessarily protect him from such large competitors. They can usually dig up patents of their own which his product infringes on, and at best he will end up granting them royalty-free licences. At worst, he will end up paying royalties to them. If he ends up infringing 20 patents, and has to pay 5% royalties for each licence, you can see the problem.
Of course, this often doesn't happen, but only because the corporations don't bother to enforce their patent. Legally though, it is their right to do so. Most websites out there infringe on at least a half dozen patents - see http://webshop.ffii.org.
Most computer science boils down to making the most with the resources available. There are many things we would love to be able to do with computers, but are currently impractical due to hardware constraints. Often software 'inventions' are not inventions at all - they are just the first time somebody has implemented an existing idea. Patenting an idea now that may not be possible to implement for another 10 years is unfair, and goes against the idea of patents.
Even if there were a case for broad software patents, the 20 year term is overly restrictive due to the speed of development, and the relative short lifespan of products. Compare software that we have now with that of 1984.
Heh, I only pointed it out as I initially pictured a hairy bespectacled geek sitting out on the Oregon trail with a giant Pringles can trying to crack wireless devices on passing airplanes in order to gain internet access...
This confused me slightly; but then, most things do.
One correction, if you're in the theater/cinema, either leave the auditorium or, better still, reject the call and turn off the phone. Other people have paid money specifically to see and hear the show; it's downright rude to use the phone in such circumstances.
Such as looking up the difference between plain, and plane?
Uh... how about those who were driving exercise due care and diligence? If they are stupid enough to allow a phone to distract them, they shouldn't be driving in the first place.
Surely you mean a warship that'll start the Earth-Minbari war?