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Comment Re:The best the SCOTUS could do is wipe software p (Score 1) 192

by gerddie (#46628977) Attached to: Supreme Court Skeptical of Computer-Based Patents

Yes, they will. And if you have a patent, then you have a legal right to make them pay you for your idea.

... and you will fail because you don't have the funds to win the patent case, and after the battle is over you will be broke.

Besides, if your innovation was in software, you will probably have to pay off a number of patent trolls the moment you become big enough to be milked and will also go broke, or work most of the time to pay someone else.

Software patents are a lose-lose for the small guy. Without them, the small guy can continue innovating and stay ahead of the big shots.

Comment Re:In other words . . . (Score 1) 409

by gerddie (#46538869) Attached to: Why Buy Microsoft Milk When the Google Cow Is Free?
And don't forget its ability to auto correct

When processing microarray data sets, we recently noticed that some gene names were being changed inadvertently to non-gene names A little detective work traced the problem to default date format conversions and floating-point format conversions in the very useful Excel program package. The date conversions affect at least 30 gene names; the floating-point conversions affect at least 2,000 if Riken identifiers are included. These conversions are irreversible; the original gene names cannot be recovered

Comment Re:I can't help but laugh a little (Score 1) 256

by gerddie (#46400763) Attached to: In Ukraine, Cyber War With Russia Heating Up

Both sides are relentlessly comparing each other to Nazi Germany. The Russians claim that Nazi-like fascist radicals led the coup and the Ukrainians claim that the Russians are behaving like Nazi Germany at the outset of World War II. It's like a bad internet argument.

Only that even the BBC now shows that here are indeed Nazi-like fascist radicals in charge now in Ukraine (especially see the two MP from Svoboda showing the numbers 14/88 at 5:00).

Comment Re:It's still protected by copyright anyway (Score 1) 105

Without patent protection, a lot of software won't enter the market because copycats who haven't done any R&D to create an innovative product will have the same access/edge as people who created the product.

If this assumption were true, then wine should be able to run every piece of software published for MS Windows = Win7 flawlessly by now.

Comment Re:tl;dr (Score 1) 712

by gerddie (#46310147) Attached to: Are Bankers Paid Too Much? Are Technology CEOs?

DavidHumus notes: Maybe the bigger question is why is CEO pay so entirely disconnected from company performance?

In other words: There is also the possibility that not employing that bigshot VP would mean the company performs better and those burger flippers would make more money.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Can't Slashdot Classic and Slashdot Beta Continue to Co-Exist? 9

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Slashdot has been a big part of my life since I had my my first stories accepted over ten years ago. Some people my age do crossword puzzles to keep their mental agility, some do sudoko, or play bridge. I enjoy searching for and putting together a story a day for slashdot because it helps keep me on my toes to have readers find errors and logical fallacies in my submissions and I enjoy learning from the different points of view expressed on a story I have submitted. That's why I have been so discouraged in the past several years to see readership in slashdot drop off. As a close observer of this web site, I know that ten years ago it was unheard of for any accepted story to get less than 100 comments and there was at least a story a day that got over 1,000 comments. Those days are long gone. Not it's not uncommon to see some stories garner only a few dozen comments. That's how web sites die. If you slip below a critical level of readership, readers will abandon the site completely. I know from my own experience running a web site devoted to the Peace Corps that I used to have hundreds of comments to some of my stories but once comments slipped below a certain threshold, then they disappeared altogether. I think that slashdot is nearing that threshold and I fear that imposing Slashdot Beta on the site's readership will push it over the edge and I don't want to see that happen. I'd like to propose that slashdot continue running slashdot classic and slashdot beta in parallel. I'll stick with classic most of the time. One of the best features of slashdot classic is that comments can be displayed in four formats (threaded, nested, no comment, and flat) and in two directions (oldest first and newest first) providing a lot of flexibility in watching conversations develop. I switch between the formats several times a day depending on what I want to see. But slashdot beta also has its advantages in certain situations. Slashdot needs a blockbuster story or two every day where people can pile on and slashdot beta facilitates this by putting the most commented story at the top of the page and I think that is a good thing. Still I'll use slashdot beta occasionally when I'm on a mobile device but slashdot classic will be the format I use on my desktop. So don't deprecate slashdot classic. That would be like Microsoft disabling Windows 7 and forcing everyone to use Windows 8. And not even Microsoft is that stupid.

Comment Re:What's the difference? (Score 4, Insightful) 296

You are completely disingenuous. As a practical matter, it will not be simple to "sideload" 3rd party software on a Steambox. It will practically impossible for another store to compete on this platform.

Nonsense: SteamBox is a computer with Debian + Steam + some specific drivers and some tweaking. Everything that is available for Debian can be directly installed on SteamOS.

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