In the early 2000s, Nakamura had a falling out with his employer and, it seemed, all of Japan. Relying on a clause in Japan's patent law, article 35, that assigns patents to individual inventors, he took the unprecedented step of suing his former employer for a share of the profits his invention was generating. He eventually agreed to a court-mediated $8 million settlement, moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and became an American citizen. During this period he bitterly complained about Japan's treatment of inventors, the country's educational system and its legal procedures.
..."Before my lawsuit, [Nakamura said] the typical compensation fee [to inventors for assigning patents rights] was a special bonus of about $10,000. But after my litigation, all companies changed [their approach]. The best companies pay a few percent of the royalties or licensing fee [to the inventors]. One big pharmaceutical company pays $10 million or $20 million. The problem is now the Japanese government wants to eliminate patent law article 35 and give all patent rights to the company. If the Japanese government changes the patent law it means basically there would no compensation [for inventors]. In that case I recommend that Japanese employees go abroad."
There is a similar problem with copyright law in the U.S., where changes in the law in the 1970s and 1990s has made it almost impossible for copyrights to ever expire. The changes favor the corporations rather than the individual who might actually create the work.
Which also meant you had to code to the lowest possible denominator.
Solaris has a kick-ass new feature in it's shell? Too bad; can't touch it. IRIX has a neat library to do something? Too bad, can't touch it. You can code to C-89, maybe POSIX, and that's that.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.
The other day, I booted up a new-in-the-box Acer laptop (or Asus, maybe) and was pleasantly surprised that it was already set to boot to desktop.
There's a fuckton of good stuff under the hood of Win8; the start menu just went fullscreen.
So, basically you're saying that you Love the Power Glove?
It's so bad.
Well, here in Venezuela we accept: USD, toothpaste, toilet paper, cooking oil, margarine/butter, diapers, coffee, sugar, flour, ketchup, shampoo, bath soap, detergent and quite a lot more, and that's with no embargo.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.