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Comment: Tackling patent fraud is a problem now? (Score 1) 134

by zenyu (#42930725) Attached to: Hardware Hacker Proposes Patent and Education Reform To Obama

Take, for example, another (short-lived) attempt to exploit the law for unjustified gain: the (now amended) statute on false marking of patents.

I think most Americans think we should have more enforcement against criminals fraudulently claiming an item is patented when it is not. Civil enforcement of the law was starting to work, but the patent bar complained and congress acted within months to protect patent fraud perps.

Patent trolls aren't the main problem. A Sony, Microsoft or IBM at the door of an innovator is a much larger problem than a patent troll. Trolls mostly attack companies already profitable enough to put up a fight. The main problems are 1/ that the patent office hands out too many patents by an order of at east 10,000x, and 2/ there is not compulsory licensing at a reasonable rate. Both problems could easily be addressed, but we have serious regulatory capture going on in the patent industry. The USPTO today exists to benefit patent lawyers at the expense of all other industry. Since the greater economy is the last thing on most politicians' to do list I don't have much hope that the problem will be addressed anytime soon.

Comment: Unusably slow, UI provides no feedback (Score 4, Informative) 384

by zenyu (#42809759) Attached to: Experience the New Slashdot Mobile Site

When I click on something it takes forever for the UI to respond. There is no visual feedback so until I realized that the new UI was just 200x slower than the old one I clicked on the things 5-10 times thinking the clicks just didn't take the first n-1 times.

I've obviously switched back to using the desktop site on my mobiles, but there is a popup on every page load asking me to try the mobile site! Sheesh!

You need to fire the contractors involved and hire some people who know what they are doing.

Comment: Re:Horribly Unfair (Score 1) 472

by zenyu (#42804159) Attached to: HR Departments Tell Equifax Your Entire Salary History

Since 1933 you are always permitted to discuss your own salary with fellow employees in the USA, even on national television or in the boardroom of your employer's fiercest competitor. But employers may have employee contract terms prohibiting their employees from discussing their salary. These terms are already null-and-void in 99.9999% of cases, but employees mostly don't know this and assume all the crazy terms in their employee contract are binding. My guess is the law being discussed is most likely meaningless, but possibly it provides some type of fine or penalty for employers that try to intimidate their employees with these types of contract provisions.

Comment: 70k/yr in 2013? (Score 1) 133

by zenyu (#42782307) Attached to: The Top Paying Tech Companies For Interns

That is less than I was paid as an intern at a tech company in 2001, when you could still buy a coffee for 50 cents! I was a higher paid intern at the time since I already had some degrees, but not by a whole lot.

I thought most tech companies paid interns about the same as an employee with a roughtly equivalent background... I guess not.

User Journal

Journal: Windows 7 printing worse than Linux and XP

Journal by NullProg

Hey Microsoft, I can install 76 updates in Linux under 10 minutes, including a new kernel. I'm not waiting two hours to install the 76 updates the computer already downloaded in the background. I powered down after update #2 took over twenty minutes to install. Life is too short. I expect the Windows 7 installation on my desktop is hosed now.

My ten year old canon ink jet died. I replaced it with a Samsung laser.

Comment: Signals and slots (Score 4, Informative) 161

by zenyu (#42338391) Attached to: Qt 5.0 Released

You can now use any C++ function as the target of a signal using the new QObject::connect() syntax. This is a huge win because with the new syntax the compiler and linker can check that the connections are valid instead missed connections just causing a run-time error.

The moc preprocessor is still required for QObject derived classes, mostly for the translation framework and also to provide support for the old signal/slot syntax which is still allowed. Qt5 doesn't require a C++11 compliant compiler, which is a good thing since there aren't yet any fully compliant compilers. I'm sure if there is a Qt6 it will require C++11 and use those features.

Some of the really cool C++11 features like move constructors aren't necessary with Qt because it's containers implement reference counted copy-on-write, so when you assign a QMap from another QMap no copy is made, and if the old QMap was an rvalue then there is never a need for the copy to be made when the new QMap is modified. One of the big improvements Qt4 made over Qt3 was to make container assignment atomic so this mechanism worked with threaded code and defensive deep copies weren't necessary anymore.

+ - Seas rising faster than projected->

Submitted by zenyu
zenyu writes "IPCC's 2mm per year sea level estimate rise at current CO2 levels proves way too optimistic. Sea levels have been rising 3.2mm per year in the last two decades. The IPCC's 50 cm — 100 cm projection for the next century may prove equally optimistic."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:He's probably right. (Score 1) 881

by zenyu (#41884981) Attached to: Nate Silver's Numbers Indicate Probable Obama Win, World Agrees

I agree; if Mr. Romney wins, he'll be a custodian president because probably the Senate will remain Democratic and the country will remain split.

In the budget stand-off 68% of Democrats wanted Democratic leaders to make compromises to avoid the fiscal cliff, only 38% of Republicans wanted Republican leaders to make compromises. The congress follows the lead of their supporters and consequently Democratic congressmen are much more likely to compromise with a Republican president than the other way around.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/_Today_Stories_Teases/11139%20April%202011%20Filled-in.pdf

Comment: Re:But that's not the real problem. (Score 1) 1651

by zenyu (#41525709) Attached to: To Encourage Biking, Lose the Helmets

I once witnessed one of these low speed collisions of a car with a bicycle. The bicyclist head it the pavement HARD when the car ran over him. But he was wearing a helmet and I heard him scream in agony when the driver backed up and ran over his legs again. Consequently, I wear a helmet whenever I ride my bicycle and my bike is absolutely covered in blinkers. I've also learned to be very aggressive about taking the lane when safety demands it. The law in NYC is that if a car passes you within 3ft or the lane is narrow enough that there wouldn't be three feet of clearance for a passing car you must take the lane to prevent other vehicles from passing you. Or as a friend said, "If they honk that means they see you!"

Comment: Re:The onion that will change the world (Score 1) 118

by zenyu (#41498271) Attached to: Iran's News Agency Picks Up Onion Story

You are at least 68 years too late on that count. Iceland won its independence from Denmark with zero bloodshed.

Your number is off a bit, I believe estimates of the number killed in World War II ranges between 50,000,000 to 78,000,000. Just because it was Hitler's tanks rolling over Denmark and not Icelandic ones doesn't it peaceful.

Nobody knows what goes between his cold toes and his warm ears. -- Roy Harper

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