Posts by Doctor Huh?

Re: Why why oh why

It would seem that you aren't involved in the modern IP game. The name of the game is numbers; companies amass patent portfolios and cross-license them to each other. Nobody has the desire to sit and evaluate 40,000 individual patents for their and haggle over their relative value, so the measure used is one recognizable on any kindergarten playground - the count. You might be surprised at how small an idea can be to be patentable -- the standard at one company I worked at was that any idea that would take over 30 seconds to explain to a colleague met the standard of novelty for filing a patent. With the old IBM system, 3-4 patent filings for $1200 is in line with what a my former company was paying 20-25 years ago for just putting words on a page (a successful patent garnered another bonus). The patent process is expensive, and not every little idea merits the protection of that sledgehammer, so the company can buy some cheap insurance by publishing the idea to establish prior art.

This game was a nice side-hustle for engineers. At that other company 20-25 years ago, a group could go to lunch and come back with a couple of ideas, type them up, and get a quick $600. Not all ideas are going to create the next $100 billion industry, and most ideas are not going to recoup the cost of filing for a patent (unless you are trying to cross-license your patent portfolio to Microsoft); most of the "innovations" were worth about what the company paid for them.

Re: Sink

So I'm guessing that you find the use of the term "PoS Etherium" as amusing as I do and possibly even more appropriate?

Re: Who wants to work for IBM?

I will dispute your last point. IBM still has brand recognition and a reputation (deserved or not) for being selective, so it attracts top talent in India -- for two to five years. With a stint at IBM on the CV, that person can then find a job almost anywhere and command a high salary.

Re: Flexibility is key.

I'm the geezer with a nice spot to work in my house in the suburbs, and I'm not keen on commuting 45 minutes each way to try to concentrate from my few square feet of space in an open office. But I've also seen the younger folks avail themselves of the opportunities presented by their minimalist lifestyles. Once they discovered that they could operate out of an Airbnb shared rental in Oahu for a couple of weeks and then move on to other spots (COVID restrictions permitting), the allure of free food in the office diminished considerably.

I'm not sure we wouldn't be having this conversation if we were all working in the offices of the 1960's, with defined spaces and doors, but the trend over the years from contained offices, to cubicles, to pods, and then to library carrels (or worse) has made the working experience in the office so inferior to what is available at home that there is no contest for many people.

Perhaps those wishing to re-populate their offices should consider making those offices less horrific.

Re: Understatement

"You are supposed to launch it full screen and it becomes your desktop and gives you access to all the applications you every need."

I remember when EMACS embodied this philosophy. Of course, in an era pre-dating shell history, integrated applications, etc., running everything through EMACS represented a huge improvement in productivity and in the user experience.

Re: Not a good idea

"IIRC, Volkswagen has been doing it for decades. Via their internal union I believe. Arguably quite successfully.'"

It depends on your definition of success and what value employee representation is intended to provide. If direct contact between employee representatives and those responsible for corporate governance is intended to produce greater transparency to prevent unfortunate occurrences such as a far-reaching engineering scandal to cheat emissions standards world-wide that would cost the company billions of dollars and some of its reputation, then one could argue that VW hardly constitutes an example of success.

If the purpose of employee representation is to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page as the corporation pillages the world, then I suppose a hearty "Well done, VW!" is in order.

Re: Testing?

--For values of "minority interest" that includes "used by millions of actual human beings (if not tens of millions) each and every day".--

Well, that's the funny thing about numbers, even large ones. Mark Zuckerberg was in front of the US Congress decrying the failure of the banking system, because over a billion people don't have access to bank accounts. There are 7.7 billion (say it like Dr. Evil, folks) people on the planet. That means that the banking system covers about 87% of the people on the planet. To me, that seems like a pretty rousing success story. It isn't perfect, and the access isn't very evenly distributed, but... 87%!

So it is perfectly possible to have millions or tens of millions of devoted followers and still be a niche product when compared against products that are distributed to billions.

Re: Top Secret- NOFORN

I've been on the Internet too long.

I mis-read that title as "Top Secret - NOPORN", a classification which would preclude any Trumpian watersports videos, thankfully.

Re: Speak for yourself

"I used to be vain but now I'm perfect ;)"

You're so vain, you probably think this post is about you.

Re: "RMS isn't opposed to money or profits or charging for sorftware -"

The stunning ignorance of history in the original post makes me wonder if it isn't intended as flame-bait.

This sentence alone is just so stunningly incorrect as to be almost Trumpian:

"Not surprisingly Stalman doesn't write code but take advantage of other people's work."

It is sad, because the original motivations behind the free software movement (God, I wish there were a better terse description than "free as in freedom, not as in beer") have never been more pertinent in an era where Apple produces products that are almost impossible for third parties to repair legally and where one could prevent a machine from running unsanctioned operating systems.

"if your business model depends on secrets your business model is broken from the start"

Tell that to Coca-Cola or Colonel Sanders...

Re: Here have a can of worms...

David Suchet, but only because THE proper choice has gone to the Great Gig in the Sky. RIP, Alan Rickman.

And the root of the problem...

"A Power9 desktop at sensible price (say £1000) would have me jump like a shot off X86."

Precisely. IBM isn't capable of functioning in a low-margin, high-volume environment, so IBM cannot take advantage of such opportunities. IBM functions best in markets like the one for the Mainframe -- one where there are very specific requirements that only a specific product can meet, where cost is not a critical concern, and where being locked in to a particular vendor is not a problem. There aren't many markets where customers are willing to let their vendors grab them by the tallywags and squeeze until wallets pop open, and there are fewer such markets with each passing year.

Random Kevin Bacon Reference

The incidents goes to show that a USA telco like ATT, VZ, etc (the ones which Google "peers" with) will accept anything China telecom feeds them and say "thank you, with pleasure".

I believe the phrase you are looking for is "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

https://youtu.be/bIZoVO8ZyyQ

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

2 words: Potemkin Village

1 acronym: IBM

Drax the Destroyer comments...

"Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast; I would catch it!" -- Drax

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiah5GB4vbdAhXydN8KHeXlB8kQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fdrax-the-destroyer-dave-bautista-metaphor-guardians-of-the-galaxy-over-my-head-gif-3613490&psig=AOvVaw2yuPcRbpxa-g26PoLcFaZY&ust=1539085389794735

Re: Apple will end up like Nokia

Symbian's problems with hardware were basically limited to dealing with chips wtih bugs (TI, ST, etc.).

Huh? For those of us who have been involved in porting/adapting an OS to new hardware, "chips with bugs" == "chips". They all have bugs.

Re: Fewer lines of code == fewer bugs?

You can argue that boiler-plate patterns ought to be incorporated into the language. Any case where the IDE could automatically generate code (Java bean pattern, for example), could be made a case for a language extension that would allow the compiler to generate the code.

So that code DOES offer an opportunity for bugs, but they are only likely to occur if the meatsack at the keyboard messes with the generated code.

I choke at the notion of counting lines as a measure of conciseness, but I'm from a time where the size of the input file mattered, so readability would be sacrificed to the Great God of the 180K Floppy Disk. I much prefer readability. I _like_ if statements that take up 3 or more lines, with one of them devoted solely to the closing bracket. I _like_ always using brackets for clauses, even where they are optional. It vastly increases readability and decreases screw-ups.

Often concise code uses obscure or infrequently-used features of the language. You may be a bad-ass C programmer who can go 5 levels deep into ?: constructs with multiple comma operators and fit 50 lines' worth of if statements in a single line, but if you are lucky, in any given country the number of people who can make sense of such a line might fit into a single bathroom stall. If you are very lucky, YOU still might be eligible for the stall 6 months after having written that monstrosity.

Re: Moron!

Facebook is NOT a source for information!

It is when you don't trust the media or your source is people like Alex Jones .

Information doesn't work like that. Pizza and beer don't become health foods just because your normal diet consists of Cool Ranch Doritos by the pound,