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I don't have the exact numbers now because I did it well over a decade ago but it was under $1,500 and about 500'. The primary cost was the optical to ethernet connectors and the hubs. The fiber wasn't all that much. I had it custom fabbed for the lengths I needed - e.g., the company put the end connectors on so it was all just plug and play. Very nice. Now prices should be even lower. Google price search something like this and you'll get more meaningful modern prices:

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=shop&q=fiber+optic+cable&tbs=p_ord:p

This fall I may install the copper cable that goes down the mountain from me to the phone company but perhaps I'll replace it with fiber. The copper cable has suffered badly from the lightning strikes/EMPs in the over 20 years it has been there. Even the best grounding and surge suppression in the world doesn't do much to protect against that. But, fiber is immune to EMP/Lightning.

Actually, you seem to be the one not understanding the issue. Let's examine.

First, the design patent. A very generic design of a device shaped in a rectangular form with rounded corners. Looks like a clipboard. Or a small TV. Nothing spectacular in design such as a Mustang, which looks unlike anything else. The design patent seems to be missing any recognizable feature on purpose and has been designed to look as generic as possible.

Now examine this picture, posted by an AC in this same thread.
Can you keep a straight face and defend that the design patent does not have prior art, that the design is original, immediately recognizable and unique?

You have it backwards. It's not that there's CO2, it's that we're killing all the things that eat co2. Go into google maps right now and look at Borneo. 3rd largest island in the world, 95% unexplored, and look what's there now instead of the trees. Where'd the trees in Europe go? How many old growth forests are there left?

"Jul 14, 2011 PARIS — Forests play a larger role in Earth's climate system than previously suspected"
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j2BAdNIG5Q2FJlEdac1l-KXiTSCA?docId=CNG.dfe97e07f144a2d29eb615412e0c12be.a81

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/
"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."

Now watch these two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrI03ts--9I
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/poles/

I dunno about you, but these gave me a different perspective.

Follow a bunch of strangers?

When strangers include Linus Torvalds and Jon Skeet, why not? They actually have interesting things to say.

And, by the way, our very own CmdrTaco is on G+, too.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19410812&id=iC0rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tJgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3813,1840173

Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.

Yes, that's the point of a design patent. It doesn't have to be something new, just a design specific to your product - the iPhone happens to be a rounded rectangle with a dock connector on one edge. That's what's laid out in the design patent.

It's not a method patent, as you seem to be wailing and gnashing about. Of course "the world has seen that before" - the purpose of a design patent is not to mark out totally new, never seen before things; that's what method patents are for.

Apple didn't "patent rounded freaking corners", they submitted a design patent for their product in much the same way that thousands and thousands of other design patents are submitted, like that of the Ford Mustang. Zomg! Ford patented a transportation device with four wheels and an engine! Like the world has never seen that before!

OK. But then they took their design patent and tried to claim that anyone else who use a rectangle with rounded corners violated their patent. So, it is like if Ford had a design patent on their model of car and then tried to sue people for shamelessly copying their innovative 4-wheel design.

No, they didn't. They sued Samsung for that, not "anyone else who used a rectangle with rounded corners".

Whether they were right to do that or not, there are plenty of other rounded rectangle tablets and phones that are not the subject of design patent lawsuits.

Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.

Yes, that's the point of a design patent. It doesn't have to be something new, just a design specific to your product - the iPhone happens to be a rounded rectangle with a dock connector on one edge. That's what's laid out in the design patent.

It's not a method patent, as you seem to be wailing and gnashing about. Of course "the world has seen that before" - the purpose of a design patent is not to mark out totally new, never seen before things; that's what method patents are for.

Apple didn't "patent rounded freaking corners", they submitted a design patent for their product in much the same way that thousands and thousands of other design patents are submitted, like that of the Ford Mustang. Zomg! Ford patented a transportation device with four wheels and an engine! Like the world has never seen that before!

OK. But then they took their design patent and tried to claim that anyone else who use a rectangle with rounded corners violated their patent. So, it is like if Ford had a design patent on their model of car and then tried to sue people for shamelessly copying their innovative 4-wheel design.

By now, you might have an easier time replacing the kernel with Darwin.

Then again, probably not.

As a guy who still has a fully functioning dual G5, I'm thinking I'll either run Linux on it, or I'm gonna have a nice little case mod coming up to house my next motherboard...

One could argue that any desktop system built expressly for development is a "workstation" and not a PC

In that case, a docked Android tablet is a "workstation". See AIDE.

Olive oil.

no, really.

Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.

Yes, that's the point of a design patent. It doesn't have to be something new, just a design specific to your product - the iPhone happens to be a rounded rectangle with a dock connector on one edge. That's what's laid out in the design patent.

It's not a method patent, as you seem to be wailing and gnashing about. Of course "the world has seen that before" - the purpose of a design patent is not to mark out totally new, never seen before things; that's what method patents are for.

Apple didn't "patent rounded freaking corners", they submitted a design patent for their product in much the same way that thousands and thousands of other design patents are submitted, like that of the Ford Mustang. Zomg! Ford patented a transportation device with four wheels and an engine! Like the world has never seen that before!

Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.

And what do you do when the next version of UEFI won't _let_ you disable it? (as demanded by Microsoft) You are aware that Microsoft is supposedly the company that said "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." right? http://books.google.com/books?q=%22Lotus+won't+run%22&btnG=Search+Books Their thoughts on sabotaging competitors are well known. If we don't make an issue of it NOW, things will continue down the "slippery slope" until Linux is just a memory and an entry on Wikipedia.

What a joke. Why fiddle around with the imitator when you can have the Real Thing.

The idea of psychohistory was also explored by Michael F. Flynn in a novel called In the Country of the Blind; he didn't use that word, but rather the word "cliology". In that novel, cliology was independently invented by multiple people at approximately the same time, and there were several secret societies trying to use cliology to model what would happen and steer the course of history. But with multiple societies working at cross-purposes, things got a bit messy at times. (But at least one of the secret societies just used cliology to pick stocks and get fabulously wealthy.)

http://books.google.com/books/about/In_the_Country_of_the_Blind.html?id=xVqB5-DLRAgC

It's not a perfect book, but some of the ideas are really interesting.

steveha

Slashdot is increasingly cited by, if not mainstream media, at least the next tier.

Citation please

Example: http://techtalk.dice.com/t5/Tech-Nation-Discussion/Wedel-case-being-discussed-on-Slashdot/td-p/290688/page/3

Find more here

What a load of crap.

1) The global prescription drug revenue is not even $1 trillion. Where are you getting this "multi-trillion dollar industry"?

Market cap

2) Drugs cost money to develop, show efficacy in clinical trials, etc. Most drugs going through the pipeline are duds. For the ones that do work we have patents. And once those 20 years are up, those drugs become generic and cheaper. The generics work, and most people should be opting for them.

Why do you think non-generics still exists? In any sane system, as soon as generics are available, the price of non-generic ones would become the same as generics or the non-generics would go of the market. Any reason why this is not happening?

3) Really? You're comparing drug cartels to the pharmaceutical industry? When was the last time Pfizer beheaded someone? How many people have the Sinaloa cartel beheaded last month?

Some people consider beheadings to more humane than what the drug/insurance cartel does. I was just reading about a case where a in-patient was called by the insurance company and told that she was safe to leave and they threatened to not cover any further charges if she does not leave the hospital the same day. She was seriously ill, and all the insurance company could think about was their bottom line?

I think most people that are reading Slashdot already know the URL.

Sure, it's http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot

But my bigger pet peeve is when a summary contains five different links and you have to play "link roulette" to try to guess the one that takes you to the relevant article

Admit it, you're lucky one of those links wasn't a 15-redirect goatse or a rickroll.

This is slashdot. Slashdot editing is slashdot editing, even if TFA is about slashdot.

X Windows killer application has already been ported to Android.

I actually did a report for school based on the premise that Google is in-fact, making us forget things. Here it is: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3E3Q9cUhtU2RUZSOG5EemdzeGs

I'm looking up "Self-Policing Society" and finding that most of the discussion revolves around citizens taking up roles we would normally assign to police or courts. (Lynch mobs being the obvious extreme case.) I am not finding anything specific to the negatives of having a recording available. Can you please be more specific about the negatives?

Regarding "do all those things with a cell phone", sure I could have a cellphone recording all the time but how would that be any different with what this guy is doing with an eyepiece/glasses? I'd have to have it recording all the time to catch the rare instances when a car hits a pedestrian in front of me...

Again, I'm trying to find out more about the negatives for having a recording available. I can think of a few issues such "big brother", "nanny state" and not wanting my recordings within my home to leak out into the public, but I also think that there is little expectation of privacy once you've left your house and I'd really like to be able to prove that "it wasn't my fault" in a car crash etc. We all know about eyewitnesses being unreliable etc etc.

Not trying to dismiss you. What are you worried about?

1000 times this. They succeeded in getting a vaccine for a NON-COMMUNICABLE disease mandatory for girls in Texas (since partially reversed), but are still trying to get it to be mandatory for boys, too.

There are rumblings of money changing hands in California over the passage of the so-called "Gardasil Bill".

Even the Wall Street Journal says mandatory Gardasil injections are a bad idea.

a) Onskreen
b) Overskreen
Multitasking on Android is like iOS squared, because shit just got REAL.

And that is after the acquisation of Trolltech ($150 million) and after the development of Meego. I wonder what the shareholders are thinking of the CEO? Also, did his new strategy brought Nokia in a better possion?

If I were a shareholder I would be very pissed of [1]

[1] https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NOK

They come in the form of text, mostly

No, really. Come on Slashdot, this is 2012. Google is the NUMBER ONE provider of graphical ads. You can even order your flashy video ad right now. OIr perhaps just a boring 336x280 full-colour banner?

This geek fantasy that Google is some sort of benevolent entity that doesn't want to disturb your browsing experience is naive.

They come in the form of text, mostly

No, really. Come on Slashdot, this is 2012. Google is the NUMBER ONE provider of graphical ads. You can even order your flashy video ad right now. OIr perhaps just a boring 336x280 full-colour banner?

This geek fantasy that Google is some sort of benevolent entity that doesn't want to disturb your browsing experience is naive.

Nokia was a giant in the cell industry but has been slipping lately.

Slipping? That's an understatement. Go check out the 1 year graph. You can't even see today's price because it's lost under the markers at the bottom.

The most clear cut example of evil I've seen from Google so far? Compare Bing's search on Googirl: googirl

To Google's results: googirl

Doctored or what? Admittedly, not really really evil. But Google does swear up and down they don't do this. Perhaps... only when they feel like it?

Hey, numbnuts, go here and buy one of these. Problem fucking solved, numbnuts. Now don't you feel all better?

Hey, numbnuts, go here and buy one of these. Problem fucking solved, numbnuts. Now don't you feel all better?

There's a device for that.

One more thing: the fallacy you've accidentally found yourself in, where you're comparing hacking while already having root access to hacking a device where you have minimal access (with the goal of getting root access) is rather common.

Microsoft files about 464,676 DMCA take downs last month, larger then any other copyright owner.

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/

You do realize that google, who you are referencing, isn't an objective party when it comes to Microsoft right?

Not saying it's necessarily wrong...just that it might not be accurate either.

Yes, developers should fall in behind Google instead. It's totally not building a patent arsenal, that's just unfounded speculation....

Face it, corporations are scum. Microsoft is scum, Apple is scum, and Google is doing the world no favors.

• The definition of rape excludes coercion and abuses of power (one yes to question 4, 5, 8, 9, or 10 is required), but includes attempted but not completed acts (which is how a 1 in 4 figure is reported; without lumping attempted rape with successful rape, the figure drops to 1 in 7).
• The "alcohol or drugs" questions -- a large fraction of the victims -- does not actually meet the legal definition of rape cited by the study. It does not require that alcohol or drugs have been given for the purpose of impairing a woman's judgment; a man who buys a glass of wine for a woman is not necessarily doing so as part of a plot to rape the woman. The study asks if a woman had sex with a man "because" he gave her alcohol or drugs; that may very well include women who had sex with men in order to obtain drugs, women who had sex with a man following a date where alcohol played a significant role (and where the lack of alcohol would have made the date boring etc.), and so forth.
  
  More importantly, in followup interview, Dr. Koss noted that this question was worded poorly, and had this question been excluded, the figure drops to 1 in 9:
  
  http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w2NPAAAAIBAJ&jtp=5
  
  (Hard to read, sorry; Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993)
• The premise of the study is that excluding the word "rape" leads to more accurate results; yet this is not actually proved anywhere, nor is any citation given. The assumption is that victims may not use the word "rape" to characterize what happened, but this is not demonstrated by the study. It may be the case that not using the word rape leads to an inflated figure.
  
  The original blog post was criticizing someone who pointed out that, in later statements, Koss admitted that 73% of the victims were not actually sure they had been raped. This is probably because of the serious connotations of the word "rape," which (rightly) conjures images of psychological harm, difficulty trusting men following the incident, years of counseling, etc. -- that is what I have seen in the rape victims that I know. People have doubts about the 1 in 4 figure for this very reason: it is not the case that 1 in 4 women require years of counseling due to a rape. The Koss study points out that rape victims often develop PTSD years later; it has been over 20 years, yet we do not have an epidemic of adult women with PTSD.
  
  Somewhere between the Koss study and the common understanding of rape, even among the victims identified in the study, there is a disconnect -- at some point, the Koss study's findings diverge from what people understand to be rape.
• The 1987 study omits a question from the original sexual experiences survey that Koss developed in 1982: "Have you ever been raped?" In that trial version of that study (only at one university), a mere 6% of women answered "yes," even though 8.2% reported having unwanted sexual intercourse while being physically restrained (note that both of these are lower than what the 1987 study found). Why omit this question? The 13th question in the 1982 version illustrates the disconnect mentioned above.
  
  https://encrypted.google.com/url?q=http://doi.apa.org/journals/ccp/50/3/455.pdf&sa=U&ei=_n8EUICPM4eW0QHlzrnoBw&ved=0CBEQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNG4492vfopHDTbiHXc3c69HIvUCJQ

To reiterate, this is no defense of rapists; rapists are predators, who strike opportunistically and who present a real threat. Yet widely cited studies like this one -- it is not as though

• The definition of rape excludes coercion and abuses of power (one yes to question 4, 5, 8, 9, or 10 is required), but includes attempted but not completed acts (which is how a 1 in 4 figure is reported; without lumping attempted rape with successful rape, the figure drops to 1 in 7).
• The "alcohol or drugs" questions -- a large fraction of the victims -- does not actually meet the legal definition of rape cited by the study. It does not require that alcohol or drugs have been given for the purpose of impairing a woman's judgment; a man who buys a glass of wine for a woman is not necessarily doing so as part of a plot to rape the woman. The study asks if a woman had sex with a man "because" he gave her alcohol or drugs; that may very well include women who had sex with men in order to obtain drugs, women who had sex with a man following a date where alcohol played a significant role (and where the lack of alcohol would have made the date boring etc.), and so forth.
  
  More importantly, in followup interview, Dr. Koss noted that this question was worded poorly, and had this question been excluded, the figure drops to 1 in 9:
  
  http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w2NPAAAAIBAJ&jtp=5
  
  (Hard to read, sorry; Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993)
• The premise of the study is that excluding the word "rape" leads to more accurate results; yet this is not actually proved anywhere, nor is any citation given. The assumption is that victims may not use the word "rape" to characterize what happened, but this is not demonstrated by the study. It may be the case that not using the word rape leads to an inflated figure.
  
  The original blog post was criticizing someone who pointed out that, in later statements, Koss admitted that 73% of the victims were not actually sure they had been raped. This is probably because of the serious connotations of the word "rape," which (rightly) conjures images of psychological harm, difficulty trusting men following the incident, years of counseling, etc. -- that is what I have seen in the rape victims that I know. People have doubts about the 1 in 4 figure for this very reason: it is not the case that 1 in 4 women require years of counseling due to a rape. The Koss study points out that rape victims often develop PTSD years later; it has been over 20 years, yet we do not have an epidemic of adult women with PTSD.
  
  Somewhere between the Koss study and the common understanding of rape, even among the victims identified in the study, there is a disconnect -- at some point, the Koss study's findings diverge from what people understand to be rape.
• The 1987 study omits a question from the original sexual experiences survey that Koss developed in 1982: "Have you ever been raped?" In that trial version of that study (only at one university), a mere 6% of women answered "yes," even though 8.2% reported having unwanted sexual intercourse while being physically restrained (note that both of these are lower than what the 1987 study found). Why omit this question? The 13th question in the 1982 version illustrates the disconnect mentioned above.
  
  https://encrypted.google.com/url?q=http://doi.apa.org/journals/ccp/50/3/455.pdf&sa=U&ei=_n8EUICPM4eW0QHlzrnoBw&ved=0CBEQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNG4492vfopHDTbiHXc3c69HIvUCJQ

To reiterate, this is no defense of rapists; rapists are predators, who strike opportunistically and who present a real threat. Yet widely cited studies like this one -- it is not as though

Who do you think makes this? How did you get modded up?

Dogbert is on the board

There is a little known drug on the market called Cycloset that works for Type 2 Diabetes, and part of it is working on the biological clock. Its been around a few years, but it was out of patent before it got approved so most doctors don't even know about it.

Oh, you mean Parlodel Bromocriptine! That drug has been around for years, and has long been the darling of life-extension advocates as a powerful antioxidant. It is yet another ergot alkaloid discovered by the late, great Dr. Albert Hoffman. In fact, Durk and Sandy Pearson first spoke of its MANY benefits in their way-ahead-of-its-time book "Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach", reportedly published in 1982 (although I swear it was a few years earlier). It's a very interesting book, and well worth trying to find. I'm glad to see that Bromocriptine is finally getting a little love. In fact, speaking of "love", Bromocriptine also inhibits Prolactin, which is widely thought to decrease sex drive. So it's a win-win-win drug!

Microsoft files about 464,676 DMCA take downs last month, larger then any other copyright owner. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/

I usually start out flaming, and then it either gets worse or better depending on wether the other person flames back. So no need to thank me for being somewhat civil at last, thank you. I'm a cursed rabid dog, and I need to hear calm voices to turn into a coherent human, for a bit. But I digress.

I think it may be true that not many web "programmers" uses IE.... but saying that about programmers, yeah, that's silly, use what works for you. If you make websites, you'll come to hate (old) IE soon enough, nobody will have to convince you ;)

There is Chrome Frame, it basically allows you to use Chrome's rendering with IE -- only if the website contains a meta tag requesting it, but there is a way to make it default: http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-started#TOC-Chrome-Frame-as-a-default-renderer

The idea basically is that you'd have more compatible rendering while keeping the user interface you're used to.

Strangely, I'm the philosophical opposite of RMS in a lot of ways; but oh crap... my friend showers fast, and I need to shower too...

You clearly ARE the staunch opposite of... the man who never saw a shower! *ba-dush* ^^

And here is the clincher: Maddow has a light saber in her desk. Hannity comes nowhere close to being as cool as Maddow.

Is that the same "ethical wall" the investment banks were supposed to use when bidding in the LIBOR scandal?

There are plenty of rules prohibiting many ethical and criminal violations in the banking industry. Of course, we're finding out more and more that the banks are more in the "rules are made to be broken" mentality these days (and probably all days)...

After a short bit of searching, I was able to bring up the lat/long coordinates on my navicomputer. Check it out: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.842823,+7.779038&hl=en&ll=33.842618,7.778471&spn=0.001635,0.004128&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.644639,135.263672&t=h&z=19

I know reading the friendly article (and especially PDFs linked from it) is not a certainty around these parts, but this one's pretty interesting. The article itself kind of entirely misses the point (whether the iDevice is a "computer" was pretty much completely irrelevant*), but the opinion itself taught me a lot. In particular, there are such things as "contributory infringement" and "inducement" in patent law. I did not know of such a thing until now.

All of the independent claims of the patent explicitly require a music source whose files have at least two types of metadata and a sorting feature (probably because "DAC-in-a-box" on its own is as old as the hills and not patentable). Assume for the purposes of discussion that the patent is valid (it's not**) and that an average mp3 file + iDevice (or most any mp3 player software) meets the metadata + sort criteria (doubly so if "file name" counts as one of the metadata).

Clearly, these companies are selling only the DAC-in-a-box, *not* including any kind of "computer", user interfaces, mp3 files, metadata or sort capabilities (although the end user can trivially add one and thus infringe the patent). Thus, most of the opinion - including a treasure trove of references to deciding cases - centers on whether the companies were liable for end-user infringements by encouraging and/or inducing them. The gist I got from the opinion is that merely knowing that a user *could* infringe is not enough - the manufacturer must either know of the patent (or believe beyond reasonable doubt that such a patent must exist), be shown to believe that it is valid, AND knowingly encourage an end user to commit actual infringement, or else be shown to have purposely avoided awareness of the existence of the patent ("willfull blindness"). Showing that you believed the patent invalid - in particular, obtaining and relying on an expert legal opinion of invalidity - is a strong defense against such "indirect infringement" claims. In other words, the burden is on the plaintiff to show indirect infringement, and the bar is pretty high.

* There is nothing about a "computer" in the independent claims (although one is briefly mentioned in a dependent claim) - only a list of features which could be performed by a computer (or iDevice). In fact, a footnote in the case notes mentions: "This Court declined to construct the term 'computer' and in this case the analysis need not turn on that definition." . For reasons I don't entirely understand, the check for direct infringement centered on the "interface" part of the claims, which the court constructed to mean a DAC (more or less).

** All of the claims were invalidated upon re-examination, several times (e.g. through several Bose objections to the reexamination results, including to the "Final Decision").

If you only want audio...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hogdex.XbmcServerFree&hl=en

CC.

3D, colour, surround sound, CGI, all of it are just tools for the storytellers to use to tell their story. We don't even think about colour in film, but it was a huge technical milestone for a lot more than just 'improving a character or story'.

This is very true. 3D is a tool that has been abused initially (the "shrapnel flying towards you" another poster referred to). But 3D is also the normal way for us to see the world, so when done right, it enhances the suspension of disbelief. However, it matters that you do it right. Just like color could be distracting when you had over saturated hues or bizarre skin tones, 3D can break the immersion spell if not done right. On the other hand, if you do it right, it is transparent on the conscious level but ads realism and makes the story more believable.

It's not just for movies either. At Taodyne, we brought 3D to interactive presentations. We have a kind of 3D interactive multimedia LaTeX called Tao Presentations. In our experience, 3D presentations are something that people still remember one year after having seen them. Most people don't necessarily remember movies better when they are in 3D, but ask any kid in France about the 3D Haribo ad, and chances are they remember it. The same is true for presentations. Showing models or charts in 3D gives them more impact.

Another interesting effect of 3D for storytelling is that you can put more data on a screen without causing confusion. You can put things in front to draw attention, or in the background for things that are less important. You can create true 3D charts, where the depth ads another useful axis. And the Star Wars effect in real 3D is an interesting way to show data (it's a built-in demo of Tao Presentations).

In short, 3D can be a gimmick. Or it can be used well and make a difference. It's all a matter of how you use it.

Since a wikipedia page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starting cap word phrase , you can just create a bookmarklet for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s, assign it keyword 'w', and then type [Ctrl+L][w]Criticism of Wikipedia to jump directly to a page. Even if you guess the page title wrong Wikipedia often has a redirect.

Also works well for Wiktionary, etc. Some browsers only let you keyword a search form with a query string, but this is fabricating the page's actual URL

It's a great Mozilla feature. You can't (?) do it on Android, Google wants you to search with them. And keep you in Google rather than jumping to Wikipedia: Google's "Knol" wikipedia competitor folded but now now with Knowledge Graph in search results (seemingly culled from Wikipedia) Google is showing you the quick Wikipedia info without you needing a trip there .

You can't buy one, really?

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=galaxy_nexus_hspa