Domain: tfd.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to tfd.com.
Comments · 42
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Re:VMs
Accurate ntp installs indeed use the system clock and rely on it. They just change the frequency on how often OS time is ticked based on information received through the network from other ntp servers.
Ntp in a VM could work under 2 conditions:
1) The VM has raw access to the system clock or a pretty good abstraction of it. VMware has had problems with that.
2) The ntp guest VM process runs at nice -10 to nice -15, and ionice RT while at it ;-)Nevertheless, no ntp will run accurately with a poor physical system clock, more commonly called an oscillator.
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Not prior art at all
How is the iPhone icon interface much different from this? http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMN2.GIF [tfd.com]
Single view encompassing entire display
Icons on uniform square tiles with color different from background and slightly rounded corners of specific radius
Four columns of icons
Dock at bottom of screen denoted by distinctive gray surface holding 4 iconsShame on Apple for trying to enforce basic touchscreen actions like multitouch and the jury not able to debate that because of the numbnut foreman. How is this not prior art from the 80s? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dmmxVA5xhuo#t=267s [youtube.com]
Gestures shown are two-handed gestures. No examples of Apple's distinctive one-handed gestures such as are required for use on hand-held device. While it hard to tell for certain from the image, the tracking of the touch appears considerably cruder, and in particular to lack the precision required for a small hand-held device, suggesting that it is not using Apple's algorithms, the key feature of which is that they include methods optimized to provide useful tracking of the pad of a finger on a small touch display. It is hard to see how any reasonable jury would consider this to be prior art for Apple's specific multitouch methods.
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Windows 3.11
How is the iPhone icon interface much different from this? http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMN2.GIF
Give a half decent team of engineers to make the above work with capacitive touch, and you can easily end up with the iPhone homescreen swipes.
The only mobile interface to claim to be really unique among UIs is Microsoft's Metro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=locNEna0of4&feature=plcp
Shame on Apple for trying to enforce basic touchscreen actions like multitouch and the jury not able to debate that because of the numbnut foreman. How is this not prior art from the 80s? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dmmxVA5xhuo#t=267s
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Re:Ummm how about....
But it could be...
Debt has been defined as: something that is owed, such as money, goods, or services
A cash sale for goods in a transaction could be argued to be simultaneously created debts owed to the other party, one in cash, one in goods.
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Re:Well duh
Alright then, I'll play the foreign card as I don't even live in an Anglophone place, "skill" and "ability" are both translated into Spanish as "habilidad".
uhm... acording to The Free Dictionary abilities can be either natural or developed. So http://www.tfd.com/skill>"skill" is a subset of "ability". Since nobody is born knowing how to do long divisions I think is fair to say that in the context of budgenator's post skill and ability refer to the same things.
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Re:Well
MPs are toothless. If the party leader in Canada tells them to vote a certain way, or talk a certain way, they have to. Otherwise they get kicked out of the party. It has happened before; look at John Nunziata (Liberal fired by Prime Minister Chretien for voting with integrity), and Garth Turner (Conservative fired by Prime Minister Harper for daring to think on his own). Then next election no one will pay for their election campaign and they're for sure out of a cushy job. It doesn't matter much that they aren't given any opportunity to speak in the house during question period if they are independent (only MPs in parties get anything more than around (literally) two or three minutes talking time each year during question period).
I have no idea why we have to pay to have MPs elected in ridings. It would save a lot of money if we just elected the leaders and gave them each a weighted vote commensurate with what percent of the popular vote they got. If we get a majority government in Canada it amounts to a limited term dictatorship. If it is a minority government like we just had, it is a limited term oligarchy. We need reform so that we can have true representative democracy, where the MPs can really vote the way the people who elected them want them to. Then we wouldn't have the BS where everyone in the house yells to get the attention of the party leaders so they can be good dogs and maybe get a bone, and keep their jobs. The party leaders should have no say in how members vote and represent their ridings, nor in who the riding associations (Conservatives, Liberals, etc.) pick to run in elections. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way right now. Our democracy is broken.
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Re:This would scare the hell out of me
read the article. all things are relative. that is why they mention frame of reference. see pedantic
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Re:Motor cars weren't
car is a general term for any conveyance for passengers or "cargo"... elevator cars, boxcars, cable cars, etc etc... and yes, it was a general term for a cart, chariot, carriage, etc as well. Basically any area for storage or passengers on a vehicle is the "car"
It's origin is the Latin word for a Celtic / Gallic 2 wheeled wagon which was generally pulled by an animal such as a horse.
http://www.tfd.com/car -
Re:Rights?
Its libel if it makes the plaintiff look bad, which is fairly irrelevant to truth or falsehood.
The Free Dictionary would seem to disagree with this definition
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Offline Wiktionary ?
Since the author of NinjaWords submitted it to AppStore, I think he wants to makes some money from it.
This is quite unethical, because it's basically a dump of wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/
(the dumps can be downloaded freely)
and frankly, it's not the best dictionary on the Web (see for example http://www.tfd.com/ )A free offline Wikipedia already exists for the iPhone:
http://collison.ie/wikipedia-iphone/So, I really don't see the point of this application.
Is it so lame that it needs so much PR ?
Apple should not even allow such applications to be sold !
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Re:tacit?
I'm sorry, but you clearly don't know the definition of tacit
See here for the correct definition: http://www.tfd.com/tacit
Definition 2 clearly states "Implied by or inferred from actions or statements". The action in this case is appointing the blogger the head of investigation
so the reality of the situation is, it might make people look dumb when you incorrectly use a word, but you're making people dumber by getting modded up for incorrectly using a word.
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Re:The One will bring the green back
Around 35% increase since 1832 from 270ppm to 370ppm
http://www.lib.utah.edu/services/prog/gould/1998/Figure_6.gif
Emission rate of 7 billion tons/year
http://img.tfd.com/wiki/5/56/Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type.png
if you doubt that humans are having significant impact then take a gander at this graph
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
and no just because i think we're making the planet hotter now doesn't mean i think we were involved in the formation of the Sahara, the two are unrelated. The Sahara is there because of prevailing winds combine with the positions of other nearby land masses, not global average temperature. The Sahara was actually larger than it is now during the last ice age.
Let the people who understand climate science do climate science.
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Re:My view
I do not think egalitarian means what you think it means.
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Re:"Terroristic threat" != "terrorist threat"
It probably would have taken you less time to find this page than it did to write your post.
Being old fashioned, I checked that it's not a novel construction by looking at my 1973 dead-tree dictionary first; however, turning up this link to indicate the same thing shouldn't have taken much longer.
Incidentally: Dammit, America, stop cowering in fear!!! -
Re:"Terroristic threat" != "terrorist threat"
To my knowladge, "terroristic" isn't even a real word, except in the sense that even engrish words that come into common usage do get promoted to the OED or somesuch publication.
It probably would have taken you less time to find this page than it did to write your post.
Terroristic is the adjective form of terrorist. -
Re:The winners are never the best.
Check your spelling before you send your messages, you're hurting my eyes!
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Re:ZOMG!!Which is hearsay and will never hold in a court of law.
How is that hearsay? Hearsay is "Evidence based on the reports of others rather than the personal knowledge of a witness", but this testimony is based on the personal knowledge of the witness (the MPAA). It's up to the jury, and possibly to some extent the judge, to decide whether the witness is credible.
I suspect that they would, unless the defendant had some clever scenario that accounted for how the MPAA got evidence that they downloaded. People probably aren't going to believe that the MPAA will outright fabricate evidence, and it probably won't, not when it's so easy to get real evidence and not when the penalties for being caught would be so huge.
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Meanwhile, back in the old west...
this already posses a security problem
Round 'em up, boys! We gonna lynch us some bank robbers! -
Re:Sign of the times
See terrorism in a dictionary. Terrorism isn't defined by what was done, it is defined by why it was done. Generally speaking, it has some socio-political motivation.
A bomb at a crappy company isn't terrorism anymore than throwing a can of yeast at someone is a biological attack.
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Re:Humans have them as well
Where did this magnetite come from? I think my mother's diet didn't include magnetite, nor did mine.
To answer your question, from The Free Dictionary: magnetite Pronunciation (mgn-tt) n. The mineral form of black iron oxide, Fe3O4, that often occurs with magnesium, zinc, and manganese and is an important ore of iron
Last I heard, the human body has all of these components -- magnesium, zinc, and manganese, in varying quantities. As indicated in the main article, the fragmented magnet within a person's finger was able to pull itself (loosely) back together through - you guessed it - magnetism. So, it's not so much of a stretch that we'd have these minute collections of magnetite in our bodies... though why they congregate specifically in the brain seems odd.
Anyone got an answer for that one? -
Re:Useless to all but theoraticians
If you do not understand the underlying structure of your high level language and the low level mathmatical theory below that you liable to make grevious mistakes in first selecting your high level tools, then in the specific models that you impliment with your code and then in your code itself.
Grevious? As in General Grevious? You were thinking of the lightsaber post above, weren't you?
Were you thinking of grievous perhaps?
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Re:WTF
teenage adj. Of, relating to, or applicable to those aged 13 through 19.
You can be tried as an adult a lot sooner then that. Nobody said they were children.
I would ask how your comment got to a three score, but that's of no use given your ability to understand simple numbers is so lacking. -
Re:Define "harmful to minors"
I wouldn't have either til I checked the definition.
http://www.tfd.com/morbid
1.b. Psychologically unhealthy or unwholesome
2. Characterized by preoccupation with unwholesome thoughts or feelingsBut now, yeah, I'd say the typical teenager/minor is preoccupied with sex. So I think those 2 definitions apply here.
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Re:The gay gene
Oh ya. Tiddlywinks is the game where you snap round plastic coins into a small pan that has different sections labeled with different point values.
But usually I'd just get pissed off and wind up throwing things at the opposing player. You see, games were violent back when I was young too. -
Re:From my reading, the ombudsman was the problem
First - ever think that the primary job of the ombudsman is to find somebody a Bud when things get bad?
Frankly, that's what I find so unpalatable about this whole nonsense. How the hell does the Post have an ombudsman (1. A man who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers or students and an institution or organization.) who writes editorials about politics? How can anyone believe that their complaint about the paper's reporting will be heard fairly if the person has already announced, in the most public way possible, that his or her opinion on the subject? Her job is to listen to me and others, represent us to the management, and possibly write about the gist of what she's hearing. That's the job. That the Post thinks that it's OK to mix the two speaks volumes about the weakness of their management. -
Re:Agenda.....
They realized that it when they're fucking chickenhawks who never fought in a war, its probably a bad idea to call a honest to fucking god war hero a coward.
Did you hear the screams from both sides of the aisle when Jean Schmidt called Murtha a coward?
What a dumbass.
Stupid Bush administration. At least Clinton had the good sense to not get us into wars without the backing of allies in places where we weren't wanted. Also Clinton had a much better excuse for not being in the war, better to be a draft dodger than a deserter.
Well, I'm not sure there is much of a difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to intervention and justification for war. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is still a blot on the Democrats. -
Re:Accuracy
I don't have a dictionary handy
There's this thing called The Internet that you're using.
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Re:Sony MP3 players?
People who think they need to carry around their 'entire music collection' are being pretty anal. Build a 'playlist,' stuff it in your player, and go out and enjoy listening to it. The only people who need to carry their entire music collection with them at all times are the homeless.
I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. -
Re:marine life?
I try to avoid meat and eat a diet that consists primarily of organically-grown vegetables, fruits, and legumes, etc, etc, etc.
I'm glad that you are a sensible vegetarian.
I'm extremely disappointed with those vegans-vegetarians who see things in black/white terms and refuse to understand that even organically growing crops often murders quite a few living creatures in the process.
Veggies are great but the the millions of animals that get slaughtered by harvesting machines (also known as Reapers interestingly enough) will disagree quite a bit.
The most vocal vegans-vegetarians would be well advised to stop finger-pointing and clean up their own houses. And again, this is not pointed at you. It's easy to see that you're more sensible than that. -
Re:Er...
The Department of Defense an "enterprise"?
Not in America! Never!
Four hundred and one billion dollar budget, I'd say they are an enterprise. Soon, a new American corporation. -
Infamous
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Infamous
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Re:Interesting... error though
there is no such thing as a centrifugal force
Not so, Grasshopper:
http://www.tfd.com/centrifugal+force -
Re:sometimes ripoff, sometimes not
... how many people know what the heck coruscating means? (definition here)...Which of course leads us to look up the definition of Coruscant, for anyone who cares. Pronounced differentaly than the Star Wars location, though...
Not really important, but interesting.
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sometimes ripoff, sometimes not
First, reading the article, paragraph, how many people know what the heck coruscating means? (definition here)
Anyway I don't know where the line is, but somewhere it is there albeit not a bright line. I loved the re-mix (don't remember who, don't remember the name of the song) where Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride was the core of the piece but I would be disappointed if credit isn't extended and a cut of the profit isn't provided to Steppenwolf for providing the original inspiration and music. Certainly if someone were to digitally re-master any song in its purest and most original form and release that as their own work they would be guilty of out and out ripoff. But, a song with hints of the motif or melody of some other work is more subtle and probably more difficult to clearly state theft of said original work.
In classical music it was quite common for composers to "rip off" a theme or motif of another composer and incorporate it into another original work. In many cases it was considered the ultimate homage to the original creator.
I guess for me it boils down to how much is added by the "new" artist's work. Some of the re-mixes I've heard come pretty darned close to ripoffs.
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Re:Interesting Title
In Soviet Union, Government Spellchecks You!!!
*parries* -
It depends on your definition of "Just"Just
I suspect they were shooting for definition 6 (under adverb):
6. Simply; certainly: It's just beautiful!
But doesn't definition 3 seem a better fit?3. By a narrow margin; barely: just missed being hit; just caught the bus before it pulled away.
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Re:there's a jury involved?Dude, jury-rigged is the actual word.
Jerry-rigged is later addition from people who didn't know that everyone else was saying jury-rigged, and thought that it must have something to do with jerry-build; which is not a nautical term.
Apart from that good post! (Except for the troll at the end)
Perhaps you were thinking of jackass rig, which is a nautical term?
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Re:there's a jury involved?Dude, jury-rigged is the actual word.
Jerry-rigged is later addition from people who didn't know that everyone else was saying jury-rigged, and thought that it must have something to do with jerry-build; which is not a nautical term.
Apart from that good post! (Except for the troll at the end)
Perhaps you were thinking of jackass rig, which is a nautical term?
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Re:there's a jury involved?Dude, jury-rigged is the actual word.
Jerry-rigged is later addition from people who didn't know that everyone else was saying jury-rigged, and thought that it must have something to do with jerry-build; which is not a nautical term.
Apart from that good post! (Except for the troll at the end)
Perhaps you were thinking of jackass rig, which is a nautical term?
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Grape Nuts?He has also enlisted the help of a number of other cognoscenti...
Definition of cognoscenti(n): "a grape nut"
Oh yeah, he sounds like an expert.
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Have a free clue