What this shows is that firms which take patents are more likely to be involved in patent lawsuits. So the whole "we took defensive patents, now see how we need them" becomes a self-justifying circle.
Huh... Well, I guess that's potentially true in the sense that "involved in a lawsuit" could then go either way - the company would have the option to sue, in addition to the possibility of being sued...
Though, on the other hand - a company that holds no patents basically has no recourse if they're sued under patents someone else claims to own. There's no potential counter-suit, no threat of retaliation to hold off the lawyers... So if someone holds a patent they can claim you're infringing, and you don't have a patent to use in a counter-suit, you're more or less boned. All you can do is go to court and fight for your case. Best case scenario is you don't lose much money.
In a patent war, on the other hand, each company holds some power over the other: there's potential there to come to a mutually-beneficial agreement.
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
Imagine His surprise upon learning that one of His angels had the evil bit set...
You are entirely missing the point of the design: It is designed so that you can stuff it in a pocket and forget about it. The controls on the cord are far easier to reach than digging out the player. That is the whole point.
Right, but you need to have controls somewhere. The player is small and light enough that you can clip it anywhere - so clip it somewhere convenient and use it as your play controls, too. There's no need to introduce a third block containing controls.
Most other MP3 players are also a magnitude of order bigger than the new Shuffle. That was kind of the point here, the thing is too small to put any controls on.
It's not that much smaller than the second version of the shuffle. They could have put a button or two on it.
Moving the controls to the headphone cord just seems like bad design - completely independent of the fact that it imposes this requirement that your headphones incorporate these controls... I mean, there's the little music player at one end of the cord, and the earphones in my ears at the other end of the cord. I don't want anything in between except wire. There's no reason there should be.
From a "simplicity" standpoint, they've taken a bit of "complexity" off the player, but introduced a new point in-line with the headphones, and re-introduced that "complexity" there. To me that's a lot worse than just making the player slightly larger and incorporating controls. The second version of the Shuffle was a much better, more sensible design for a minimalistic player.
Granted, I'm kind of closer to the upper end of it at this point (I was old enough to see "Transformers" in the theater) but DAMN that is a shitty new name they came up with.
Let me describe the situation with an analogy: Suppose the old name, "Sci Fi Channel", is a venerable old VW bus. It's been kicked around for a long time, and it kind of drags up images of the past one might not be too proud of these days - of Sci Fi Channel's humble origins: episodes of Dr. Who that take up more than a regular half-hour block, padded out to an hour with old rocketman serials... FTL newscasts, reruns of "Swamp Thing" and lots of old sci-fi TV shows...
Now, to complete the analogy, "SyFy" is like a giant, steaming pile of dog shit - probably ejected from the back side of a large dog after it's eaten a rancid piece of roadkill. Looking at it makes one want to vomit forcefully, probably without great regard for direction.
I'm shocked! SHOCKED I tell you! You mean the phones/laptops don't run as long as advertised? I can't believe this! It's impossible! Next you'll tell me a 8GB pendrive/SSD holds less than 2^33 bytes.
Yeah, well they did something a little sneaky there - which is they don't use the same definition for "Gigabyte" as computer scientists often do...
Specifically, in this case, they made each byte only 7.45 bits instead of the full 8 bits. Hence, when you boot up your OS and check the drive capacity, it'll say 7.45 GB instead of 8GB.
"The sound of the engines and the smell of the grain, We go riding on the abolition grain train Steven A. Douglas was a great debater, But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator
Denominator, go Decatur, go Decatur, It's the great I Am abominate her, go Decatur, why did we hate her? It's the great I Am"
Then there could also be a matching "-1, Misuse of Meme"...
Fixed
I see what you did there...
I think use or misuse of a meme generally amounts to the same thing, though. Memes are, by their very nature, overused jokes. I figure some people will want to add points for meme use, others will want to subtract points for meme use - personally I'd just like to filter the whole lot of them out.:)
There should be a moderation for "+1, Use of Meme" - I think that applies much better than "Funny" in this case... Then there could also be a matching "-1, Use of Meme"...
How so? I mean, really, I've watched both series in their entirety more than once. How did Firefly have anything in common with Buffy?
Didn't see Serenity, did you?
So the thing that makes Firefly "Buffy in Space" is the fact that the movie based on Firefly included fight scenes in which a relatively small woman kicked large amounts of ass?
OK, granted, that's a shared theme. But it's one that's pretty much central to "Buffy" and actually never occurred in the TV show "Firefly".
Of course, even with the ass-kicking I wouldn't call "Serenity" "Buffy in Space" either. Lots of movies feature copious amounts of ass-kicking and still aren't "Buffy".
Nah, Gul Lemec was just messing with him. He knew Picard was going to be freed and also that he was on the virge of starting to crack - so he switched the number of lights periodically to make Picard think he was losing it.:D
(I am not enough of a Trek geek to know Gul Lemec's name without looking it up...)
Yes, there is a lot of pointless hate for Voyager and I don't get it.
OK... But the comparison you're making here doesn't gain you anything. "This stupid facet of Voyager is no worse than one of the weaker episodes of TNG's worst season".
And it's not as though TNG stopped doing stupid crap after the first season, either - the whole "crew infected with a virus that turns them into animals" episode comes to mind... But what makes a show good isn't that you can hold it up to another show and say "see, the worst of this show is no worse than the worst of that show" - it's all about the show's strengths and how well it plays them.
In terms of Voyager I haven't really watched enough to evaluate it: I lost interest in it around the second season or so and never really went back to watch more. I haven't watched it recently enough to critique it. I'm just saying the argument you make in support of it makes no sense.
Or to steal priceless artifacts...well they -are- priceless (buy you know, if they're willing to throw that much cash out to get them, theu could probably just BUY them back.
Do you understand why these things are called "priceless"?
One thing I found confusing about that episode is why they would need a made-to-order professional thief, instead of just hiring one. I guess the idea was that it's less risky to have your professional thief be programmed not to double-cross you...
"The first episode after they were canceled" and "the first episode after they were renewed" are the same episode. New episodes of a show do not generally come out while a show is canceled.
If the network cancels a show (i.e., makes it clear they will be ordering no more new episodes) before all the episodes they've ordered have been produced, then there is a period after the show is canceled, and before the show is off the air, in which the fact of cancellation can be used within the show... For instance, to do a "finale" episode (like MST3K did... twice...)
Slashdot Mirror
What this shows is that firms which take patents are more likely to be involved in patent lawsuits. So the whole "we took defensive patents, now see how we need them" becomes a self-justifying circle.
Huh... Well, I guess that's potentially true in the sense that "involved in a lawsuit" could then go either way - the company would have the option to sue, in addition to the possibility of being sued...
Though, on the other hand - a company that holds no patents basically has no recourse if they're sued under patents someone else claims to own. There's no potential counter-suit, no threat of retaliation to hold off the lawyers... So if someone holds a patent they can claim you're infringing, and you don't have a patent to use in a counter-suit, you're more or less boned. All you can do is go to court and fight for your case. Best case scenario is you don't lose much money.
In a patent war, on the other hand, each company holds some power over the other: there's potential there to come to a mutually-beneficial agreement.
I'll reserve my judgement on this until I read more from someone that owns a clue.
I assume you meant "powns a clue".
There's no "o" in "pwn"...
Of course, I seriously question the taste of anyone who would use "pwn" in their discussions...
Grumpy Old Men - one of his later roles, and he was really funny in it.
shouldn't that be like 'fan'gels or something to keep in line with the forums theme? Just saying is all...
No, I think that makes the joke an order of magnitude more awkward and not any funnier.
Why stick to a "forums theme" anyway? Folks can talk about things on forums that aren't forum-related, you know...
Not CoCy?
Well, admittedly they have been a bit CoCy ever since their first breakaway success with "South Park", but...
Someone just has to create an ESPN/Porn OS and market it on Comedy Channel.
Oh, haven't you heard? They're Comydy Centryl now...
Sorry, but Burgess Meredith died over a decade ago.
DROP THAT FISH!
Microsoft makes their INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE knockoff (which still flops).
Yeah, it gigaflops...
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
Imagine His surprise upon learning that one of His angels had the evil bit set...
You are entirely missing the point of the design: It is designed so that you can stuff it in a pocket and forget about it. The controls on the cord are far easier to reach than digging out the player. That is the whole point.
Right, but you need to have controls somewhere. The player is small and light enough that you can clip it anywhere - so clip it somewhere convenient and use it as your play controls, too. There's no need to introduce a third block containing controls.
Most other MP3 players are also a magnitude of order bigger than the new Shuffle. That was kind of the point here, the thing is too small to put any controls on.
It's not that much smaller than the second version of the shuffle. They could have put a button or two on it.
Moving the controls to the headphone cord just seems like bad design - completely independent of the fact that it imposes this requirement that your headphones incorporate these controls... I mean, there's the little music player at one end of the cord, and the earphones in my ears at the other end of the cord. I don't want anything in between except wire. There's no reason there should be.
From a "simplicity" standpoint, they've taken a bit of "complexity" off the player, but introduced a new point in-line with the headphones, and re-introduced that "complexity" there. To me that's a lot worse than just making the player slightly larger and incorporating controls. The second version of the Shuffle was a much better, more sensible design for a minimalistic player.
Granted, I'm kind of closer to the upper end of it at this point (I was old enough to see "Transformers" in the theater) but DAMN that is a shitty new name they came up with.
Let me describe the situation with an analogy: Suppose the old name, "Sci Fi Channel", is a venerable old VW bus. It's been kicked around for a long time, and it kind of drags up images of the past one might not be too proud of these days - of Sci Fi Channel's humble origins: episodes of Dr. Who that take up more than a regular half-hour block, padded out to an hour with old rocketman serials... FTL newscasts, reruns of "Swamp Thing" and lots of old sci-fi TV shows...
Now, to complete the analogy, "SyFy" is like a giant, steaming pile of dog shit - probably ejected from the back side of a large dog after it's eaten a rancid piece of roadkill. Looking at it makes one want to vomit forcefully, probably without great regard for direction.
I'm shocked! SHOCKED I tell you! You mean the phones/laptops don't run as long as advertised? I can't believe this! It's impossible! Next you'll tell me a 8GB pendrive/SSD holds less than 2^33 bytes.
Yeah, well they did something a little sneaky there - which is they don't use the same definition for "Gigabyte" as computer scientists often do...
Specifically, in this case, they made each byte only 7.45 bits instead of the full 8 bits. Hence, when you boot up your OS and check the drive capacity, it'll say 7.45 GB instead of 8GB.
Well, just 'cause we don't read the article doesn't mean we don't load it...
(In fact, don't some web browsers pre-load the available links on a page to give a faster browsing experience?)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Nice. :D
"The sound of the engines and the smell of the grain,
We go riding on the abolition grain train
Steven A. Douglas was a great debater,
But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator
Denominator, go Decatur, go Decatur,
It's the great I Am
abominate her, go Decatur, why did we hate her?
It's the great I Am"
You think that's awkward, imagine Bobbit plugging in.
You don't need to imagine, you can go watch the video...
Then there could also be a matching "-1, Misuse of Meme"...
Fixed
I see what you did there...
I think use or misuse of a meme generally amounts to the same thing, though. Memes are, by their very nature, overused jokes. I figure some people will want to add points for meme use, others will want to subtract points for meme use - personally I'd just like to filter the whole lot of them out. :)
There should be a moderation for "+1, Use of Meme" - I think that applies much better than "Funny" in this case... Then there could also be a matching "-1, Use of Meme"...
"Also, there are four lights."
You know that was ripped straight from George Orwell, right?
Nope, didn't know that was taken from 1984... (just looked it up) And being now enlightened, I find the world... remarkably unchanged...
Still, it's good to know these things.
Didn't see Serenity, did you?
So the thing that makes Firefly "Buffy in Space" is the fact that the movie based on Firefly included fight scenes in which a relatively small woman kicked large amounts of ass?
OK, granted, that's a shared theme. But it's one that's pretty much central to "Buffy" and actually never occurred in the TV show "Firefly".
Of course, even with the ass-kicking I wouldn't call "Serenity" "Buffy in Space" either. Lots of movies feature copious amounts of ass-kicking and still aren't "Buffy".
But for a while you beleived there were 5
Nah, Gul Lemec was just messing with him. He knew Picard was going to be freed and also that he was on the virge of starting to crack - so he switched the number of lights periodically to make Picard think he was losing it. :D
(I am not enough of a Trek geek to know Gul Lemec's name without looking it up...)
"Are you trying to make some kind of point here?"
Yes, there is a lot of pointless hate for Voyager and I don't get it.
OK... But the comparison you're making here doesn't gain you anything. "This stupid facet of Voyager is no worse than one of the weaker episodes of TNG's worst season".
And it's not as though TNG stopped doing stupid crap after the first season, either - the whole "crew infected with a virus that turns them into animals" episode comes to mind... But what makes a show good isn't that you can hold it up to another show and say "see, the worst of this show is no worse than the worst of that show" - it's all about the show's strengths and how well it plays them.
In terms of Voyager I haven't really watched enough to evaluate it: I lost interest in it around the second season or so and never really went back to watch more. I haven't watched it recently enough to critique it. I'm just saying the argument you make in support of it makes no sense.
Or to steal priceless artifacts...well they -are- priceless (buy you know, if they're willing to throw that much cash out to get them, theu could probably just BUY them back.
Do you understand why these things are called "priceless"?
One thing I found confusing about that episode is why they would need a made-to-order professional thief, instead of just hiring one. I guess the idea was that it's less risky to have your professional thief be programmed not to double-cross you...
...
I should know better, but...
"The first episode after they were canceled" and "the first episode after they were renewed" are the same episode. New episodes of a show do not generally come out while a show is canceled.
If the network cancels a show (i.e., makes it clear they will be ordering no more new episodes) before all the episodes they've ordered have been produced, then there is a period after the show is canceled, and before the show is off the air, in which the fact of cancellation can be used within the show... For instance, to do a "finale" episode (like MST3K did... twice...)