Absolutely agree with the above post. I have an iPaq, dust bunnies and all. I would never give it up.;)
That being said, they have supposedly fixed the dust problem by adding screen gaskets. I don't have one of these newer models so I can't comment.
The single button problem does make gaming impossible. Can't even play a decent game of Doom; Quake is a chore also. Folks are working on gamepad controllers to get around this problem.
Speaker click is very irritating, but the excellent sound when using the device with headphones (which is how I normally listen to music and movies) more than makes up for it.
The worst thing is size. A naked iPaq is a thing of beauty. Sure, it's bigger than a Palm (not by that much) - but hell, look at all it can do! A naked iPaq is a very good thing.
As soon as you slip an expansion jacket on it, forget about it, it's a brick. There are after-market modifications you can make to the sleeves (or pay someone else to) to slim them down. I'm working on mine right now.
Palms are great, and if all your mobile needs are met by one, fantastic. I for one love the expansion possibilities and features of my iPaq, whether it be running WinCE or Linux.
This card will run all your old games, and better than any other card out there.
I take that back - my bad. This is debatable, see the benchmarks at http://www.digit-life.com/articles/gf3/index.html for more info.
Of course, these are using pre-release drivers. If anything NVidia has shown us they can do wonderful things regarding performance with their drivers, so perhaps these numbers will change and my original statement will stand.;)
If you don't want to see the 3D industry completely monopolised by a single player, avoid the GeForce3, and avoid any games written to depend on its features. Support chipmakers that are seeking to make everything run better, like ATI and PowerVR.
This has to be one of the dumbest things I've heard all month.
They have improved "general stuff" like fillrates and T&L.
Where do you think new features come from? This card will run all your old games, and better than any other card out there. On top of that, it will run all the new games coming out that support features exposed in DirectX 8.0 - which, in case you haven't figured it out yet, is what developers will be using to create those new games.
And who is to say you have to use vertex lighting? Granted, it won't look as good, but you can keep your old card and use light mapping instead.
ATI didn't pack any "new" features into their current crop of cards, because the APIs weren't there to take advantedge of them when they were being developed. You can bet your ass they have their R&D departments all over the new funtionality exposed in DirectX 8.0 and are busy creating new cards to go head-to-head with the GeForce3.
This is a good thing. NVidia has raised the bar, now the others must try and top them. That's how we get better hardware folks, it's not a bad thing.
The visual clarity was overwhelming - I was noticing so much - the edges of leaves on trees that had previously been sort of an indistinct green blur, details of people's hair across the street... so much sharp detail on the complex, organic stuff in the real world.
It gave me a headache within a couple of hours.
My brain was not used to getting so much visual information. The "software" for visual processing was suddenly having to deal with twice as much resolution, and it was constantly "getting behind" processing details that I didn't actually need. Over the next week, the sensation and problems went away as I got used to it - the brain is very adaptive.
I don't think so. Oh, I agree, the brain is very adaptive, but I don't think that's why you were getting a headache.
If you have poor peripheral vision, why would you spend any time using it? Consequently, the muscles that move your eye around atrophy. When you got the contacts you realized what you were missing and started looking around.
When I was a teenager I had long hair, only got it cut once every six months or so. Every time I would get a headache for a day or two, because my peripheral vision would be usable again (I have 20/10 vision).
It's natural for us to focus our eyes on interesting things. If your peripheral vision suddenly starts identifying more interesting things for you to look at, you get eyestrain from the extra activity.
There is an excellent article on Gamasutra that covers this very issue, detailing the "Art and Science of Level Design". Being artistic isn't enough, and being technical isn't enough - you must be both.
When X was 'invented' there is no concept of 'inter-application communication' through GUI (how ever other means as pipes / sockets / shared mem existed on Unix for a long time). Then these things were 'glued on'.
This is the unix way. Lots of small tools working as one.
One advantage windows had however, is they came out at a time these GUI things were around (MAcs) and they set the standard (ie this is how you cut text / this is how you drag stuff). So no wonder every win application behaves the same way.
And this is another way.;) I have no desire for my Linux/Unix workstations to behave this way, because I have a Windows workstation that already does it quite well.
That being said, I don't like the idea of anti-aliasing on my desktop. I'd much rather run at a disgusting resolution with scalable fonts.
I got about 3/4 of the way thru and gave up. As far as I can see there's little that's new here. This isn't a critique, it's flaming, filled with poor comparisons that are right on par with the OOP myths he debunks (which, btw, was the only accurate part of the paper).
If he's set out to prove that OOP is the enemy of folks who want to rush code out the door and be the first to market, well then fine... he's done so. Nobody is going to argue that to do things properly takes time, regardless of the methodology you use. Which do you admire more, first to market, or clean, elegant code?
Is it our fault his tax class depends on another class!!???
OOP, code indenting, editors, etc. - all personal choices that influence your productivity. I don't complain when I see someone drinking pepsi (ugh!) instead of Coke.
Hrmmm.... Now, while I am apt to agree with some of the choices on that list, there are obvious omissions. Not a single ancient work appears on that list (the Illiad, the Oddessy, Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, for samplers).
Pointing out the obvious... these are more than 1000 years old.
Bram's Dracula is probably one of the most popular works EVER, yet it doesn't appear on the list.
Agreed... why this is missing and Harry Fucking Potter made it is beyond me...
Also missing is ANYTHING by Dickens, Fitzgerald, Defoe, or Stevenson, or Hemingway. But I guess Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (which are required reading in U.S. grade and junior high schools, I believe) just dont rank up there with the "Harry Potter phenomenon."
Agreed on Hemingway, but Dickens!? The man was paid by the word, and it shows. Pure tripe.;)
Now, if the States pay for worker education, companies no longer have to worry about employees jumping ship once trained to competitors who, not having to pay for the training, can afford to pay the employees more, and thus prey on better intentioned companies...
The role of the State is to make a level playing field for everybody, so no one is disadvantaged for being "nice". Since every company (cough) pays taxes, everyone will pay for the training, and everyone will benefit.
What "state" are you speaking of? The United States? Like we already don't have problems with our educational system!
Better to spend the money on the basics, like decent middle and high schools. Perhaps we could even have a generation that knows how to read, write, and maybe even understand some calculus. There is an incredible gulf between affluent communities and poor communities when it comes to education -- giving this sort of benefit would only serve to widen this gap and once and for all create a permanent "labor" class. ugh. No thanks...
The state should provide every citizen with an education that will prepare them to learn ANYTHING. Specialized skills should come later, and be paid for by the individual or private entities.
Then I learned that whoever recommended the accepted new TLDs got a lock (like NSI had up to a year ago) on the TLD, I was angered. Where went the idea of opening up the net? Then I learned they shot down two of what I felt to be the most important TLDs;.kids and.sex or.xxx. There could have been a lot of good done with.kids, and.sex or.xxx would have helped separate the.coms from the.cums out there.
1. Kids aren't a big moneymaking audience on the 'net just yet. As you've already noticed, these TLDs aren't designed to make more sense out of the 'net, they're designed to make more money out of it.
2. Same for porn sites... they generally come and go. I imagine being a registrar for a porn site is about as lucrative as being a merchant account provider -- great if the site does well, a big loss if it doesn't (and might even open you to lawsuits).
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more commercialized.;)
The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers.
" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened.
Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center still much is to fill out ", said Hawking. ( dpa ) ( jk / c't)
Your missing my point,and thats my fault, I didn't express it fully.
This is perhaps the most refreshing statement I have read in a comment to date.;)
It's also entirely possible that you are correct, I still disagree, though not as vehemently as before.
Lets say that you offered Oil changes for free to anyone who wants to drive up to your house. You provide free oil, and a free oil filter.
Great service. Now, after a year or two of this, you decide that you are no longer going to change the oil filters, just change the oil. (of course changing the filter, as many people know, is part of a proper oil change).
You know what, thats fine, and you have EVERY RIGHT to do that. However, the people who are getting the change have the RIGHT to know that you have changed the service that you are giving them, and it is no longer what they expect.
Perhaps, in fact yes. You can argue that safety is an issue. Cars can kill when they don't work. Search engines don't. I understand analogies aren't ideal and the point you are trying to make. I think that Google has a responsibility to provide us with this information, I don't believe we have a right to it. It's a sad fact, but not everyone lives up to their responsibilities.
It is WRONG to pretend to continue to provide a service, when you are not really providing it. This is a signifigant change in the type of service.
Again, I am in total agreement. I just do not feel we have a right to the information under the circumstances.
Noone has a "Right" to use the service. They do, however, have a right to know WHAT is being offered to them.
What is being offered is search results. Google has never made their algorithims public knowledge, and we shouldn't expect them to do so now. We (at least I) have been using google for some time now not knowing definitivly how they rank their results.
Though I share your frustration, and would love to know what's going on, I just don't feel like it's a right that has been taken away from me.
So what's your point? The person you're responding to never said anything about a right to use Google. He did talk about a right to know if they're screwing around with their search result precedence to make a buck.
That's my point. You have no right to know that. It would be nice, but you have no right to it at all.
You know what? He's correct. The source for this story had every right to analyze Google's operation in the way that he did, and he has every right to disseminate this information, and users have every right to pick another search engine. All of these rights seem perfectly reasonable, to me.
And to me. If you read my post you'll see that I suggest using another engine if you find google doesn't work for you. Nowhere do I suggest that you should not talk about their practices or methods. I maintain you have no right to demand anything from google. Anything.
Search engines perform a task that is somewhat "journalistic" in nature. In the long term, they're going to need to develop something like journalistic integrity in order to maintain the respect of most users. Giving preference to people who are paying you to do so without disclosing to users that you are doing this is probably a violation of this integrity. Not punisble by law, but certainly worthy of censure in the public eye.
Well and good, and I agree. Now please explains how this bestows any rights to the public to demand anything from google.
The problem is not the making of an alliance.
The problem is that they appear to be doing what many companies do. They have realised that they can make profit easier by decreasing quality.
An alliance is one thing. However compromising the quality of a service in the process means that the community of people who use it suffers.
The community thus has a RIGHT to know that this is going on, so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to continue the use of that service.
How do you figure you have a right to anything from Google? Did you pay them? Can you point me to any written proof of such a right?
Claiming a right to a free service is absurd. Google is and remains an excellent, free, service. If it stops being free, or the quality starts to suffer -- stop using it!
I'm sure you have plenty of rights being abused that would better deserve your attention. Think about it.
If you don't like patents, come up with some arguments against them. Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up
with, were things that anybody could have come up with.
I would think that any normal, sane person would see an arguement isn't neccesary. Obviously we do not live in a normal, sane world.
The patent system is not intended to protect obvious inventions. It is meant to allow inventors to show the public how their inventions work, while still protecting their rights. Patenting widgets, file managers, or new ways to tie your shoe-lace is hardly benefiting the public, and it's the public that by and large pays for enforcement of these patents with taxes going to a legal system that now has to worry about folks like Adobe who are miffed that someone else is using a tabbed dialog. Imagine if they could focus on the crimes and issues that concern the public, and not those that concern companies like Adobe.
Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up
with, were things that anybody could have come up with.
Are you seriously suggestion no-one would come up with a tabbed dialog? A window manager? A file manager? I'll grant you Post-it notes are ingenious, but protecting them with a patent is an abuse of the original intent of the system.
"Adobe will not be the R&D department for its competitors."
Okay, so they have the patent, ridiculous as it is. Were they really the first to come up with the tabbed dialog?
The patent is here. Very interesting that crap like this is even possible! IBM's patent server also lists patents that reference this one, including:
Computer user interface with window title bar icons (IBM)
Computer windows management system and method for simulating off-screen document storage and retrieval (HP)
User interface system having programmable user interface elements (Apple)
System and methods for improved spreadsheet interface with user-familiar objects (Borland)
System and method for viewing icon contents on a video display (Wang)
<sarcasm>Great to see the patent system at work. Now we the public can understand how all these amazing things would work, since we'd never possibly think of them ourselves.</sarcasm>
Title bar icons? Window management? Document storage and retrival? This is almost funny.
However, there are no TT fonts included ATM (neither with the 7.0beta nor with Freetype) - if you can point me to a place that has good and free TT fonts that we could include, do. It's hard to find any high-quality free TT fonts.
There's Fontastic, though not all the fonts come with license information, so they may not actually be free. Quite a collection though.
I suspect that the guys who pay $70 (or whatever it really costs) for a Redhat distribution are not aware of the beta release schedule of 7.0. In other words, I think the guys who read/. are downloading their distributions.
Perhaps. I always buy the latest Redhat I'm using for the same reason I always register shareware I use often. Though selling the actual distro may no longer be RedHat's bread and butter (service and support is) I have no desire to see them go under because the planet is sitting in uffish thought while they download it.;)
Besides, how else am I to get my official redhat sticker? I think I have one on every major appliance in my house at this point. <g>
Seriously, where do you get all the hydrogen for the fuel cells? To create that much H (because it sure as hell isn't available in nature) would require tremendous amounts of energy. Given our current power infrastructure, producing large amounts of hydrogen would have quite an effect on the environment. Doesn't buy you much over gasoline.
Of course, if we'd come to our senses and explore nuclear energy properly and scientifically instead of telling horror stories about Chernobyl we'd be moving in the right direction.
Author James P Hogan maintains an excellent website, of special interest to folks in this discussion are his thoughts on energy.
From one of his articles:
A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.
NO! Netcraft and Google are not doing these types of scans. I think you are confusing Layers 3 and 4 with Layer 7. A ping sweep is much more invasive than a web spider or an HTTP GET request. These ping sweeps are mapping networks, not following links. I consider my network private property and anyone attempting to scan it (for whatever reason) is trespassing.
That's great! I believe in the tooth fairy.;)
But seriously folks, scanning a network should not be invasive. If you're running services that give you cause to worry -- turn them off! Making comparisons to jiggling the door knob is well and good, but it's a just a comparison -- doors and services are two totally seperate things and I just don't see how the analogy applies.
Scanning someone might be rude, but it's not invasive. Invasive is someone hAx0ring your boxen and replacing login.;)
Slashdot Mirror
That being said, they have supposedly fixed the dust problem by adding screen gaskets. I don't have one of these newer models so I can't comment.
The single button problem does make gaming impossible. Can't even play a decent game of Doom; Quake is a chore also. Folks are working on gamepad controllers to get around this problem.
Speaker click is very irritating, but the excellent sound when using the device with headphones (which is how I normally listen to music and movies) more than makes up for it.
The worst thing is size. A naked iPaq is a thing of beauty. Sure, it's bigger than a Palm (not by that much) - but hell, look at all it can do! A naked iPaq is a very good thing.
As soon as you slip an expansion jacket on it, forget about it, it's a brick. There are after-market modifications you can make to the sleeves (or pay someone else to) to slim them down. I'm working on mine right now.
Palms are great, and if all your mobile needs are met by one, fantastic. I for one love the expansion possibilities and features of my iPaq, whether it be running WinCE or Linux.
Welcome to Slashdot.
I take that back - my bad. This is debatable, see the benchmarks at http://www.digit-life.com/articles/gf3/index.html for more info. ;)
Of course, these are using pre-release drivers. If anything NVidia has shown us they can do wonderful things regarding performance with their drivers, so perhaps these numbers will change and my original statement will stand.
This has to be one of the dumbest things I've heard all month.
They have improved "general stuff" like fillrates and T&L.
Where do you think new features come from? This card will run all your old games, and better than any other card out there. On top of that, it will run all the new games coming out that support features exposed in DirectX 8.0 - which, in case you haven't figured it out yet, is what developers will be using to create those new games.
And who is to say you have to use vertex lighting? Granted, it won't look as good, but you can keep your old card and use light mapping instead.
ATI didn't pack any "new" features into their current crop of cards, because the APIs weren't there to take advantedge of them when they were being developed. You can bet your ass they have their R&D departments all over the new funtionality exposed in DirectX 8.0 and are busy creating new cards to go head-to-head with the GeForce3.
This is a good thing. NVidia has raised the bar, now the others must try and top them. That's how we get better hardware folks, it's not a bad thing.
I don't think so. Oh, I agree, the brain is very adaptive, but I don't think that's why you were getting a headache.
If you have poor peripheral vision, why would you spend any time using it? Consequently, the muscles that move your eye around atrophy. When you got the contacts you realized what you were missing and started looking around.
When I was a teenager I had long hair, only got it cut once every six months or so. Every time I would get a headache for a day or two, because my peripheral vision would be usable again (I have 20/10 vision).
It's natural for us to focus our eyes on interesting things. If your peripheral vision suddenly starts identifying more interesting things for you to look at, you get eyestrain from the extra activity.
Glad to hear you like the contacts! ;)
An excellent read, check it out.
This is the unix way. Lots of small tools working as one.
One advantage windows had however, is they came out at a time these GUI things were around (MAcs) and they set the standard (ie this is how you cut text / this is how you drag stuff). So no wonder every win application behaves the same way.
And this is another way. ;) I have no desire for my Linux/Unix workstations to behave this way, because I have a Windows workstation that already does it quite well.
That being said, I don't like the idea of anti-aliasing on my desktop. I'd much rather run at a disgusting resolution with scalable fonts.
That is to say, none. Unless of course you use the power of statistics.
If he's set out to prove that OOP is the enemy of folks who want to rush code out the door and be the first to market, well then fine... he's done so. Nobody is going to argue that to do things properly takes time, regardless of the methodology you use. Which do you admire more, first to market, or clean, elegant code?
Is it our fault his tax class depends on another class!!???
OOP, code indenting, editors, etc. - all personal choices that influence your productivity. I don't complain when I see someone drinking pepsi (ugh!) instead of Coke.
Pointing out the obvious... these are more than 1000 years old.
Bram's Dracula is probably one of the most popular works EVER, yet it doesn't appear on the list.
Agreed... why this is missing and Harry Fucking Potter made it is beyond me...
Also missing is ANYTHING by Dickens, Fitzgerald, Defoe, or Stevenson, or Hemingway. But I guess Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (which are required reading in U.S. grade and junior high schools, I believe) just dont rank up there with the "Harry Potter phenomenon."
Agreed on Hemingway, but Dickens!? The man was paid by the word, and it shows. Pure tripe. ;)
What "state" are you speaking of? The United States? Like we already don't have problems with our educational system!
Better to spend the money on the basics, like decent middle and high schools. Perhaps we could even have a generation that knows how to read, write, and maybe even understand some calculus. There is an incredible gulf between affluent communities and poor communities when it comes to education -- giving this sort of benefit would only serve to widen this gap and once and for all create a permanent "labor" class. ugh. No thanks...
The state should provide every citizen with an education that will prepare them to learn ANYTHING. Specialized skills should come later, and be paid for by the individual or private entities.
1. Kids aren't a big moneymaking audience on the 'net just yet. As you've already noticed, these TLDs aren't designed to make more sense out of the 'net, they're designed to make more money out of it.
2. Same for porn sites... they generally come and go. I imagine being a registrar for a porn site is about as lucrative as being a merchant account provider -- great if the site does well, a big loss if it doesn't (and might even open you to lawsuits).
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more commercialized. ;)
Should be typosquating = cybersquating
Looks like a standard newbie mistake, throwing a comparison operator in where you should have an assignment. ;)
This pedantic piece of wisdom brought to you by the letters J-O-K-E.
The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers.
" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened.
Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center still much is to fill out ", said Hawking. ( dpa ) ( jk / c't)
This is perhaps the most refreshing statement I have read in a comment to date. ;)
It's also entirely possible that you are correct, I still disagree, though not as vehemently as before.
Lets say that you offered Oil changes for free to anyone who wants to drive up to your house. You provide free oil, and a free oil filter. Great service. Now, after a year or two of this, you decide that you are no longer going to change the oil filters, just change the oil. (of course changing the filter, as many people know, is part of a proper oil change).
You know what, thats fine, and you have EVERY RIGHT to do that. However, the people who are getting the change have the RIGHT to know that you have changed the service that you are giving them, and it is no longer what they expect.
Perhaps, in fact yes. You can argue that safety is an issue. Cars can kill when they don't work. Search engines don't. I understand analogies aren't ideal and the point you are trying to make. I think that Google has a responsibility to provide us with this information, I don't believe we have a right to it. It's a sad fact, but not everyone lives up to their responsibilities.
It is WRONG to pretend to continue to provide a service, when you are not really providing it. This is a signifigant change in the type of service.
Again, I am in total agreement. I just do not feel we have a right to the information under the circumstances.
Noone has a "Right" to use the service. They do, however, have a right to know WHAT is being offered to them.
What is being offered is search results. Google has never made their algorithims public knowledge, and we shouldn't expect them to do so now. We (at least I) have been using google for some time now not knowing definitivly how they rank their results.
Though I share your frustration, and would love to know what's going on, I just don't feel like it's a right that has been taken away from me.
That's my point. You have no right to know that. It would be nice, but you have no right to it at all.
You know what? He's correct. The source for this story had every right to analyze Google's operation in the way that he did, and he has every right to disseminate this information, and users have every right to pick another search engine. All of these rights seem perfectly reasonable, to me.
And to me. If you read my post you'll see that I suggest using another engine if you find google doesn't work for you. Nowhere do I suggest that you should not talk about their practices or methods. I maintain you have no right to demand anything from google. Anything.
Search engines perform a task that is somewhat "journalistic" in nature. In the long term, they're going to need to develop something like journalistic integrity in order to maintain the respect of most users. Giving preference to people who are paying you to do so without disclosing to users that you are doing this is probably a violation of this integrity. Not punisble by law, but certainly worthy of censure in the public eye.
Well and good, and I agree. Now please explains how this bestows any rights to the public to demand anything from google.
The problem is that they appear to be doing what many companies do. They have realised that they can make profit easier by decreasing quality.
An alliance is one thing. However compromising the quality of a service in the process means that the community of people who use it suffers.
The community thus has a RIGHT to know that this is going on, so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to continue the use of that service.
How do you figure you have a right to anything from Google? Did you pay them? Can you point me to any written proof of such a right?
Claiming a right to a free service is absurd. Google is and remains an excellent, free, service. If it stops being free, or the quality starts to suffer -- stop using it!
I'm sure you have plenty of rights being abused that would better deserve your attention. Think about it.
I would think that any normal, sane person would see an arguement isn't neccesary. Obviously we do not live in a normal, sane world.
The patent system is not intended to protect obvious inventions. It is meant to allow inventors to show the public how their inventions work, while still protecting their rights. Patenting widgets, file managers, or new ways to tie your shoe-lace is hardly benefiting the public, and it's the public that by and large pays for enforcement of these patents with taxes going to a legal system that now has to worry about folks like Adobe who are miffed that someone else is using a tabbed dialog. Imagine if they could focus on the crimes and issues that concern the public, and not those that concern companies like Adobe.
Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up with, were things that anybody could have come up with.
Are you seriously suggestion no-one would come up with a tabbed dialog? A window manager? A file manager? I'll grant you Post-it notes are ingenious, but protecting them with a patent is an abuse of the original intent of the system.
"Adobe will not be the R&D department for its competitors." Okay, so they have the patent, ridiculous as it is. Were they really the first to come up with the tabbed dialog?
The patent is here. Very interesting that crap like this is even possible! IBM's patent server also lists patents that reference this one, including:
- Computer user interface with window title bar icons (IBM)
- Computer windows management system and method for simulating off-screen document storage and retrieval (HP)
- User interface system having programmable user interface elements (Apple)
- System and methods for improved spreadsheet interface with user-familiar objects (Borland)
- System and method for viewing icon contents on a video display (Wang)
<sarcasm>Great to see the patent system at work. Now we the public can understand how all these amazing things would work, since we'd never possibly think of them ourselves.</sarcasm>Title bar icons? Window management? Document storage and retrival? This is almost funny.
Do they care if you have IE installed? Any other app? No. Fact is both work with or without windows, since all they care about is the filesystem.
This is a troll. (well, either I'm trolling or the guy who "asked slashdot" is).
There's Fontastic, though not all the fonts come with license information, so they may not actually be free. Quite a collection though.
Perhaps. I always buy the latest Redhat I'm using for the same reason I always register shareware I use often. Though selling the actual distro may no longer be RedHat's bread and butter (service and support is) I have no desire to see them go under because the planet is sitting in uffish thought while they download it. ;)
Besides, how else am I to get my official redhat sticker? I think I have one on every major appliance in my house at this point. <g>
Of course, if we'd come to our senses and explore nuclear energy properly and scientifically instead of telling horror stories about Chernobyl we'd be moving in the right direction.
Author James P Hogan maintains an excellent website, of special interest to folks in this discussion are his thoughts on energy.
From one of his articles:
A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.
Nuclear's not looking so bad, eh? ;)
You've just described Kimberlite, the open source clustering stuff from Mission Critical Linux. ;)
That's great! I believe in the tooth fairy. ;)
But seriously folks, scanning a network should not be invasive. If you're running services that give you cause to worry -- turn them off! Making comparisons to jiggling the door knob is well and good, but it's a just a comparison -- doors and services are two totally seperate things and I just don't see how the analogy applies.
Scanning someone might be rude, but it's not invasive. Invasive is someone hAx0ring your boxen and replacing login. ;)