I'm not aware of anybody getting a patent on that, but I can imagine it would be profitable if they could get it to stand (if you'll excuse the expression).
The terms of Google's out-of-court settlement with Yahoo are unclear http://www.techuser.net/microsoft-yahoo.html, but they may well leave some leverage over Google in the patent.
It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents
The aclu seems to think that a us phone number confers us citizenship / permanent residency upon the answerer
does the bill require the prior determination that the person whose number is being tapped is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident? If not, it's not the ACLU that's doing any assuming. (BTW, where did that "permanent" come from anyway? And precisely to whom does the US constitution apply?)
All this buying of internet companies is complete nonsense. You CAN and WILL do better than that dinosaur Yahoo if you TRY. Anyone can creat a fucking WEB SITE for God's sake.
But as far as I know, nobody has yet found a way of making monry from a search site that doesn't involve one particular patent, which Yahoo just happens to own.
That may be true in an IT environment, but are the majority of Microsoft Office users in an IT environment? Or maybe it's just me in an unusual situation -- I'm a consultant and all of my customers require deliverables in MS Office format, and the appearance of OO.o documents saved in MS Office formats and re-opened in MS Office just isn't up to the professional standards required of me (for precisely the reasons we object to OOXML). That ties me, and the rest of the company, to using MS Office, even before I start considering the customers that require me to use their templates with VBA macros built in.
So, interestingly, letting the 15-year-old have alcohol at a private party would have been legal at home in the UK (as a UK parent I already knew that) but was apparently illegal where they were, in Spain.
Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.
Trouble is, the vast vast majority of Microsoft users will have no interest in this whole fiasco. The "more people" who want to escape will be lost in the noise. The things that concern the majority of/. readers are rarely the things that concern the corporate suits who make the purchasing decisions.
Well, only if you choose to treat it that way -- English is not like French, with an official academy to mandate correct use. I doubt whether the editors of the Longman or Collins range of dictionaries give the OED canonical status! (in the case of the Longman range at least, with some justification, because they do a lot of solid research work into how the language is actually used -- the Collins people probably do too).
Given that I specifically refer to the tug of war between the two philosophies of dictionary editing, given that I know that the first that you mention is called "prescriptive" not "proscriptive", and given that most dictionaries nowadays are indeed descriptive rather than prescriptive (the same is not true of grammars, for what it's worth) -- something you yourself recognise when you say "many dictionaries are mere reporters" -- I think I have some clue about the subject -- we've covered it quite extensively already on the linguistics degree I'm doing at the moment. If you have better authority than my course texts I'd love to hear it, because well-supported contrary opinions are always good for a few extra marks on assignments.
The dictionary compiles all the words we say, and we make up more words, and the dictionary compiles all the new words we say, and we make up more new words...
Which is a good case for dictionaries moving from paper to electronic formats -- my copy of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary (the "compact" edition) is huge and unwieldly, and long out of date.
I gave up on Webster's as an authoritative source on the English language after they added bling to its dictionary.
What do you mean by "authoritative"? Do you think that the purpose of a dictionary is to tell you how the language should be used or to report how it actually is used? Most dictionary compilers see themselves as having the latter role, in which case "bling" certainly deserves a place.
But how many times have you used mouse potato since 1993?
Isn't that exactly why it should be in a dictionary? Somebody reading something from the early 1990s might come across it and want to check their understanding of the meaning. If I'm reading old literature I'm rather glad that my dictionary includes "sweven" and "parfay" precisely because I don't normally use those words.
Proactive is the opposite of reactive, which are both something else than "active".
You know that and I know that, but apparently the VC giving the speech didn't know that, and the questioner successfully called his bluff. The point isn't that the words don't have useful meanings, it's that people use them to hype up their message without actually knowing those useful meanings.
On the other hand, if the developer falls under a bus and turns out to have been developing the critical application in Intercal...
This is clearly a trade-off for the company. They gain flexibility, being able to move resources as projects get slack or hit bottlenecks, but will be working less efficiently on any particular project than a company that is used to using tools that are well-suited to that project (and both will probably do better than the company that learns a new toolset each time).
Because audible spam in my head would be even worse than the e-mailed spam in my in-box or the visible spam on billboards (and bus stops, sides of buildings/cars, etc.)
Nah -- the voices already in my head will be able to shout it down...
and before the Linux people say it - I fully expect their experience would be similar to the FreeBSD one - I just don't have the experience to say one way or the other
Nor do I, I've never looked at BSD (experienced MS users read that TLA quite differently and get nervous!) One particular nuisance on Linux is trying to get around the problem of manufacturers not releasing driver specifications and only producing MS drivers. The thought of struggling (usually unsuccessfully) with ndiswrapper to try to get wi-fi working (a real nuisance when there's no internet connection until you get wi-fi working) makes my heart sink when faced with installing Linux. Driver support like that is another advantage MS has: you might have to search, but at least the drivers will be out there. It's an unfair advantage, but whether it's fair or not probably isn't at the front of most people's minds when trying to get a system working.
as soon as you're not compatible with Windows, you may as well run Linux anyway
That's only true for some users -- essentially, geeks and those with access to geeks. Every MS WIndows installation I have ever done has been an absolute dream compared to every Linux installation I have ever done (although I confess I've never done a Vista installation). Every MS Windows setup I have worked on has been a dream to configure and use compared to Linux. It's the big challenge for FOSS -- to make the transition from geek-only to general purpose, as the geeks lose interest when it comes down to such anti-geek things as documentation. Linux would be fine for the person who just accepts what their computer comes with preinstalled, and it would be fine for those who are happy to play with the internals (or who have a support department to do that), but I honestly don't think that it's ready for the middle-ground yet -- pretty much the SOHO market. So the question isn't whether there's a market for a non-MS-compatible MS OS, the question is whether that market is big enough for a new-concept OS to get a foothold from which it can build back to the corporate customers. I can't help wondering whether Vista was an attempt to sound that out -- it comes pretty close to being a non-MS-compatible MS OS.
Although this isn't a troll, I expect it will be marked as one by those who only see that I've been negative about MS and/or Linux, but sometimes the unsayable needs to be said.
Slashdot Mirror
A fucking patent?
I'm not aware of anybody getting a patent on that, but I can imagine it would be profitable if they could get it to stand (if you'll excuse the expression).
The terms of Google's out-of-court settlement with Yahoo are unclear http://www.techuser.net/microsoft-yahoo.html, but they may well leave some leverage over Google in the patent.
It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents
The aclu seems to think that a us phone number confers us citizenship / permanent residency upon the answerer
does the bill require the prior determination that the person whose number is being tapped is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident? If not, it's not the ACLU that's doing any assuming. (BTW, where did that "permanent" come from anyway? And precisely to whom does the US constitution apply?)
If Microsoft get their hands on Patent 6,269,361 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,269,361.PN.&OS=PN/6,269,361&RS=PN/6,269,361 there might not be an elsewhere for them to go to.
All this buying of internet companies is complete nonsense. You CAN and WILL do better than that dinosaur Yahoo if you TRY. Anyone can creat a fucking WEB SITE for God's sake.
But as far as I know, nobody has yet found a way of making monry from a search site that doesn't involve one particular patent, which Yahoo just happens to own.
That may be true in an IT environment, but are the majority of Microsoft Office users in an IT environment? Or maybe it's just me in an unusual situation -- I'm a consultant and all of my customers require deliverables in MS Office format, and the appearance of OO.o documents saved in MS Office formats and re-opened in MS Office just isn't up to the professional standards required of me (for precisely the reasons we object to OOXML). That ties me, and the rest of the company, to using MS Office, even before I start considering the customers that require me to use their templates with VBA macros built in.
So, interestingly, letting the 15-year-old have alcohol at a private party would have been legal at home in the UK (as a UK parent I already knew that) but was apparently illegal where they were, in Spain.
Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.
Trouble is, the vast vast majority of Microsoft users will have no interest in this whole fiasco. The "more people" who want to escape will be lost in the noise. The things that concern the majority of /. readers are rarely the things that concern the corporate suits who make the purchasing decisions.
But are your thoughts random?
Well, only if you choose to treat it that way -- English is not like French, with an official academy to mandate correct use. I doubt whether the editors of the Longman or Collins range of dictionaries give the OED canonical status! (in the case of the Longman range at least, with some justification, because they do a lot of solid research work into how the language is actually used -- the Collins people probably do too).
See? If you had a dictionary with archaic words then you'd know by now! ;-)
(It's an archaic intejection, reinforcing the remainder of the utterance, parfay! -- as well as being an alternative spelling of "parfait").
Given that I specifically refer to the tug of war between the two philosophies of dictionary editing, given that I know that the first that you mention is called "prescriptive" not "proscriptive", and given that most dictionaries nowadays are indeed descriptive rather than prescriptive (the same is not true of grammars, for what it's worth) -- something you yourself recognise when you say "many dictionaries are mere reporters" -- I think I have some clue about the subject -- we've covered it quite extensively already on the linguistics degree I'm doing at the moment. If you have better authority than my course texts I'd love to hear it, because well-supported contrary opinions are always good for a few extra marks on assignments.
The dictionary compiles all the words we say, and we make up more words, and the dictionary compiles all the new words we say, and we make up more new words...
Which is a good case for dictionaries moving from paper to electronic formats -- my copy of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary (the "compact" edition) is huge and unwieldly, and long out of date.
I gave up on Webster's as an authoritative source on the English language after they added bling to its dictionary.
What do you mean by "authoritative"? Do you think that the purpose of a dictionary is to tell you how the language should be used or to report how it actually is used? Most dictionary compilers see themselves as having the latter role, in which case "bling" certainly deserves a place.
But how many times have you used mouse potato since 1993?
Isn't that exactly why it should be in a dictionary? Somebody reading something from the early 1990s might come across it and want to check their understanding of the meaning. If I'm reading old literature I'm rather glad that my dictionary includes "sweven" and "parfay" precisely because I don't normally use those words.
Proactive is the opposite of reactive, which are both something else than "active".
You know that and I know that, but apparently the VC giving the speech didn't know that, and the questioner successfully called his bluff. The point isn't that the words don't have useful meanings, it's that people use them to hype up their message without actually knowing those useful meanings.
In many cases it's easier -- when it's the media barons who are doing the lobbying, for instance.
On the other hand, if the developer falls under a bus and turns out to have been developing the critical application in Intercal...
This is clearly a trade-off for the company. They gain flexibility, being able to move resources as projects get slack or hit bottlenecks, but will be working less efficiently on any particular project than a company that is used to using tools that are well-suited to that project (and both will probably do better than the company that learns a new toolset each time).
Because audible spam in my head would be even worse than the e-mailed spam in my in-box or the visible spam on billboards (and bus stops, sides of buildings/cars, etc.)
Nah -- the voices already in my head will be able to shout it down...
and before the Linux people say it - I fully expect their experience would be similar to the FreeBSD one - I just don't have the experience to say one way or the other
Nor do I, I've never looked at BSD (experienced MS users read that TLA quite differently and get nervous!) One particular nuisance on Linux is trying to get around the problem of manufacturers not releasing driver specifications and only producing MS drivers. The thought of struggling (usually unsuccessfully) with ndiswrapper to try to get wi-fi working (a real nuisance when there's no internet connection until you get wi-fi working) makes my heart sink when faced with installing Linux. Driver support like that is another advantage MS has: you might have to search, but at least the drivers will be out there. It's an unfair advantage, but whether it's fair or not probably isn't at the front of most people's minds when trying to get a system working.
as soon as you're not compatible with Windows, you may as well run Linux anyway
That's only true for some users -- essentially, geeks and those with access to geeks. Every MS WIndows installation I have ever done has been an absolute dream compared to every Linux installation I have ever done (although I confess I've never done a Vista installation). Every MS Windows setup I have worked on has been a dream to configure and use compared to Linux. It's the big challenge for FOSS -- to make the transition from geek-only to general purpose, as the geeks lose interest when it comes down to such anti-geek things as documentation. Linux would be fine for the person who just accepts what their computer comes with preinstalled, and it would be fine for those who are happy to play with the internals (or who have a support department to do that), but I honestly don't think that it's ready for the middle-ground yet -- pretty much the SOHO market. So the question isn't whether there's a market for a non-MS-compatible MS OS, the question is whether that market is big enough for a new-concept OS to get a foothold from which it can build back to the corporate customers. I can't help wondering whether Vista was an attempt to sound that out -- it comes pretty close to being a non-MS-compatible MS OS.
Although this isn't a troll, I expect it will be marked as one by those who only see that I've been negative about MS and/or Linux, but sometimes the unsayable needs to be said.
To configure bluetooth for the external keyboard.
(one of which is now a tea room, ah yes, nice treatment of history there guys...)
I bet one of them was a tea-room during WWII, too, although they would have called it a canteen then.
Don't give the RIAA ideas...
Indeed. Nowadays it doesn't mean anything at all.