Did you actually LOOK at some of those things you linked? The video card section, for example, is more or less completely filled with "Yes" under the important columns.
Ubuntu's own help files contain extensive lists of wireless cards that have a big fat "No" listed under the "Works out of the box" column. And that's just wireless cards.
I'm sorry, but when was the last time you actually tried installing Windows? How much hardware works "out of the box" there? How much hardware requires you to go hunting around web sites to try to find the right Windows driver to download and install, and hope that it works? I'm sorry, but in my experience on a number of computers, "out of the box" hardware support is SUBSTANTIALLY better than it is for any Windows installation I've tried. The only place you can escape this at all is on a Mac, and that's only because there's only one kind of hardware. Installation on my desktop system is generally:
Hardware I need to manually configure after the fact on Windows:
Video Card
Wireless Card
Printer
Modem
Sound Card
Motherboard Onboard LAN (fucking LAN, how am I even supposed to get drivers if I hadn't already downloaded them?)
Ditto under Linux:
Video Card
Printer
(no not wireless card, I've never had a problem with any I've every had under Linux)
Or are you doing something as ridiculous as comparing default support on a computer that was manufactured with Windows pre-installed? Because that would indeed be apples to oranges. Anyway, this has always been an incredibly stupid argument. Windows is HORRIBLE with out of the box support for anything other than a very specific set of hardware.
Any distro whose install guide needs to contain a section "Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail" I think should be fairly disqualified. I think "desktop" distros should be those that are basically plug and play (I've never used Debian myself, so if I'm wrong here let me know). Don't get me wrong though on one account, my distro of choice is Arch, and I wouldn't really call that a desktop distro either; nothing wrong with that.
This seems like it would only affect downstream bandwidth. That is, this affects which hosts a client will request information from. I don't see any reason why it would have any effect on whether or not a host would accept a requested upstream connection. So, now that I think about it, I guess it would be BENEFICIAL to people living in the boonies on account of they'd receive fewer requests to upload data.
While your argument makes some sense in theory, it doesn't change the fact that this project is apparently reporting some very straightforward numbers which seem to indicate that in practice your point doesn't hold much water. I understand what you're getting at, but a 207% average speed increase is a 207% average speed increase. If you've investigated and gotten different results, please feel free to share. How directly that translates into a savings in bandwidth for the provider, I don't know, but I don't think that's what the GP was getting at.
Sure, newspapers in general missed something of a business opportunity by not moving their classified ads online, but really, in that market space I really don't think it's clear that there was much profit to be made. The classified ad of old was a seller because it really was the best way to get your ad seen by the broadest number of potential customers. With the internet, that's not the kind of distribution papers have a monopoly on anymore, so there's really no reason they should have led the market there. Anybody could have done it (and Craigslist did).
As for the inverted pyramid, I really just don't see your argument. News stories I read, whether online or not, generally all employ the technique in the actual content of individual stories. Are you claiming that online news stories have the useful information scattered throughout to a greater extent than written print stories? If so, I guess I'm going to have to just disagree. Beyond that, I'm not sure how you "apply" the inverted pyramid to online stories in any different manner than print stories. In other words, I don't see (for example) nytimes.com providing any less organization to their online material than is present in their paper material. Are you arguing they should be doing more? If so, what?
Also, what is your definition of a "proper" news site? You claim that no single traditional news company has managed to construct one, but fail completely to indicate what you consider their actual failings to be with respect to your supposed ideal. I may as well just go and start bitching that no American auto maker has yet managed to make a "proper modern car." Nevermind what that actually is, they've failed!
So once they tell you to go and pound sand (the OP clearly states he hasn't gotten that far), then you take it to the courts. Honestly, I think it's really ethically inexcusable to lawyer up without even ATTEMPTING to solve things decently and without undue conflict. If they're unreasonable about it, THAT is what the court system is for. If they wouldn't have been unreasonable about it, congratulations, you just abused the court system, wasted MY tax dollars, and made our whole corporate society just *that* much more litigious. Good job.
I want nothing to do with children raised by people who have lost all other meaning in their life. This does not make for well adjusted people on any end, and I really think your oversimplification of the situation is naive and dangerous, for both parents and children.
If a change of venue is detrimental to your children, then that should perhaps make you reconsider. If it's a matter of buying your children $1000 Christmas presents or $100 Christmas presents, then they can cope and happily accept that for your good (if only in retrospect later on), and if they can't you haven't been doing your job. I know I would not have wanted to grow up only to discover that I was the source of that kind of misery for my parents.
In short, I feel the above poster has a dangerous attitude towards raising children. Certainly, they are a high priority, but the parents' mental wellbeing is also tremendously important (miserable parents tend not to promote happy families), and should not be unduly sacrificed. If it's a matter of the children or the parents being miserable, then the parents should suffer the burden. I get the distinct impression that is not at issue here, however, and the children involved would not suffer unduly regardless of the decision.
All that said, the OP should be asking his wife and children what they think, not the anonymous masses of/.
The article is based on two whopping unfounded assumptions:
- That this cognitive surplus even exists. It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended. The fact that people in the past had much less free time is meaningless; they also had much less requirement for thought in their work and in their lives. Maybe a consequence of the move from mindless drones to modern thought-workers is that there isn't much thought left to be used in the free time created.
- That mental effort is interchangeable. This should be obviously false, not just unproven. It should be clear to anyone who has interacted with humans that when any kind of goal is at stake, some people's brains are vastly more effective at reaching it than others. If your goal is some physics problem, an hour of Albert Einstein's brain is probably worth more than the entire lifetime of that girl who made me a sandwich at the deli today. You can't say that there are X person-hours being wasted in front of the TV which could do awesome things if they were put to use elsewhere. These are not CPU cycles, you can't just load new software and go.
I'm sorry but... what? Your argument seems itself to be founded on the assumption that sitting on the couch watching television is potentially the height of many peoples' cognitive capacity, which seems ludicrous to me. I'll provide you with a single, simple alternative to watching TV that anybody could engage in to a virtually unlimited degree, and which is almost universally more productive than sitting on the couch: hobbies.
I think it's fair to say that TV and hobbies are fairly interchangeable time-wise, and that hobbies are generally actually productive of something. Whether it's making art or music, gathering and categorizing knowledge (as in Wikipedia), or even many engineering-related hobbies many people enjoy (I myself am a hobby programmer after giving up on it as an enjoyable career), I think it's a very safe assumption to make that there are a number of viable alternatives to TV.
No, we aren't going to have millions of people working on theoretical physics, but that's probably for the best. It also doesn't mean that they won't be doing SOMETHING worthwhile with their time; you don't need a PhD to do useful things. Hell, just getting off their fat asses and going outside to engage in sports as hobbies would be a much more productive endeavor, although probably not exactly what the author here is imagining when he speaks of cognitive surplus.
Anyway, all that said, I'd have to strongly disagree with you on the nature of mental effort. While I myself enjoy participating in a number of hobbies as an alternative to watching TV--hobbies that I like to think of as being productive--I can't imagine a person who would not be likewise capable, barring severe biological disability. Whether people will choose to do so is the matter the author seems to be addressing, but whether they COULD as far as I'm concerned is fairly indisputible. So, while I'm not going to speak to whether I think he's proven any points, I don't think your arguments are very sound.
I seem to have mod points available about 7 days out of every 10. The other three days are apparently reserved for posts on which I would actually use them:( Definitely agree with you that he's comparing apples to oranges.
Wasn't that information released as a result of anti-trust litigation in Europe? As I understand matters, the nature of such a release precludes any legal action on behalf of Microsoft against any companies that thenceforth USE that information, even for commercial purposes, and even if they DO intend to sell in the US--I believe international treaty covers this. The only possible problem I could see on this front would be a company based in the US using this commercially, but even then I'm not so sure. In short, it seems to me like any company operating outside the US could use this information all they want commercially, and there are PLENTY of software companies based outside the US.
I earn a salary too, and I'd be pissed off over the general principle of it if they only charged 50 damn cents. They're essentially asking the game playing public for $10 for the privilege of doing their jobs for them. I think I lost my faith in the future decency of the video game industry when Oblivion players started paying $5 (or whatever) to caparison their horses. Nevertheless, you seem to be confusing outrage over the practicality of the matter with outrage over the principle of it.
tl;dr version: Make your own goddamn finished products developers! (or charge less if you make us do the work for you, and moreso if you make us PAY you to do it)
Typically, nothing I buy for $10 is intended to last, anyhow.
Don't even get me started on how disposable our culture has become. Is there any practical reason why products couldn't be designed to last and sold at a decent price as well? No, it's just less profitable. Anyway, sorry about all that... *rant off*
Except that the search query they use seems designed to identify people writing about languages, rather than using them. Specifically, they query for "+' programming'" This seems specifically designed to favor people-writing-about-it hits far and away above people-using-it. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't see many actual project web pages mentioning "C programming" if they use the C language. They tend to talk about the actual project.
IMO, totally, utterly worthless survey on account of such a poorly chosen search term.
1. Provide an unnecessary, unwanted service to perform background checks on the entire population of the US.
2. Lobby to have your service legislated into a legal requirement.
3. Profit.
You are absolutely incorrect. This is almost a textbook example of an ad hominem argument. The claim of the argument is that, because the proponent of a position is supposedly a "hate filled bigot," the position is therefore invalid.
To use Wikipedia's example:
Person A makes claim X
There is something objectionable about Person A
Therefore claim X is false
This is precisely the content of the argument I was responding to. Please, if you are going to attempt to correct somebody on a point like this, in the future do try to do better than, "it's more like a red herring."
Similar to ignoratio elenchi, a red herring is an argument, given in reply, that does not address the original issue. Critically, a red herring is a deliberate attempt to change the subject or divert the argument.
Wikipedia again, although I have some textbooks on the subject if you'd prefer I use a more formal resource. Of important note that ad hominem and red herring are not mutually exclusive, and even suggest one another often as not.
To wit, the person to whom I replied both dismissed the grandparent's argument on the bases of a personal characterization (ad hominem) and attempted to divert the argument to one about people being "hate filled bigots" about bush (red herring). I stand by my claim of ad hominem, and suggest you find a more useful and valid criticism if you dislike my point.
P.S. I studied philosophy with a concentration in formal logic, why I claim as an explanation for my preference for formal logical analysis of arguments. And yourself?
Slang. to speak critically and often disloyally of; disparage -dictionary.com
So if we're to split hairs, then I'll claim this definition as a perfectly valid reason to say "badmouthing" him is a-okay. This is actually the definition I've always understood the word as, for that matter.
That aside, I think "Huh huh, look how he messes up words so much," is a perfectly valid criticism for somebody in Bush's position. He can, at times, be a HORRIBLY incompetent speaker who has an unusual amount of trouble getting his point across. Unfortunately for him, that's a big part of a politician's job. So yeah, it's a fair criticism that he performs even this simple aspect of his job so poorly.
It's that kind of thing that made me equate any criticism of President Bush with "Huh huh, look how he messes up words so much."
Yes, clearly all criticism of a fascist warmonger (which is in all genuine honestly what I and many others see him as) is invalid because some of the more vocal criticism of him is overly puerile. Attack the argument, not the person, as you just said. If everybody took the attitude you seem to be justifying, we'd be in a sorry state indeed.
Nowadays, I agree with them that he is a criminal, that his behavior is unethical, that he is running the country into the ground and that his war is being waged on behalf of corporate interests. But I try not to badmouth and insult him, because I don't think it's right. And I don't want to turn anyone else away.
He's an unethical criminal who is destroying our country on the behalf of corporate interests... but it's not okay to badmouth him? What kind of twisted world do you live in? If you don't "badmouth" that kind of bullshit, it slides. And when it slides, and you suffer for it, you have only yourself to blame. By all means, badmouth it in a more politic manner than some have, but badmouth it you absolutely should.
Thank you for an absolutely classic example of the ad hominem fallacy. Clearly there is something wrong with you, therefore there must be something wrong with your argument. Please, attach the argument or position, or remain quiet--attacking the person accomplishes nothing.
That said, Bush has done much to deserve the vitriol that is so squarely aimed at him, at least in the eyes of many, and on top of that I think you own prejudices have caused you to apparently read WAY too much into something as simple as the word "Bushco." I mean, overreact much?
I believe the person who used the 1% figure was essentially pulling it from his nether regions. I certainly don't know what kind of figures (if any) that researchers like Hare use, but I suspect that if 1% figures in anywhere, it is that 1% of males are psychopaths, and it is from this pool that people in power are overwhelmingly drawn. Not saying that ALL of the people in that pool end up in power, or that all people in power are drawn from that pool. Like I said though, I don't have any idea on the exact figures.
The kitten one shouldn't be too hard to generate new pictures with. What makes that one hard for computers isn't the fact that it's a picture of a kitten, but the fact that it's SEVERELY distorted and overlaid on top of other images. While "drawing a kitten" might be hard to program, "randomly distorting a kitten picture" isn't too bad. Enough distortion and lookup tables are essentially useless, while highly sophisticated pattern recognition systems (read: humans) still should have little problem.
I'll tell you why *I* would do it, and this reasoning works regardless of immediate business or product plans. Apple is in a number of market segments that are both fast moving and heavily reliant on the kind of chips this company makes. I think, even if they don't have an immediate need for it, it is possibly a very smart need to have that kind of asset essentially on call for any future needs. It would allow them to react a lot more quickly in getting a new product out the door--beating competitors to the punch in whatever the future holds--to essentially be able to make whatever chips they want on demand without having to worry about partnerships. In the interim there's no reason they couldn't allow the company to simply keep on with business as usual in order to maintain profitability until such future need takes over.
My real guess is, while they may have a few minor applications to put PA Semi to currently, the real motivator was simply to have this kind of resources available. In other words, I think it's possibly a strategic purchase against future need. All speculation of course.
As I understand it, there is more than a little support for this claim. For example, Robert Hare, apparently a well known criminal psychologist and professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia where he studied psychopathy, seems to be of this opinion.
Which basically is an attempt to patent the straightforward way of implementing an IM client on any touch screen device. It may seem quite specific, but my reading of your quote pretty much amounts to, "We'd like to patent the only sensible way of implementing an IM interface on touch screens."
Luckily it seems there's pretty obvious prior art. There was a third party IM application for the (jailbroken) iPhone several months ago almost identical to what's described by this filing.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you actually LOOK at some of those things you linked? The video card section, for example, is more or less completely filled with "Yes" under the important columns.
I'm sorry, but when was the last time you actually tried installing Windows? How much hardware works "out of the box" there? How much hardware requires you to go hunting around web sites to try to find the right Windows driver to download and install, and hope that it works? I'm sorry, but in my experience on a number of computers, "out of the box" hardware support is SUBSTANTIALLY better than it is for any Windows installation I've tried. The only place you can escape this at all is on a Mac, and that's only because there's only one kind of hardware. Installation on my desktop system is generally:
Hardware I need to manually configure after the fact on Windows:
Video Card
Wireless Card
Printer
Modem
Sound Card
Motherboard Onboard LAN (fucking LAN, how am I even supposed to get drivers if I hadn't already downloaded them?)
Ditto under Linux:
Video Card
Printer
(no not wireless card, I've never had a problem with any I've every had under Linux)
Or are you doing something as ridiculous as comparing default support on a computer that was manufactured with Windows pre-installed? Because that would indeed be apples to oranges. Anyway, this has always been an incredibly stupid argument. Windows is HORRIBLE with out of the box support for anything other than a very specific set of hardware.
For reference: The Debian installation guide.
Any distro whose install guide needs to contain a section "Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail" I think should be fairly disqualified. I think "desktop" distros should be those that are basically plug and play (I've never used Debian myself, so if I'm wrong here let me know). Don't get me wrong though on one account, my distro of choice is Arch, and I wouldn't really call that a desktop distro either; nothing wrong with that.
This seems like it would only affect downstream bandwidth. That is, this affects which hosts a client will request information from. I don't see any reason why it would have any effect on whether or not a host would accept a requested upstream connection. So, now that I think about it, I guess it would be BENEFICIAL to people living in the boonies on account of they'd receive fewer requests to upload data.
While your argument makes some sense in theory, it doesn't change the fact that this project is apparently reporting some very straightforward numbers which seem to indicate that in practice your point doesn't hold much water. I understand what you're getting at, but a 207% average speed increase is a 207% average speed increase. If you've investigated and gotten different results, please feel free to share. How directly that translates into a savings in bandwidth for the provider, I don't know, but I don't think that's what the GP was getting at.
I'm not sure I really buy your complaints here.
Sure, newspapers in general missed something of a business opportunity by not moving their classified ads online, but really, in that market space I really don't think it's clear that there was much profit to be made. The classified ad of old was a seller because it really was the best way to get your ad seen by the broadest number of potential customers. With the internet, that's not the kind of distribution papers have a monopoly on anymore, so there's really no reason they should have led the market there. Anybody could have done it (and Craigslist did).
As for the inverted pyramid, I really just don't see your argument. News stories I read, whether online or not, generally all employ the technique in the actual content of individual stories. Are you claiming that online news stories have the useful information scattered throughout to a greater extent than written print stories? If so, I guess I'm going to have to just disagree. Beyond that, I'm not sure how you "apply" the inverted pyramid to online stories in any different manner than print stories. In other words, I don't see (for example) nytimes.com providing any less organization to their online material than is present in their paper material. Are you arguing they should be doing more? If so, what?
Also, what is your definition of a "proper" news site? You claim that no single traditional news company has managed to construct one, but fail completely to indicate what you consider their actual failings to be with respect to your supposed ideal. I may as well just go and start bitching that no American auto maker has yet managed to make a "proper modern car." Nevermind what that actually is, they've failed!
So once they tell you to go and pound sand (the OP clearly states he hasn't gotten that far), then you take it to the courts. Honestly, I think it's really ethically inexcusable to lawyer up without even ATTEMPTING to solve things decently and without undue conflict. If they're unreasonable about it, THAT is what the court system is for. If they wouldn't have been unreasonable about it, congratulations, you just abused the court system, wasted MY tax dollars, and made our whole corporate society just *that* much more litigious. Good job.
I want nothing to do with children raised by people who have lost all other meaning in their life. This does not make for well adjusted people on any end, and I really think your oversimplification of the situation is naive and dangerous, for both parents and children.
If a change of venue is detrimental to your children, then that should perhaps make you reconsider. If it's a matter of buying your children $1000 Christmas presents or $100 Christmas presents, then they can cope and happily accept that for your good (if only in retrospect later on), and if they can't you haven't been doing your job. I know I would not have wanted to grow up only to discover that I was the source of that kind of misery for my parents.
In short, I feel the above poster has a dangerous attitude towards raising children. Certainly, they are a high priority, but the parents' mental wellbeing is also tremendously important (miserable parents tend not to promote happy families), and should not be unduly sacrificed. If it's a matter of the children or the parents being miserable, then the parents should suffer the burden. I get the distinct impression that is not at issue here, however, and the children involved would not suffer unduly regardless of the decision.
All that said, the OP should be asking his wife and children what they think, not the anonymous masses of /.
The attorney can't prevent it, but I believe he can refuse to represent the man any further if he does.
I'm sorry but... what? Your argument seems itself to be founded on the assumption that sitting on the couch watching television is potentially the height of many peoples' cognitive capacity, which seems ludicrous to me. I'll provide you with a single, simple alternative to watching TV that anybody could engage in to a virtually unlimited degree, and which is almost universally more productive than sitting on the couch: hobbies.
I think it's fair to say that TV and hobbies are fairly interchangeable time-wise, and that hobbies are generally actually productive of something. Whether it's making art or music, gathering and categorizing knowledge (as in Wikipedia), or even many engineering-related hobbies many people enjoy (I myself am a hobby programmer after giving up on it as an enjoyable career), I think it's a very safe assumption to make that there are a number of viable alternatives to TV.
No, we aren't going to have millions of people working on theoretical physics, but that's probably for the best. It also doesn't mean that they won't be doing SOMETHING worthwhile with their time; you don't need a PhD to do useful things. Hell, just getting off their fat asses and going outside to engage in sports as hobbies would be a much more productive endeavor, although probably not exactly what the author here is imagining when he speaks of cognitive surplus.
Anyway, all that said, I'd have to strongly disagree with you on the nature of mental effort. While I myself enjoy participating in a number of hobbies as an alternative to watching TV--hobbies that I like to think of as being productive--I can't imagine a person who would not be likewise capable, barring severe biological disability. Whether people will choose to do so is the matter the author seems to be addressing, but whether they COULD as far as I'm concerned is fairly indisputible. So, while I'm not going to speak to whether I think he's proven any points, I don't think your arguments are very sound.
I seem to have mod points available about 7 days out of every 10. The other three days are apparently reserved for posts on which I would actually use them :( Definitely agree with you that he's comparing apples to oranges.
Wasn't that information released as a result of anti-trust litigation in Europe? As I understand matters, the nature of such a release precludes any legal action on behalf of Microsoft against any companies that thenceforth USE that information, even for commercial purposes, and even if they DO intend to sell in the US--I believe international treaty covers this. The only possible problem I could see on this front would be a company based in the US using this commercially, but even then I'm not so sure. In short, it seems to me like any company operating outside the US could use this information all they want commercially, and there are PLENTY of software companies based outside the US.
I earn a salary too, and I'd be pissed off over the general principle of it if they only charged 50 damn cents. They're essentially asking the game playing public for $10 for the privilege of doing their jobs for them. I think I lost my faith in the future decency of the video game industry when Oblivion players started paying $5 (or whatever) to caparison their horses. Nevertheless, you seem to be confusing outrage over the practicality of the matter with outrage over the principle of it.
tl;dr version: Make your own goddamn finished products developers! (or charge less if you make us do the work for you, and moreso if you make us PAY you to do it)
Don't even get me started on how disposable our culture has become. Is there any practical reason why products couldn't be designed to last and sold at a decent price as well? No, it's just less profitable. Anyway, sorry about all that... *rant off*Woops, it /. ate my query string example. Here is where they show what they search for.
Except that the search query they use seems designed to identify people writing about languages, rather than using them. Specifically, they query for "+' programming'" This seems specifically designed to favor people-writing-about-it hits far and away above people-using-it. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't see many actual project web pages mentioning "C programming" if they use the C language. They tend to talk about the actual project.
IMO, totally, utterly worthless survey on account of such a poorly chosen search term.
1. Provide an unnecessary, unwanted service to perform background checks on the entire population of the US.
2. Lobby to have your service legislated into a legal requirement.
3. Profit.
There is no step ?.
You are absolutely incorrect. This is almost a textbook example of an ad hominem argument. The claim of the argument is that, because the proponent of a position is supposedly a "hate filled bigot," the position is therefore invalid.
To use Wikipedia's example:
This is precisely the content of the argument I was responding to. Please, if you are going to attempt to correct somebody on a point like this, in the future do try to do better than, "it's more like a red herring."Wikipedia again, although I have some textbooks on the subject if you'd prefer I use a more formal resource. Of important note that ad hominem and red herring are not mutually exclusive, and even suggest one another often as not.
To wit, the person to whom I replied both dismissed the grandparent's argument on the bases of a personal characterization (ad hominem) and attempted to divert the argument to one about people being "hate filled bigots" about bush (red herring). I stand by my claim of ad hominem, and suggest you find a more useful and valid criticism if you dislike my point.
P.S. I studied philosophy with a concentration in formal logic, why I claim as an explanation for my preference for formal logical analysis of arguments. And yourself?
So if we're to split hairs, then I'll claim this definition as a perfectly valid reason to say "badmouthing" him is a-okay. This is actually the definition I've always understood the word as, for that matter.
That aside, I think "Huh huh, look how he messes up words so much," is a perfectly valid criticism for somebody in Bush's position. He can, at times, be a HORRIBLY incompetent speaker who has an unusual amount of trouble getting his point across. Unfortunately for him, that's a big part of a politician's job. So yeah, it's a fair criticism that he performs even this simple aspect of his job so poorly.
Yes, clearly all criticism of a fascist warmonger (which is in all genuine honestly what I and many others see him as) is invalid because some of the more vocal criticism of him is overly puerile. Attack the argument, not the person, as you just said. If everybody took the attitude you seem to be justifying, we'd be in a sorry state indeed.
Thank you for an absolutely classic example of the ad hominem fallacy. Clearly there is something wrong with you, therefore there must be something wrong with your argument. Please, attach the argument or position, or remain quiet--attacking the person accomplishes nothing.
That said, Bush has done much to deserve the vitriol that is so squarely aimed at him, at least in the eyes of many, and on top of that I think you own prejudices have caused you to apparently read WAY too much into something as simple as the word "Bushco." I mean, overreact much?
I believe the person who used the 1% figure was essentially pulling it from his nether regions. I certainly don't know what kind of figures (if any) that researchers like Hare use, but I suspect that if 1% figures in anywhere, it is that 1% of males are psychopaths, and it is from this pool that people in power are overwhelmingly drawn. Not saying that ALL of the people in that pool end up in power, or that all people in power are drawn from that pool. Like I said though, I don't have any idea on the exact figures.
The kitten one shouldn't be too hard to generate new pictures with. What makes that one hard for computers isn't the fact that it's a picture of a kitten, but the fact that it's SEVERELY distorted and overlaid on top of other images. While "drawing a kitten" might be hard to program, "randomly distorting a kitten picture" isn't too bad. Enough distortion and lookup tables are essentially useless, while highly sophisticated pattern recognition systems (read: humans) still should have little problem.
I'll tell you why *I* would do it, and this reasoning works regardless of immediate business or product plans. Apple is in a number of market segments that are both fast moving and heavily reliant on the kind of chips this company makes. I think, even if they don't have an immediate need for it, it is possibly a very smart need to have that kind of asset essentially on call for any future needs. It would allow them to react a lot more quickly in getting a new product out the door--beating competitors to the punch in whatever the future holds--to essentially be able to make whatever chips they want on demand without having to worry about partnerships. In the interim there's no reason they couldn't allow the company to simply keep on with business as usual in order to maintain profitability until such future need takes over.
My real guess is, while they may have a few minor applications to put PA Semi to currently, the real motivator was simply to have this kind of resources available. In other words, I think it's possibly a strategic purchase against future need. All speculation of course.
As I understand it, there is more than a little support for this claim. For example, Robert Hare, apparently a well known criminal psychologist and professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia where he studied psychopathy, seems to be of this opinion.
Which basically is an attempt to patent the straightforward way of implementing an IM client on any touch screen device. It may seem quite specific, but my reading of your quote pretty much amounts to, "We'd like to patent the only sensible way of implementing an IM interface on touch screens."
Luckily it seems there's pretty obvious prior art. There was a third party IM application for the (jailbroken) iPhone several months ago almost identical to what's described by this filing.