and there is a little problem with keeping a data connection open all the time. It drains the battery fast.
That's a problem with your Palm, your chat software, and/or your cellular provider. Persistent data connections are widely used on cell phones and don't drain batteries if implemented correctly.
I am not sure where you are coming up with the distinction that the iPhone is more tethered to the docking station than a gPhone would be.
You even use iTunes on your "Mac or PC" to activate the iPhone! The phone is designed with desktop syncing in mind; the fact that you can use some mobile web sites to get by without syncing doesn't change that.
For the Google phone, you'll likely just unpack it, turn it on, and you're good to go. Syncing and all that will probably be OTA, the way a modern phone should be.
since it would be through a web page on the gPhone
I see no reason to assume that. In fact, Google has already created mobile applications for mail, calendaring, and maps, and they recommend against using the web based ones on phones that give you a choice.
The iPhone occupies a mobile market that is far separate from what Google will be targeting with its series of lower-end, consumer-level devices
This statement suggests that the iPhone is somehow not a consumer-level device. In fact, both the Google phone and the iPhone look like they are going to be "consumer-level devices". The iPhone is "high end" in terms of its price. In terms of features, if the Google phone provides Google's applications (mail, docs, YouTube, maps, reader, talk, maybe more) and MP3 player functionality, the Google phone would actually be "higher end" as far as I'm concerned. The iPhone becomes even more expensive and complicated if you consider that the Google phone can just operate over the air, while the iPhone uses desktop syncing.
I think this could be a serious problem for Apple because the one thing Apple traditionally has going for them over other companies is that other companies make their products too complex. But Google keeps things simple and cheap. Furthermore, on-line services without desktops is clearly where the industry is going: Nokia is coming up with OTA tie-ins, and Microsoft and Yahoo are also busy exposing their web sites through phone software and phone integration.
Neither did the Jews, communists, homosexuals or what the Soviets called "fascist".
Well, duh! That's why I gave the analogy in the first place.
(And for the permanently obtuse, 'what the Soviets called "fascist"' does not mean the same thing as 'fascists'; real fascists are actually dangerous.)
But actually, you're both wrong, because none of that should be necessary unless those tools are used by the pre-crime department.
The only thing that's wrong is that the government is getting involved at all. There may be something sinister about the government asking you 72h in advance of travel who you are and where you're going, but American Airlines has the right to make that a condition of letting you on board.
Airlines should bear the full cost of security (not to mention fuel, air traffic control, pollution, airports, and associated roads) and the entire cost of when they screw up. Right now, we are having a taxpayer subsidized air transportation system that distorts the market and also leads to the government getting involved in private transactions between an airline and a passenger.
Somewhere between 30 million and 50 million Soviet citizens were killed defeating those 'fascists'.
Please stick to the facts: staggering as they were, Soviet losses in WWII were 10 million civilian and 12 million military. And the Soviets were happy to back the Nazis until the Nazis actually attacked them, so don't try to make the Soviet Union out to be some glorious defender of freedoms here.
Unsurprising that thereafter there was a certain amount of paranoia in the USSR about 'fascism'.
There was no paranoia about the actual political system of fascism in the USSR because the USSR practiced fascism themselves. There was paranoia about the label "fascism", which the USSR then exploited for the purpose of propaganda and control.
"Bill Gates" isn't exactly an unusual name, and if he didn't submit the right paperwork, of course it gets denied; even if you're an evil, monopolistic overlord billionaire, you still have to prove your identity and your financial status. It's either that, or use the backdoors in Windows to approve the paperwork himself, which I guess amounts to the same thing.
(I suspect that his notoriety is kind of a nuisance for other people with that name, who probably have to deal with "stop clowning around, what's your real name" a lot. It's probably kind of nice that Nigeria treats the name as just a name).
On the other hand, maybe they just correctly reasoned through that Gates was retiring in 2008, that Windows is having problems, and that his company definitely is being an economic nuisance to Nigeria already.
I understand why Google has this trademark policy--it avoids all sorts of legal hassles--but it's a bad (shall we say, evil?) policy. The purpose of a trademark is to identify a product unambiguously to buyers. The purpose of a trademark is not to give the trademark holder full control over the use of the trademark or to give them "valuable intellectual property".
So, "Olestra gives you diarrhea" and "MoveOn.org tortures kittens to power their web server" are valid trademark uses, regardless of whether they are true or not, and as such should not be restricted.
Just thought I'd point that out. Internet here is quite pathetic, but it's not strictly a free market problem. It's more a general population problem which is amplified by having a free market environment.
No, it's not a "general population problem"; ignorance is economically rational because obtaining information has costs associated with it. Furthermore, it's part of a free market that sellers take advantage of this to charge more than they would if people had complete information.
When you balance out all these effects, it means that a regulated market can sometimes operate more efficiently than a free market. That's why regulating cell phone and cable markets may make sense.
The only "problem" with any of this is that laissez-faire free market proponents don't know their economics and propose bad economic policies.
Of course, the WTO was created out of blatant self interest. That's what makes this such an interesting test case: will the US comply even though it may not be fully in its own interest? If it does, the WTO stands a chance of eventually achieving its stated goals. If it doesn't and there are more cases like this, it may expose the WTO as a sham. Seems to me we're better off either way.
Each state has its right to decide what is and is not legal with regard to this.
That's not the problem of the WTO. The US government made a commitment to other nations to do something and it needs to live up to it. If it can't because of some legal quirks, it has to pay the penalties or fix the quirks.
Your excuse just won't fly any more than "Judge, I really wanted to pay for that large screen TV that I bought on credit, but my wife won't let me."
This isn't the same for most other countries...the analogous thing would be the EU...to the US.
Member states are bound by the decisions of the EU as a whole and need to implement them. If the EU as a whole decides to ban gambling, then every member state must pass a law banning gambling. If the EU as a whole commits to legalized gambling, then every member state must legalize it.
The WTO has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in this issue. It's simply trying to override the sovereignty of an independent state/nation.
The US made contractual commitments when it joined the WTO, and it needs to live up to them. Of course, those commitments override the sovereignty of the US, that's the whole point! The US gave up a bit of sovereignty in exchange for benefits.
By analogy, when you sign any other contract, you usually give up some rights or freedoms you otherwise enjoy: a contract may allow people to enter your home, to withdraw money from a credit card, etc.
This is just confirmation that the WTO is a meaningless cabal of mindless USA bashers with an axe to grind.
The US has been a major proponent of the WTO and its predecessors, over the objections of many other nations. Other nations grudgingly agreed to the WTO, but the least they can expect is that the US live up to the commitments it made.
I think you're misjudging the difference between FPS and exploring. FPS may look like it's just about raw fire power and reaction times and it may let you make it through a level on speed alone. But to get good at a level requires figuring out precise sequences of moves, power-ups, etc. For many levels in an FPS, the difference between brute force and understanding a level is between barely making it through and making it through without getting wounded at all.
This is not to diminish his other work and Bussard may have accomplished other good engineering work, but if anybody should get credit for the "Bussard collector", it should be the people making it actually work eventually. If it ever does work, the amount of brilliance that needs to go into the engineering (not to mention getting the funding!) will be far greater than the initial idea, an idea probably many people would have come up with by then independently.
His work on the Polywell is different: there he sat down to do get the funding and do the engineering and implementation himself. That's the really tough work. Unfortunately, after 12 years, results are still inconclusive, which raises the question whether the concept itself may be flawed.
You're forgetting one important aspect of these things: the demonization of particular groups and the exaggeration of risk. Back then it was Jews, communists, homosexuals, or what the Soviets called "fascist".
These days, child pornographers are despicable, terrorists kill innocent people, and drug users kill themselves, but none of them represent a threat to people that demonstrably warrants the kind of reaction we are having. If our legal system and our politicians redirected the money to counseling, democratic media, and foreign aid, we'd be safer than with all these "security" efforts.
Any system with a false positive rate significantly exceeding zero is considered a failure,
Let's say a system produces 10% false positives and no false negatives. That means that instead of 300 passengers, they now only have to check 30. That means 1/10 the number of TSA inspectors needed to handle the same volume of travelers.
Another way of putting it is that what you do before current manual checking (namely, nothing) is essentially 100% false positives with no false negatives.
as people will quickly learn to assume that positives are false.
And that's a perfectly good assumption, as they go about checking the positives to make sure.
The patent is on a specific way of implementing virtual desktops. Even if it covered all virtual desktops, it wouldn't be a big deal and easy to work around.
It will be interesting to see these people claim damages. These features have been in UNIX window managers since the mid-80's and nobody ever complained about it; if it's so damaging, why has it taken until now? Furthermore, given that neither RedHat nor Novell actually developed the software in question, they may be suing the wrong people.
As for the patent itself, it contains very little that's original. In fact, even at the time the academic paper was written in 1986, a year prior to the patent application, there were already commercial systems in the market offering the same functionality. That shows you that not only the patent examiners, but also the researchers, are sometimes rather out of touch.
Xerox and Microsoft couldn't have delivered a better test case--it's just barely credible enough not to be thrown out right away, but in the end, it's no threat to Linux or anybody else. I predict this will end in a whimper, and in the end, will convince people that patent claims against Linux are harmless, and usually unproductive.
But this patent was granted to Xerox, NOT "IP Innovation LLC". So why the hell is this 3rd party suing over a patent it wasn't granted?
The patent only lists the initial assignee; the patent can be sold later.
Xerox PARC hit hard times (no wonder with Apple and Microsoft making all the money off the GUI). I think they just basically sold the patents to patent troll companies, and perhaps they are getting a percentage.
Actually, more importantly, if something is listed in the patent application and the patent is granted anyway, the presumption is that it is not prior art (because otherwise the patent wouldn't have been granted). Therefore, if you can sneak prior art past the examiner in this way, your patent is a lot safer from prior art claims than it would otherwise be.
Apple filed a patent on that several months ago. Microsoft's implementation seems cumbersome, using a camera on the back (cleverly kept out of the frame). Apple can at least implement this with multi-touch.
In any case, I don't see this going anywhere; it's too weird.
Slashdot Mirror
and there is a little problem with keeping a data connection open all the time. It drains the battery fast.
That's a problem with your Palm, your chat software, and/or your cellular provider. Persistent data connections are widely used on cell phones and don't drain batteries if implemented correctly.
I am not sure where you are coming up with the distinction that the iPhone is more tethered to the docking station than a gPhone would be.
You even use iTunes on your "Mac or PC" to activate the iPhone! The phone is designed with desktop syncing in mind; the fact that you can use some mobile web sites to get by without syncing doesn't change that.
For the Google phone, you'll likely just unpack it, turn it on, and you're good to go. Syncing and all that will probably be OTA, the way a modern phone should be.
since it would be through a web page on the gPhone
I see no reason to assume that. In fact, Google has already created mobile applications for mail, calendaring, and maps, and they recommend against using the web based ones on phones that give you a choice.
described the amusing case in the October issue of Practical Neurology
Amusing?
including temperature reversal, intense pruritus and increased nociception [...] improved over a period of 10 months
This sounds very unpleasant. This might be amusing if it happened to Osama, but otherwise, this isn't something you'd wish on someone's dog.
Ah, so you got it from Agnes?
The iPhone occupies a mobile market that is far separate from what Google will be targeting with its series of lower-end, consumer-level devices
This statement suggests that the iPhone is somehow not a consumer-level device. In fact, both the Google phone and the iPhone look like they are going to be "consumer-level devices". The iPhone is "high end" in terms of its price. In terms of features, if the Google phone provides Google's applications (mail, docs, YouTube, maps, reader, talk, maybe more) and MP3 player functionality, the Google phone would actually be "higher end" as far as I'm concerned. The iPhone becomes even more expensive and complicated if you consider that the Google phone can just operate over the air, while the iPhone uses desktop syncing.
I think this could be a serious problem for Apple because the one thing Apple traditionally has going for them over other companies is that other companies make their products too complex. But Google keeps things simple and cheap. Furthermore, on-line services without desktops is clearly where the industry is going: Nokia is coming up with OTA tie-ins, and Microsoft and Yahoo are also busy exposing their web sites through phone software and phone integration.
Neither did the Jews, communists, homosexuals or what the Soviets called "fascist".
Well, duh! That's why I gave the analogy in the first place.
(And for the permanently obtuse, 'what the Soviets called "fascist"' does not mean the same thing as 'fascists'; real fascists are actually dangerous.)
But actually, you're both wrong, because none of that should be necessary unless those tools are used by the pre-crime department.
The only thing that's wrong is that the government is getting involved at all. There may be something sinister about the government asking you 72h in advance of travel who you are and where you're going, but American Airlines has the right to make that a condition of letting you on board.
Airlines should bear the full cost of security (not to mention fuel, air traffic control, pollution, airports, and associated roads) and the entire cost of when they screw up. Right now, we are having a taxpayer subsidized air transportation system that distorts the market and also leads to the government getting involved in private transactions between an airline and a passenger.
Somewhere between 30 million and 50 million Soviet citizens were killed defeating those 'fascists'.
Please stick to the facts: staggering as they were, Soviet losses in WWII were 10 million civilian and 12 million military. And the Soviets were happy to back the Nazis until the Nazis actually attacked them, so don't try to make the Soviet Union out to be some glorious defender of freedoms here.
Unsurprising that thereafter there was a certain amount of paranoia in the USSR about 'fascism'.
There was no paranoia about the actual political system of fascism in the USSR because the USSR practiced fascism themselves. There was paranoia about the label "fascism", which the USSR then exploited for the purpose of propaganda and control.
Sorry, I meant "Mini-ITX or one of its successors". In any case, it's nothing unusual: there are many cheap, small, silent, embedded PCs you can get.
"Bill Gates" isn't exactly an unusual name, and if he didn't submit the right paperwork, of course it gets denied; even if you're an evil, monopolistic overlord billionaire, you still have to prove your identity and your financial status. It's either that, or use the backdoors in Windows to approve the paperwork himself, which I guess amounts to the same thing.
(I suspect that his notoriety is kind of a nuisance for other people with that name, who probably have to deal with "stop clowning around, what's your real name" a lot. It's probably kind of nice that Nigeria treats the name as just a name).
On the other hand, maybe they just correctly reasoned through that Gates was retiring in 2008, that Windows is having problems, and that his company definitely is being an economic nuisance to Nigeria already.
I understand why Google has this trademark policy--it avoids all sorts of legal hassles--but it's a bad (shall we say, evil?) policy. The purpose of a trademark is to identify a product unambiguously to buyers. The purpose of a trademark is not to give the trademark holder full control over the use of the trademark or to give them "valuable intellectual property".
So, "Olestra gives you diarrhea" and "MoveOn.org tortures kittens to power their web server" are valid trademark uses, regardless of whether they are true or not, and as such should not be restricted.
Just thought I'd point that out. Internet here is quite pathetic, but it's not strictly a free market problem. It's more a general population problem which is amplified by having a free market environment.
No, it's not a "general population problem"; ignorance is economically rational because obtaining information has costs associated with it. Furthermore, it's part of a free market that sellers take advantage of this to charge more than they would if people had complete information.
When you balance out all these effects, it means that a regulated market can sometimes operate more efficiently than a free market. That's why regulating cell phone and cable markets may make sense.
The only "problem" with any of this is that laissez-faire free market proponents don't know their economics and propose bad economic policies.
Of course, the WTO was created out of blatant self interest. That's what makes this such an interesting test case: will the US comply even though it may not be fully in its own interest? If it does, the WTO stands a chance of eventually achieving its stated goals. If it doesn't and there are more cases like this, it may expose the WTO as a sham. Seems to me we're better off either way.
Each state has its right to decide what is and is not legal with regard to this.
That's not the problem of the WTO. The US government made a commitment to other nations to do something and it needs to live up to it. If it can't because of some legal quirks, it has to pay the penalties or fix the quirks.
Your excuse just won't fly any more than "Judge, I really wanted to pay for that large screen TV that I bought on credit, but my wife won't let me."
This isn't the same for most other countries...the analogous thing would be the EU...to the US.
Member states are bound by the decisions of the EU as a whole and need to implement them. If the EU as a whole decides to ban gambling, then every member state must pass a law banning gambling. If the EU as a whole commits to legalized gambling, then every member state must legalize it.
The WTO has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in this issue. It's simply trying to override the sovereignty of an independent state/nation.
The US made contractual commitments when it joined the WTO, and it needs to live up to them. Of course, those commitments override the sovereignty of the US, that's the whole point! The US gave up a bit of sovereignty in exchange for benefits.
By analogy, when you sign any other contract, you usually give up some rights or freedoms you otherwise enjoy: a contract may allow people to enter your home, to withdraw money from a credit card, etc.
This is just confirmation that the WTO is a meaningless cabal of mindless USA bashers with an axe to grind.
The US has been a major proponent of the WTO and its predecessors, over the objections of many other nations. Other nations grudgingly agreed to the WTO, but the least they can expect is that the US live up to the commitments it made.
I think you're misjudging the difference between FPS and exploring. FPS may look like it's just about raw fire power and reaction times and it may let you make it through a level on speed alone. But to get good at a level requires figuring out precise sequences of moves, power-ups, etc. For many levels in an FPS, the difference between brute force and understanding a level is between barely making it through and making it through without getting wounded at all.
This is not to diminish his other work and Bussard may have accomplished other good engineering work, but if anybody should get credit for the "Bussard collector", it should be the people making it actually work eventually. If it ever does work, the amount of brilliance that needs to go into the engineering (not to mention getting the funding!) will be far greater than the initial idea, an idea probably many people would have come up with by then independently.
His work on the Polywell is different: there he sat down to do get the funding and do the engineering and implementation himself. That's the really tough work. Unfortunately, after 12 years, results are still inconclusive, which raises the question whether the concept itself may be flawed.
You're forgetting one important aspect of these things: the demonization of particular groups and the exaggeration of risk. Back then it was Jews, communists, homosexuals, or what the Soviets called "fascist".
These days, child pornographers are despicable, terrorists kill innocent people, and drug users kill themselves, but none of them represent a threat to people that demonstrably warrants the kind of reaction we are having. If our legal system and our politicians redirected the money to counseling, democratic media, and foreign aid, we'd be safer than with all these "security" efforts.
Any system with a false positive rate significantly exceeding zero is considered a failure,
Let's say a system produces 10% false positives and no false negatives. That means that instead of 300 passengers, they now only have to check 30. That means 1/10 the number of TSA inspectors needed to handle the same volume of travelers.
Another way of putting it is that what you do before current manual checking (namely, nothing) is essentially 100% false positives with no false negatives.
as people will quickly learn to assume that positives are false.
And that's a perfectly good assumption, as they go about checking the positives to make sure.
See here.
Microsoft has patent cross licensing agreements with many companies. They probably have one with Xerox and got this under that agreement.
The patent is on a specific way of implementing virtual desktops. Even if it covered all virtual desktops, it wouldn't be a big deal and easy to work around.
It will be interesting to see these people claim damages. These features have been in UNIX window managers since the mid-80's and nobody ever complained about it; if it's so damaging, why has it taken until now? Furthermore, given that neither RedHat nor Novell actually developed the software in question, they may be suing the wrong people.
As for the patent itself, it contains very little that's original. In fact, even at the time the academic paper was written in 1986, a year prior to the patent application, there were already commercial systems in the market offering the same functionality. That shows you that not only the patent examiners, but also the researchers, are sometimes rather out of touch.
Xerox and Microsoft couldn't have delivered a better test case--it's just barely credible enough not to be thrown out right away, but in the end, it's no threat to Linux or anybody else. I predict this will end in a whimper, and in the end, will convince people that patent claims against Linux are harmless, and usually unproductive.
But this patent was granted to Xerox, NOT "IP Innovation LLC". So why the hell is this 3rd party suing over a patent it wasn't granted?
The patent only lists the initial assignee; the patent can be sold later.
Xerox PARC hit hard times (no wonder with Apple and Microsoft making all the money off the GUI). I think they just basically sold the patents to patent troll companies, and perhaps they are getting a percentage.
Actually, more importantly, if something is listed in the patent application and the patent is granted anyway, the presumption is that it is not prior art (because otherwise the patent wouldn't have been granted). Therefore, if you can sneak prior art past the examiner in this way, your patent is a lot safer from prior art claims than it would otherwise be.
Apple filed a patent on that several months ago. Microsoft's implementation seems cumbersome, using a camera on the back (cleverly kept out of the frame). Apple can at least implement this with multi-touch.
In any case, I don't see this going anywhere; it's too weird.