And three months to finally get laid, and three hours of crying afterwords. Followed by three apologetic phone calls, three stalking incidents, three calls by her to the police, a restraining order keeping you three hundred feet from her at all times...
Correct. I cringe when I think about the average couch potato sitting in front of cable news drooling as they are lobotomized by sensational headlines, and then during the commercial break for Cheetos they absently stand up, go to the cupboard, get out a bag of Cheetos, and sit back down in time for the next deluge, totally unaware of the tasty, orange-coated snacks they are shoveling into their mouths.
To be fair, I think such people are really just uninformed and under-educated, and have been raised to believe what comes out of the shiny, moving-picture box controllable with the battery-powered magic wand. OK, that wasn't very fair. Guess I'm still bitter because my parents wouldn't let me join the circus when I was 8.
Same-month sales in videogames is a useless statistic.
True. Good statistical analysis has in large part - at least in popular media - yielded to sensational headlines and talking heads.
An interesting study would be to compare video game release and sales figures (FPS, RPG, online, 'thinking games' like Portal, etc.) with the development of image rendering techniques, hardware advances, and anything else with a supposed effect on video game production or sales.
Yeah, after reading the summary I though, If the video game industry needs sales of crap in order to be profitable, maybe the lesson should be make better games.
Also, they should look further than the current economic situation. It is getting too easy for people to site that as the cause for decline.
Employees are very happy with XP and cringe at change. So many complaints about the ribbon etc. when upgrading to Office 2007.
Businesses will change to appease the management, not the employees.
Businesses will also change to appease Microsoft when suddenly they are found to not be abiding by the terms of the license, and the more cost-effective avenue is, interestingly enough, upgrade to [Office 2007|Win 7|Server 2008|etc].
In general, money talks. Businesses probably won't upgrade unless there is significant money to save, or there are feature or security enhancements they need.
VOIP, IM, S&M, B&D, I don't care! In my day twitter was hosted on the wall of the bathroom stall, not some magical cloud-box! Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!
I highly doubt he's actually got anything revolutionary to say.
Just wait. Any day now we will see the armies of teenagers emerge carrying around their PS3's and Xboxes instant messaging each other while their cell phones rest idly in their pockets, ringing on deaf ears like so many unread tweets...
I don't know which part of that is more interesting: That the manhole cover says, "N.Y.C. Sewer - Made in India" or that the parents will sue because there daughter is a dolt.
I usually use lemon and pepper in combination as a nice flavor accent to chicken or fish.
I am aware of the difference between patent and copyright. What I was wondering about - and that a sibling post to yours addressed - is if the use of patents on the methods of creating via software a widget are patentable. Seems the argument is that a programmatic method for creating, say, a shopping cart is not patentable. The program utilizing the shopping cart, however, is copyrightable.
It seems clear that "quadruple click on the web" should not be patentable. A mouse with a "quadruple click" button would also not be patentable, but a method for producing mechanically a quadruple click could very well be patentable. So, how about electronically? And what if the extra button click is read by the mouse drivers (software) which then send 4 left-button clicks to the operating system?
I guess this is why such decisions are left to the experts. Now, someone explain why the experts apper to suck at their job?
The arguments about math are correct. Otherwise Texas Instruments wouldn't keep such a tight hold on their algorithms for integration, derivatives, etc.
IANAPT (I am not a patent-troll), but I am interested in your take on this: If fifty years ago I came up with a way to manufacture ball bearings - independently of an existing, patented method - would I not be sued by the patent holder of the bearing production process if I brought a product to market using my bearings?
If so, how is that different than making an online auction site, basically copying the tried and true functionality of ebay? Software is not manufacturing, and the tools required are readily available for almost anyone to make their own ebay copy at very little cost (compared to manufacturing bearings), but is that enough to make it substantially different to where patent law would not apply?
To be clear, I like the freedom of Linux, PHP, MySQL, and Apache, and I shudder to think I could come up with some neat idea for a client only to be sued because Amazon patented the "quadruple click" widget.
I am not an MS Anti-fanboy trying to diminish their achievements (or in some cases, as you point out, their lack of shooting themselves in the head). I was responding to the assertion of the parent to my post that MS-DOS or Win 3.1 represented the first computer experience of such a vast majority. Granted, my third computer experience was MS-DOS, but that was hard to avoid - not that I was trying to avoid it. Actually, I thought it was pretty cool.
"Insightful?" More like "informative." No I was not aware of that. But I also programmed in assembler on the Vic and c-64. That wasn't based on M$, was it? Damn, I am such a whore. Anyway, I am not arguing against Microsoft having been influential, just that I didn't use DOS or Win 3.1 on my first computer as the parent suggested.
Uni-taskers - like dedicated, hand-held GPS devices - all have short life spans. More specialized equipment (e.g., nautical use) can survive a long time or even be necessary, but the average consumer isn't going to hold onto it very long. Think outside the box of what is currently available. Think Nuvifone and beyond.
In America we order MM/dd/yyyy. Why, I don't know, but we do. So have your magical time celebration on August 7. Maybe we'll celebrate then, too. Notice the summary also states it happens twice today...That's the whole "America and their lousy AM/PM crap" thing. Like our date format it also leaves some ambiguity.
Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1?
I bet I am only one of a crowd here how did not have our first experience with either. I started on a Vic-20. The first windows system I used was on a Mac. Bill Gates and Microsoft have, if anything, ensured the monetization of all things computer. Not that it wouldn't have happened anyway sans Gates.
I'm not sure get your meaning. My observation is that people believe what reinforces there existing beliefs. Regarding a finding which goes against their beliefs, they are willing to take that one in a million chance and - like Jim Carey in "Dumb and Dumber" - say, "So your saying there's a chance?" OTOH, if something they believe has a one in a hundred chance of being wrong, they will stand behind it firmly as irrefutable proof.
All that said, I really don't think people have changed very much since we climbed down from the proverbial tree and had our first drum circle.
Really? Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used? Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
I get the feeling there is a growing trend towards never needing to ask user input on anything. User interfaces are expected to be completely intuitive and perfectly accessible. There is no room for requiring people to read instructions of any kind.
I do some UI design at work, and I frequently find myself in a tug-of-war with a colleague because he thinks users should be able to do anything and that everything they need to do should be completely intuitive. Ask five random people and you'd be lucky to have less than three different opinions regarding a given site's usability.
Car analogy time! You don't need to know how to shift to drive an automatic transmission. Now, extend that (quite) a bit until you don't need to know the speed limit because the road you are on limits the top speed of your car. Further, and you don't need to worry about steering because the car steers for you. Collision prevention, anyone?
If they haven't yet sued Google over supposed HTML patent infringements then I think you are safe. That is, unless they are waiting to build a case against the entire internet. Oh god...
With only wind and solar power they will be nothing more than helpless little hippies, ripe for a good hosing! Right? Please tell me that is true. I certainly don't want some granola-munching nanobots telling me what to do!
First of all, without a security clearance and need-to-know you will never know what the NSA does. And then forget what MSNBC has convinced you is true about the agency; there are very strict rules as to how any "signals" involving US citizens are handled. There is more foreign collection than you could possibly imagine, and that is where they expend most of their power.
in the end WHAT you eat is completely secondary to HOW MUCH...
OTOH, a balanced diet of sufficient caloric value is better than an unbalanced one. If one is not exercising - as this states he doesn't have time - then do trade in the saturated fats and simple sugars for foods with more use to the body. And drink water!
Nevertheless, the Volt, Tesla Roadster, and so on aren't magic, they still damage roads.
Good point. But I don't think passenger cars - or even tractor-trailers for that matter - damage the road as much as the city/state-owned plows during the winter months. Between frost heaves and just the fact they are pushing a several hundred-pound plow over the road we see major damage, at least in the northeast.
Slashdot Mirror
And three months to finally get laid, and three hours of crying afterwords. Followed by three apologetic phone calls, three stalking incidents, three calls by her to the police, a restraining order keeping you three hundred feet from her at all times...
Correct. I cringe when I think about the average couch potato sitting in front of cable news drooling as they are lobotomized by sensational headlines, and then during the commercial break for Cheetos they absently stand up, go to the cupboard, get out a bag of Cheetos, and sit back down in time for the next deluge, totally unaware of the tasty, orange-coated snacks they are shoveling into their mouths.
To be fair, I think such people are really just uninformed and under-educated, and have been raised to believe what comes out of the shiny, moving-picture box controllable with the battery-powered magic wand. OK, that wasn't very fair. Guess I'm still bitter because my parents wouldn't let me join the circus when I was 8.
Same-month sales in videogames is a useless statistic.
True. Good statistical analysis has in large part - at least in popular media - yielded to sensational headlines and talking heads.
An interesting study would be to compare video game release and sales figures (FPS, RPG, online, 'thinking games' like Portal, etc.) with the development of image rendering techniques, hardware advances, and anything else with a supposed effect on video game production or sales.
Yeah, after reading the summary I though, If the video game industry needs sales of crap in order to be profitable, maybe the lesson should be make better games.
Also, they should look further than the current economic situation. It is getting too easy for people to site that as the cause for decline.
Employees are very happy with XP and cringe at change. So many complaints about the ribbon etc. when upgrading to Office 2007. Businesses will change to appease the management, not the employees.
Businesses will also change to appease Microsoft when suddenly they are found to not be abiding by the terms of the license, and the more cost-effective avenue is, interestingly enough, upgrade to [Office 2007|Win 7|Server 2008|etc].
In general, money talks. Businesses probably won't upgrade unless there is significant money to save, or there are feature or security enhancements they need.
VOIP, IM, S&M, B&D, I don't care! In my day twitter was hosted on the wall of the bathroom stall, not some magical cloud-box! Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!
I highly doubt he's actually got anything revolutionary to say.
Just wait. Any day now we will see the armies of teenagers emerge carrying around their PS3's and Xboxes instant messaging each other while their cell phones rest idly in their pockets, ringing on deaf ears like so many unread tweets...
I don't know which part of that is more interesting: That the manhole cover says, "N.Y.C. Sewer - Made in India" or that the parents will sue because there daughter is a dolt.
You are comparing lemons to peppers.
I usually use lemon and pepper in combination as a nice flavor accent to chicken or fish.
I am aware of the difference between patent and copyright. What I was wondering about - and that a sibling post to yours addressed - is if the use of patents on the methods of creating via software a widget are patentable. Seems the argument is that a programmatic method for creating, say, a shopping cart is not patentable. The program utilizing the shopping cart, however, is copyrightable.
It seems clear that "quadruple click on the web" should not be patentable. A mouse with a "quadruple click" button would also not be patentable, but a method for producing mechanically a quadruple click could very well be patentable. So, how about electronically? And what if the extra button click is read by the mouse drivers (software) which then send 4 left-button clicks to the operating system?
I guess this is why such decisions are left to the experts. Now, someone explain why the experts apper to suck at their job?
The arguments about math are correct. Otherwise Texas Instruments wouldn't keep such a tight hold on their algorithms for integration, derivatives, etc.
IANAPT (I am not a patent-troll), but I am interested in your take on this: If fifty years ago I came up with a way to manufacture ball bearings - independently of an existing, patented method - would I not be sued by the patent holder of the bearing production process if I brought a product to market using my bearings?
If so, how is that different than making an online auction site, basically copying the tried and true functionality of ebay? Software is not manufacturing, and the tools required are readily available for almost anyone to make their own ebay copy at very little cost (compared to manufacturing bearings), but is that enough to make it substantially different to where patent law would not apply?
To be clear, I like the freedom of Linux, PHP, MySQL, and Apache, and I shudder to think I could come up with some neat idea for a client only to be sued because Amazon patented the "quadruple click" widget.
Damn. Numerology is a bitch. I see patterns everywhere...
I am not an MS Anti-fanboy trying to diminish their achievements (or in some cases, as you point out, their lack of shooting themselves in the head). I was responding to the assertion of the parent to my post that MS-DOS or Win 3.1 represented the first computer experience of such a vast majority. Granted, my third computer experience was MS-DOS, but that was hard to avoid - not that I was trying to avoid it. Actually, I thought it was pretty cool.
"Insightful?" More like "informative." No I was not aware of that. But I also programmed in assembler on the Vic and c-64. That wasn't based on M$, was it? Damn, I am such a whore. Anyway, I am not arguing against Microsoft having been influential, just that I didn't use DOS or Win 3.1 on my first computer as the parent suggested.
Uni-taskers - like dedicated, hand-held GPS devices - all have short life spans. More specialized equipment (e.g., nautical use) can survive a long time or even be necessary, but the average consumer isn't going to hold onto it very long. Think outside the box of what is currently available. Think Nuvifone and beyond.
In America we order MM/dd/yyyy. Why, I don't know, but we do. So have your magical time celebration on August 7. Maybe we'll celebrate then, too. Notice the summary also states it happens twice today...That's the whole "America and their lousy AM/PM crap" thing. Like our date format it also leaves some ambiguity.
Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1?
I bet I am only one of a crowd here how did not have our first experience with either. I started on a Vic-20. The first windows system I used was on a Mac. Bill Gates and Microsoft have, if anything, ensured the monetization of all things computer. Not that it wouldn't have happened anyway sans Gates.
I'm not sure get your meaning. My observation is that people believe what reinforces there existing beliefs. Regarding a finding which goes against their beliefs, they are willing to take that one in a million chance and - like Jim Carey in "Dumb and Dumber" - say, "So your saying there's a chance?" OTOH, if something they believe has a one in a hundred chance of being wrong, they will stand behind it firmly as irrefutable proof.
All that said, I really don't think people have changed very much since we climbed down from the proverbial tree and had our first drum circle.
Really? Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used? Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
I get the feeling there is a growing trend towards never needing to ask user input on anything. User interfaces are expected to be completely intuitive and perfectly accessible. There is no room for requiring people to read instructions of any kind.
I do some UI design at work, and I frequently find myself in a tug-of-war with a colleague because he thinks users should be able to do anything and that everything they need to do should be completely intuitive. Ask five random people and you'd be lucky to have less than three different opinions regarding a given site's usability.
Car analogy time! You don't need to know how to shift to drive an automatic transmission. Now, extend that (quite) a bit until you don't need to know the speed limit because the road you are on limits the top speed of your car. Further, and you don't need to worry about steering because the car steers for you. Collision prevention, anyone?
Max Power tuna will merely taste good.
Yes, only faster!
If they haven't yet sued Google over supposed HTML patent infringements then I think you are safe. That is, unless they are waiting to build a case against the entire internet. Oh god...
No Script baby
I second that emotion. I never browse at work without it.
With only wind and solar power they will be nothing more than helpless little hippies, ripe for a good hosing! Right? Please tell me that is true. I certainly don't want some granola-munching nanobots telling me what to do!
First of all, without a security clearance and need-to-know you will never know what the NSA does. And then forget what MSNBC has convinced you is true about the agency; there are very strict rules as to how any "signals" involving US citizens are handled. There is more foreign collection than you could possibly imagine, and that is where they expend most of their power.
in the end WHAT you eat is completely secondary to HOW MUCH...
OTOH, a balanced diet of sufficient caloric value is better than an unbalanced one. If one is not exercising - as this states he doesn't have time - then do trade in the saturated fats and simple sugars for foods with more use to the body. And drink water!
Nevertheless, the Volt, Tesla Roadster, and so on aren't magic, they still damage roads.
Good point. But I don't think passenger cars - or even tractor-trailers for that matter - damage the road as much as the city/state-owned plows during the winter months. Between frost heaves and just the fact they are pushing a several hundred-pound plow over the road we see major damage, at least in the northeast.