Considering this myself, or at a minimum dropping to a disc only. Their streaming library has sucked of late. I've used it too infrequently to merit the price increase.
Outsourcing staff for cheaper support isn't the same thing as putting your data out in the cloud. Outsourcing comes with it's own security risks, but to my mind and to most security professionals, the cloud doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy. It contains inherent risks when data is no longer under your control. Embedding cloud services in the OS to such a degree will require a lot of work to restrict, lock down, and disable such features.
Then again this might give MS yet another reason to split off yet another 'version' of Windows (for a small fee) to add or remove such features (Home, Home Premium, Enterprise, Ultimate, and then Cloud versions of each).
I thought the same thing but more from a company perspective, where they limit and restrict just about everything one does on the internet. This doesn't seem like a sound business move, or it will severely limit the need to upgrade from a business perspective at least. IS Security groups are already frowning on cloud services where I work.
Does this take into account the miniaturization of electronics and the associated increase in battery size? We're seeing this in many mobile platforms. I'm curious if this is taken into account when they consider 'battery life' while possibly ignoring that batteries themselves may be more efficient or simply larger due to more space in the enclosure.
Actually the article mentions red and blue light, so it sounds like visible light per the study, but it would have to be far more intense than anything a smartphone could ever produce:
"This app was developed by a dermatologist," the marketers of AcneApp said. "A study published by the British Journal of Dermatology showed blue and red light treatments eliminated p-acne bacteria (a major cause of acne) and reduces skin blemishes by 76%."
Houston dermatologist Dr. Gregory Pearson worked with developer Koby Brown on AcneApp, according to FTC documents. AcneApp generated significant media attention in late 2009 and early 2010, just after the app launched, including reports in the New York Times and on Fox News.
The acne treatment claims from both apps were unsubstantiated, the FTC said. Brown and Pearson misrepresented the British of Journal of Dermatology study on light therapy.
Light therapy can help treat acne, but not at the low levels of light iPhone devices emit, some dermatologists have said.
I don't think they could do anything about your collection due to burden of proof. They should have to prove you'd downloaded them. I digitized a large portion of my collection. Some I've sold over the years at garage sales and whatnot. it would be ridiculous to expect someone would keep every disc ever bought. A huge portion of my older CD collection is now gone and digitized on my PC.
I don't think it's illegal to copy your movies and music to a digital medium and then get rid of the physical (is there a lawyer in the house?)
Why should Amazon be able to avoid paying taxes while any other business in the state does?
I'm sick of corporate America being treated like royalty. They have more voting power, more funds, lower taxes, and seemingly unlimited resources to control the political landscape to the detriment of the consumer. When they start hiring and stop giving all their money to their CEO's, perhaps I might have more sympathy, but until I see they are actually interested in supporting the states and municipals where they do business, then I can't seem to shed a tear for them.
No, I said no such thing. I could care less about legal wrangling about basic design accusations. The courts can decide those merits.
If you want a good idea of the far reaching effects of messing around with this class of patent, Google Rambus.
Sitting here cheering this sort activity on this type of patent is shortsighted at best. This type of patent is the very basis of encouraging open standards and a level playing field for all competitors, including folks like Google and their entry into the smartphone market.
No, it does count for something but they shouldn't be leveraged in a way that would flat out lock someone out from competing. This is a different class of patents that can completely block someone from entering a market (critical design element).
Legal wrangling aside between all of these companies, they always settle or cross license, but RAND patents shouldn't be used to extort those kind of cross licensing deals. They are supposed to be offered equitably to any interested party who pays the same price for them as any other potential competetor.
In this case, Apple is accusing Samsung and Motorola of doing exactly that (requiring different pricing or deals in order to enter the market which they hold unavoidable patents on since those patents are used as part of the 'standard' for that market.
You folks do realize what a F/RAND patent is, yes? This is what is considered an essential patent in order to compete in an industry. For a phone for instance, it may be something like the underlying cellular technology used to allow the device to communicate with a cell tower.
The spat with Apple and Samsung/Motorola has to do with the fact that both of those companies have attempted to leverage F/RAND patents as a means to totally prevent competition. Legal bickering about non-essential patents happens across the board in every company in the tech industry, but this is a far more basic (and vile) practice of which they are being accused.
This special class of patents involves industry standards, and leveraging such to keep any other competitor out of a market should never be tolerated regardless of who the company is that's doing this (in this case, Motorola and Samsung stand accused).
From TFA:
"Samsung's contention that Apple has failed to allege valid antitrust and related counterclaims is particularly remarkable given its own extensive history of asserting worldwide that similar standard-setting abuses violate antitrust and related laws. For example, Samsung argued to the Federal Trade Commission that another company’s (Rambus) failure 'to disclose its patent rights” and “other misleading conduct” led an SSO to standardize its technologies and convey monopoly power, and that Rambus should be barred from enforcing its patent rights as a result of its “antitrust violations.”1 In related private litigation, Samsung alleged that Rambus’s subversion of the standard-setting process violated the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL) because it 'violat[ed]' 'federal and state antitrust laws.' Similarly, in a complaint in the United Kingdom, Samsung alleged that Ericsson violated both Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty – the EU analogues to Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act – by failing to fulfill its promises to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ('ETSI'), the standards body significantly responsible for the promulgation of the UMTS standard, to license on FRAND terms patents it claimed were essential to UMTS. Again, in a complaint against InterDigital, Samsung alleged that '[w]ithout certain rules,' SSOs 'would be illegal trusts,' and '[t]o prevent patent owners from imposing monopolistic royalties,” SSOs “condition the standardization of proprietary technology upon the patent owner’s promise to make the technology available to the public . . . on [FRAND] terms.'"
They did use it. This was a separate lawsuit that was filed by the woman who bought the laptop from the thief. The thief was arrested and charged as you would expect. The woman however, did not know it was stolen and she in turn had explicit video conferences with her boyfriend using the stolen laptop (again unbeknownst to her that it was stolen). Because of this, she was deemed to have a reasonable and objective expectation of privacy. They found that although the company tracking the laptop had the right to obtain such information as IP address and geographical location, they went too far in collecting the contents of the private communications between the girlfriend and her boyfriend.
From TFA:
In so many words, the court was saying that Absolute went too far in collecting the contents of the communications being made on the stolen computer. Had the information collection stopped at IP addresses and other non-content information, the remote tracking efforts may not have run afoul of the ECPA.
You're making a few wrong assumptions. Multiple cores doesn't mean all cores are powered on at the same time. It also ignores advances in battery tech and power management (something Apple pays particular attention to), as well as miniaturization allowing larger batteries due to smaller components. We've already seen this in later generations of iDevices.
This will be a boon to game makers to allow more complex AI as well as short term CPU boosts for processes that need it. It also ignores the innate possibilities of parallelism allowed with multi-core systems at a lower MHz.
So your theory is that we need 4 cores to run many lightweight apps at the same time. That doesn't make much sense.
Taken to the extreme, every idea has a basic root. In your example, the first two would definitely be patentable, and the third to my mind, would have to license the first and the second at least for a short time but the third would not be patentable.
The first two are NOT obvious considering I know of no program that can reproduce smells. I would consider that a new invention, just as I would consider a program or method for determining 'what' a smell was as being 'new'l.
Your extremes would suggest that a truck is 'obvious' since any large group of people could and did used to do the same thing by hand, possibly by throwing a bunch of 'stuff' on a table or some other surface and carrying a large pile of 'stuff' at once rather than separately. I absolutely agree that minor variations on a design that produce a very similar result should not be patentable but with limits. In your example above, I would consider the smell producing invention a root invention, and the smell detecting invention a root device, but the one that combines the two? Not so much unless it did so using an unexpected (read: non-obvioius) way. I'm assuming that's where you're going there with your transistor example, but implying that all inventions, just because they share the same root (or basic math) are 'obvious' simple doesn't make sense. If they were 'obvious' we would have MP3/AAC/MPEG/GUI's/Multi-tasking/etc decades ago when computers were first built. These things have evolved over time. That doesn't mean they were all evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Smart phones are a good example. Before iOS, they were very physical in nature as far as input. All buttons, toggles, keyboards, where now we have an entire breed of almost purely digital means for input. I would consider that revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
That's why I said they need to inject a little sanity into the patent process to draw a line between the digital realm and the physical realm. I can foresee a huge number of physical implementations being designed in purely digital ways and if they were to eliminate patents, there would be no incentive to release the details of how it was done. One of the primary reasons for a patent was to put the 'how' into the public view so that others could eventually expand on that work and to cultivate new ideas, while allowing the creator to profit. It was a win/win situation that both rewarded the inventory and spurred competition and other (new) inventions.
If that were the case we wouldn't have any patents. That's something that I don't think would be good for business or competition. If someone (including an engineer) builds a system that performs some function and it turns out to be wildly successful, that person should have a short time of exclusivity to both reap reward from his or her idea, and to also allow time to recoup any research/development costs.
I do think the length of time now being used should be reduced to a sane amount of time (say 4-7 years).
Actually the court found the swipe to unlock gesture that was also under consideration 'obvious' while it held that the photo app used by Android was in violation. It's likely Android will simply update the app rather than license this from Apple. They are now getting into implementations rather than physical designs. I don't recall of the top of my head if there are any physical aspects to the Samsung lawsuits. I think those are currently going for Motorola or HTC in regards to slimline rocker switches. In any case, this was a natural extension of older physical methods being implemented in software. The next 20 years should prove interesting as more and more physical aspects of devices are implemented in software and digital realms.
For example, the swipe to unlock was lost due to a previous art that samsung submitted an image from a 1992 human interface design doc that discussed toggling 'switches' via a touch interface. This was the primary reason the judge found the patent 'obvious' and dismissed it.
I'm of two minds regarding software 'patents' when it comes to this sort of implementation. For instance, take something as simple as a music player of any type. Fully implemented in a digital medium now with only the 'box' holding the software itself doing all of the work where before with something like an 8-Track or Cassette required a full hardware implementation. I have to wonder if/when they will draw a line between the digital and physical realm for implementation.
In regards to the photo patent that Samsung lost on this one, it is yet another patent that was successfully leveraged against Android. Right or wrong, it is probably making smartphone vendors a bit nervous. There are some 50 lawsuits from various companies worldwide against Android. I'm doubtful that the Motorola purchase is going to be of much help against all of those, especially if they relate to Android rather than phone functinality.
Added it back is more like it. A while back (think a year +), you used to be able to change the viewing audience after you posted something, and then that dissapeared a few months ago. You then had to remember to set it when you posted it, or you either had to delete it or live with it.
I agree though, competition is good. I seriously doubt Facebook has done a good implementation though. For instance, you can setup different levels of who can see what, and all it takes is someone from a restricted list posting a link to something that was 'restricted' to them only, and suddenly anyone can see it.
I find their lack of security disturbing... (sorry, couldn't resist...).
Can't speak to Google + as of yet. Haven't seen any activity on there to speak of. It's pretty much dead. Of the two I actually prefer the cleaners of Google + but I suspect my locked down settings are making it difficult for people to find me. Not sure I want to open that up either.
You do realize that information is a double edged sword? Those same insurance companies that may cut you a break will also charge you a premium based on such info as well. If a bank knows you've been visiting loan sites to much, or checking bankruptcy sites, you credit worthiness could be damaged.
I would say 95% of the information companies collect about us actually benefits us or society.
If the information they collect is beneficial, it is still YOURS, and you should be the one in control of it's release. This should not be a tacit agreement, or a one answer gives full access situation, but rather you should have granular access over what is and is not released. Unfortunately every inch you give is almost impossible to claim back later on.
I would say you are misguided to think that data mining is in any way beneficial to you personally or to society in general. It gives corporations an unfair advantage in pricing (for instance they can leverage markets based on local wage values, forcing up the cost to what the local neighborhood will bare rather than a fair price), All data mining does is to put a dollar sign new to your personal info, but that value isn't valuable to you, but rather to those who sell it to the highest bidders.
An elegant way you put that if I do say so myself. The miraculous would simply be mundane. Who's to say that God didn't create it, but until it can be proven, it's just a hypothesis, not a theory. Basically an unproven idea. Perfectly acceptable for a theology class, or possibly a history class to discuss creationism, but not as a science topic.
Unfortunately, Religion (meant in a general sense, although aimed unfortunately at Christianity in this case), is trying to force it's way into government in a way the founding fathers specifically tried to avoid. They seem to crave a Christian 'state'. A state sponsored religion without realizing the very thing they are fighting for, would invalidate or deny that same choice in others. Ironically the very reason for the middle east and it's terror attacks on the US are founded in a theocracy. They very thing social conservatives claim to be fighting, they would put in place here.
Separation of Church and State as many like to call it, isn't about protecting the government from the people and whatever religion they choose (or don't choose), but rather it's about protecting the people from the government. Saddening and at times frustrating that these people simply don't see that.
Some times I'm amazed at the wisdom the founding fathers have shown. To think of the foresight that went into the document, and how well the Constitution has held up, even hundreds of years later is amazing if you think about it.
That would be called a 'theology class', not a Science class. There is a reason that we've settled on Evolution.
1st grade science should not teach that, but what happens when people try to make Santology part of the 9th grade science syllabus? I can understand teachers not wanting to teach it, but when a student asks why it is not being taught should they be able to discuss the reasons in class?
TFA actually makes a very good statement about this. Scientists have spent countless years trying to disprove everything about Evolution and to date, there have been no big showstoppers to prove it wrong. It is not 100 percent complete, but it's on pretty solid ground. 'Creationists' have spent years trying to 'prove' their theory to everyone else, simply by claiming that the current winning theory is wrong because it's incomplete or a 'theory' as if that's somehow a bad word.
Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”
It's a telling argument. Creationists don't even try to disprove their theory via scientific study. It's actually impossible to do since by it's very nature, there is no proof. They instead spend all of their time claiming the preeminent theory is all wrong because it's still a 'theory' which in itself is just laughable. I hate to break it to them but most scientific principles are theory until something better comes along. If/when something better comes along, it will be the new theory, but to date, nothing better has come along, and it's very likely that evolution is the winning bet.
Interesting theory, except Apple is the market leader when you take into account all of it's PC and tablet sales and Apple has a health profit margin for hardware. I tend to think their profit margins are a bit more sane than 2%. Thin margins are great for consumers up front, assuming you don't get bargain basement parts throughout, but not good for long term business. Given that HP rank the poorest in hardware failures in the above linked PDF, HP is a good example of cutting your margins too thin. Being #1 is great, but unless it's profitable and has market recognition for ROI, it's an empty and valueless statistic.
According to the article, the code in question wasn't even being supplied to handset vendors. In any case, this isn't a breach of contract of the person MS showed it to was also under a confidentiality agreement and currently employed by MS (Note: IANAL). It does seem odd though that the source is supposed to be open but they are stating it is proprietary info.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering this myself, or at a minimum dropping to a disc only. Their streaming library has sucked of late. I've used it too infrequently to merit the price increase.
Outsourcing staff for cheaper support isn't the same thing as putting your data out in the cloud. Outsourcing comes with it's own security risks, but to my mind and to most security professionals, the cloud doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy. It contains inherent risks when data is no longer under your control. Embedding cloud services in the OS to such a degree will require a lot of work to restrict, lock down, and disable such features.
Then again this might give MS yet another reason to split off yet another 'version' of Windows (for a small fee) to add or remove such features (Home, Home Premium, Enterprise, Ultimate, and then Cloud versions of each).
I thought the same thing but more from a company perspective, where they limit and restrict just about everything one does on the internet. This doesn't seem like a sound business move, or it will severely limit the need to upgrade from a business perspective at least. IS Security groups are already frowning on cloud services where I work.
Does this take into account the miniaturization of electronics and the associated increase in battery size? We're seeing this in many mobile platforms. I'm curious if this is taken into account when they consider 'battery life' while possibly ignoring that batteries themselves may be more efficient or simply larger due to more space in the enclosure.
Actually the article mentions red and blue light, so it sounds like visible light per the study, but it would have to be far more intense than anything a smartphone could ever produce:
I don't think they could do anything about your collection due to burden of proof. They should have to prove you'd downloaded them. I digitized a large portion of my collection. Some I've sold over the years at garage sales and whatnot. it would be ridiculous to expect someone would keep every disc ever bought. A huge portion of my older CD collection is now gone and digitized on my PC.
I don't think it's illegal to copy your movies and music to a digital medium and then get rid of the physical (is there a lawyer in the house?)
Why should Amazon be able to avoid paying taxes while any other business in the state does?
I'm sick of corporate America being treated like royalty. They have more voting power, more funds, lower taxes, and seemingly unlimited resources to control the political landscape to the detriment of the consumer. When they start hiring and stop giving all their money to their CEO's, perhaps I might have more sympathy, but until I see they are actually interested in supporting the states and municipals where they do business, then I can't seem to shed a tear for them.
Wouldn't prior art on this be the control interface in Minority Report? They used all natural gestures to navigate, discard, collect, etc.
The SFPD has already admitted that they did indeed go to this house. This is a lot to do about absolutely nothing.
Link
No, I said no such thing. I could care less about legal wrangling about basic design accusations. The courts can decide those merits.
If you want a good idea of the far reaching effects of messing around with this class of patent, Google Rambus.
Sitting here cheering this sort activity on this type of patent is shortsighted at best. This type of patent is the very basis of encouraging open standards and a level playing field for all competitors, including folks like Google and their entry into the smartphone market.
No, it does count for something but they shouldn't be leveraged in a way that would flat out lock someone out from competing. This is a different class of patents that can completely block someone from entering a market (critical design element).
Legal wrangling aside between all of these companies, they always settle or cross license, but RAND patents shouldn't be used to extort those kind of cross licensing deals. They are supposed to be offered equitably to any interested party who pays the same price for them as any other potential competetor.
In this case, Apple is accusing Samsung and Motorola of doing exactly that (requiring different pricing or deals in order to enter the market which they hold unavoidable patents on since those patents are used as part of the 'standard' for that market.
You folks do realize what a F/RAND patent is, yes? This is what is considered an essential patent in order to compete in an industry. For a phone for instance, it may be something like the underlying cellular technology used to allow the device to communicate with a cell tower.
The spat with Apple and Samsung/Motorola has to do with the fact that both of those companies have attempted to leverage F/RAND patents as a means to totally prevent competition. Legal bickering about non-essential patents happens across the board in every company in the tech industry, but this is a far more basic (and vile) practice of which they are being accused.
This special class of patents involves industry standards, and leveraging such to keep any other competitor out of a market should never be tolerated regardless of who the company is that's doing this (in this case, Motorola and Samsung stand accused).
From TFA:
They did use it. This was a separate lawsuit that was filed by the woman who bought the laptop from the thief. The thief was arrested and charged as you would expect. The woman however, did not know it was stolen and she in turn had explicit video conferences with her boyfriend using the stolen laptop (again unbeknownst to her that it was stolen). Because of this, she was deemed to have a reasonable and objective expectation of privacy. They found that although the company tracking the laptop had the right to obtain such information as IP address and geographical location, they went too far in collecting the contents of the private communications between the girlfriend and her boyfriend.
From TFA:
You're making a few wrong assumptions. Multiple cores doesn't mean all cores are powered on at the same time. It also ignores advances in battery tech and power management (something Apple pays particular attention to), as well as miniaturization allowing larger batteries due to smaller components. We've already seen this in later generations of iDevices.
This will be a boon to game makers to allow more complex AI as well as short term CPU boosts for processes that need it. It also ignores the innate possibilities of parallelism allowed with multi-core systems at a lower MHz.
Taken to the extreme, every idea has a basic root. In your example, the first two would definitely be patentable, and the third to my mind, would have to license the first and the second at least for a short time but the third would not be patentable.
The first two are NOT obvious considering I know of no program that can reproduce smells. I would consider that a new invention, just as I would consider a program or method for determining 'what' a smell was as being 'new'l.
Your extremes would suggest that a truck is 'obvious' since any large group of people could and did used to do the same thing by hand, possibly by throwing a bunch of 'stuff' on a table or some other surface and carrying a large pile of 'stuff' at once rather than separately. I absolutely agree that minor variations on a design that produce a very similar result should not be patentable but with limits. In your example above, I would consider the smell producing invention a root invention, and the smell detecting invention a root device, but the one that combines the two? Not so much unless it did so using an unexpected (read: non-obvioius) way. I'm assuming that's where you're going there with your transistor example, but implying that all inventions, just because they share the same root (or basic math) are 'obvious' simple doesn't make sense. If they were 'obvious' we would have MP3/AAC/MPEG/GUI's/Multi-tasking/etc decades ago when computers were first built. These things have evolved over time. That doesn't mean they were all evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Smart phones are a good example. Before iOS, they were very physical in nature as far as input. All buttons, toggles, keyboards, where now we have an entire breed of almost purely digital means for input. I would consider that revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
That's why I said they need to inject a little sanity into the patent process to draw a line between the digital realm and the physical realm. I can foresee a huge number of physical implementations being designed in purely digital ways and if they were to eliminate patents, there would be no incentive to release the details of how it was done. One of the primary reasons for a patent was to put the 'how' into the public view so that others could eventually expand on that work and to cultivate new ideas, while allowing the creator to profit. It was a win/win situation that both rewarded the inventory and spurred competition and other (new) inventions.
If that were the case we wouldn't have any patents. That's something that I don't think would be good for business or competition. If someone (including an engineer) builds a system that performs some function and it turns out to be wildly successful, that person should have a short time of exclusivity to both reap reward from his or her idea, and to also allow time to recoup any research/development costs.
I do think the length of time now being used should be reduced to a sane amount of time (say 4-7 years).
Actually the court found the swipe to unlock gesture that was also under consideration 'obvious' while it held that the photo app used by Android was in violation. It's likely Android will simply update the app rather than license this from Apple. They are now getting into implementations rather than physical designs. I don't recall of the top of my head if there are any physical aspects to the Samsung lawsuits. I think those are currently going for Motorola or HTC in regards to slimline rocker switches. In any case, this was a natural extension of older physical methods being implemented in software. The next 20 years should prove interesting as more and more physical aspects of devices are implemented in software and digital realms.
For example, the swipe to unlock was lost due to a previous art that samsung submitted an image from a 1992 human interface design doc that discussed toggling 'switches' via a touch interface. This was the primary reason the judge found the patent 'obvious' and dismissed it.
I'm of two minds regarding software 'patents' when it comes to this sort of implementation. For instance, take something as simple as a music player of any type. Fully implemented in a digital medium now with only the 'box' holding the software itself doing all of the work where before with something like an 8-Track or Cassette required a full hardware implementation. I have to wonder if/when they will draw a line between the digital and physical realm for implementation.
In regards to the photo patent that Samsung lost on this one, it is yet another patent that was successfully leveraged against Android. Right or wrong, it is probably making smartphone vendors a bit nervous. There are some 50 lawsuits from various companies worldwide against Android. I'm doubtful that the Motorola purchase is going to be of much help against all of those, especially if they relate to Android rather than phone functinality.
Added it back is more like it. A while back (think a year +), you used to be able to change the viewing audience after you posted something, and then that dissapeared a few months ago. You then had to remember to set it when you posted it, or you either had to delete it or live with it.
I agree though, competition is good. I seriously doubt Facebook has done a good implementation though. For instance, you can setup different levels of who can see what, and all it takes is someone from a restricted list posting a link to something that was 'restricted' to them only, and suddenly anyone can see it.
I find their lack of security disturbing... (sorry, couldn't resist...).
Can't speak to Google + as of yet. Haven't seen any activity on there to speak of. It's pretty much dead. Of the two I actually prefer the cleaners of Google + but I suspect my locked down settings are making it difficult for people to find me. Not sure I want to open that up either.
You do realize that information is a double edged sword? Those same insurance companies that may cut you a break will also charge you a premium based on such info as well. If a bank knows you've been visiting loan sites to much, or checking bankruptcy sites, you credit worthiness could be damaged.
If the information they collect is beneficial, it is still YOURS, and you should be the one in control of it's release. This should not be a tacit agreement, or a one answer gives full access situation, but rather you should have granular access over what is and is not released. Unfortunately every inch you give is almost impossible to claim back later on.
I would say you are misguided to think that data mining is in any way beneficial to you personally or to society in general. It gives corporations an unfair advantage in pricing (for instance they can leverage markets based on local wage values, forcing up the cost to what the local neighborhood will bare rather than a fair price), All data mining does is to put a dollar sign new to your personal info, but that value isn't valuable to you, but rather to those who sell it to the highest bidders.
An elegant way you put that if I do say so myself. The miraculous would simply be mundane. Who's to say that God didn't create it, but until it can be proven, it's just a hypothesis, not a theory. Basically an unproven idea. Perfectly acceptable for a theology class, or possibly a history class to discuss creationism, but not as a science topic.
Unfortunately, Religion (meant in a general sense, although aimed unfortunately at Christianity in this case), is trying to force it's way into government in a way the founding fathers specifically tried to avoid. They seem to crave a Christian 'state'. A state sponsored religion without realizing the very thing they are fighting for, would invalidate or deny that same choice in others. Ironically the very reason for the middle east and it's terror attacks on the US are founded in a theocracy. They very thing social conservatives claim to be fighting, they would put in place here.
Separation of Church and State as many like to call it, isn't about protecting the government from the people and whatever religion they choose (or don't choose), but rather it's about protecting the people from the government. Saddening and at times frustrating that these people simply don't see that.
Some times I'm amazed at the wisdom the founding fathers have shown. To think of the foresight that went into the document, and how well the Constitution has held up, even hundreds of years later is amazing if you think about it.
That would be called a 'theology class', not a Science class. There is a reason that we've settled on Evolution.
TFA actually makes a very good statement about this. Scientists have spent countless years trying to disprove everything about Evolution and to date, there have been no big showstoppers to prove it wrong. It is not 100 percent complete, but it's on pretty solid ground. 'Creationists' have spent years trying to 'prove' their theory to everyone else, simply by claiming that the current winning theory is wrong because it's incomplete or a 'theory' as if that's somehow a bad word.
It's a telling argument. Creationists don't even try to disprove their theory via scientific study. It's actually impossible to do since by it's very nature, there is no proof. They instead spend all of their time claiming the preeminent theory is all wrong because it's still a 'theory' which in itself is just laughable. I hate to break it to them but most scientific principles are theory until something better comes along. If/when something better comes along, it will be the new theory, but to date, nothing better has come along, and it's very likely that evolution is the winning bet.
Interesting theory, except Apple is the market leader when you take into account all of it's PC and tablet sales and Apple has a health profit margin for hardware. I tend to think their profit margins are a bit more sane than 2%. Thin margins are great for consumers up front, assuming you don't get bargain basement parts throughout, but not good for long term business. Given that HP rank the poorest in hardware failures in the above linked PDF, HP is a good example of cutting your margins too thin. Being #1 is great, but unless it's profitable and has market recognition for ROI, it's an empty and valueless statistic.
I would assume I started in a new zone but I have no idea. The quests are boring. Go here. Kill X numbers of Y.
Not impressed as I yet (lvl 15).
So which is more logical. Some 80 million iPad's sold to date, and none of those 80 million people knew what they were buying?
Or perhaps, it's well designed, with a good app selection, and really is targeted for someone other than /.?
Occam's razor: "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one."
According to the article, the code in question wasn't even being supplied to handset vendors. In any case, this isn't a breach of contract of the person MS showed it to was also under a confidentiality agreement and currently employed by MS (Note: IANAL). It does seem odd though that the source is supposed to be open but they are stating it is proprietary info.