Wow, thanks! I didn't know what the laptop/tablet combination did already. You see I'm blind, and couldn't look at the pictures.
I didn't want to make the assumption that you weren't blind, or that you somehow otherwise didn't have a look at the pictures, because otherwise it would be fairly obvious why the combo is good.
So, you've got a perfectly good laptop now, and instead of just buying a notepad, you're going to buy a combination of the two?
And two devices are more convenient to carry than one? Or should I velcro the tablet to the top of my laptop?
That's a bad thing. People either want a Tablet or a Laptop or a Tablet and a seperate laptop, a mixture of the two just means missing out on the convenience of both.
I disagree. The laptop/tablet combination is really a neat idea. You have a keyboard with a touchpad or nipple for mouse movement, but also a touch screen and stylus. The LCD rotates 180 degrees so you can have it in a laptop form factor (LCD and keyboard at 90 degrees), or in a tablet form (like a closed laptop, but with the LCD screen facing outwards). That way, you can carry it around like a notepad and write on it in tablet form, but then sit down, swing it around into a laptop, and use it for typing in a meeting.
I've been thinking about selling my current laptop and buying a tablet to replace it, but prices need to come down a bit more before I do that.
Not to mention, am I the only one who thought it strange that 9/11 was used a reason to go to war against Iraq? Why not use "I was mugged on my way to the store" as an excuse to go murder everybody in your office....
Maybe not murder, but if you could link your boss to financially backing that mugger, and other muggers like him, and with support of a significant portion of your office, then yes, being mugged on your way to the store would be an excuse to go after everybody in your office.
If someone has a car I'm sure they'll already have a credit card.
What about a 16 year old that just got a license and a job to pay for a car, but mommy and daddy aren't rich or don't spoil him, and so he does't have his own credit card? You can't get your own credit card until you're 18, so if mommy and/or daddy don't pony up, he's stuck. If you think about it, teens are the prime music-buying demographic, so Napster et al need to make it dead simple for these teens to be able to buy music.
Why would someone drive to Best Buy to get this pre-paid card, then drive home to download the songs?
Because you want to use Napster but don't have a credit card? More likely these will be used as gifts, though.
While you're at Best Buy why don't you just buy the CD? It would certainly be cheaper than $14.85. Is it to make a compilation?
What are the chances you intend to buy every song on a CD? Instead, you'll probably buy 15 different songs from 15 different albums, like you suggested for compilations. However, CDs aren't cheaper than $14.85 anywhere I've been. Some are, but most CDs are marked at $15 and higher before tax, not $9.99. Even if you add the cost of blank media to burn your purchases, you're just starting to get to the after-tax cost of a CD.
MS seems to be nowhere close to other companies' realization of the practicalities. Simply because they're focused on the grandma home-user or dippy office PHB.
Microsoft is taking a different approach, it seems. Download whatever the latest version is of the speech SDK, and incorporate voice recognition or text-2-speech in your own application. Microsoft has integrated this with several of their products already, most notably Office (I believe it was first integrated in Office 2000, but I can't back that up. I know for a fact that it was available in Office XP). By providing a programming interface into their speech engine, Microsoft makes it possible to do what you want in your application, not what they want. As well, I'm sure you and other Slashdotters would be crying foul if Microsoft were to try to push into the above-mentioned market.
But overall, you're missing my point. You don't need a new Operating System to accomplish stuff like this.
Right, you don't need a new OS to release a Speech SDK. However, I expect Microsoft intends to integrate voice recognition and such into the user experience, so you no longer need a hack or a separate app to control your desktop via voice, not that you need a new OS to do voice recognition at all. At least, that's what I understood them to mean. Perhaps I'm wrong.
Yeah. I already do that. It doesn't have quite the dramatic effect when I do it that he talks about (admittedly I only briefly glanced around). Someone taught me that way back when I was learning how to drive - basically avoid flashing your brakes at the person behind you and it'll smooth out at least a bit.
I was taught pretty much the same in school, but it's amazing how many of us (myself included, at one point) throw all that out the window. Since finding that page on traffic wave patterns nearly two years ago, I've been doing my part when I find myself in heavy traffic by leaving fairly large gaps (I don't quite get to the 20 car length gap the guy talks about, but I routinely end up with an 8-12 car length gap). I may only be going 20mph (average speed of traffic being no more than 25mph, if even that, but it's in quick bursts of acceleration between braking for most people rather than a constant 25mph), but I'm saving my brakes and gas by not speeding up to 50mph and then hitting the brakes, and I'm giving merging people a place to go. Quite often, I've seen a jam break up just as I get within a few car lengths of it because I brought a large enough gap to let the cars ahead start moving again before I reach them. Granted, it tends to only work for the lane I'm in, but one lane clearing up is better than nothing.
Speaking of the "no cause at all" part - or rather, the cause not being immediately evident, I have to say that the Seattle area is one of the worst. Seattle's construction workers seem to like to put up signs, and then leave them there. Signs that say things like merge left or merge right, but never follow up by closing the lanes. This causes all sorts of hassle for everyone.
I've never seen that on the freeways, but here on the east side it's not uncommon to see those signs on city streets even though the lanes are not closed. This happens quite often in front of the building where I work, because construction is being done during the day and is reopened by the evening. The workers should remove the signs, but I guess they're too lazy.
Special self-driving vehicle lanes for the highway would be pretty cool - they'd have the potential of running very smoothly, even if they don't move any faster overall than normal lanes. Should be safer, too.
Do your part now. You don't need to wait for automated vehicles.
You seem to have missed that this is a race through a desert, partly off-road. The vehicles of choice will probably be hummers and buggys, and even these will flip if pushed too hard.
I certainly didn't miss that. Instead, I was replying to the original poster's assertion that this race would leave to advancements in civilian vehicles, including abilities to prevent rollover accidents. I do not doubt that he is correct, I simply wanted to rebut his point by mentioning that there are ways right now to avoid rollover accidents, if you only take a moment to consider what type of vehicle best suits you, and then adjust your driving style that vehicle. When a soccer mom goes from a Honda Civic to a Ford Explorer (or god forbid a H2!), from experience it seems to me that said soccer mom does not realize that she's now driving a much larger, heavier vehicle that is slower to accelerate, slower to decelerate, slower to turn, and has a higher center of gravity. Therefore, her insistence on driving that Explorer as if it were a Civic is a large factor in preventable rollover accidents.
(Of course, I intend no disrepect towards soccer moms, nor do I intend to stereotype drivers of SUVs nor the female parent of soccer players. I simply used the soccer mom as an example of an average SUV driver who does not respect his or her vehicle.)
I do not doubt your ownership of said automobiles, since I know better of this world than to assume. Neither would I want to imply that I am maligning your character, since I do not know you personally and cannot judge, but one must admit that statistically speaking a "Slashdotter" would be exaggerating a bit to say this.
Follow the link in my profile, I think that'll do a fair job of verifying my statement...
And personally, if I had a Boxster I'd be out driving that bitch!
The Boxster is my daily driver for over a year and a half, and is also my track car for the few times per year I can get out for some recreational lapping. The F250 is a recent purchase, and serves as a workhorse and future tow vehicle for a race car I do not yet have but plan to build. In fact, prior to last night, when I decided I needed to drive the truck, I hadn't driven it for nearly a month.
Of course, the point of mentioning either of my vehicles was to emphasize the difference between a truck and a car. I don't think anyone would disagree that a Boxster is a completely different beast than an F250, yet every day I see people driving Suburbans and Excursions like they were Boxsters. *shudder*
I liked the part where he describes how most bad open source projects die in a darwinistic fashion while most bad microsoft projects limp on forever.
That just shows Cringley's ignorance of how Microsoft functions. Microsoft routinely kills off bad projects, usually before they even make it out to the public beyond controlled user testing or alpha or beta programs. In that respect, Microsoft Bob was an anomoly. However, the real problem here I think is the difference in how Microsoft and open source projects define "good" and "bad". For instance, while most of Slashdot may consider the Windows 9x line a "bad" project, for Microsoft is was hugely successful. While it may have hung on too long (Windows ME), it was a great step between Windows 3.x and an NT-based consumer system (XP Home).
Yes the technology is out there - it's not currently tied together, though.
Depends on how you look at it, of course. If I could afford it, I could buy a Bentley (a sedan, low center of gravity to help prevent roll-over) with traction control and hire a driver to drive me around. That seems pretty tied together to me:)
This is really cool.. technology like this could be used in consumer cars to reduce rollover/tire spin/etc. Maybe even 'smart' cars that drive themselves, leaving the human passengers free to sleep or get work done.
We already have all of that technology available already.
Preventing roll-overs: Buy a car that's not top-heavy. If you have a real need for an SUV that is top-heavy, don't try to drive it like a car, because it's not. It's a truck, and you should be aware of that (ie, avoid turning sharply, braking suddenly, etc). The newer cross-over and car-based SUVs (Chrysler Pacifica, Porsche Cayenne/VW Touareg, Infiniti FX models, etc) are much better in this respect. I'm referring mostly to the body-on-frame truck-based SUVs. I don't drive my huge F250 like I do my Boxster, simply because the F250 doesn't handle like the Boxster does.
Wheel spin: Traction control/stability management systems are quite intelligent these days, using modulated application of braking at the different wheels depending on what's need. Otherwise, keep your tires in good condition (check your remaining tread depth, air pressure, etc) and use the proper type of tire (summer ultra-performance tires are dangerous on snow or ice, of course) and you'll be much safer. It's scary the number of cars I see on the road with bald tires or low pressure.
Cars that drive themselves: Busses, trains, etc. Of course, this assumes you're in an area with a good mass transit system, which many of us are not. On the whole, though, I'd rather entrust myself to a human bus driver than an autonomous car, at least for the forseeable future. (That said, I never use mass transit, because it's simply not useful where I live, and I love driving:)
Okay, so those may not be as glamorous as a fully-robotic car, but the technology is already there. And as far as future autonomous cars go, so long as I can still buy a car that lets me manage throttle, brakes, shifting on my own for fun, I'll be happy.
The 'limit' is only there so you cant script automated mass-burns and pay a monkey $1/hr to just swap cds out. Takes a bit more work.
Oh no! You mean the script writer would have to take ten more minutes and code in a routine to drop/recreate the playlist every 10 burns? Argh, the horror!
And I didn't know that Palm had a wristwatch. That's pretty cool!
I expect the watches to only get better over time, as well. Color screens, touch screens (use a thumbtack as a stylus?:), more memory, etc. Now if only our eyesight would increase comparably...
PDA functionality is usefull and will be used virtually in all personal devices. And some of those devices will be far away from being called "a cell phone": watches, MP3 players, cameras.
Also, I am sure PDA functionality will expand from wearable devices to... drivable one?
Once again, yes, yes, and yes. Granted, most of the items I've listed aren't exactly PDAs, but they all have some PDA-type behaviors or at the very least the capability or promise of PDA features.
Surely if a company went with all open source software going with Microsoft would cost them a literally infinite amount more?
I assume you're joking, however I'll still bite. You've made several bad assumptions:
Open Source Software may be Free Software, but it's not always free (ie, no monetary cost).
You're assuming a company's time is worth nothing. How much is it going to cost a company to hack together enough open source applications to get close to replacing all of Exchange's functionality (yes, there are tools that aim to replace Exchange, like Binari, but they're not free last I checked), and how much is it going to cost to maintain this ragtag solution? This is where "Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)" comes in. You have to measure everything from purchase price, to implementation costs, to maintenance costs and so on. Microsoft software may be more in the purchase price department compared to open source software, but if it's less in implementation costs or maintenance costs, its TCO will be lower.
With software activation, I can't set up this failsafe without blowing my department's budget.
Activation or not, if the software's license doesn't allow you to install on two machines, you're putting your department at more risk than just their budget. Aside from that, if the activation is properly implemented you should not have any problems at all (see Windows XP; as much as people complained, it's dead simple to reactivate XP, even if you're installing it on a different machine -- if you can't do it directly over the internet, you can do it through an automated phone system that takes less than 5 minutes without any human intervention but yours required).
However, if your applications die so often that this is a major concern, you're doing something wrong. Most likely, you have crap hardware because you skimped on it. Consider fixing the problem, rather than complaining because this might impact your band-aid efforts.
That explains some of the problems, but not everything. For instance, why haven't I had mod points in nearly two years, despite having good karma and contributing to conversations (rather than trolling)? Yes, I know the rules about getting moderation points, but even with those I'd expect to get points at least two or three times a year, not every two years. As well, I recently started noticing that Slashdot has popup ads now (I saw one in the last day, and then added slashdot into my popup blocker's blacklist because there's no excuse for that). I usually don't pay attention to trolls, but one has to wonder if the trolls about Slashdot not being able to pay their bandwidth fees may have a kernal of truth to them? That would certainly explain why they've had connectivity issues, as well as why they've added more annoying advertisements in an attempt to scare up more advertising revenue.
The Freedom referred to in Free Software is freedom for the software under the GPL. Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.
This is precisely why "Free" is a bad choice of terminology for "Free" Software. The word "free" is badly overloaded, and the prevalent definition is "having no cost." That definition is obviously inccorect here. One suggestion would be to call it "Freedom Software" instead, though that still leaves ambiguous as to what freedoms it provides, whether it be for the developer or for the user. The worst part, however, is that RMS persists in using the poorly named concept, to the point where he has to explain the difference between "free" and "Free" in nearly every interview he does. One would think that the wise choice would be to choose a less ambiguous name, but RMS seems too hard-headed to change.
If I ran a pub called "Free Beer", but meant that the beers I provide are brewed from recipes that anybody can use and not that you don't have to pay for the brewed beers, you would agree that I chose a poor name for my pub. If you have to reiterate the meaning of a key phrase or name every time someone asks about it because of misconceptions, it's obvious that the name is bad and should be changed.
Personally I like product names that mean something like Apple Powermac G5 2.0 Ghz. That is descriptive, says who built it, something about what is inside and how powerful just like Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6. Again, who made it, what it is, and some idea of how powerful.
Taking this off topic, but perhaps you meant to use a better example, like BMW 330Ci -- tells you that BMW makes it, it's an Inline-6 configuration engine (3-series), with a 3.0L displacement, in Coupe form. Porsche 911 Turbo doesn't tell you much (I've never seen Porsche cars referenced by their engine displacements). Is it a 930, a 993, a 996, or what? What year? air-cooled or water-cooled? You say 3.6L, but that's not part of the name designation. And more importantly, Porsche has moved towards the "flashy name" trend anyway, with the Boxster and now the Cayenne (nevermind that they both have internal codenames like 986 for the Boxster and I can't recall what the Cayenne's number is, something like 961). One could even call the 911 a "flashy name", since it originated as just a codename (for the 901, which couldn't be released as the 901 thanks to Peugeot's trademark on "x0y" numbers for car models) but now is nothing more than the name for Porsche's ass-engined car.
"Porsche Boxster" tells you just as much as "Intel Pentium III". Is it a 97-99 with the 2.5L engine? a 00-02 with the 2.7L engine? an 03-04 with the 2.7L that makes a bit more hp? Or did you mean to say Boxster S (Pentium III Xeon)? And again, is that a 00-02 with the 250hp 3.2L, or the 03-4 that adds more hp?
this almost reminds me of richard and linus vs the evil sco
Not quite. In the SCO case, the claim is that there was wholesale copying of source code, which is a copyright infringement (whether or not SCO is right doesn't matter here). The Microsoft case involves patents, where a method for doing something was patented and Microsoft implemented that method, or a method similar enough to infringe upon the patent. No source code was copied, just an idea. Microsoft need only show that the patent is invalid by prior art, or that they implemented a different method (the latter is difficult, given the broad patents awarded by the broken USPTO). For IBM and SGI vs. SCO, they have to show that no code was copied, or that what code was copied was not SCO's property.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't want to make the assumption that you weren't blind, or that you somehow otherwise didn't have a look at the pictures, because otherwise it would be fairly obvious why the combo is good.
And two devices are more convenient to carry than one? Or should I velcro the tablet to the top of my laptop?
I disagree. The laptop/tablet combination is really a neat idea. You have a keyboard with a touchpad or nipple for mouse movement, but also a touch screen and stylus. The LCD rotates 180 degrees so you can have it in a laptop form factor (LCD and keyboard at 90 degrees), or in a tablet form (like a closed laptop, but with the LCD screen facing outwards). That way, you can carry it around like a notepad and write on it in tablet form, but then sit down, swing it around into a laptop, and use it for typing in a meeting.
I've been thinking about selling my current laptop and buying a tablet to replace it, but prices need to come down a bit more before I do that.
Maybe not murder, but if you could link your boss to financially backing that mugger, and other muggers like him, and with support of a significant portion of your office, then yes, being mugged on your way to the store would be an excuse to go after everybody in your office.
Very true, but the story was about Best Buy, and Best Buy's prices tend to range around $15 on average last I checked.
What about a 16 year old that just got a license and a job to pay for a car, but mommy and daddy aren't rich or don't spoil him, and so he does't have his own credit card? You can't get your own credit card until you're 18, so if mommy and/or daddy don't pony up, he's stuck. If you think about it, teens are the prime music-buying demographic, so Napster et al need to make it dead simple for these teens to be able to buy music.
Because you want to use Napster but don't have a credit card? More likely these will be used as gifts, though.
What are the chances you intend to buy every song on a CD? Instead, you'll probably buy 15 different songs from 15 different albums, like you suggested for compilations. However, CDs aren't cheaper than $14.85 anywhere I've been. Some are, but most CDs are marked at $15 and higher before tax, not $9.99. Even if you add the cost of blank media to burn your purchases, you're just starting to get to the after-tax cost of a CD.
Microsoft is taking a different approach, it seems. Download whatever the latest version is of the speech SDK, and incorporate voice recognition or text-2-speech in your own application. Microsoft has integrated this with several of their products already, most notably Office (I believe it was first integrated in Office 2000, but I can't back that up. I know for a fact that it was available in Office XP). By providing a programming interface into their speech engine, Microsoft makes it possible to do what you want in your application, not what they want. As well, I'm sure you and other Slashdotters would be crying foul if Microsoft were to try to push into the above-mentioned market.
Right, you don't need a new OS to release a Speech SDK. However, I expect Microsoft intends to integrate voice recognition and such into the user experience, so you no longer need a hack or a separate app to control your desktop via voice, not that you need a new OS to do voice recognition at all. At least, that's what I understood them to mean. Perhaps I'm wrong.
Right, because Microsoft hasn't been researching and using natural language processing for years.
I was taught pretty much the same in school, but it's amazing how many of us (myself included, at one point) throw all that out the window. Since finding that page on traffic wave patterns nearly two years ago, I've been doing my part when I find myself in heavy traffic by leaving fairly large gaps (I don't quite get to the 20 car length gap the guy talks about, but I routinely end up with an 8-12 car length gap). I may only be going 20mph (average speed of traffic being no more than 25mph, if even that, but it's in quick bursts of acceleration between braking for most people rather than a constant 25mph), but I'm saving my brakes and gas by not speeding up to 50mph and then hitting the brakes, and I'm giving merging people a place to go. Quite often, I've seen a jam break up just as I get within a few car lengths of it because I brought a large enough gap to let the cars ahead start moving again before I reach them. Granted, it tends to only work for the lane I'm in, but one lane clearing up is better than nothing.
I've never seen that on the freeways, but here on the east side it's not uncommon to see those signs on city streets even though the lanes are not closed. This happens quite often in front of the building where I work, because construction is being done during the day and is reopened by the evening. The workers should remove the signs, but I guess they're too lazy.
Do your part now. You don't need to wait for automated vehicles.
I certainly didn't miss that. Instead, I was replying to the original poster's assertion that this race would leave to advancements in civilian vehicles, including abilities to prevent rollover accidents. I do not doubt that he is correct, I simply wanted to rebut his point by mentioning that there are ways right now to avoid rollover accidents, if you only take a moment to consider what type of vehicle best suits you, and then adjust your driving style that vehicle. When a soccer mom goes from a Honda Civic to a Ford Explorer (or god forbid a H2!), from experience it seems to me that said soccer mom does not realize that she's now driving a much larger, heavier vehicle that is slower to accelerate, slower to decelerate, slower to turn, and has a higher center of gravity. Therefore, her insistence on driving that Explorer as if it were a Civic is a large factor in preventable rollover accidents.
(Of course, I intend no disrepect towards soccer moms, nor do I intend to stereotype drivers of SUVs nor the female parent of soccer players. I simply used the soccer mom as an example of an average SUV driver who does not respect his or her vehicle.)
Follow the link in my profile, I think that'll do a fair job of verifying my statement ...
The Boxster is my daily driver for over a year and a half, and is also my track car for the few times per year I can get out for some recreational lapping. The F250 is a recent purchase, and serves as a workhorse and future tow vehicle for a race car I do not yet have but plan to build. In fact, prior to last night, when I decided I needed to drive the truck, I hadn't driven it for nearly a month.
Of course, the point of mentioning either of my vehicles was to emphasize the difference between a truck and a car. I don't think anyone would disagree that a Boxster is a completely different beast than an F250, yet every day I see people driving Suburbans and Excursions like they were Boxsters. *shudder*
That just shows Cringley's ignorance of how Microsoft functions. Microsoft routinely kills off bad projects, usually before they even make it out to the public beyond controlled user testing or alpha or beta programs. In that respect, Microsoft Bob was an anomoly. However, the real problem here I think is the difference in how Microsoft and open source projects define "good" and "bad". For instance, while most of Slashdot may consider the Windows 9x line a "bad" project, for Microsoft is was hugely successful. While it may have hung on too long (Windows ME), it was a great step between Windows 3.x and an NT-based consumer system (XP Home).
Depends on how you look at it, of course. If I could afford it, I could buy a Bentley (a sedan, low center of gravity to help prevent roll-over) with traction control and hire a driver to drive me around. That seems pretty tied together to me :)
We already have all of that technology available already.
Okay, so those may not be as glamorous as a fully-robotic car, but the technology is already there. And as far as future autonomous cars go, so long as I can still buy a car that lets me manage throttle, brakes, shifting on my own for fun, I'll be happy.
Oh no! You mean the script writer would have to take ten more minutes and code in a routine to drop/recreate the playlist every 10 burns? Argh, the horror!
And I didn't know that Palm had a wristwatch. That's pretty cool!
I expect the watches to only get better over time, as well. Color screens, touch screens (use a thumbtack as a stylus? :), more memory, etc. Now if only our eyesight would increase comparably ...
Watches? Yes and yes. MP3 players? Not quite yet, but I'd expect it soon. Cameras? Close enough.
Once again, yes, yes, and yes. Granted, most of the items I've listed aren't exactly PDAs, but they all have some PDA-type behaviors or at the very least the capability or promise of PDA features.
I assume you're joking, however I'll still bite. You've made several bad assumptions:
Activation or not, if the software's license doesn't allow you to install on two machines, you're putting your department at more risk than just their budget. Aside from that, if the activation is properly implemented you should not have any problems at all (see Windows XP; as much as people complained, it's dead simple to reactivate XP, even if you're installing it on a different machine -- if you can't do it directly over the internet, you can do it through an automated phone system that takes less than 5 minutes without any human intervention but yours required).
However, if your applications die so often that this is a major concern, you're doing something wrong. Most likely, you have crap hardware because you skimped on it. Consider fixing the problem, rather than complaining because this might impact your band-aid efforts.
That explains some of the problems, but not everything. For instance, why haven't I had mod points in nearly two years, despite having good karma and contributing to conversations (rather than trolling)? Yes, I know the rules about getting moderation points, but even with those I'd expect to get points at least two or three times a year, not every two years. As well, I recently started noticing that Slashdot has popup ads now (I saw one in the last day, and then added slashdot into my popup blocker's blacklist because there's no excuse for that). I usually don't pay attention to trolls, but one has to wonder if the trolls about Slashdot not being able to pay their bandwidth fees may have a kernal of truth to them? That would certainly explain why they've had connectivity issues, as well as why they've added more annoying advertisements in an attempt to scare up more advertising revenue.
This is precisely why "Free" is a bad choice of terminology for "Free" Software. The word "free" is badly overloaded, and the prevalent definition is "having no cost." That definition is obviously inccorect here. One suggestion would be to call it "Freedom Software" instead, though that still leaves ambiguous as to what freedoms it provides, whether it be for the developer or for the user. The worst part, however, is that RMS persists in using the poorly named concept, to the point where he has to explain the difference between "free" and "Free" in nearly every interview he does. One would think that the wise choice would be to choose a less ambiguous name, but RMS seems too hard-headed to change.
If I ran a pub called "Free Beer", but meant that the beers I provide are brewed from recipes that anybody can use and not that you don't have to pay for the brewed beers, you would agree that I chose a poor name for my pub. If you have to reiterate the meaning of a key phrase or name every time someone asks about it because of misconceptions, it's obvious that the name is bad and should be changed.
Taking this off topic, but perhaps you meant to use a better example, like BMW 330Ci -- tells you that BMW makes it, it's an Inline-6 configuration engine (3-series), with a 3.0L displacement, in Coupe form. Porsche 911 Turbo doesn't tell you much (I've never seen Porsche cars referenced by their engine displacements). Is it a 930, a 993, a 996, or what? What year? air-cooled or water-cooled? You say 3.6L, but that's not part of the name designation. And more importantly, Porsche has moved towards the "flashy name" trend anyway, with the Boxster and now the Cayenne (nevermind that they both have internal codenames like 986 for the Boxster and I can't recall what the Cayenne's number is, something like 961). One could even call the 911 a "flashy name", since it originated as just a codename (for the 901, which couldn't be released as the 901 thanks to Peugeot's trademark on "x0y" numbers for car models) but now is nothing more than the name for Porsche's ass-engined car.
"Porsche Boxster" tells you just as much as "Intel Pentium III". Is it a 97-99 with the 2.5L engine? a 00-02 with the 2.7L engine? an 03-04 with the 2.7L that makes a bit more hp? Or did you mean to say Boxster S (Pentium III Xeon)? And again, is that a 00-02 with the 250hp 3.2L, or the 03-4 that adds more hp?
Not quite. In the SCO case, the claim is that there was wholesale copying of source code, which is a copyright infringement (whether or not SCO is right doesn't matter here). The Microsoft case involves patents, where a method for doing something was patented and Microsoft implemented that method, or a method similar enough to infringe upon the patent. No source code was copied, just an idea. Microsoft need only show that the patent is invalid by prior art, or that they implemented a different method (the latter is difficult, given the broad patents awarded by the broken USPTO). For IBM and SGI vs. SCO, they have to show that no code was copied, or that what code was copied was not SCO's property.
Copyright != Patent.
Huh? An overpriced, underpowered, aging game system mated with weak PVR capabilities is a "cool toy"?