Where are you following it? The linked document (which the third article, in turn, uses as a source) refers clearly to the suspension type. If you're right, that document is outdated.
Or use a 1.x Gecko-based browser. K-Meleon, for example, is actively maintained and re-enables a lot of good stuff: sane image search, "Cached" link back in place, result links that really link to the result page (rather than some Google script) - all without having to go to the extreme of disabling Javascript. Slashdot looks terrible, though.
Also, IMHO the 20-year extensibility is pretty ridiculous for software and the grantees should be required to license their patents at reasonable fees.
obviously you disagree that mathematical algorithms should not be patented
Yes. I must add that only a really tiny fraction of the mathematical algorithms that have been patented should really have been regarded as patentable in the first place (patentable also means non-obvious, novel, and applicable in the industry).
I'll point out that your example of Red Hat is a company that works as much or more than any other to end software patents.
Indeed. Perhaps they would be a bit more moderate about software patents if only the worthy ones were awarded.
I patent software too, also for defensive reasons. It's a huge waste of time and money, but the lawyers making money of software patents and big companies that shut down competition with them through anti-competitive practices have far more influence in government that open source developers and small companies.
Maybe the problem with software patents is not the concept of patent, but the money and bureaucracy required to enforce them and the sheer amount of patents that get awarded.
I don't think having source or not makes any difference.
Arguably the inventors should also indicate the best mode for carrying out the invention to the extent of the inventor's knowledge, and IMHO that includes not only the detailed description but also the source and the necessary steps to compile it.
Mathematical algorithms simply should not qualify as patentable. It's bad for innovation, as he original patent system creators understood.
Mathematical algorithms are processes, and as such they should be qualified as patentable as long as they are novel, non-obvious and capable of industrial application. In that sense they are no different from the process to build an automobile (a patent that expired).
Mathematical algorithms simply should not qualify as patentable. It's bad for innovation, as he original patent system creators understood.
It's not a black-and-white situation. A FOSS company can decide to patent their software and allow selected partners, with a commitment to FOSS, to infringe them, precisely to prevent megacorporations from stalling innovation. Like Red Hat does.
Software should be patentable *as long as the source code is released*, which is not the way it's usually done. Quoting from WTO TRIPS agreement, which has been signed and ratified by the vast majority of countries in the world:
Article 29
Conditions on Patent Applicants
1. Members shall require that an applicant for a patent shall disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for the invention to be carried out by a person skilled in the art and may require the applicant to indicate the best mode for carrying out the invention known to the inventor at the filing date or, where priority is claimed, at the priority date of the application.
But a few posts above you seemed to suggest "efficiency==lack of ambiguity". English is no less ambiguous than Spanish.
So why is it so inefficient, when Latin itself is extremely efficient, and Spanish is partly descended from Latin?
The lack of cases. The vast majority of modern Latin-descended languages lost them almost completely or completely. Romanian is an interesting exception, I think, though by no means as complex as Latin.
Portuguese is not much closer than Spanish to Latin in grammar or word inflection - they're pretty similar. They have different root words, and they have many in common as well (not sure which one is more like Latin in that sense) but that doesn't have to do with efficiency.
By the way, sometimes one doesn't want to be very precise and the lack of precision adds to the language's efficiency. For example, to say "I'm with a friend" without disclosing the gender of the friend in Spanish, and yes also in Latin from what I remember from high school, one would have to resort to pretty awkward constructions with lots of words.
It's syllable-inefficient, and that's common to most Latin languages.
Other than that, care to explain why you find it "abysmally-inefficient"? A conjugated verb (no subject needed) can express grammatical number, grammatical person, tense (including future) and likelihood.
After reading TFA and the fine website of Europe vs Facebook it turns out they are honoring the European (Irish) law and sending CDs with personal info to whoever requests them; the kind of data they're refusing to hand over is:
"Data like the biometrical information or ”likes” are seen at trade secret, intellectual property or are simply too complicated to send to users according to Facebook."
It raises the question whether it's reasonable to request from them information such as your "likes". It sounds to me like asking a company to hand you over a log with your phone calls and email exchanges; I don't think they have that obligation.
That is true for companies with which you have a contract that involves sending them personal information.
Whether Facebook and others like Google, Microsoft, etc. are bound by the DPD remains to be seen. They are not from a EU country and they did not sign a contract with you - I don't think there's an official client-provider relation between their users (especially their EU users) and them. Some court might try to force them to hand over the data on account of national laws but that's open to interpretation. It would be interesting to see how that would work out though.
Apparently you haven't visited Norway's Lofoten Islands (north of the Arctic circle) in summer months.
Among many other awesome views (recommended) there's a couple of gorgeous beaches with white sands and emerald blue waters that make for perfect sunbathing spots. And yes you can get sunburnt really bad.
Android 3.0 onwards isn't free, neither open source nor zero-cost.
Samsung doesn't "make money for free off Android". Samsung gets the latest Android releases because Samsung is part of the OHA (Open Handset Alliance).
It's not only Samsung that are under attack for using Android. HTC and Motorola are also under fire, Apple-style (litigation) or MS-style (strong-arm into patent deals).
Facebook's method of tracking uses IFRAMES, that's why when you visit a page with a Facebook button your browser is actually hitting the facebook servers again.
Run NoScript and disable IFRAMES. The Iframes within the same domain as the parent site, which are typically the only useful ones, will still load. And you can temporarily unblock any blocked item, in case you want to make an exception.
About that part, yeah fair enough. And Flash games can't die soon enough. But that is one thing and another thing is to predict the death of "Installed Games". Look at the HTML5 version of Quake II - on an Atom netbook you get something like, 6fps? While the native runs smoothly on a 100 Mhz machine.
You can add a bandwidth graph showing only totals.
But in addition to that you can add, for each process, separate columns with the upload and download network usages. These are not history graphs, but amounts of packets or bytes transferred during the last interval (the "Delta" columns) or since Process Explorer was started (e.g. "Send Bytes", "Receive Bytes"). Good enough for most purposes. Admittedly what it doesn't do is break it down by interface (or device, in Windows parlance).
I have no problem with the idea of poking fun at someone's language skills when they should know better (or indeed DO know better but are just being lazy)
I hear you. I rarely poke fun at anyone's poor grammar, and when I do I am careful to make fun of specific sentences, not of the person.
The thing is I think this fellow may very well be a native speaker and the poor grammar may be caused by laziness or by typing on a small touchscreen with software that will check your spelling but not your grammar. I happen to be a non-native English speaker myself (second language). I read a lot of poor English written by learning speakers. I also read quite a bit of awful English written by careless native speakers. Both can be rather horrid, but in different ways. In this case I am not 100% certain - that text is too short. But for example, it is not typical of learning speakers to confuse "its" with "it's", especially when done inconsistently - the OP incorrectly writes "Its" but shortly thereafter (s)he correctly uses "it's". Non-native speakers rarely make that mistake because they usually learn written English before learning how to speak.
The problem is not with Flash, but with how it is used and the purposes for which it is used, specifically:
- The braindead decisions and taste of the people who designed those pieces of crap - for example, the text on Flash CAN actually be selected and copied if the developer makes it so - but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. In fact, I suspect many people use Flash mainly to prevent you from copying text and other resources.
- The stupid thought that something designed to be used with a mouse, a keyboard and a large screen can scale well for use on touchscreen devices.
Ultimately Flash is a close relative to Macromedia Director, and as such, it is about multimedia, scripted presentations with actually useful functionality, not just about trying to do cool stuff for the sake of being cool. I wonder how Director is doing these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Where are you following it? The linked document (which the third article, in turn, uses as a source) refers clearly to the suspension type. If you're right, that document is outdated.
Sobreseimiento (as in the original report) != dismissal
Just nitpicking, though. I don't think there is a case.
Or use a 1.x Gecko-based browser. K-Meleon, for example, is actively maintained and re-enables a lot of good stuff: sane image search, "Cached" link back in place, result links that really link to the result page (rather than some Google script) - all without having to go to the extreme of disabling Javascript. Slashdot looks terrible, though.
Also, IMHO the 20-year extensibility is pretty ridiculous for software and the grantees should be required to license their patents at reasonable fees.
obviously you disagree that mathematical algorithms should not be patented
Yes. I must add that only a really tiny fraction of the mathematical algorithms that have been patented should really have been regarded as patentable in the first place (patentable also means non-obvious, novel, and applicable in the industry).
I'll point out that your example of Red Hat is a company that works as much or more than any other to end software patents.
Indeed. Perhaps they would be a bit more moderate about software patents if only the worthy ones were awarded.
I patent software too, also for defensive reasons. It's a huge waste of time and money, but the lawyers making money of software patents and big companies that shut down competition with them through anti-competitive practices have far more influence in government that open source developers and small companies.
Maybe the problem with software patents is not the concept of patent, but the money and bureaucracy required to enforce them and the sheer amount of patents that get awarded.
I don't think having source or not makes any difference.
Arguably the inventors should also indicate the best mode for carrying out the invention to the extent of the inventor's knowledge, and IMHO that includes not only the detailed description but also the source and the necessary steps to compile it.
Mathematical algorithms simply should not qualify as patentable. It's bad for innovation, as he original patent system creators understood.
Mathematical algorithms are processes, and as such they should be qualified as patentable as long as they are novel, non-obvious and capable of industrial application. In that sense they are no different from the process to build an automobile (a patent that expired).
Mathematical algorithms simply should not qualify as patentable. It's bad for innovation, as he original patent system creators understood.
It's not a black-and-white situation. A FOSS company can decide to patent their software and allow selected partners, with a commitment to FOSS, to infringe them, precisely to prevent megacorporations from stalling innovation. Like Red Hat does.
No, it fails the novelty requirement.
Article 29 Conditions on Patent Applicants 1. Members shall require that an applicant for a patent shall disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for the invention to be carried out by a person skilled in the art and may require the applicant to indicate the best mode for carrying out the invention known to the inventor at the filing date or, where priority is claimed, at the priority date of the application.
Emphasis mine.
I don't know about Samsung but when the HTC Desire HD came out, the stores DID run out of stock where I lived (Western Europe for what it's worth).
It's called Wikipedia.
The best thing about it is not the article contents, but the references and external links. I use it as a crowdsourced web search site.
So why is it so inefficient, when Latin itself is extremely efficient, and Spanish is partly descended from Latin?
The lack of cases. The vast majority of modern Latin-descended languages lost them almost completely or completely. Romanian is an interesting exception, I think, though by no means as complex as Latin.
Portuguese is not much closer than Spanish to Latin in grammar or word inflection - they're pretty similar. They have different root words, and they have many in common as well (not sure which one is more like Latin in that sense) but that doesn't have to do with efficiency.
By the way, sometimes one doesn't want to be very precise and the lack of precision adds to the language's efficiency. For example, to say "I'm with a friend" without disclosing the gender of the friend in Spanish, and yes also in Latin from what I remember from high school, one would have to resort to pretty awkward constructions with lots of words.
It's syllable-inefficient, and that's common to most Latin languages.
Other than that, care to explain why you find it "abysmally-inefficient"? A conjugated verb (no subject needed) can express grammatical number, grammatical person, tense (including future) and likelihood.
now, for good or ill, the left-hand vertical menu is a permanent desktop element. It looks great to me
Dealbreaker. The left-hand menu is not the only problem with Unity. Its dependence on the sluggish compiz wm is another.
"Data like the biometrical information or ”likes” are seen at trade secret, intellectual property or are simply too complicated to send to users according to Facebook."
It raises the question whether it's reasonable to request from them information such as your "likes". It sounds to me like asking a company to hand you over a log with your phone calls and email exchanges; I don't think they have that obligation.
That is true for companies with which you have a contract that involves sending them personal information.
Whether Facebook and others like Google, Microsoft, etc. are bound by the DPD remains to be seen. They are not from a EU country and they did not sign a contract with you - I don't think there's an official client-provider relation between their users (especially their EU users) and them. Some court might try to force them to hand over the data on account of national laws but that's open to interpretation. It would be interesting to see how that would work out though.
Apparently you haven't visited Norway's Lofoten Islands (north of the Arctic circle) in summer months.
Among many other awesome views (recommended) there's a couple of gorgeous beaches with white sands and emerald blue waters that make for perfect sunbathing spots. And yes you can get sunburnt really bad.
Android 3.0 onwards isn't free, neither open source nor zero-cost.
Samsung doesn't "make money for free off Android". Samsung gets the latest Android releases because Samsung is part of the OHA (Open Handset Alliance).
It's not only Samsung that are under attack for using Android. HTC and Motorola are also under fire, Apple-style (litigation) or MS-style (strong-arm into patent deals).
I don't think so.
Facebook's method of tracking uses IFRAMES, that's why when you visit a page with a Facebook button your browser is actually hitting the facebook servers again.
Run NoScript and disable IFRAMES. The Iframes within the same domain as the parent site, which are typically the only useful ones, will still load. And you can temporarily unblock any blocked item, in case you want to make an exception.
Especially for MMO game developers
About that part, yeah fair enough. And Flash games can't die soon enough. But that is one thing and another thing is to predict the death of "Installed Games". Look at the HTML5 version of Quake II - on an Atom netbook you get something like, 6fps? While the native runs smoothly on a 100 Mhz machine.
You can add a bandwidth graph showing only totals.
But in addition to that you can add, for each process, separate columns with the upload and download network usages. These are not history graphs, but amounts of packets or bytes transferred during the last interval (the "Delta" columns) or since Process Explorer was started (e.g. "Send Bytes", "Receive Bytes"). Good enough for most purposes. Admittedly what it doesn't do is break it down by interface (or device, in Windows parlance).
Yes.
Sysinternals Process Explorer, and add the network graphs.
I have no problem with the idea of poking fun at someone's language skills when they should know better (or indeed DO know better but are just being lazy)
I hear you. I rarely poke fun at anyone's poor grammar, and when I do I am careful to make fun of specific sentences, not of the person.
The thing is I think this fellow may very well be a native speaker and the poor grammar may be caused by laziness or by typing on a small touchscreen with software that will check your spelling but not your grammar. I happen to be a non-native English speaker myself (second language). I read a lot of poor English written by learning speakers. I also read quite a bit of awful English written by careless native speakers. Both can be rather horrid, but in different ways. In this case I am not 100% certain - that text is too short. But for example, it is not typical of learning speakers to confuse "its" with "it's", especially when done inconsistently - the OP incorrectly writes "Its" but shortly thereafter (s)he correctly uses "it's". Non-native speakers rarely make that mistake because they usually learn written English before learning how to speak.
It fun to out verb.
To, or not to. That the question.
The problem is not with Flash, but with how it is used and the purposes for which it is used, specifically:
- The braindead decisions and taste of the people who designed those pieces of crap - for example, the text on Flash CAN actually be selected and copied if the developer makes it so - but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. In fact, I suspect many people use Flash mainly to prevent you from copying text and other resources.
- The stupid thought that something designed to be used with a mouse, a keyboard and a large screen can scale well for use on touchscreen devices.
Ultimately Flash is a close relative to Macromedia Director, and as such, it is about multimedia, scripted presentations with actually useful functionality, not just about trying to do cool stuff for the sake of being cool. I wonder how Director is doing these days.
So, will my tinfoil hat protect me from those things, or increase their power?!