Okay thank you, I thought I was crazy. 915 also covers a single finger to scroll, which is something single touch screens have done forever as well; no need for multitouch there, and the history goes back even further, well into the 70s before apple even existed.
That's not the point. You're not seeing the big picture. Apple in fact owns a patent on pinch to zoom, yet there are mountains of prior art available which depict the same thing. Part of Samsung's argument in the trial is that Apple is trying to patent large swaths of computer interactions that either have been around forever, have been done before iPhone, are completely obvious, or some combination thereof. Some of the arguments you hear in favor of Apple's patents are "It wasn't done before on a cell phone" and that's what the jurors seem to be saying here. But that doesn't matter when considering prior art. Apple and many Apple supporters try to cite the iPhone as the first multitouch device ever, but as Buxton's website shows, multitouch devices have a long history; and more importantly, the interaction techniques with multitouch interfaces, such as pinch to zoom, were well documented and implemented for decades before the iPhone.
That pinch to zoom wasn't a question in the trial is immaterial; the pinch to zoom patent serves to highlight the fact that Apple holds very obviously questionable patents, which brings into doubt not only their other UI patents but also the entire patent system.
I don't think the fact that there was a patent holder on the jury is a big deal; after all, a jury is ostensibly comprised of your peers. However, the problem is that he was the *only* "peer" on the jury, and in fact acted as an authoritative figure in making decisions. It seems like other jurors deferred to his "expertise" because they were not as well informed as him. There was no "balancing force" behind closed doors, which seems to be why the decision is not nuanced at all, and completely one sided.
Microsoft Engineering Bill Buxton has this nice collection of multitouch systems going back to the early 80s. Pinch to zoom dates back as early as 1982. This collections of prior art makes it plainly obvious that people "skilled in the art" not only would find something like pinch to zoom obvious, the in fact did and implemented it long before the iPhone ever existed.
Was it implemented on a computer you could hold in your hand? No, simply because the technology was not small enough to fit in your hand. But just because Apple was the first to implement it in your hand, does not mean they were in anyway inventing something novel, unique, and non-obvious that deserves patent protection. Apple made a logical, obvious, iteration to a decades old technology. I don't see how this is possibly a point of contention, and the fact the jurors went the other way on this leads me to believe the headline is 100% correct, or something else fishy is going on.
squeeze the kiwis (it is like pressing lemons, just more sweet)
I think that all depends on what kind of kiwis the lawyers will be squeezing. Given the disposition of lawyers, I don't expect anything sweet to come out of their kiwi-squeezing endeavors.
I doubt that. As bad as Vista was, it drove approximately no one to Linux. If anything, OSX would be the one to pick up the exodus, not Linux. But neither really benefited that much from Vista's blunders, because most users just stayed where they were: on XP, and if Windows 7 turned out to suck, they'd probably still be there today.
Ah yes, unfettered energy policy and fracking. Here's what those two beasts are doing in my backyard:
In the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, 13 water wells were contaminated with methane (one of them blew up). Arsenic, barium, DEHP, glycol compounds, manganese, phenol, and sodium were also found in unacceptable levels in the wells.
When I can't drink my own water because it combusts out of the tap next to a flame, I don't really give a fuck how fracking drives down natural gas prices.
I don't know if there is sufficient prior art to invalidate those patents; and I don't know if the jury was even allowed to consider invalidation of those patents (if they were then all this prior art should have been displayed for them).
If you don't know these things why are you engaging in a conversation about them? Please do yourself a favor and read up on the trial. If you want a spoil they were asked to decide invalidity, they were given prior art, and they were instructed by their patent holding forman to basically skip over those decisions.
I am 100% sure that you don't know either, you just cherry-picked comments and constructed some plotline which reinforces your world-view.
How can you be 100% sure when you admit you yourself don't even know what's going on? Either way, proving prior art is precisely "cherrypicking" examples of past technologies that preempt the patent technology. I have provided you examples, Samsung has done the same with expert witnesses. The only people who haven't paid attention to this are you, Apple Inc., and the Jury who neglected to even consider it because it was too hard for them.
I don't think either pinch-zoom or scroll bounce-back are all that obvious. It seems like if they were obvious then they would have shown up in a smartphone or tablet before the iPhone/iPad.
Did you even look at the link? There are at least half a dozen examples of pinch-zoom being used in touch systems spanning the last two decades prior to iPhone. That Apple used them in a phone is not novel or innovative. It's obvious. That you don't think it's obvious is irrelevant; it is apparent from the link provided that those "skilled in the art" (which you are not) did see this gesture as obvious.
Are you saying it is impossible to build a phone without pinch-to-zoom or scroll bounce-back?
No, I'm saying pinch-zoom and scroll bounce back are both obvious and natural ways to interact with devices and should not be patentable. Akin to click-drag, pinch zoom is one of the most natural gestures for zoom, and in fact has plenty of prior art, the earliest pre-dating the iPhone by over 20 years. Aside from Samsung's own expert testimony on coll bounce prior art, it is also natural and obvious, as any spring loaded mechanism contains the exact same feedback the iPhone's emulates on the screen. Same goes for slide to unlock.
But the jury didn't even consider the patents validity in their decisions. They went so far as to say such matters bogged down the process, and proceeded diligently as if the patents were valid, as instructed by a patent-holder foreman.
With such copious examples of prior art and physical analogs, these patents are analogous to Apple patenting the placement of speakers and microphones in a phone. Sure you could make a phone without a speaker on the top and a microphone on the bottom, but it would be completely counterintuitive. If the patent system is designed to encourage innovation and not obviousness, yet we have patents on obviousness, the patent system is completely fucked.
It's not just about things that were patented, but things that are so obvious they are designed out of necessity, not ingenuity. Things like the basic shape and function of the cell phone are obvious and not patented. In today's climate however, if Apple could get away with it they'd patent "A method and placement of a speaker microphone array to optimize audio quality." Unfortunately for them, they can't do this, but they are getting away with equally egregious acts on the patents they managed to squeak through the rubber stamp patent authority known as the USPTO.
Total market cap of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined: $659.0B
Total market cap of Apple: $633.4B
Anyway, not sure what a company's worth in relation to others prove about what one company will do with respect to breaking contracts and dropping customers. Remember, Samsung has something much more powerful than fat stacks of cash, something Apple cannot compare: the full backing and support of the South Korean government. Not saying I think it's great a corporation is so close to a government, but that while Apple is making only shiny iToys, Samsung is a massive conglomerate making:
Textiles
Securities
Credit cards
Insurance
Chemicals
Machine tools
Engineering services
Electronics
Semiconductors
Hotels
Ships
Surveillance
Automations
Aeronautics
Oh yeah, and weapons tech... seriously, that's not a company I'd want to fuck with.
Its not like Apple waddled into a vacuum and suddenly made a phone nobody had ever done before with never unheard of components.
This is what always kills me about those "Before iPhone, after iPhone" and "Before iPad, after iPad" images Apple fans constantly post. They completely miss the fact that Samsung had phone before iPhone and Samsung had tablets before iPad. Apple gets defensive about broad patents on trade dress, but completely neglect the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on the top, which is not so loud as to conform to the sensitivities of the human ear; a mic on the bottom, which is sensitive enough to pic up the human voice; is shaped to fit the human hand and the human head; contains radio technology which enables voice conversations between people across the planet, at the speed of light; relies on networking technology developed by other companies to enable as such.... all the myriad technologies that enable the iPhone to even exist, were in place before the iPhone, and were invented by many of the same companies Apple is so keen to sue for frivolities like scroll bounce.
These "Before iPhone, after iPhone" images are a direct consequence of the touch screen becoming the primary input device, just as the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on top and a mic on the bottom is a direct consequence of mouth/ear placement on the human head.
Why do Americans get so insulted over the most benign comments? The guy was making a joke about a place with the absurd name "Possim Kingdom" (Get it, a nation of possums?) not calling America a nation of possums.
The fact that you flew right into us vs. them nationalism mode at such a silly joke says more about you than anything. Judging from the GP's comments, he says a couple things that makes me think he's probably American anyway.
What you've just said is something many entrepreneurs find out too late: that ideas are dime a dozen, and execution is what really differentiates successes from failures. Strong organizations differ significantly from "two kids in a garage," in that they have people who are experienced in execution and all it entails including: capital management, marketing, legal, supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, personnel, security, infrastructure etc. These things all need to coordinate with R&D and work on specific timelines to sync with departments, and this is all happening in parallel. Two guys in a garage operate serially, so management isn't really needed.
I know most people here are developers, so most of us see the world in developer-colored glasses, so saying things like "Just hire good developers and let them loose and they'll churn out good work and you'll be a success." is just plain wrong. They'll do what good developers do: develop. And that might be enough to make a good product (or in some cases a good prototype or preproduction product), but it's not enough to make a successful product. This is also why the "two guys in a garage" stories are few and far between; their efforts were met with a good deal of luck and happenstance which drove their success. Right place, right time sort of stuff. Everyone else with the next big idea in their garage met with failure because they lacked execution.
No, in fact if you ever installed Windows 8 you would have been given the opportunity to read the following privacy information with respect to SmartScreen:
Information collected, processed, or transmitted
If you choose to use this feature, information about some of the apps you use and some of hte files you download from the Internet will be sent to Microsoft. This information may include a file name, file ID ("hash"), and digital certificate information along with standard PC information and the Windows SmartScreen filter version number. To help protect your privacy, the information sent to Microsoft is encrypted.
Windows SmartScreen randomly generates a number called a GUID that is sent to Microsoft with your SmartScreen usage data. The GUID lets us determine which data is sent from a particular PC over time. The GUID does not contain any personal information.
Use of Information
Microsoft uses the information described above to provide warnings to you about potentially unsafe files and apps. We also use the information to analyze performance of the feature to improve the quality of our products and services. We use the GUID to determine how widespread the feedback we receive is and how to prioritize it. For example, the GUID allows Microsoft to distinguish between one computer experiencing a problem one hundred times and one hundred customers experiencing the same problem once. Microsoft doesn't use the information to identify, contact, or target advertising to you.
None of this information is new, or surprising. Microsoft has been completely transparent about it, and this information has been in the install of Windows 8 forever. This is just proof that most Slashdot users (including you) have never really actually used or installed Windows 8, since they are suddenly blowing up about a feature they would have known about and been using if they actually used Windows 8.
Why are opt-out features being bad treated as some sort of truism here? There are *reasons* why opt-out features can be bad, and I don't think they apply in this particular case. Opt-in vs. opt-out is the difference between 10% participation and 90% participation. Here we're talking about a security feature, which is especially important for mass participation for the health of the internet and singular computer systems. Further, it's a security feature which relies on reputation building, so mass participation is even more important.
Opt-out features are only bad when those features deceive or mislead the user. In this case, the user is given everything he needs to know to make an informed decision as to whether or not to keep the feature on, in very plain non-technical language. The user is told data about apps and files will be collected and sent to Microsoft, and that it will be associated with an ID that will track data over time; none of the data is personally identifiable or traceable back to him, and that it will not be used for anything other than checking files against a database and improving the service. Any user who cares about their privacy has all the information he needs to make an informed decision. There is no deception or hiding of intentions here. Even the short one sentence description says you'll be checking app and file data with Microsoft. It's all about personal choice and informed decisions. You have the choice whether to use the feature or not. You have the ability to make an informed decision. If you don't care enough to read a couple paragraphs and then turn around and complain your privacy is being violated by an opt-out feature, I have no sympathy for you.
Yes, it appears as a check-box (or equivalent), labeled "SmartScreen".
No, it does not. The exact text next to the checkbox is: "Use Windows Smartscreen Filter to Check Files and Apps with Microsoft." This is a very brief yet clear description of what the feature is and that you will indeed be checking in with Microsoft with respect to files and apps.
Especially when you are setting up your computer and can't just search for what it means because the desktop is not yet available?
Clearly you don't know what you're talking about. Have you ever actually installed Windows 8? There are two links right there in the overview screen for Express Settings. One goes into detail what each setting is for and what it does. The other details privacy information for each settings including: what it does, what data they collect, how they use the data, and how you can manage the feature (how to turn if on and off once you start using Windows). This is pretty much everything you need to make an informed decision about which settings to use.
I really don't see how you can claim given all the information Microsoft provides right there during setup that they're not being forthcoming about what this feature is and what they're doing with the data they collect.
Here is the exact privacy text relevent to SmartScreen, in very plain english, available when you are choosing default settings. Do yourself a favor and made install Windows 8 and actually use it before commenting any further about it. M'kay?
Not only do they allow you to turn it off during install, they provide a detailed explanation of what the feature does, what data they collect, how they use the data, and how you can turn the feature off during install and after install. This seems to be just about all the information a user needs to make an informed decision about whether or not to leave smart screen on. if the user opts not to read this information and clicks right through the express settings without caring about the consequences, perhaps that's exactly the kind of user this smart screen filter aims to protect; odds are they have the same lackadaisical attitude when install Ing random software from the internet. Its self selecting really.
Theories of wormholes and the like accomplish FTL travel that don't involve violating the speed of light. I'd put those theories right up there with cloning the human consciousness. Before we can even think about cloning, we have to consider the sub-problem of scanning a brain to determine the state of every neuron and chemical in the brain. Furthermore, we have no idea how consciousness works, and if it's a simple biological state of the system or something more that that. We can hardly agree on a definition of consciousness as it is, so before we even try to quantify it, we need to figure out exactly what we're even trying to measure and test.
So all of that is even before you get to the stage of encoding all that information in as small enough space (which we at least have an upper bound for) , and then once you do that you need the computational power to run such a thing, which we can't even begin to quantify. I really think this is one of those problems where you don't understand how deep and complex it is because we are so profoundly ignorant about the depth of the subject matter.
Yes, I'm aware of all of that. I've been building self-driving robot cars before Google was even involved in them (see DARPA Urban Challenge). This means I am acutely aware of the true capabilities of these machines, and have no illusions of their robustness. For instance the Curiosity Rover can do all those things you describe... navigation and obstacle avoidance are well studied topics in robotics. But the curiosity rover can't do any remote science. It can't make hypotheses and draw inferences from data and create new plans based on those inferences. It's beaming back all that data to earth and humans are making those decisions.
I've heard some roboticists describe the kind of operations the mars rover and Google cars are capable of, and the kind you describe, as a kind of telepresence in the 4th dimension. You program your own knowledge of how to deal with certain situations into the robot, and it acts according to those instructions at some point in the future when it discerns those situations. But curiosity and Google cars are largely ignorant of how to act in all the myriad situations they haven't encountered before, and are incapable of reasoning about them at the level humans can.
But this won't work for space travel beyond mars and the solar system. You can't design iteratively like we can now. By the time a space probe gets to the planet in question and you survey and get the info back, 100 years could have passed before you even know if the thing landed properly. It might be 50 years before you know the thing exploded en route.
Further, space travel is especially sensitive to budget constraints and funding. What do you think would have happened to NASA's budget and prospects if the Curiosity rover crashed and burned due to an unforeseen circumstance? They wouldn't say "Whoops, well live and learn." They'd be begging for their very existance and justifying another 2 billion mission would be almost impossible. The guys at NASA did great planning for everything they could, but you can never plan for everything. That's just a fact of life, and we humans are great at adapting to that; it takes a great deal of creativity and ingenuity. But for now and for the foreseeable future Robots suck at those tasks.
If you're going to posit that we'll explore distant planets by uploading a human consciousness to a computer, why not save yourself the trouble and posit faster than light travel? They're both equally science fiction at this point in time.
His premise seems to arise by extrapolating the rate of robotics progress and comparing it to the progress of spaceflight and concluding a moor's law style progression for robotics that will result. While yes, robotics is advancing rapidly, we are so far off from any and every sci-fi depiction of robots in the future, and we're still facing serious challenges in artificial intelligence with the complexity of current algorithms and our infantile understanding of the brain and how our own intelligence function.
I work with machine learning and robots for a living, and every day I gain an even greater appreciation for the complexity and robustness of the human body and mind, and it takes every ounce of willpower to not despair at the futility of my own efforts to mimic the kind of cognition that even infants are capable of. The mars rover is probably our greatest achievement in robotics yet, but I can't even begin to express how far removed it is from cloning a human brain and replicating that in a machine. Extrapolating conclusions based on that is folly.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay thank you, I thought I was crazy. 915 also covers a single finger to scroll, which is something single touch screens have done forever as well; no need for multitouch there, and the history goes back even further, well into the 70s before apple even existed.
That's not the point. You're not seeing the big picture. Apple in fact owns a patent on pinch to zoom, yet there are mountains of prior art available which depict the same thing. Part of Samsung's argument in the trial is that Apple is trying to patent large swaths of computer interactions that either have been around forever, have been done before iPhone, are completely obvious, or some combination thereof. Some of the arguments you hear in favor of Apple's patents are "It wasn't done before on a cell phone" and that's what the jurors seem to be saying here. But that doesn't matter when considering prior art. Apple and many Apple supporters try to cite the iPhone as the first multitouch device ever, but as Buxton's website shows, multitouch devices have a long history; and more importantly, the interaction techniques with multitouch interfaces, such as pinch to zoom, were well documented and implemented for decades before the iPhone.
That pinch to zoom wasn't a question in the trial is immaterial; the pinch to zoom patent serves to highlight the fact that Apple holds very obviously questionable patents, which brings into doubt not only their other UI patents but also the entire patent system.
I don't think the fact that there was a patent holder on the jury is a big deal; after all, a jury is ostensibly comprised of your peers. However, the problem is that he was the *only* "peer" on the jury, and in fact acted as an authoritative figure in making decisions. It seems like other jurors deferred to his "expertise" because they were not as well informed as him. There was no "balancing force" behind closed doors, which seems to be why the decision is not nuanced at all, and completely one sided.
Microsoft Engineering Bill Buxton has this nice collection of multitouch systems going back to the early 80s. Pinch to zoom dates back as early as 1982. This collections of prior art makes it plainly obvious that people "skilled in the art" not only would find something like pinch to zoom obvious, the in fact did and implemented it long before the iPhone ever existed.
Was it implemented on a computer you could hold in your hand? No, simply because the technology was not small enough to fit in your hand. But just because Apple was the first to implement it in your hand, does not mean they were in anyway inventing something novel, unique, and non-obvious that deserves patent protection. Apple made a logical, obvious, iteration to a decades old technology. I don't see how this is possibly a point of contention, and the fact the jurors went the other way on this leads me to believe the headline is 100% correct, or something else fishy is going on.
squeeze the kiwis (it is like pressing lemons, just more sweet)
I think that all depends on what kind of kiwis the lawyers will be squeezing. Given the disposition of lawyers, I don't expect anything sweet to come out of their kiwi-squeezing endeavors.
I doubt that. As bad as Vista was, it drove approximately no one to Linux. If anything, OSX would be the one to pick up the exodus, not Linux. But neither really benefited that much from Vista's blunders, because most users just stayed where they were: on XP, and if Windows 7 turned out to suck, they'd probably still be there today.
Debunking of the debunking:
http://1trickpony.cachefly.net/gas/pdf/Affirming_Gasland_Sept_2010.pdf
Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBjSXWQRV8
In the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, 13 water wells were contaminated with methane (one of them blew up). Arsenic, barium, DEHP, glycol compounds, manganese, phenol, and sodium were also found in unacceptable levels in the wells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States
When I can't drink my own water because it combusts out of the tap next to a flame, I don't really give a fuck how fracking drives down natural gas prices.
I don't know if there is sufficient prior art to invalidate those patents; and I don't know if the jury was even allowed to consider invalidation of those patents (if they were then all this prior art should have been displayed for them).
If you don't know these things why are you engaging in a conversation about them? Please do yourself a favor and read up on the trial. If you want a spoil they were asked to decide invalidity, they were given prior art, and they were instructed by their patent holding forman to basically skip over those decisions.
I am 100% sure that you don't know either, you just cherry-picked comments and constructed some plotline which reinforces your world-view.
How can you be 100% sure when you admit you yourself don't even know what's going on? Either way, proving prior art is precisely "cherrypicking" examples of past technologies that preempt the patent technology. I have provided you examples, Samsung has done the same with expert witnesses. The only people who haven't paid attention to this are you, Apple Inc., and the Jury who neglected to even consider it because it was too hard for them.
I don't think either pinch-zoom or scroll bounce-back are all that obvious. It seems like if they were obvious then they would have shown up in a smartphone or tablet before the iPhone/iPad.
Did you even look at the link? There are at least half a dozen examples of pinch-zoom being used in touch systems spanning the last two decades prior to iPhone. That Apple used them in a phone is not novel or innovative. It's obvious. That you don't think it's obvious is irrelevant; it is apparent from the link provided that those "skilled in the art" (which you are not) did see this gesture as obvious.
Are you saying it is impossible to build a phone without pinch-to-zoom or scroll bounce-back?
No, I'm saying pinch-zoom and scroll bounce back are both obvious and natural ways to interact with devices and should not be patentable. Akin to click-drag, pinch zoom is one of the most natural gestures for zoom, and in fact has plenty of prior art, the earliest pre-dating the iPhone by over 20 years. Aside from Samsung's own expert testimony on coll bounce prior art, it is also natural and obvious, as any spring loaded mechanism contains the exact same feedback the iPhone's emulates on the screen. Same goes for slide to unlock.
But the jury didn't even consider the patents validity in their decisions. They went so far as to say such matters bogged down the process, and proceeded diligently as if the patents were valid, as instructed by a patent-holder foreman.
With such copious examples of prior art and physical analogs, these patents are analogous to Apple patenting the placement of speakers and microphones in a phone. Sure you could make a phone without a speaker on the top and a microphone on the bottom, but it would be completely counterintuitive. If the patent system is designed to encourage innovation and not obviousness, yet we have patents on obviousness, the patent system is completely fucked.
It's not just about things that were patented, but things that are so obvious they are designed out of necessity, not ingenuity. Things like the basic shape and function of the cell phone are obvious and not patented. In today's climate however, if Apple could get away with it they'd patent "A method and placement of a speaker microphone array to optimize audio quality." Unfortunately for them, they can't do this, but they are getting away with equally egregious acts on the patents they managed to squeak through the rubber stamp patent authority known as the USPTO.
Apple is worth more than Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined.
Assets:
Samsung: $384.3B
Google: $72.6B
Microsoft: $121.2B
RIM: $7.7B
Noika: $45.4B
Total assets of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined: $631.2B
Total assets of Apple: $116.4B
Oh, or were you talking about the imaginary measure of "worth" derived from feelings and pixie dust known as market cap? Even not then:
Market Cap:
Samsung: $167.1B
Google: $218.9B
Microsoft: $257.3B
RIM: $3.7B
Noika: $12.06B
Total market cap of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined: $659.0B
Total market cap of Apple: $633.4B
Anyway, not sure what a company's worth in relation to others prove about what one company will do with respect to breaking contracts and dropping customers. Remember, Samsung has something much more powerful than fat stacks of cash, something Apple cannot compare: the full backing and support of the South Korean government. Not saying I think it's great a corporation is so close to a government, but that while Apple is making only shiny iToys, Samsung is a massive conglomerate making:
Textiles
Securities
Credit cards
Insurance
Chemicals
Machine tools
Engineering services
Electronics
Semiconductors
Hotels
Ships
Surveillance
Automations
Aeronautics
Oh yeah, and weapons tech... seriously, that's not a company I'd want to fuck with.
Its not like Apple waddled into a vacuum and suddenly made a phone nobody had ever done before with never unheard of components.
This is what always kills me about those "Before iPhone, after iPhone" and "Before iPad, after iPad" images Apple fans constantly post. They completely miss the fact that Samsung had phone before iPhone and Samsung had tablets before iPad. Apple gets defensive about broad patents on trade dress, but completely neglect the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on the top, which is not so loud as to conform to the sensitivities of the human ear; a mic on the bottom, which is sensitive enough to pic up the human voice; is shaped to fit the human hand and the human head; contains radio technology which enables voice conversations between people across the planet, at the speed of light; relies on networking technology developed by other companies to enable as such.... all the myriad technologies that enable the iPhone to even exist, were in place before the iPhone, and were invented by many of the same companies Apple is so keen to sue for frivolities like scroll bounce.
These "Before iPhone, after iPhone" images are a direct consequence of the touch screen becoming the primary input device, just as the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on top and a mic on the bottom is a direct consequence of mouth/ear placement on the human head.
Why do Americans get so insulted over the most benign comments? The guy was making a joke about a place with the absurd name "Possim Kingdom" (Get it, a nation of possums?) not calling America a nation of possums.
The fact that you flew right into us vs. them nationalism mode at such a silly joke says more about you than anything. Judging from the GP's comments, he says a couple things that makes me think he's probably American anyway.
What you've just said is something many entrepreneurs find out too late: that ideas are dime a dozen, and execution is what really differentiates successes from failures. Strong organizations differ significantly from "two kids in a garage," in that they have people who are experienced in execution and all it entails including: capital management, marketing, legal, supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, personnel, security, infrastructure etc. These things all need to coordinate with R&D and work on specific timelines to sync with departments, and this is all happening in parallel. Two guys in a garage operate serially, so management isn't really needed.
I know most people here are developers, so most of us see the world in developer-colored glasses, so saying things like "Just hire good developers and let them loose and they'll churn out good work and you'll be a success." is just plain wrong. They'll do what good developers do: develop. And that might be enough to make a good product (or in some cases a good prototype or preproduction product), but it's not enough to make a successful product. This is also why the "two guys in a garage" stories are few and far between; their efforts were met with a good deal of luck and happenstance which drove their success. Right place, right time sort of stuff. Everyone else with the next big idea in their garage met with failure because they lacked execution.
Information collected, processed, or transmitted
If you choose to use this feature, information about some of the apps you use and some of hte files you download from the Internet will be sent to Microsoft. This information may include a file name, file ID ("hash"), and digital certificate information along with standard PC information and the Windows SmartScreen filter version number. To help protect your privacy, the information sent to Microsoft is encrypted.
Windows SmartScreen randomly generates a number called a GUID that is sent to Microsoft with your SmartScreen usage data. The GUID lets us determine which data is sent from a particular PC over time. The GUID does not contain any personal information.
Use of Information
Microsoft uses the information described above to provide warnings to you about potentially unsafe files and apps. We also use the information to analyze performance of the feature to improve the quality of our products and services. We use the GUID to determine how widespread the feedback we receive is and how to prioritize it. For example, the GUID allows Microsoft to distinguish between one computer experiencing a problem one hundred times and one hundred customers experiencing the same problem once. Microsoft doesn't use the information to identify, contact, or target advertising to you.
None of this information is new, or surprising. Microsoft has been completely transparent about it, and this information has been in the install of Windows 8 forever. This is just proof that most Slashdot users (including you) have never really actually used or installed Windows 8, since they are suddenly blowing up about a feature they would have known about and been using if they actually used Windows 8.
Why are opt-out features being bad treated as some sort of truism here? There are *reasons* why opt-out features can be bad, and I don't think they apply in this particular case. Opt-in vs. opt-out is the difference between 10% participation and 90% participation. Here we're talking about a security feature, which is especially important for mass participation for the health of the internet and singular computer systems. Further, it's a security feature which relies on reputation building, so mass participation is even more important.
Opt-out features are only bad when those features deceive or mislead the user. In this case, the user is given everything he needs to know to make an informed decision as to whether or not to keep the feature on, in very plain non-technical language. The user is told data about apps and files will be collected and sent to Microsoft, and that it will be associated with an ID that will track data over time; none of the data is personally identifiable or traceable back to him, and that it will not be used for anything other than checking files against a database and improving the service. Any user who cares about their privacy has all the information he needs to make an informed decision. There is no deception or hiding of intentions here. Even the short one sentence description says you'll be checking app and file data with Microsoft. It's all about personal choice and informed decisions. You have the choice whether to use the feature or not. You have the ability to make an informed decision. If you don't care enough to read a couple paragraphs and then turn around and complain your privacy is being violated by an opt-out feature, I have no sympathy for you.
Yes, it appears as a check-box (or equivalent), labeled "SmartScreen".
No, it does not. The exact text next to the checkbox is: "Use Windows Smartscreen Filter to Check Files and Apps with Microsoft." This is a very brief yet clear description of what the feature is and that you will indeed be checking in with Microsoft with respect to files and apps.
Especially when you are setting up your computer and can't just search for what it means because the desktop is not yet available?
Clearly you don't know what you're talking about. Have you ever actually installed Windows 8? There are two links right there in the overview screen for Express Settings. One goes into detail what each setting is for and what it does. The other details privacy information for each settings including: what it does, what data they collect, how they use the data, and how you can manage the feature (how to turn if on and off once you start using Windows). This is pretty much everything you need to make an informed decision about which settings to use.
I really don't see how you can claim given all the information Microsoft provides right there during setup that they're not being forthcoming about what this feature is and what they're doing with the data they collect.
Here is the exact privacy text relevent to SmartScreen, in very plain english, available when you are choosing default settings. Do yourself a favor and made install Windows 8 and actually use it before commenting any further about it. M'kay?
The check box appears on first account setup, so any use buying a new PC will see it too.
Not only do they allow you to turn it off during install, they provide a detailed explanation of what the feature does, what data they collect, how they use the data, and how you can turn the feature off during install and after install. This seems to be just about all the information a user needs to make an informed decision about whether or not to leave smart screen on. if the user opts not to read this information and clicks right through the express settings without caring about the consequences, perhaps that's exactly the kind of user this smart screen filter aims to protect; odds are they have the same lackadaisical attitude when install Ing random software from the internet. Its self selecting really.
Here is a link to my comment from yesterday, which has the exact text relevant to smart screen you encounter on install: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3070309&cid=41111521
Theories of wormholes and the like accomplish FTL travel that don't involve violating the speed of light. I'd put those theories right up there with cloning the human consciousness. Before we can even think about cloning, we have to consider the sub-problem of scanning a brain to determine the state of every neuron and chemical in the brain. Furthermore, we have no idea how consciousness works, and if it's a simple biological state of the system or something more that that. We can hardly agree on a definition of consciousness as it is, so before we even try to quantify it, we need to figure out exactly what we're even trying to measure and test.
So all of that is even before you get to the stage of encoding all that information in as small enough space (which we at least have an upper bound for) , and then once you do that you need the computational power to run such a thing, which we can't even begin to quantify. I really think this is one of those problems where you don't understand how deep and complex it is because we are so profoundly ignorant about the depth of the subject matter.
We all know this won't be over for a long time to come, appeal after appeal after appeal.
Yes, I'm aware of all of that. I've been building self-driving robot cars before Google was even involved in them (see DARPA Urban Challenge). This means I am acutely aware of the true capabilities of these machines, and have no illusions of their robustness. For instance the Curiosity Rover can do all those things you describe... navigation and obstacle avoidance are well studied topics in robotics. But the curiosity rover can't do any remote science. It can't make hypotheses and draw inferences from data and create new plans based on those inferences. It's beaming back all that data to earth and humans are making those decisions.
I've heard some roboticists describe the kind of operations the mars rover and Google cars are capable of, and the kind you describe, as a kind of telepresence in the 4th dimension. You program your own knowledge of how to deal with certain situations into the robot, and it acts according to those instructions at some point in the future when it discerns those situations. But curiosity and Google cars are largely ignorant of how to act in all the myriad situations they haven't encountered before, and are incapable of reasoning about them at the level humans can.
But this won't work for space travel beyond mars and the solar system. You can't design iteratively like we can now. By the time a space probe gets to the planet in question and you survey and get the info back, 100 years could have passed before you even know if the thing landed properly. It might be 50 years before you know the thing exploded en route.
Further, space travel is especially sensitive to budget constraints and funding. What do you think would have happened to NASA's budget and prospects if the Curiosity rover crashed and burned due to an unforeseen circumstance? They wouldn't say "Whoops, well live and learn." They'd be begging for their very existance and justifying another 2 billion mission would be almost impossible. The guys at NASA did great planning for everything they could, but you can never plan for everything. That's just a fact of life, and we humans are great at adapting to that; it takes a great deal of creativity and ingenuity. But for now and for the foreseeable future Robots suck at those tasks.
If you're going to posit that we'll explore distant planets by uploading a human consciousness to a computer, why not save yourself the trouble and posit faster than light travel? They're both equally science fiction at this point in time.
His premise seems to arise by extrapolating the rate of robotics progress and comparing it to the progress of spaceflight and concluding a moor's law style progression for robotics that will result. While yes, robotics is advancing rapidly, we are so far off from any and every sci-fi depiction of robots in the future, and we're still facing serious challenges in artificial intelligence with the complexity of current algorithms and our infantile understanding of the brain and how our own intelligence function.
I work with machine learning and robots for a living, and every day I gain an even greater appreciation for the complexity and robustness of the human body and mind, and it takes every ounce of willpower to not despair at the futility of my own efforts to mimic the kind of cognition that even infants are capable of. The mars rover is probably our greatest achievement in robotics yet, but I can't even begin to express how far removed it is from cloning a human brain and replicating that in a machine. Extrapolating conclusions based on that is folly.