Do you bother to read Slashdot at all? If you do, how on Earth did you miss this? One wonderful paragraph in particular states:
(c) The flaws in the Federal Circuit's analysis relate mostly to its narrow conception of the obviousness inquiry consequent in its application of the TSM test. The Circuit first erred in holding that courts and patent examiners should look only to the problem the patentee was trying to solve. Under the correct analysis, any need or problem known in the field and addressed by the patent can provide a reason for combining the elements in the manner claimed. Second, the appeals court erred in assuming that a person of ordinary skill in the art attempting to solve a problem will be led only to those prior art elements designed to solve the same problem. The court wrongly concluded that because Asano's primary purpose was solving the constant ratio problem, an inventor considering how to put a sensor on an adjustable pedal would have no reason to consider putting it on the Asano pedal. It is common sense that familiar items may have obvious uses beyond their primary purposes, and a person of ordinary skill often will be able to fit the teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle. (emphasis added)
Nope, bogus patents are headed for a long overdue fall, thank Ghu.
I'd say that the Supreme Court disagrees with you, the USPTO, and the Federal Circuit Court on the definition of "obvious." From KSR v Teleflex:
(c) The flaws in the Federal Circuit's analysis relate mostly to its narrow conception of the obviousness inquiry consequent in its application of the TSM test. The Circuit first erred in holding that courts and patent examiners should look only to the problem the patentee was trying to solve. Under the correct analysis, any need or problem known in the field and addressed by the patent can provide a reason for combining the elements in the manner claimed. Second, the appeals court erred in assuming that a person of ordinary skill in the art attempting to solve a problem will be led only to those prior art elements designed to solve the same problem. The court wrongly concluded that because Asano's primary purpose was solving the constant ratio problem, an inventor considering how to put a sensor on an adjustable pedal would have no reason to consider putting it on the Asano pedal. It is common sense that familiar items may have obvious uses beyond their primary purposes, and a person of ordinary skill often will be able to fit the teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle.
There's a lot more in the same vein if you take the time to read the whole decision.
I thought autoconf was available by default in most Linux distros now. I don't know if it's to the point that you could call it 'ubiquitous', but it's gotta be close.
Very good anti-virus and personal firewall software does exist for Linux so there's another win for you. (I'm thinking specifically of ClamAV, shorewall, and firestarter.)
As far as UI wins go, I'm one of those people who just can't get comfortable with Macs. I find that personally, KDE is by far better suited to my needs. I suppose, though, that the nearly infinite customisability of Linux does mean that we give up consistency of UI to some degree. Still, I think most Linux apps still adhere to the old CUA guidelines that IBM published back when DOS was still the primary OS on most corporate desktops. At least that means that we only have to learn where the basic stuff is once.:)
Wellll, while it's not quite true that we weren't contending with crazed religious fanatics at the end of WWII. How else would you describe (a) the Japanese soldiers scattered all over the Pacific that kept turning up decades after their units were destroyed or surrendered and (b) hardcore Nazis maintaining a guerrilla war against the occupying forces until some time in the early '50s? One set worshipped a living man as a demi-god and the other set worshipped the ideal of a perfect super-race. BTW, the aforementioned guerrillas did deliberately target civilian targets as well as military ones.
In fact, I've argued with friends of mine for years that Rumsfeld's and Cheney's biggest failings weren't necessarily that they're empire builders dedicated to their own agenda. That just makes them evil. Nope, their biggest failing was that they were so incompetent that they really believed that we would be welcomed with open arms by the populace. They were thinking of themselves as the liberators of France instead of the occupiers of Germany. If they had bothered to study even a little of the relevant history, they might at least have sent in the right number of ground pounders to/secure/ the ground once they conquered it.
At minimum, they should've listened to some generals instead of firing them. You know, all the ones who told them during the planning stages just how many guys really needed to be in the field? The generals with still bitter and painful memories of Vietnam? They didn't want all those troops to win the war. They wanted those boots on the ground to win the peace.
Sorry, I'm digressing, I know. Forget the lies about WMD. I thought we had every reason to invade Iraq based solely on Saddam's constant flouting of the UN sanctions. (Heck, I though GWB senior should've told Powell not to stop until he had tanks parked on top of Saddam's hidey hole.) I just get extremely frustrated when I think of all the completely unnecessary casualties suffered on all sides because the greedy bastards in office just saw an opportunity to line their pockets instead of concerning themselves with the long term safety and security of the U.S. and Europe.:(
All encrypted traffic is now throttled just because it's encrypted.
Wait. This can't be right. Are you seriously telling us that Rogers is now actively blocking anyone using, for example, a VPN tunnel to work? All connections over SSL to sites utilizing HTTPS? FTPS? PGP encrypted mail? Really??
Now watch your latency go up by orders of magnitude.:(
Don't get me wrong. I think that what the research team has come up with is remarkable. I just don't see it as being an efficient use of resources. Demonstrate that the CPU cycles to do all this math won't impact throughput and latency, and I'll be the first to applaud them. Otherwise, it's just a nifty way of recovery that covers such small set of corner cases that it's not worth engineering for.
I've searched the comments and haven't seen a single mention of one of the more moddable FPS games out there (that is still one of my personal favorites): Operation Flashpoint. GREAT mission and campaign editor. Tools are also freely available for creating new models and huge new environments. People used the tools for everything from minor changes like dynamic weather to complete conversions like RTSes.
Operation Flashpoint's true successor, Armed Assault, was released in Europe in November or December. The U.S. release, named ArmA by Atari, just came out. If you enjoy playing FPSes that encourage teamwork, strive for a decent level of realism, and provide an incredible toolset for user created mods, Armed Assault is right up your alley.
Even assuming that you're right about the validity of Microsoft's patents, I still think it's a pretty risky strategy for a couple of reasons. First, sooner or later they'll bump into IBM because IBM has had paid programmers working on several of the projects that Microsoft listed. That's a patent and war chest that Microsoft/really/ doesn't want to face, especially given IBM's scorched earth policy when facing this kind of case.
Second, others have noted that the Supremes are probably looking for a case or cases to invalidate/all/ software patents. If they're correct, MS could find itself facing a very dangerous court climate, indeed.
Re-writing it assumes that he started with Minix code. Tannenbaum states very clearly that in his opinion, Linus did/not/ use any Minix code. IOW, Linus used just as much in the way of concepts from Minix as he would have from any Unix variant.
It might distract him long enough for you to get out the door before he shoots you? Maybe if one kid had done that, a few more might have joined in and the death toll would have been lower?
I agree with the OP. I can't comprehend why everyone apparently just rolled over and waited to die.
My favorite quote on the subject comes from Heinlein: "It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier."
Back on topic: I think these teachers did a lot more than just lose any chance to ever teach again. I think it's highly likely that they will face charges of some sort. Making terroristic threats would certainly be a start. Causing harm to minors would be another. From the sounds of it, I'd say that the principal might be up for aiding and abetting after the fact.
The last one is the most interesting, since fixing Minix ended up meaning completely re-writing it because (at the time) the license didn't allow redistribution of modified versions (only patch sets, and those were growing unwieldy).
Sigh. Can we please stop spreading this particular piece of misinformation? From no less an authority that the guy who wrote Minix, Andy Tannenbaum himself:
Finally he asked me if I thought Linus wrote Linux. I said that to the best of my knowledge, Linus wrote the whole kernel himself, but after it was released, other people began improving the kernel, which was very primitive initially, and adding new software to the system--essentially the same development model as MINIX. Then he began to focus on this, with questions like: "Didn't he steal pieces of MINIX without permission." I told him that MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that. He asked if I objected to that and I said no, I didn't, people were free to use it as they wished for noncommercial purposes.
"The point was simply that on a compact keyboard (if it has been well designed) you can type just as well as on a full-fledged desktop keyboard. If you can't type well to begin with, of course it's not going to make things better, but it won't make it worse."
As others have pointed out, the keyboard size that you are talking about would not be comfortable for some segment of the population. Several pointed out that their fingers were too large to fit on keys that small and that close together. I've noticed since I read this that I can keep my fingers on the home keys with just enough room to clear properly as I type on my laptop keyboard. However, it feels small already. I can't imagine that I'd be happy with a keyboard that was crammed into a form factor that was four inches shorter.
"Resting your hands on a notebook is pretty sub-par to begin with. Assuming it's thin enough, resting your hands on whatever the notebook is resting on, is much more comfortable.
And if you really don't like that, it would still be quite easy to have some kind of wrist rest that slides out when you open the lid."
I keep my laptop on my lap. So, I should be resting my wrists on either my legs or a thin sheet of pull out plastic instead of on the relatively sturdy surface of the laptop cover? Or carry around a board or something to put the laptop on?
"That's not a very high DPI... That makes all the difference.
You can have a huge, 50" (low-def.) TV, and text will look horrible and completely unreadable on it. Meanwhile, a PC monitor 1/10th the size, with a much higher DPI, is easily readable. DPI is the difference. You simply haven't seen any 7" screens with a very high DPI."
A higher DPI display would be nice, no doubt. However, I'm having trouble reading 8 or 9 point fonts on paper these days.:(
The point is that all laptops represent a set of design compromises. The current form factor is one that I find very useful. I have no desire to move to a smaller device until someone comes up with a reasonably rugged, halfway decent keyboard that expands to be full sized.
I'd have to say that you're very likely the exception, not the rule. For example, I can't type 100 WPM on the best keyboard ever made, let alone on one so small. The last time I recorded my time was about 25 years ago, though. I think my best time then was about 35 or 40 wpm, and that was on an IBM Selectric. (Best 'keyboard' ever made, IMO) Nowadays I suppose I'm down to about 20 or less. I spend a lot of time going back and correcting errors due to my fingers getting ahead of my brain. Age'll do that to you.:)
I'll grant you that laptop keyboards aren't all that hot, but still. I need something I can actually use, not an interface so small that it doesn't have any place to rest my hands.
As far as a screen goes? No way do I want something that's only 7" wide. I use a Dell 610 with a 8.5" H x 11.25" W screen at 1024 x 768. I like a lot of text on the screen at once. At this resolution, with this screen size, 8 or 9 point text is readable, but it starts feeling uncomfortable after a while to my old eyes. I find myself going to 10 point more and more.:( Now imagine how I feel on when I get a good 20" LCD monitor at 1600 x 1200 in front of me. w00t! Hog heaven!:)
I'm not saying that I want to lug around a laptop that big, but I sure don't want something as small as the form factor you're talking about, either.
50:1 (or higher) used to be a doable overbooking ratio for an ISP. That was true because the typical individual demand for service was actually pretty low over any arbitrarily long period of time. Each individual would have a very spiky usage pattern, with short bursts of traffic interspersed with fairly long periods of quiescence. That model doesn't work with P2P because it essentially creates a new traffic model of always on, constant send and receive. That places a burden on the network that it hasn't been engineered for.
Hey, if someone wants to fire up BT and leave it on for long periods, I say more power to 'em. They just need to be prepared to pay for the bandwidth that you are using above and beyond the standard usage pattern. (Well, that, and you need an ISP willing to offer you such a contract.:) )
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had mod points myself right now.
Here's a thought: Why don't you go to the OSI's website, read their definition for Open Source, then decide for yourself whether they got it right?
And yet you still find yourself drawn to post, year after year. And I thought my /. habit was bad! lol
Oh, I read it. I just think that particular examiner is in for a rude awakening. :)
Nope, bogus patents are headed for a long overdue fall, thank Ghu.
I'd say that the Supreme Court disagrees with you, the USPTO, and the Federal Circuit Court on the definition of "obvious." From KSR v Teleflex:
There's a lot more in the same vein if you take the time to read the whole decision.
I thought autoconf was available by default in most Linux distros now. I don't know if it's to the point that you could call it 'ubiquitous', but it's gotta be close.
:)
Very good anti-virus and personal firewall software does exist for Linux so there's another win for you. (I'm thinking specifically of ClamAV, shorewall, and firestarter.)
As far as UI wins go, I'm one of those people who just can't get comfortable with Macs. I find that personally, KDE is by far better suited to my needs. I suppose, though, that the nearly infinite customisability of Linux does mean that we give up consistency of UI to some degree. Still, I think most Linux apps still adhere to the old CUA guidelines that IBM published back when DOS was still the primary OS on most corporate desktops. At least that means that we only have to learn where the basic stuff is once.
Wellll, while it's not quite true that we weren't contending with crazed religious fanatics at the end of WWII. How else would you describe (a) the Japanese soldiers scattered all over the Pacific that kept turning up decades after their units were destroyed or surrendered and (b) hardcore Nazis maintaining a guerrilla war against the occupying forces until some time in the early '50s? One set worshipped a living man as a demi-god and the other set worshipped the ideal of a perfect super-race. BTW, the aforementioned guerrillas did deliberately target civilian targets as well as military ones.
/secure/ the ground once they conquered it.
:(
In fact, I've argued with friends of mine for years that Rumsfeld's and Cheney's biggest failings weren't necessarily that they're empire builders dedicated to their own agenda. That just makes them evil. Nope, their biggest failing was that they were so incompetent that they really believed that we would be welcomed with open arms by the populace. They were thinking of themselves as the liberators of France instead of the occupiers of Germany. If they had bothered to study even a little of the relevant history, they might at least have sent in the right number of ground pounders to
At minimum, they should've listened to some generals instead of firing them. You know, all the ones who told them during the planning stages just how many guys really needed to be in the field? The generals with still bitter and painful memories of Vietnam? They didn't want all those troops to win the war. They wanted those boots on the ground to win the peace.
Sorry, I'm digressing, I know. Forget the lies about WMD. I thought we had every reason to invade Iraq based solely on Saddam's constant flouting of the UN sanctions. (Heck, I though GWB senior should've told Powell not to stop until he had tanks parked on top of Saddam's hidey hole.) I just get extremely frustrated when I think of all the completely unnecessary casualties suffered on all sides because the greedy bastards in office just saw an opportunity to line their pockets instead of concerning themselves with the long term safety and security of the U.S. and Europe.
Wait. This can't be right. Are you seriously telling us that Rogers is now actively blocking anyone using, for example, a VPN tunnel to work? All connections over SSL to sites utilizing HTTPS? FTPS? PGP encrypted mail? Really??
If so, all I can say is; wow.
Now watch your latency go up by orders of magnitude. :(
Don't get me wrong. I think that what the research team has come up with is remarkable. I just don't see it as being an efficient use of resources. Demonstrate that the CPU cycles to do all this math won't impact throughput and latency, and I'll be the first to applaud them. Otherwise, it's just a nifty way of recovery that covers such small set of corner cases that it's not worth engineering for.
I've searched the comments and haven't seen a single mention of one of the more moddable FPS games out there (that is still one of my personal favorites): Operation Flashpoint. GREAT mission and campaign editor. Tools are also freely available for creating new models and huge new environments. People used the tools for everything from minor changes like dynamic weather to complete conversions like RTSes.
Operation Flashpoint's true successor, Armed Assault, was released in Europe in November or December. The U.S. release, named ArmA by Atari, just came out. If you enjoy playing FPSes that encourage teamwork, strive for a decent level of realism, and provide an incredible toolset for user created mods, Armed Assault is right up your alley.
Even assuming that you're right about the validity of Microsoft's patents, I still think it's a pretty risky strategy for a couple of reasons. First, sooner or later they'll bump into IBM because IBM has had paid programmers working on several of the projects that Microsoft listed. That's a patent and war chest that Microsoft /really/ doesn't want to face, especially given IBM's scorched earth policy when facing this kind of case.
/all/ software patents. If they're correct, MS could find itself facing a very dangerous court climate, indeed.
Second, others have noted that the Supremes are probably looking for a case or cases to invalidate
Re-writing it assumes that he started with Minix code. Tannenbaum states very clearly that in his opinion, Linus did /not/ use any Minix code. IOW, Linus used just as much in the way of concepts from Minix as he would have from any Unix variant.
It might distract him long enough for you to get out the door before he shoots you? Maybe if one kid had done that, a few more might have joined in and the death toll would have been lower?
I agree with the OP. I can't comprehend why everyone apparently just rolled over and waited to die.
My favorite quote on the subject comes from Heinlein: "It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier."
Back on topic: I think these teachers did a lot more than just lose any chance to ever teach again. I think it's highly likely that they will face charges of some sort. Making terroristic threats would certainly be a start. Causing harm to minors would be another. From the sounds of it, I'd say that the principal might be up for aiding and abetting after the fact.
Sigh. Can we please stop spreading this particular piece of misinformation? From no less an authority that the guy who wrote Minix, Andy Tannenbaum himself:
Funny stuff, man. :D
"The point was simply that on a compact keyboard (if it has been well designed) you can type just as well as on a full-fledged desktop keyboard. If you can't type well to begin with, of course it's not going to make things better, but it won't make it worse."
:(
As others have pointed out, the keyboard size that you are talking about would not be comfortable for some segment of the population. Several pointed out that their fingers were too large to fit on keys that small and that close together. I've noticed since I read this that I can keep my fingers on the home keys with just enough room to clear properly as I type on my laptop keyboard. However, it feels small already. I can't imagine that I'd be happy with a keyboard that was crammed into a form factor that was four inches shorter.
"Resting your hands on a notebook is pretty sub-par to begin with. Assuming it's thin enough, resting your hands on whatever the notebook is resting on, is much more comfortable.
And if you really don't like that, it would still be quite easy to have some kind of wrist rest that slides out when you open the lid."
I keep my laptop on my lap. So, I should be resting my wrists on either my legs or a thin sheet of pull out plastic instead of on the relatively sturdy surface of the laptop cover? Or carry around a board or something to put the laptop on?
"That's not a very high DPI... That makes all the difference.
You can have a huge, 50" (low-def.) TV, and text will look horrible and completely unreadable on it. Meanwhile, a PC monitor 1/10th the size, with a much higher DPI, is easily readable. DPI is the difference. You simply haven't seen any 7" screens with a very high DPI."
A higher DPI display would be nice, no doubt. However, I'm having trouble reading 8 or 9 point fonts on paper these days.
The point is that all laptops represent a set of design compromises. The current form factor is one that I find very useful. I have no desire to move to a smaller device until someone comes up with a reasonably rugged, halfway decent keyboard that expands to be full sized.
Not me. My browser is Firefox, and one of the extensions that I always install is Adblock. Guess which vendor's images are blocked? :)
Then you defined your contract terms wrong, didn't you?
I'd have to say that you're very likely the exception, not the rule. For example, I can't type 100 WPM on the best keyboard ever made, let alone on one so small. The last time I recorded my time was about 25 years ago, though. I think my best time then was about 35 or 40 wpm, and that was on an IBM Selectric. (Best 'keyboard' ever made, IMO) Nowadays I suppose I'm down to about 20 or less. I spend a lot of time going back and correcting errors due to my fingers getting ahead of my brain. Age'll do that to you. :)
:( Now imagine how I feel on when I get a good 20" LCD monitor at 1600 x 1200 in front of me. w00t! Hog heaven! :)
I'll grant you that laptop keyboards aren't all that hot, but still. I need something I can actually use, not an interface so small that it doesn't have any place to rest my hands.
As far as a screen goes? No way do I want something that's only 7" wide. I use a Dell 610 with a 8.5" H x 11.25" W screen at 1024 x 768. I like a lot of text on the screen at once. At this resolution, with this screen size, 8 or 9 point text is readable, but it starts feeling uncomfortable after a while to my old eyes. I find myself going to 10 point more and more.
I'm not saying that I want to lug around a laptop that big, but I sure don't want something as small as the form factor you're talking about, either.
50:1 (or higher) used to be a doable overbooking ratio for an ISP. That was true because the typical individual demand for service was actually pretty low over any arbitrarily long period of time. Each individual would have a very spiky usage pattern, with short bursts of traffic interspersed with fairly long periods of quiescence. That model doesn't work with P2P because it essentially creates a new traffic model of always on, constant send and receive. That places a burden on the network that it hasn't been engineered for.
:) )
Hey, if someone wants to fire up BT and leave it on for long periods, I say more power to 'em. They just need to be prepared to pay for the bandwidth that you are using above and beyond the standard usage pattern. (Well, that, and you need an ISP willing to offer you such a contract.
Did they fix it so it works for Kubuntu this time around?
Please Dear God, no DX10! Us Linux gamers want to finally shut off our Windows partitions! lol
Oh, I think they knew /exactly/ who they were attacking.