Each claim in the patent can be invalidated independantly. Most patents start off with an all encompasing claim 1 that would almost certainly get invalidated if it went to court, and define subsequent claims more narrowly, often in terms of the preceding claims.
Yes, they're really annoying. They often have genuine looking summaries in Google's results, inticing you to click on them expecting to find useful information, but all you find is a page of links, often completely unrelated to your Google search. I wonder why Google hasn't got on top of them yet. All it would take is a second robot identifying itself as Internet Explorer slowly crawling the web looking for pages that give completely different results than the google spider.
Indian food, for example, has a truly huge variation of veggie-only dishes, as does Spanish (though on that, I'll admit, my experience with it involves mostly South-American-Spanish, not Southern-Europe-Spanish food).
For a minute there, I was confused, because if there's something the Spanish eat a lot of, it's meat. Jamon, chorizo, chicken paella, and once upon a time you could end up answering to the inquisition if you cooked your dinner in anything other than lard. Then I realised you didn't mean Spain at all, you meant South America, home to vegetarian paradise Argentina.
Microtel? WTF is microtel? How about a major brand name that comes with reliable components?
You do know they're made in the same factory in China, don't you? With Microtel, you pay for the components (and someone to put them together, but child labor in China is cheap). With Dell, you pay for the same components and child labor, plus 4 or 5 full page ads in glossy magazines, a handful of TV spots and that billboard down the road. If you're lucky, you might get to sponsor a cinema ad in full widescreen Dolby surround as well.
I had this same experience a couple of years ago when I needed something that was only available in testing, and tried to set things up so most of my system was tracking stable, with just the things I needed and their dependancies from testing. I ended up needing to install the latest apt from source compiled against the c runtime libraries on my system, then after a couple more problems like this, decided it would be much easier in the long run to track testing system-wide and forget about stable.
I think the biggest problem is that stable has got so far behind that everything including such fundamentals as libc need to be upgraded several major versions in one hit, and any attempts that the developers made to be backwards compatible with the previous version are not enough.
Okay, if I've downloaded an iTunes song in Apple format, it would seem obvious that I have an iPod. Why would I want to have it in another format?
If you have an iPod, let's face it, you are a fashion victim. There are better players out there for less money, they just don't come with the white in-ear headphones and minimilist interfaces that made the iPod last year's must have toy.
Next year, when MS releases its much awaited xPod360.NET with its integrated clippy to guide you around the Windows CE.NET Embedded XP interface (designed by the best intern programmers Microsoft has working for them this month), then all you fashion victims will be picking it up like the plague.
Personally I think they are colluding with the RIAA. Put out press releases now saying they will convert your iTunes into WMV for free, so people think its safe to switch, but once all the fashion victims have bought a new media player, make them pay again for the music they've most likely already bought on vinyl, CD and iTunes over the years.
Then it'll be time to increase the length of copyrights again, so they can keep reselling back catalog without any of this pesky investing in new artists.
I'd be interested in how they sync these with the "atomic clock". Is it the same radio signals that my bedside alarm clock claims to use? Because somehow that manages to run 8 minutes fast, even though it claims to have a lock on the radio signal. I suspect those radio sync chips only correct the seconds, so if your clock/the camera's clock is more than 30 seconds out to start with, it isn't corrected to the right time.
More to the point, it gives them a chance to own efficient ~10 year old Japanese cars, instead of the Hindustanis based on a 1950's British design they would have driven otherwise.
Me too. I host a couple of sites on my home ADSL line, and my usage is about 6GB/month, mostly MSN, Google and Yahoo's crawlers indexing and reindexing the same pages over and over. MSN especially I would like to slow down.
As heard last Thursday on the local pirate hip-hop station:
"Big up to the 2 girls in the silver topless Audi"
Not sure if he was looking out the window at the time, or just made it up at random.
I go past an IBM campus on my way to work every day. This morning the carpark looked as full as it ever does. Someone needs to tell these people that a strike means you don't turn up at work. Wearing black and blue is what people normally do, it does not constitute a strike.
What counts as a "component"? If I sell a computer with all the screws made in the US, but everything else made somewhere else does each screw count as a component?
I think you're on to something here. Take my PC for example: 4 screws (US) 1 Chassis (US), 1 sheet metal cover (US), one plastic molded front panel (Singapore), one fully populated circuit board (Taiwan). Total US portion of components: 75%.
The problem is that the information isn't encrypted in any way so all someone needs to do is copy it.
Not true. There is encrypted info on the magstripe of a credit card, the problem is that making an exact duplicate with exactly the same encrypted info is easy. With a smartcard it is more difficult, since public key encryption needs to be used to get the data off the card in the first place.
MS use the same loopholes as other big corporations and the Cuban government. The only people ever hurt by sanctions are the ordinary man in the street, and the problem with using sanctions against dictators is that they don't give a shit what happens to the man in the street.
Same thing happened in Iraq, Saddam and his croneys were rolling in it thanks to Bayoil and others, while the Iraqi people starved.
Slashdot Mirror
When google.stanford.edu was a startup, the web was still in nappies, and spam wasn't such a problem.
Each claim in the patent can be invalidated independantly. Most patents start off with an all encompasing claim 1 that would almost certainly get invalidated if it went to court, and define subsequent claims more narrowly, often in terms of the preceding claims.
Yes, they're really annoying. They often have genuine looking summaries in Google's results, inticing you to click on them expecting to find useful information, but all you find is a page of links, often completely unrelated to your Google search. I wonder why Google hasn't got on top of them yet. All it would take is a second robot identifying itself as Internet Explorer slowly crawling the web looking for pages that give completely different results than the google spider.
For a minute there, I was confused, because if there's something the Spanish eat a lot of, it's meat. Jamon, chorizo, chicken paella, and once upon a time you could end up answering to the inquisition if you cooked your dinner in anything other than lard. Then I realised you didn't mean Spain at all, you meant South America, home to vegetarian paradise Argentina.
Insurance likely doesn't cover "acts of god" either.
You do know they're made in the same factory in China, don't you? With Microtel, you pay for the components (and someone to put them together, but child labor in China is cheap). With Dell, you pay for the same components and child labor, plus 4 or 5 full page ads in glossy magazines, a handful of TV spots and that billboard down the road. If you're lucky, you might get to sponsor a cinema ad in full widescreen Dolby surround as well.
Typing that one handed while looking at the screenshots by any chance?
The unexpected fact that byte is signed can also be used to advantage in Java.
News for nerds?
I think the biggest problem is that stable has got so far behind that everything including such fundamentals as libc need to be upgraded several major versions in one hit, and any attempts that the developers made to be backwards compatible with the previous version are not enough.
If you have an iPod, let's face it, you are a fashion victim. There are better players out there for less money, they just don't come with the white in-ear headphones and minimilist interfaces that made the iPod last year's must have toy.
Next year, when MS releases its much awaited xPod360.NET with its integrated clippy to guide you around the Windows CE.NET Embedded XP interface (designed by the best intern programmers Microsoft has working for them this month), then all you fashion victims will be picking it up like the plague.
Personally I think they are colluding with the RIAA. Put out press releases now saying they will convert your iTunes into WMV for free, so people think its safe to switch, but once all the fashion victims have bought a new media player, make them pay again for the music they've most likely already bought on vinyl, CD and iTunes over the years.
Then it'll be time to increase the length of copyrights again, so they can keep reselling back catalog without any of this pesky investing in new artists.
Yeah, makes me think they rushed to put that press release out while they still could.
Naked City was my first exposure to John Zorn. I didn't go back for more, maybe I should.
John Zorn. If you've listened to any of his music (discordant guitar based Jazz), you'd probably agree with the German meaning.
I'd be interested in how they sync these with the "atomic clock". Is it the same radio signals that my bedside alarm clock claims to use? Because somehow that manages to run 8 minutes fast, even though it claims to have a lock on the radio signal. I suspect those radio sync chips only correct the seconds, so if your clock/the camera's clock is more than 30 seconds out to start with, it isn't corrected to the right time.
More to the point, it gives them a chance to own efficient ~10 year old Japanese cars, instead of the Hindustanis based on a 1950's British design they would have driven otherwise.
Me too. I host a couple of sites on my home ADSL line, and my usage is about 6GB/month, mostly MSN, Google and Yahoo's crawlers indexing and reindexing the same pages over and over. MSN especially I would like to slow down.
Please, tell us more about the fascinating workings of computers you seem to know so much about.
As heard last Thursday on the local pirate hip-hop station: "Big up to the 2 girls in the silver topless Audi" Not sure if he was looking out the window at the time, or just made it up at random.
Ukraine is in Europe, and this happened back in October 2004. Are you sure you're not remembering the same incident?
I go past an IBM campus on my way to work every day. This morning the carpark looked as full as it ever does. Someone needs to tell these people that a strike means you don't turn up at work. Wearing black and blue is what people normally do, it does not constitute a strike.
You're paying your Indians too much. Time to move on to China.
I think you're on to something here. Take my PC for example: 4 screws (US) 1 Chassis (US), 1 sheet metal cover (US), one plastic molded front panel (Singapore), one fully populated circuit board (Taiwan). Total US portion of components: 75%.
Not true. There is encrypted info on the magstripe of a credit card, the problem is that making an exact duplicate with exactly the same encrypted info is easy. With a smartcard it is more difficult, since public key encryption needs to be used to get the data off the card in the first place.
Same thing happened in Iraq, Saddam and his croneys were rolling in it thanks to Bayoil and others, while the Iraqi people starved.