Yes, of course, you're correct. Hexagons would be much more efficient, and I did mean kilometers instead of meters on the square size. Thank you for correcting me. 2:00 in the afternoon and I clearly still wasn't awake yet...
If my past 5 years of playing WoW have taught me anything, it's that Blizzard is all too eager to cave to customer demands. It will only take a small percentage of customers dissenting to get both of these (shitty shitty shitty) ideas scrapped.
I'm all too happy to pay Blizzard $15 a month for WoW, as I feel it offers me good value. I would be all too happy to pay for D3 when it launches too, because I trust that it will be a good game. However if they do happen to keep the persistent connection bullshit intact, I will be all too happy to find one of those nifty offline cracks that emulates a BNet server on my local machine so I can play the game I legally acquired on my terms, not theirs.
Assuming these things cover a radius of 100km (62.5 Miles) then Mr. Pythagoras has a little theorum that can help us turn that circle into a square.
a^2 + b^2 = 100^2 Since the right triangle we inscribe in the circle is also isosceles, we know a = b, thus
2(a^2) = 100^2
a^2 = 5000
a = 70.71m
Now we can double this to get the length of the side of the largest square that can be circumscribed by the circle giving us 141.42m. Squaring this gives a coverage of 19,999.6164m^2 (7,812.35sq Miles)
The US has a claimed area of 9.83 Million km^2 giving us a required number of routers for full coverage (if the US were rectangular) as 492 (rounding up.) Since the US isn't at all rectangular, let's bump that estimate conservatively by 25% to 615.
So most likely it would take somewhere over 600 routers to comfortably blanket the US in coverage, assuming of course that the edges of the covered areas lend themselves to significant "waste" (but hey, boats could have Wi-Fi access!)
You wouldn't be singing this tune if you had invented the iPhone or iPad, and essentially created two new markets with your unique design and then had tons of companies immediately start their photocopiers and try and blatantly rip you off by offering the same thing.
Yes, gods forbid that companies actually have to do some work instead of just thinking up new things. If another company can look at your idea, and make a better product out of it, then bully for them, they should be allowed to profit from it. Don't get all jealous because some other company took your idea and ran with it further than you did. If a company is so damned innovative, then they should have no problem running with that idea in a way that maintains their lead on the competition.
The fallacious part of your argument is that Samsung (or Android, really, as the UI element is part of the OS, not the hardware) is ripping Apple off by offering the same thing. Except they aren't. Samsung isn't selling an iPad2, they're selling a Galaxy Tab 10.1. The internals aren't the same, and hell, they don't even have the same hard buttons. Android isn't offering the same thing either. They aren't selling (or giving away, as it were) a fucking UI element, they're selling an entire fucking OS. Is it the same thing? Hell no it isn't. Does it look the same? Similar, sure. But if you can honestly sit there and tell me that two similar devices should have wildy different UIs, then you are a moron. It does not benefit anyone for two similar devices to have vastly different interfaces; would you like to relearn how to use a new Blu-Ray player every time you bought one? How about a TV? Oh no, Panasonic cried foul on Samsung using decimal numbers on their TV remotes. Now all Samsung TVs have to punch in their channels using binary. Does that sound like a good idea to you? They say imitation is the greatest form of flatery. Apparently no one told Apple this when they got all pissy pantsed and decided that Samsung was somehow going to steal sales based on one single UI element. (Hint: they're threatened by the product as a whole, and are using one patent they just so happen to hold to try to stifle competition.)
Don't go claiming bias either here. I don't own a smartphone, nor a tablet. I still rock an old Moto Razr since I barely talk on the phone. I have however had a chance to use both an iPad (it's part of my main project at work) and an Android tablet running Honeycomb (try it before you buy it at some B&M). I admit that I like both products, regardless of their manufacturers. My gripe is that I cannot understand where any company gets off patenting a single UI element and then trying to shut down competition based on the fact that they implemented something similar as <1% of another product. On the one hand I can't completely blame Apple for "playing the game" in this broken copyright system, but on the other hand, they're breaking my one and only tenant of life; don't be a dick. If a single UI element were a saleable item (as in, some entity would actually buy a particular implementation of said UI element) and a non-patent holder tried to sell that same UI element, then sure, take them to court. But no-one is ever going to buy a single UI element, it is far too impractical given just how many different ones you would need to buy to put together an interface, not to mention the fact that you want them all to look the same anyway.
So really, this patent shouldn't even be a patent. This just screams to me how broken the patent system is that a company can patent an idea that when implemented by its lonesome does not create a saleable object. Does this forgive Apple from exploiting the broken system to their benefit? Hell no it doesn't.
How about we stop allowing patents on the intangible and only allow patents for actual functional, saleable, physical objects. Have a great idea for something? That's great! The world runs on innovation! Now be the first person to market with something, and we'll let you have exclusive sale rights for a couple of years! It's high time we started rewarding actual work in this goddamn country instead of rewarding every nitwit with a fucking "idea".
Slashdot Mirror
::bangs head on desk::
Yes, of course, you're correct. Hexagons would be much more efficient, and I did mean kilometers instead of meters on the square size. Thank you for correcting me. 2:00 in the afternoon and I clearly still wasn't awake yet...
If my past 5 years of playing WoW have taught me anything, it's that Blizzard is all too eager to cave to customer demands. It will only take a small percentage of customers dissenting to get both of these (shitty shitty shitty) ideas scrapped.
I'm all too happy to pay Blizzard $15 a month for WoW, as I feel it offers me good value. I would be all too happy to pay for D3 when it launches too, because I trust that it will be a good game. However if they do happen to keep the persistent connection bullshit intact, I will be all too happy to find one of those nifty offline cracks that emulates a BNet server on my local machine so I can play the game I legally acquired on my terms, not theirs.
Assuming these things cover a radius of 100km (62.5 Miles) then Mr. Pythagoras has a little theorum that can help us turn that circle into a square.
a^2 + b^2 = 100^2 Since the right triangle we inscribe in the circle is also isosceles, we know a = b, thus
2(a^2) = 100^2
a^2 = 5000
a = 70.71m
Now we can double this to get the length of the side of the largest square that can be circumscribed by the circle giving us 141.42m. Squaring this gives a coverage of 19,999.6164m^2 (7,812.35sq Miles)
The US has a claimed area of 9.83 Million km^2 giving us a required number of routers for full coverage (if the US were rectangular) as 492 (rounding up.) Since the US isn't at all rectangular, let's bump that estimate conservatively by 25% to 615.
So most likely it would take somewhere over 600 routers to comfortably blanket the US in coverage, assuming of course that the edges of the covered areas lend themselves to significant "waste" (but hey, boats could have Wi-Fi access!)
AND it can also do some stuff traditional machining/molding just can't do ever.
...Not to imply that I doubt you (I don't) but could you give an example? I'm genuinely curious.
It should also be rejected on the grounds of grammar, since "unlock" is not properly a verb.
From Dictionary.com
unlock/nläk/Verb
1. Undo the lock of (something) by using a key: "he unlocked the door to his room".
I dunno. I'm more likely to trust a reputable source than an AC.
You wouldn't be singing this tune if you had invented the iPhone or iPad, and essentially created two new markets with your unique design and then had tons of companies immediately start their photocopiers and try and blatantly rip you off by offering the same thing.
Yes, gods forbid that companies actually have to do some work instead of just thinking up new things. If another company can look at your idea, and make a better product out of it, then bully for them, they should be allowed to profit from it. Don't get all jealous because some other company took your idea and ran with it further than you did. If a company is so damned innovative, then they should have no problem running with that idea in a way that maintains their lead on the competition.
The fallacious part of your argument is that Samsung (or Android, really, as the UI element is part of the OS, not the hardware) is ripping Apple off by offering the same thing. Except they aren't. Samsung isn't selling an iPad2, they're selling a Galaxy Tab 10.1. The internals aren't the same, and hell, they don't even have the same hard buttons. Android isn't offering the same thing either. They aren't selling (or giving away, as it were) a fucking UI element, they're selling an entire fucking OS. Is it the same thing? Hell no it isn't. Does it look the same? Similar, sure. But if you can honestly sit there and tell me that two similar devices should have wildy different UIs, then you are a moron. It does not benefit anyone for two similar devices to have vastly different interfaces; would you like to relearn how to use a new Blu-Ray player every time you bought one? How about a TV? Oh no, Panasonic cried foul on Samsung using decimal numbers on their TV remotes. Now all Samsung TVs have to punch in their channels using binary. Does that sound like a good idea to you? They say imitation is the greatest form of flatery. Apparently no one told Apple this when they got all pissy pantsed and decided that Samsung was somehow going to steal sales based on one single UI element. (Hint: they're threatened by the product as a whole, and are using one patent they just so happen to hold to try to stifle competition.)
Don't go claiming bias either here. I don't own a smartphone, nor a tablet. I still rock an old Moto Razr since I barely talk on the phone. I have however had a chance to use both an iPad (it's part of my main project at work) and an Android tablet running Honeycomb (try it before you buy it at some B&M). I admit that I like both products, regardless of their manufacturers. My gripe is that I cannot understand where any company gets off patenting a single UI element and then trying to shut down competition based on the fact that they implemented something similar as <1% of another product. On the one hand I can't completely blame Apple for "playing the game" in this broken copyright system, but on the other hand, they're breaking my one and only tenant of life; don't be a dick. If a single UI element were a saleable item (as in, some entity would actually buy a particular implementation of said UI element) and a non-patent holder tried to sell that same UI element, then sure, take them to court. But no-one is ever going to buy a single UI element, it is far too impractical given just how many different ones you would need to buy to put together an interface, not to mention the fact that you want them all to look the same anyway.
So really, this patent shouldn't even be a patent. This just screams to me how broken the patent system is that a company can patent an idea that when implemented by its lonesome does not create a saleable object. Does this forgive Apple from exploiting the broken system to their benefit? Hell no it doesn't.
How about we stop allowing patents on the intangible and only allow patents for actual functional, saleable, physical objects. Have a great idea for something? That's great! The world runs on innovation! Now be the first person to market with something, and we'll let you have exclusive sale rights for a couple of years! It's high time we started rewarding actual work in this goddamn country instead of rewarding every nitwit with a fucking "idea".