Doesn't it bother anyone else that even Microsoft doesn't have a clue how the OS they developed works anymore? That something like this is even an issue?
Par for the course. Welcome to the tech world. At most companies there's a bunch of stuff running that no one who currently works there knows how it works, they're working of the notes of the people who left, who made those notes while trying to figure out how it works, after the generation before them already quit...
Suddenly the part of Foundation where planets are just working to maintain stuff they don't understand doesn't seem so far fetched...
It's pretty sad that people take this as a given. If your machine is vulnerable to viruses out of the box, you should box it back up and return it, not act like there's something normal about it. If you drove your new car off the lot and immediately all the hoses disconnected and the engine seized because you didn't drive directly to the nearest garage to have a bunch of extra work done on the engine to prevent that, would you just throw up your hands and say it's your fault for expecting your car to be in working condition straight from the manufacturer?
I'm sure cold operation has some uses but my fingers stop working somewhere around -10C so I wouldn't know what they are....
lol -- I actually make it a point to buy gloves that don't impede my ability to type. It helps that I have small hands -- I can get a decent amount of material on the fingers without them getting so fat I hit multiple keys at once. The gloves I use maybe aren't as warm as they could be, but they're a heck of a lot warmer than no gloves at all, which is the situation my hands would be in if the only alternative was to remove the gloves to be able to use my fingers. I used to have a drawer full of gloves I never wore because they were too bulky while my hands froze because I wasn't wearing gloves. Now I just buy gloves I will actually use.
But even before SI existed Kilo still meant 10^3. Mega still meant 10^6 and Giga still meant 10^9. They never meant 2^10, 2^20, or 2^30 before being corrupted.
OMG! Surely you aren't suggesting that computer scientists would ever take a common word and repurpose it for their own use! Where would it end? Imagine how confusing it would be if physicists started talking about the "color" of quarks or such! Inventing new meanings for existing words should obviously never be allowed...:p
"The idea of CASE was to produce better code faster by having a computer do it," says McLean. "Just feed your specifications into the front end, and it'll spit out flawless code. The vendors counted on customers who did not realize that the biggest problem in these projects is bad specifications, and they found a lot of those customers. So, people fed bad specs in one end and got bad code out of the other."
So, they never asked a single professional programmer? XD Seriously, has ANYONE EVER gotten a spec that wasn't ridiculously underspecified, internally contradictory, and containing numerous very very bad ideas? Anyone who's done any professional coding knows that the best way to make a product that probably does not look good and certainly does not do anything useful and does not even work right for the things it does do, is to give the customer exactly what they asked for. Although I've used that as a tactic before as a starting point. First, implement exactly what they asked for, then rather than trying to explain to them why that won't work, show them. But I use that as a last resort...
A lot (lot) of people died on those first voyages to the New World. Entire ships were lost as well. I don't think anyone wants to send boatloads of astronauts in an expensive investment without guaranteeing that they'll arrive in one piece.
Most of those colonists were middle & lower class citizens without a whole lot of training other than how to farm, put up a hut, etc. You're talking orders of magnitude of training differential here. I have yet to see any proposal to send Joe Sixpack on a Mars mission.
I think you missed the point. How would being trained how to farm, put up a hut, etc., help you survive a long boat trip with a crowd of other humans of questionable health?
This isn't a conclusive listing of all the things in the Federal Budget that are larger than NASA. What is actually is is a list of all the things in the Federal Budget that would still be bigger than NASA if we doubled NASA's budget.
Which fails to refute the point. My friend's pickup with full-size back seats and such is massive. The fact that there are literally millions of more massive vehicles on the road does not alter the fact that his pickup is massive.
They'd NEVER file multiple lawsuits against people for infringing totally obvious patents, right? Of course not! That'd be like saying that Slashdotters actually believed half the stuff they said about freedom and rights.
Quick! No one's said anything stupid yet! Let's construct a straw man so I have something to ridicule!
If you tend to take statements literally, Nietzsche is not for you. Also, Nietzsche is one of those people who can be said to have said just about anything, if you pull comments out of the middle of a discussion and try to analyze them out of context.
What most people call facts are interpretations. When anyone says "the evidence supports X", they're anthropomorphizing. Evidence just sits there in the lab or at the site or in the sky. It never supports or refutes anything, it's just an inanimate object or the like, incapable of engaging in rational discussions. The only thing that supports or refutes a theory is an interpretation of the evidence. This is not a bad thing, certainly not an indictment of science, but anyone who loses sight of this fact is prone to go astray.
Anyhow, the "facts" most people use to support whatever they believe are in fact interpretations. Observe any debate and you'll find, in that context, Nietzsche's statement is absolutely right. No facts will come up during the debate, just conflicting interpretations.
Maybe (and I think it likely) the Mayans weren't predicting doomsday, but that their n thousand year long calander simply rolls over then?
No maybe about it. The Mayan calendar is cyclical. Looking for a prediction of doomsday on the Mayan calendar is like trying to find the endpoint of a circle. The circle does not come to an end at 359 degrees, 59 minutes and 59.999... seconds.
This is not entirely correct, as there are still Mayan speaking persons in south mexico
I wonder how much deviation has occurred in the spoken language. I think it'd be reasonable to presume a modern day Mayan would be unable to communicate with an ancient Mayan due to generational changes in dialect and word-set, but I'm not sure how it could be determined if there is no phonetic dictionary.
Probably not that much. English-speaking people frequently think this, but English is actually fairly unusual in several respects, including its relative youth compared to most other languages, the large amount of external influence upon it, and the relatively dynamic nature of English society compared to many if not most others, particularly historically. A modern Englishman transported back in time 800 years would find it impossible to speak with the locals. But most non-English-speaking people, transported back in time 800 years, would have little trouble conversing with the locals, albeit with a noticeable accent, and assuming they refrain from discussing relatively modern things. There might be difficulties, but they would very likely be able to communicate.
Don't be silly, he won't be built for another couple of thousand years. We still have to turn the planet radioactive first.
No no, you've reversed the order there. Daneel and Giskard were around to see the planet turn radioactive. (Yes, I know, I'm glossing over an important detail there. XD Trying to avoid spoilers -- read the books.)
Yes, I know. This will most likely be similar to a Netzero play: free OS, free software, as long as you watch the ads.
No, this will most likely be similar to a television with ads that can be marked as unskipable.
News flash: Apple makes television devices. They've just patented a method of making the ads unskipable on an OS level. This is a fairly obvious idea, but that doesn't stop patents these days. What's not obvious is why people are blathering on about ads on their desktop and NetZero or FreePC or other things utterly unrelated to what Apple is obviously doing this for. When you see that Yamaha has patented a new motorcycle engine design, do you expect to see motorcycle engines attached to their next new music synth? Or are people still living in a world where they think Apple only makes computers?
Actually, I'm a little confused by this and I'm pretty sure this isn't what patents are for. Years ago, could you have really filed a patent for "displaying advertising on a television during breaks in shows" and therefore nobody else could do it without your permission? I know you can patent a certain technical methodology for accomplishing this, but you surely can't patent the entire concept?
Right. So you can't patent the concept, but you can patent the technical methodology. You could not have patented displaying advertising during breaks in a show, but you could have patented a method of engineering a television so that people can't change channels while the commercial is on. Apple has just patented a method of preventing commercial skipping on their television devices. Why does this strike you as non-patentable?
Does anyone in this thread really think that Apple, a company utterly obsessed with aesthetics, good design, and usability, would put ads in their operating system? Not likely. Remember when Apple switched to Intel chips? There were no "Intel Inside" stickers for Macs.
I think the poster and the first commenter have it right: this is a protection measure to make sure that any company stupid enough to try and set this precedent (advertising in the OS) will have to pay through the nose to Apple. It is in fact, the quintessential poison pill.
To anyone who's at all familiar with Apple's product line, it's patently obvious which product this patent is for.
Oh come on, it's patently obvious what product Apple intends to use this on. People blabbering on about ads on their desktop are just engaging in fear-mongering...
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't it bother anyone else that even Microsoft doesn't have a clue how the OS they developed works anymore? That something like this is even an issue?
Par for the course. Welcome to the tech world. At most companies there's a bunch of stuff running that no one who currently works there knows how it works, they're working of the notes of the people who left, who made those notes while trying to figure out how it works, after the generation before them already quit...
Suddenly the part of Foundation where planets are just working to maintain stuff they don't understand doesn't seem so far fetched...
A machine without AV is vulnerable to viruses!
It's pretty sad that people take this as a given. If your machine is vulnerable to viruses out of the box, you should box it back up and return it, not act like there's something normal about it. If you drove your new car off the lot and immediately all the hoses disconnected and the engine seized because you didn't drive directly to the nearest garage to have a bunch of extra work done on the engine to prevent that, would you just throw up your hands and say it's your fault for expecting your car to be in working condition straight from the manufacturer?
I'm sure cold operation has some uses but my fingers stop working somewhere around -10C so I wouldn't know what they are. ...
lol -- I actually make it a point to buy gloves that don't impede my ability to type. It helps that I have small hands -- I can get a decent amount of material on the fingers without them getting so fat I hit multiple keys at once. The gloves I use maybe aren't as warm as they could be, but they're a heck of a lot warmer than no gloves at all, which is the situation my hands would be in if the only alternative was to remove the gloves to be able to use my fingers. I used to have a drawer full of gloves I never wore because they were too bulky while my hands froze because I wasn't wearing gloves. Now I just buy gloves I will actually use.
But even before SI existed Kilo still meant 10^3. Mega still meant 10^6 and Giga still meant 10^9. They never meant 2^10, 2^20, or 2^30 before being corrupted.
OMG! Surely you aren't suggesting that computer scientists would ever take a common word and repurpose it for their own use! Where would it end? Imagine how confusing it would be if physicists started talking about the "color" of quarks or such! Inventing new meanings for existing words should obviously never be allowed... :p
"The idea of CASE was to produce better code faster by having a computer do it," says McLean. "Just feed your specifications into the front end, and it'll spit out flawless code. The vendors counted on customers who did not realize that the biggest problem in these projects is bad specifications, and they found a lot of those customers. So, people fed bad specs in one end and got bad code out of the other."
So, they never asked a single professional programmer? XD Seriously, has ANYONE EVER gotten a spec that wasn't ridiculously underspecified, internally contradictory, and containing numerous very very bad ideas? Anyone who's done any professional coding knows that the best way to make a product that probably does not look good and certainly does not do anything useful and does not even work right for the things it does do, is to give the customer exactly what they asked for. Although I've used that as a tactic before as a starting point. First, implement exactly what they asked for, then rather than trying to explain to them why that won't work, show them. But I use that as a last resort...
Most of those colonists were middle & lower class citizens without a whole lot of training other than how to farm, put up a hut, etc. You're talking orders of magnitude of training differential here. I have yet to see any proposal to send Joe Sixpack on a Mars mission.
I think you missed the point. How would being trained how to farm, put up a hut, etc., help you survive a long boat trip with a crowd of other humans of questionable health?
This isn't a conclusive listing of all the things in the Federal Budget that are larger than NASA. What is actually is is a list of all the things in the Federal Budget that would still be bigger than NASA if we doubled NASA's budget.
Which fails to refute the point. My friend's pickup with full-size back seats and such is massive. The fact that there are literally millions of more massive vehicles on the road does not alter the fact that his pickup is massive.
... even with the real cold war over.
Putin didn't get the memo...
They'd NEVER file multiple lawsuits against people for infringing totally obvious patents, right? Of course not! That'd be like saying that Slashdotters actually believed half the stuff they said about freedom and rights.
Quick! No one's said anything stupid yet! Let's construct a straw man so I have something to ridicule!
Does anyone know Dutch and have the time to submit better translations?
better? >:( teh xlashun iz jus fien kthxbai
Besides, Hallmark has invented more holidays to sell greeting cards than the Catholic church has invented in centuries...
Another shining example of the benefits of free markets over central planning... ;)
:)
If you tend to take statements literally, Nietzsche is not for you. Also, Nietzsche is one of those people who can be said to have said just about anything, if you pull comments out of the middle of a discussion and try to analyze them out of context.
What most people call facts are interpretations. When anyone says "the evidence supports X", they're anthropomorphizing. Evidence just sits there in the lab or at the site or in the sky. It never supports or refutes anything, it's just an inanimate object or the like, incapable of engaging in rational discussions. The only thing that supports or refutes a theory is an interpretation of the evidence. This is not a bad thing, certainly not an indictment of science, but anyone who loses sight of this fact is prone to go astray.
Anyhow, the "facts" most people use to support whatever they believe are in fact interpretations. Observe any debate and you'll find, in that context, Nietzsche's statement is absolutely right. No facts will come up during the debate, just conflicting interpretations.
What amuses me is how seriously some people take /. moderation. /eyeroll
You know you've gone off the deep-end when you make your signature a comment about moderation...
Maybe (and I think it likely) the Mayans weren't predicting doomsday, but that their n thousand year long calander simply rolls over then?
No maybe about it. The Mayan calendar is cyclical. Looking for a prediction of doomsday on the Mayan calendar is like trying to find the endpoint of a circle. The circle does not come to an end at 359 degrees, 59 minutes and 59.999... seconds.
OK. In exactly which direction should I be pointing my telescope when things go "tits up"?
Towards your neighbor's window, of course. :p
I wonder how much deviation has occurred in the spoken language. I think it'd be reasonable to presume a modern day Mayan would be unable to communicate with an ancient Mayan due to generational changes in dialect and word-set, but I'm not sure how it could be determined if there is no phonetic dictionary.
Probably not that much. English-speaking people frequently think this, but English is actually fairly unusual in several respects, including its relative youth compared to most other languages, the large amount of external influence upon it, and the relatively dynamic nature of English society compared to many if not most others, particularly historically. A modern Englishman transported back in time 800 years would find it impossible to speak with the locals. But most non-English-speaking people, transported back in time 800 years, would have little trouble conversing with the locals, albeit with a noticeable accent, and assuming they refrain from discussing relatively modern things. There might be difficulties, but they would very likely be able to communicate.
Don't be silly, he won't be built for another couple of thousand years. We still have to turn the planet radioactive first.
No no, you've reversed the order there. Daneel and Giskard were around to see the planet turn radioactive. (Yes, I know, I'm glossing over an important detail there. XD Trying to avoid spoilers -- read the books.)
I'm not a programer, nor have I ever built a databse, but even I've heard of locking a spreadsheet to make sure the right cells are filled in.
That technique will not prevent this kind of error for any spreadsheet that requires more than one cell be filled in.
Yes, I know. This will most likely be similar to a Netzero play: free OS, free software, as long as you watch the ads.
No, this will most likely be similar to a television with ads that can be marked as unskipable.
News flash: Apple makes television devices. They've just patented a method of making the ads unskipable on an OS level. This is a fairly obvious idea, but that doesn't stop patents these days. What's not obvious is why people are blathering on about ads on their desktop and NetZero or FreePC or other things utterly unrelated to what Apple is obviously doing this for. When you see that Yamaha has patented a new motorcycle engine design, do you expect to see motorcycle engines attached to their next new music synth? Or are people still living in a world where they think Apple only makes computers?
Actually, I'm a little confused by this and I'm pretty sure this isn't what patents are for. Years ago, could you have really filed a patent for "displaying advertising on a television during breaks in shows" and therefore nobody else could do it without your permission? I know you can patent a certain technical methodology for accomplishing this, but you surely can't patent the entire concept?
Right. So you can't patent the concept, but you can patent the technical methodology. You could not have patented displaying advertising during breaks in a show, but you could have patented a method of engineering a television so that people can't change channels while the commercial is on. Apple has just patented a method of preventing commercial skipping on their television devices. Why does this strike you as non-patentable?
I just don't see Apple pushing any of this into any of it's products, but it can certainly prevent others from doing it as well.
It's fairly easy to see Apple putting this into one of their products. It's also fairly obvious that that's exactly what this patent is for.
Does anyone in this thread really think that Apple, a company utterly obsessed with aesthetics, good design, and usability, would put ads in their operating system? Not likely. Remember when Apple switched to Intel chips? There were no "Intel Inside" stickers for Macs.
I think the poster and the first commenter have it right: this is a protection measure to make sure that any company stupid enough to try and set this precedent (advertising in the OS) will have to pay through the nose to Apple. It is in fact, the quintessential poison pill.
To anyone who's at all familiar with Apple's product line, it's patently obvious which product this patent is for.
If you don't intend to put ads in your OS, why would you need to protect yourself from someone else patenting it?
Duh.
Oh come on, it's patently obvious what product Apple intends to use this on. People blabbering on about ads on their desktop are just engaging in fear-mongering...
Duh.