If you have no way of affording two machines, you also have no way of affording one machine that's twice as fast -- as quite often, a machine that is twice as fast is as much as four times the price.
This was my comment. Please read before responing.
Re:Linux easier than Windows? Unpossible.
on
Linux Users Are Spoiled
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
You can figure out the arcane Microsoft BS simply by clicking in sane places. Windows Update is at the top of the menu when you hit the start menu. Automatic Updates is listed in the Control Panel right next to desktop settings, so if you go in to change your wallpaper, chances are you'll pick up on its existance. And Automatic Updates...pretty self explanatory, heh? I'd say you would find this feature after about thirty seconds of using the machine. On a mac, it's even faster -- it's the second button on the apple menu.
Tell me, in what sane place do I click in gentoo to figure out the syntax for emerge? No really, I'd like to know, as I've used emerge for three years and haven't seen the "sync &&" part of the command until today. It seems to me that I'd have to use info or man to figure it out...and to run either of these, I have to first know the name of a command -- or similar command -- to figure out its syntax. If you run man update, man patch, or man get the latest version, you get fuck-all. "Emerge" is not exactly a self explanatory program name...shit, it's what happens when a baby duck is born, not what you use to maintain the latest version of your software packages!
I'm similarly annoyed at grep, sed, awk, echo and export. Tail is fine.
libc is *NOT* gentoo's only achilles heel. At one point earlier this year an emerge World on our server pulled down a newer version of postgres which was not compatible with the old one.
We didn't know this. It didn't tell us. Postgres reported it was running when it wasn't. We didn't find out about this until two of our clients dropped our service because of a two day "outtage" we didn't even know about.
Since then, we have done two things: we've added postgres to our "check to see if this process is REALLY running" page, and we've stopped using emerge.
I've also had trouble on other boxes, especially with the really crummy way gentoo used to handle java VMs. For a while, you could not install a sane version of tomcat using emerge...it put the config files in the wrong place and installed the wrong connectors. Last time I tried it it worked alright...but considering how easy it is to install "binaries" of java packages, I'm going to shy away from using emerge to update anything unless I explicitly tell it to.
Oh, and I've never had a problem with Windows Update at our office. Thought I'd point that out, since most/.'rs seem to think that Microsoft only hires money hungry buffoons and doesn't know how to update a fucking program.
Re:Linux easier than Windows? Unpossible.
on
Linux Users Are Spoiled
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It isn't the typing of the letters. It's the waitng three hours while every application recompiles itself even if there have been no changes and hoping the whole time that some critical app hasn't had a drastic configuration or datafile change that will result in either an unusable system or a long debugging session.
I have never done this on Windows. Never had to. Which is one reason it's worth the $200 or whatever I paid for it five years ago.
I love gentoo too, but it's not the answer to whatever the problem with linux' general acceptance. It's the answer to "how do I maintain a cutting edge webserver without having to rely on shady binaries or doing everything by hand."
Incidentally, a buddy of mine used to compile ten different versions of new gentoo files on his fastest computer, then have the others -- ones owned by his mother, uncle, cousins, etc -- "phone home" and download their version. A very neat solution to this problem.
Very wise. Except that a PC with four times the processor speed, four times the bus speed and four times the memory bus, along with four video outputs, would be quite a bit more expensive than four individual computers, thanks to the commodity hardware market.
Which is why we moved away from the mainframe in the first place.
The benefit of this technology, if there is one, is that four users with bare minimum needs can share one commodity computer. Control four web terminals at your coffee house from a single PC. That's kind of useful.
There is no "right" to profits. There is, however, a right to protect your research. If you invent something and patent it, you have the right to demand licensing fees from anybody else who uses that thing -- even if they didn't reverse engineer your product to figure it out. This "first come, first served" patent system is designed to encourage research, as opposed to sitting around waiting for an idea to be invented for you.
Oh, and I just realized what you are doing is kind of wierd. You are testing for two separate concepts and claiming that you can do that with ==. You can. But this is major fucking sloppy and no faster than doing it this (arguably) better way, which doesn't confuse the reader as to what the == is actually testing for (it's obviously not reference...which is what == SHOULD be testing).
In this example, you would create in your SnackFood interface a pair of virtual methods: isQuantityEqual and isIndexEqual. Both methods would be overloaded, and could take as a parameter either a SnackFood object or an integer.
Thus, testing snack foods, you'd use cheeseDoodle.isQuantityEqual(thingamajig) or cheeseDoodble.isIndexEqual(potatoChip). Very simple. Very legibile. And the poor == operator doesn't find itself performing completely different tasks depending on what's on either side of it.
Operator overloading is commonly abused and it is always obfuscating to people who don't implicitly know your classes. It may be easier for you to type == to compare the value equality of two disparate methods, but in reality you're changing the context of the language just so you don't have to type as much. Coming in to the codebase from the outside, I have no idea that you overloaded the = method unless I go in and check the source code -- which besides being a waste of time partially defeats the purpose of using objects.
Considering that in modern code completion IDEs, == and.equals take about the same effort to type, I love Java's way of enforcing sparate operations for testing value equality and reference equality. It takes time to get used to using.equals(),.compare() and.append() to replace ==, > and +, but it's worth it.
Incidentally, I recently switched from Java to C# and started overloading operators again. I wish I hadn't. We have three methods in our collection structure that reference objects by value. All of the ones I wrote implement an indexer which selects the members of the collection by their foreign integer ID (the only useful value for referring to a specific object). All of the ones written by my coworker, who doesn't seem to understand the concept of reading comments, are indexed by position in the structure (completely useless as the resort themselves on the fly). He never used the indexer, instead relying on an unoptimized FindObject method that performed an iterative search. Therefore, his code was always slow...and every time I would reference one of his objects, the data would be wrong or null.
I could place the blame on him not using our agreed upon syntax properly, but really it's on the confusion over the overloaded [] operator. If we'd just settled on FindByPosition and FindByReferenceID, we'd never have had a problem.
Alpine gear has a nice kick to it, and a much cleaner interface than the majority of audio gear. That alone is worth more cash to me. When I'm driving I like to listen to music. What I don't like is a dashboard that's lit up like a fucking circus with whales swimming at me in three dimensions.
You're right. And you know what? Linux is just a bunch of cloned technologies, it doesn't do anything you can't do better and with less work in any one of a half dozen other PC operating systems.
And yet, lots and lots of people really like it. Some have based their whole worldview around it. I guess maybe some things are more than just the sum of their parts...and some other things are way less (that new Commodore player looks pretty shitty).
Alpine stereos -- NICE ones -- start at under $160 and I guarantee you they have more power than your Toyota stock unit.
Sounds like you paid more for less. I wouldn't complain, though...I spent about two days hacking my own changer controls to work with the iPod last year, didn't have the luxury of buying either of these devices.
I have both of those on the iPod already. And to be honest, I'd rather lift the ipod into my field of view while driving than look down at the head unit all the time.
Plus a lot of Alpine gear is kind of...well...chintzy. I'll stick with my factory dash, thanks (plus i went through a lot of trouble to hack the CD changer controls).
This is because the iPod is at the juncture of geek/tech life and what everybody else does. It is rare that something that enraptures us will also interest impress others, like (oh say) a girl or something.
Personally, I'd like to see a lot fewer article about Linux's acceptance or nonacceptance on the desktop, the pervasive attacks on our freedom by DMCA/RFID/PATRIOT/DRM/GWB/Internet Explorer, the sense or nonsense of outsourcing or anything relating to SCO. I mean, come on -- "Darl McBride's toilet overflows, says stolen memcopy algorithm to blame." This is supposed to be "stuff that matters," when indeed it's usually the same shit served up cold with the same for insights modded up (and, you know, anything *I* post).
But the iPod...well, the iPod was something out of left field, and it's something that confounds our community because so many of us still don't understand how it can be so popular when it's so expensive. It's right -- or as right as right can get with software. So what if it's lacking features -- this just goes to show that little features done sloppy aren't worth one feature done well and marketted without prejudice. If we could take that to heart -- make an Open system that had a single high quality choice for every function you could like, instead of one based on thousands of discordant choices -- well, there'd be no stopping us.
By the way, http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-kernel.x ml has the different kernels and their relative merits and shortfalls if you're interested.
I'm not. The subtle differences between Linux kernels does not hold my interest; in fact it is about the most boring thing I can think of at the moment. I am certain the time wasted learning the different kernels and experimenting with them will be far greater than whatever perfomance increase is gained by selecting the right one over the entire life of the machine. It's bullshit knowledge.
If the click-to-continue EULA on a spyware program is meaningless, the click-to-continue EULA on IE is just as meaningless. It hasn't been tested in either direction...but I guarantee you that if Microsoft knowingly released an IE patch that fucked the whole internet, there would be lawsuits.
The difference is not culpability -- obviously, if MS can write "No warranty expressed or implied" and have it mean butkiss, it has no meaning in the GPL, either -- but potential damages. Sue Microsoft, your class stands to make a pretty penny. Sue Eugene Rodriguez, Guatemalan CS TA, and you're not going to make squat.
So what would you prefer? Vulnerability hits and some program in the Microsoft catacombs releases a 0 hour patch that breaks some essential part of IE?
This is a web browser used by close to 90% of internet users. You might say that the internet economy DEPENDS on IE, for better or worse. When you've got that kind of albatross hanging from the neck of a product you're purposely trying to deprecate, you had better make damned sure you properly QA the patch, which even with an army of testers could take weeks.
In the meantime, you can obviously release a quick fix, but even that needs to be QA'd to be sure people can still access their bank records, stock market info, and the government's tax payment system.
You're making claims that are untrue and short sighted. I call FUD.
First, to release a patch to a commercial application used by millions of people is inherently troublesome. You've got to make sure you test it thoroughly...because unlike Open Source, the liability is on YOU if people can't get their work done. If there is a change to an existing setting that can defray the effect of the vulnerability and give you more time to test, it would be remiss of you not to inform customers of it. Would you rather they ask customers to wait a few days until the patch is thoroughly QA'd?
Second, I have never -- that means NOT EVER -- seen an IE fix that broke my machine worse than a virus would. The fix might cause problems with IE, but it wouldn't cause my machine to send spam email against my will. And the VAST majority of IE fixes have had no ill effects whatsoever. On the other hand, emerging the latest from gentoo causes something to break a substantial percentage of the time.
I do agree that IE isn't the best browser ever, but this doesn't excuse you from putting blame where it doesn't belong. If you're going to fault Microsoft for anything, fault them for not being up front about the patch process. They should let us know at every step of the way what the problem is, how to patch it for now, when a fix will be ready and how to defray such bugs from allowing exploits in the future. That's one cue from OSS they'd be smart to heed. All software is buggy. Pretending it's not is tantemount to pretending you aren't going to fix it.
I guess what it's going to come down to is this: which is more annoying, losing your luggage, or losing your privacy?
Considering how LITTLE privacy we have in airports these days anyway, I'd rather take a little assurance that my drawers will make it on the plane after the security guards are done sniffing them.
It seems like that still matters to me. This patent is for a distinctly different application of an existing technology -- namely, not to hide things all the time, but only when the screen starts to get cluttered. That's non-obvious...
In fact, the only difference I see in the patenting process is that patent AUTHORS have gotten better at phrasing their patents in such a way as they're more likely to be issued. Some freelance firms go so far as to guarantee acceptance. But that's rhetorical progress, not laxidaisical issuance.
Close as I can tell, Microsoft invented fast alt-tab switching, one of my favorite user interface touches. I think they also invented the scroll wheel, which I love, and the networking protocol Samba uses. I've even seen some evidence that they invented the graphical status bar.
This is just off the top of my head. Microsoft may steal a lot of good ideas, but they have certainly invented things and perfected some others. They're no IBM and certainly not an Apple when it comes to invention...but since they built their fortune offering improvements of -- not revolution on -- user interfaces, who can blame them?
Hey man. People have been putting pedals side by side for years. Patents must have something new and innovative in them. How about pedals that were one over the other? Pedals that were diagonal? Or how about the pedals that Volvo recently patented that adjust their travel distance depending on the height of the driver...so short or tall, you sit at the same height with reference to the windows.
Microsoft's new and innovative touch to grouped taskbars is that their taskbars automatically collapse when they start to get too cluttered. That's kind of a neat idea, not for everybody, but some folks -- myself included -- would find it very useful. Of course, an article that read "Microsoft Patents Clutter Based Automatic Grouping of Taskbar Icons, Which is a Quite Specific and Easily Avoided New Techology" would never get posted on Slashdot, where making reactionary conclusions based on false assumptions gleamed from unread fucking articles is the name of the game.
Eh, don't bother bringing it up. If slashdotters haven't yet realized that patents are SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATIONS, and that patenting a gear with 7 cogs that turns counterclockwise doesn't necessarily give you the ability to sue everybody who makes gears, they probably never will. I mean, come on, remember the outrage when some clever cat in Australia patented fire? "Oh look, patents don't work! This guy got fire!"
Sure they work. Let him try and pursue damages for fire, and see how much longer he keeps that ill gotten patent. This is why we have systems of checks and balances...occasionally, the checks fail.
Steve doesn't use it. The Mac OS has never listed "open windows" anywhere in the system "tray" (dock) nor in the old application drop down. The dock is for accessing programs. If you want to access a window, click on the program and use the program's interface to select a window. Better still, hit F7 and tile all them windows with Expose so you can see the one you want (a little nicer than the method planned for Longhorn, but only a little...that one's cool too)
Some OS X apps *DO* put their windows into the menu that springs from the dock icon. But since that's not really a function of the OS, I don't think this patent really counts.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have no way of affording two machines, you also have no way of affording one machine that's twice as fast -- as quite often, a machine that is twice as fast is as much as four times the price.
This was my comment. Please read before responing.
You can figure out the arcane Microsoft BS simply by clicking in sane places. Windows Update is at the top of the menu when you hit the start menu. Automatic Updates is listed in the Control Panel right next to desktop settings, so if you go in to change your wallpaper, chances are you'll pick up on its existance. And Automatic Updates...pretty self explanatory, heh? I'd say you would find this feature after about thirty seconds of using the machine. On a mac, it's even faster -- it's the second button on the apple menu.
Tell me, in what sane place do I click in gentoo to figure out the syntax for emerge? No really, I'd like to know, as I've used emerge for three years and haven't seen the "sync &&" part of the command until today. It seems to me that I'd have to use info or man to figure it out...and to run either of these, I have to first know the name of a command -- or similar command -- to figure out its syntax. If you run man update, man patch, or man get the latest version, you get fuck-all. "Emerge" is not exactly a self explanatory program name...shit, it's what happens when a baby duck is born, not what you use to maintain the latest version of your software packages!
I'm similarly annoyed at grep, sed, awk, echo and export. Tail is fine.
libc is *NOT* gentoo's only achilles heel. At one point earlier this year an emerge World on our server pulled down a newer version of postgres which was not compatible with the old one.
/.'rs seem to think that Microsoft only hires money hungry buffoons and doesn't know how to update a fucking program.
We didn't know this. It didn't tell us. Postgres reported it was running when it wasn't. We didn't find out about this until two of our clients dropped our service because of a two day "outtage" we didn't even know about.
Since then, we have done two things: we've added postgres to our "check to see if this process is REALLY running" page, and we've stopped using emerge.
I've also had trouble on other boxes, especially with the really crummy way gentoo used to handle java VMs. For a while, you could not install a sane version of tomcat using emerge...it put the config files in the wrong place and installed the wrong connectors. Last time I tried it it worked alright...but considering how easy it is to install "binaries" of java packages, I'm going to shy away from using emerge to update anything unless I explicitly tell it to.
Oh, and I've never had a problem with Windows Update at our office. Thought I'd point that out, since most
It isn't the typing of the letters. It's the waitng three hours while every application recompiles itself even if there have been no changes and hoping the whole time that some critical app hasn't had a drastic configuration or datafile change that will result in either an unusable system or a long debugging session.
I have never done this on Windows. Never had to. Which is one reason it's worth the $200 or whatever I paid for it five years ago.
I love gentoo too, but it's not the answer to whatever the problem with linux' general acceptance. It's the answer to "how do I maintain a cutting edge webserver without having to rely on shady binaries or doing everything by hand."
Incidentally, a buddy of mine used to compile ten different versions of new gentoo files on his fastest computer, then have the others -- ones owned by his mother, uncle, cousins, etc -- "phone home" and download their version. A very neat solution to this problem.
Very wise. Except that a PC with four times the processor speed, four times the bus speed and four times the memory bus, along with four video outputs, would be quite a bit more expensive than four individual computers, thanks to the commodity hardware market.
Which is why we moved away from the mainframe in the first place.
The benefit of this technology, if there is one, is that four users with bare minimum needs can share one commodity computer. Control four web terminals at your coffee house from a single PC. That's kind of useful.
There is no "right" to profits. There is, however, a right to protect your research. If you invent something and patent it, you have the right to demand licensing fees from anybody else who uses that thing -- even if they didn't reverse engineer your product to figure it out. This "first come, first served" patent system is designed to encourage research, as opposed to sitting around waiting for an idea to be invented for you.
Oh, and I just realized what you are doing is kind of wierd. You are testing for two separate concepts and claiming that you can do that with ==. You can. But this is major fucking sloppy and no faster than doing it this (arguably) better way, which doesn't confuse the reader as to what the == is actually testing for (it's obviously not reference...which is what == SHOULD be testing).
In this example, you would create in your SnackFood interface a pair of virtual methods: isQuantityEqual and isIndexEqual. Both methods would be overloaded, and could take as a parameter either a SnackFood object or an integer.
Thus, testing snack foods, you'd use cheeseDoodle.isQuantityEqual(thingamajig) or cheeseDoodble.isIndexEqual(potatoChip). Very simple. Very legibile. And the poor == operator doesn't find itself performing completely different tasks depending on what's on either side of it.
Operator overloading is commonly abused and it is always obfuscating to people who don't implicitly know your classes. It may be easier for you to type == to compare the value equality of two disparate methods, but in reality you're changing the context of the language just so you don't have to type as much. Coming in to the codebase from the outside, I have no idea that you overloaded the = method unless I go in and check the source code -- which besides being a waste of time partially defeats the purpose of using objects.
.equals take about the same effort to type, I love Java's way of enforcing sparate operations for testing value equality and reference equality. It takes time to get used to using .equals(), .compare() and .append() to replace ==, > and +, but it's worth it.
Considering that in modern code completion IDEs, == and
Incidentally, I recently switched from Java to C# and started overloading operators again. I wish I hadn't. We have three methods in our collection structure that reference objects by value. All of the ones I wrote implement an indexer which selects the members of the collection by their foreign integer ID (the only useful value for referring to a specific object). All of the ones written by my coworker, who doesn't seem to understand the concept of reading comments, are indexed by position in the structure (completely useless as the resort themselves on the fly). He never used the indexer, instead relying on an unoptimized FindObject method that performed an iterative search. Therefore, his code was always slow...and every time I would reference one of his objects, the data would be wrong or null.
I could place the blame on him not using our agreed upon syntax properly, but really it's on the confusion over the overloaded [] operator. If we'd just settled on FindByPosition and FindByReferenceID, we'd never have had a problem.
China is a communist nation, sir.
There is no Profit. Only power.
Alpine gear has a nice kick to it, and a much cleaner interface than the majority of audio gear. That alone is worth more cash to me. When I'm driving I like to listen to music. What I don't like is a dashboard that's lit up like a fucking circus with whales swimming at me in three dimensions.
You're right. And you know what? Linux is just a bunch of cloned technologies, it doesn't do anything you can't do better and with less work in any one of a half dozen other PC operating systems.
And yet, lots and lots of people really like it. Some have based their whole worldview around it. I guess maybe some things are more than just the sum of their parts...and some other things are way less (that new Commodore player looks pretty shitty).
Alpine stereos -- NICE ones -- start at under $160 and I guarantee you they have more power than your Toyota stock unit.
Sounds like you paid more for less. I wouldn't complain, though...I spent about two days hacking my own changer controls to work with the iPod last year, didn't have the luxury of buying either of these devices.
I have both of those on the iPod already. And to be honest, I'd rather lift the ipod into my field of view while driving than look down at the head unit all the time.
Plus a lot of Alpine gear is kind of...well...chintzy. I'll stick with my factory dash, thanks (plus i went through a lot of trouble to hack the CD changer controls).
This is because the iPod is at the juncture of geek/tech life and what everybody else does. It is rare that something that enraptures us will also interest impress others, like (oh say) a girl or something.
Personally, I'd like to see a lot fewer article about Linux's acceptance or nonacceptance on the desktop, the pervasive attacks on our freedom by DMCA/RFID/PATRIOT/DRM/GWB/Internet Explorer, the sense or nonsense of outsourcing or anything relating to SCO. I mean, come on -- "Darl McBride's toilet overflows, says stolen memcopy algorithm to blame." This is supposed to be "stuff that matters," when indeed it's usually the same shit served up cold with the same for insights modded up (and, you know, anything *I* post).
But the iPod...well, the iPod was something out of left field, and it's something that confounds our community because so many of us still don't understand how it can be so popular when it's so expensive. It's right -- or as right as right can get with software. So what if it's lacking features -- this just goes to show that little features done sloppy aren't worth one feature done well and marketted without prejudice. If we could take that to heart -- make an Open system that had a single high quality choice for every function you could like, instead of one based on thousands of discordant choices -- well, there'd be no stopping us.
By the way,x ml has the different kernels and their relative merits and shortfalls if you're interested.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-kernel.
I'm not. The subtle differences between Linux kernels does not hold my interest; in fact it is about the most boring thing I can think of at the moment. I am certain the time wasted learning the different kernels and experimenting with them will be far greater than whatever perfomance increase is gained by selecting the right one over the entire life of the machine. It's bullshit knowledge.
If the click-to-continue EULA on a spyware program is meaningless, the click-to-continue EULA on IE is just as meaningless. It hasn't been tested in either direction...but I guarantee you that if Microsoft knowingly released an IE patch that fucked the whole internet, there would be lawsuits.
The difference is not culpability -- obviously, if MS can write "No warranty expressed or implied" and have it mean butkiss, it has no meaning in the GPL, either -- but potential damages. Sue Microsoft, your class stands to make a pretty penny. Sue Eugene Rodriguez, Guatemalan CS TA, and you're not going to make squat.
So what would you prefer? Vulnerability hits and some program in the Microsoft catacombs releases a 0 hour patch that breaks some essential part of IE?
This is a web browser used by close to 90% of internet users. You might say that the internet economy DEPENDS on IE, for better or worse. When you've got that kind of albatross hanging from the neck of a product you're purposely trying to deprecate, you had better make damned sure you properly QA the patch, which even with an army of testers could take weeks.
In the meantime, you can obviously release a quick fix, but even that needs to be QA'd to be sure people can still access their bank records, stock market info, and the government's tax payment system.
You're making claims that are untrue and short sighted. I call FUD.
First, to release a patch to a commercial application used by millions of people is inherently troublesome. You've got to make sure you test it thoroughly...because unlike Open Source, the liability is on YOU if people can't get their work done. If there is a change to an existing setting that can defray the effect of the vulnerability and give you more time to test, it would be remiss of you not to inform customers of it. Would you rather they ask customers to wait a few days until the patch is thoroughly QA'd?
Second, I have never -- that means NOT EVER -- seen an IE fix that broke my machine worse than a virus would. The fix might cause problems with IE, but it wouldn't cause my machine to send spam email against my will. And the VAST majority of IE fixes have had no ill effects whatsoever. On the other hand, emerging the latest from gentoo causes something to break a substantial percentage of the time.
I do agree that IE isn't the best browser ever, but this doesn't excuse you from putting blame where it doesn't belong. If you're going to fault Microsoft for anything, fault them for not being up front about the patch process. They should let us know at every step of the way what the problem is, how to patch it for now, when a fix will be ready and how to defray such bugs from allowing exploits in the future. That's one cue from OSS they'd be smart to heed. All software is buggy. Pretending it's not is tantemount to pretending you aren't going to fix it.
I guess what it's going to come down to is this: which is more annoying, losing your luggage, or losing your privacy?
Considering how LITTLE privacy we have in airports these days anyway, I'd rather take a little assurance that my drawers will make it on the plane after the security guards are done sniffing them.
It seems like that still matters to me. This patent is for a distinctly different application of an existing technology -- namely, not to hide things all the time, but only when the screen starts to get cluttered. That's non-obvious...
In fact, the only difference I see in the patenting process is that patent AUTHORS have gotten better at phrasing their patents in such a way as they're more likely to be issued. Some freelance firms go so far as to guarantee acceptance. But that's rhetorical progress, not laxidaisical issuance.
Close as I can tell, Microsoft invented fast alt-tab switching, one of my favorite user interface touches. I think they also invented the scroll wheel, which I love, and the networking protocol Samba uses. I've even seen some evidence that they invented the graphical status bar.
This is just off the top of my head. Microsoft may steal a lot of good ideas, but they have certainly invented things and perfected some others. They're no IBM and certainly not an Apple when it comes to invention...but since they built their fortune offering improvements of -- not revolution on -- user interfaces, who can blame them?
Hey man. People have been putting pedals side by side for years. Patents must have something new and innovative in them. How about pedals that were one over the other? Pedals that were diagonal? Or how about the pedals that Volvo recently patented that adjust their travel distance depending on the height of the driver...so short or tall, you sit at the same height with reference to the windows.
Microsoft's new and innovative touch to grouped taskbars is that their taskbars automatically collapse when they start to get too cluttered. That's kind of a neat idea, not for everybody, but some folks -- myself included -- would find it very useful. Of course, an article that read "Microsoft Patents Clutter Based Automatic Grouping of Taskbar Icons, Which is a Quite Specific and Easily Avoided New Techology" would never get posted on Slashdot, where making reactionary conclusions based on false assumptions gleamed from unread fucking articles is the name of the game.
Eh, don't bother bringing it up. If slashdotters haven't yet realized that patents are SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATIONS, and that patenting a gear with 7 cogs that turns counterclockwise doesn't necessarily give you the ability to sue everybody who makes gears, they probably never will. I mean, come on, remember the outrage when some clever cat in Australia patented fire? "Oh look, patents don't work! This guy got fire!"
Sure they work. Let him try and pursue damages for fire, and see how much longer he keeps that ill gotten patent. This is why we have systems of checks and balances...occasionally, the checks fail.
Steve doesn't use it. The Mac OS has never listed "open windows" anywhere in the system "tray" (dock) nor in the old application drop down. The dock is for accessing programs. If you want to access a window, click on the program and use the program's interface to select a window. Better still, hit F7 and tile all them windows with Expose so you can see the one you want (a little nicer than the method planned for Longhorn, but only a little...that one's cool too)
Some OS X apps *DO* put their windows into the menu that springs from the dock icon. But since that's not really a function of the OS, I don't think this patent really counts.