Auto-hiding scroll widgets have been around for ages, on everything from flash-driven text display widgets through video games. Even the 'touch screen' magic does not make this innovative, as touch screen equipped kiosks have been around for a long time as well - just show one of those displaying such a flash widget from the early 2000's and this patent meets its maker.
To be honest it should not even be necessary to point at auto-hiding scrollbars to defuse this patent. In essence it comes down to auto-hiding visual interaction widgets after a period of user inactivity, so all those auto-hiding pointers (from the lowly inverse block cursor in text-based interfaces to the mouse-driven arrows and other shapes in GUIs) should be enough.
Even on a mobile device.
Or on a touch screen.
Or on a combination of both.
Or on the mobile touch-screen-driven rounded cornered internet.
Why has the USPTO not been reined in? Is it all lawyers supporting lawyers supporting lawyers (ad infinitum) or does the political establishment still believe this is the way to further progress in the arts and sciences?
My first laptop was a Zenith Z-181 which I got for cheap (unlike this one, what are they thinking...) at one of those computer dump markets which used to be held quite often back then. The thing still works, but it is currently in storage for lack of usable floppies (it has two 720K 3.5" 'flip-up' drives), time and interest. Its dark-blue-on-light-blue screen (or the other way around if that was preferred) felt strangely familiar, coming from a Commodore 64. Even though it has been surpassed in almost every sense by later portable machines, I have yet to use a laptop with a better keyboard. And yes, that does include all those Thinkpads which I've acquired over the years.
I always thought that the palm pilot was a great idea, but if it had phone functionality, it would be perfect. Blackberry never saw this idea too well. When Apple finally figured it out, Blackberry was dead man walking.
Apple? They arrived on the scene in 2007, fashionably late to the PDA-phone-combination party. Why not try that with Ericsson (1999) or even Microsoft (2002). Just because Apple did a good spit-and-shine job on the concept of the touchscreen smartphone does not mean they invented it.
If Samsung's profit margins are so slim on those devices that they cannot afford a few pennies for this patent, they are doing something wrong.
Some people pay the mob. Some people fight the mob. Samsung - and now Google - has chosen to fight the mob. I think they are right in doing so. When it comes to paying the danegeld, rule one is 'never pay the danegeld'. Just ask Shakespeare:
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, âfâfâfNo matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, âfâfâfAnd the nation that plays it is lost!"
It does not surprise me that IE has the lowest working storage use when idle (only one tab open) as parts of IE (eg. the rendering engine) are most likely loaded on boot because they are used elsewhere in the operating system.
"The patent covers a system to detect telephone numbers in e-mails so, when the number on the screen is tapped, they can be stored in directories or called without dialing."
And as to why this is even considered patentable in the US remains a mystery. And that is valid even without considering the fact that anyone who has followed Programming 101 would be able to come up with something like this. Just look at the majority of GUI-enabled (or -hobbled) MUAs which offer this functionality for email addresses and web links. Just look at the majority of phones of both the feature- and smart-variety which have been able to do just that for ages. All phones I've had over the years have been able to do this with phone numbers in SMS and (later) addresses and numbers in email. Not to mention the multitude of other programs which sported similar features (context-aware MUD clients, IRC programs, HTML mail gateways, Lotus Notes, etc) before this patent was granted. No, those programs did not run on 'mobile phones', but why is that important? The term 'mobile phone' is a misnomer when it comes to modern examples of the species which should really be called 'mobile computers' which happen to have 'phone' functionality built-in.
So, USPTO, would you care to explain why this patent was granted in the first place? The standard approach of 'grant patent, let the courts decide whether it sticks' does nothing to uphold the stated intent of patent law. The courts are busy, fallible, expensive and slow. The way things stand now the stated intent of patent law would be better served by abolishing patent law...
Name 5 things that you can buy today that can remain in use for 20 years through repairs.
Cars, bicycles, kitchen appliances, HVAC equipment, anything made of cast iron (which includes all my cookery stuff), need I go on?
The era of grabbing a screwdriver to tinker with and fix a broken device is pretty much over with as we head toward more micronization of components and faster automated manufacturing processes.
Not true, it just means you'll be repairing stuff by replacing functional units (''the power supply module') instead of components ('that broken FET in the power supply'). I do this regularly to great effect.
Of course there are things which just can not be repaired by the average hacker - hard drive head assemblies come to mind. The big 'but' here is that once it gets common enough for repairs to need dust-free environments, a dust-free enclosure will become standard hacker equipment. It is not like building one of these is that much effort, I just have not felt the need yet.
In short, as long as stuff can be broken into individual functional units it can be repaired. It might be that the amount of function contained in one unit increases (discrete components -> 74XX TTL/40XX CMOS - > LSI/VLSI -> SoC -> ?) but even in the latter case it is possible - and sometimes worthwhile - to replace broken components.
Envious Dell and HP users should instead try and find out why Dell and HP have been unable to muster the same brand loyalty.
I think you should really turn your own question around:
Why are you loyal to a brand? Why do you feel the need to support a commercial operation which has a singular stated goal, namely to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible - in other words to maximise profits? That is a very un-capitalistic thing to do. In a free market you - being a consumer - should not show any loyalty at all towards brands, manufacturers, suppliers or merchants. The market only works if both sides try to maximise their profits. You, as a loyal Apple follower, seem to have forgotten this. You show loyalty towards a market participant who takes the chance to make more money from you while spending less because he knows you won't go to the competition anyway - you are a loyal follower after all.
It seems to me those HP and Dell buyers understand something you don't: in a free market you are only as free as you allow yourself to be. Showing loyalty to a brand is the Stockholm syndrome of free market capitalism.
Steve Jobs was willing and able to travel thousands of miles at the drop of a hat to get there in time. It's not reasonable or feasible to do that for everyone.
As long as 'everyone' consists of the relatively short list (compared to the total population) of people in need of a donor organ I don't see why it would be a problem to put one of them on a plane towards wherever a compatible organ just became available. That is what insurance is for after all. I don't see the problem in using existing infrastructure to potentially save some lives.
Should I add that I live in Europe, and thus am a contributor and beneficiary of a socialised health care system? By each according to their means, to each according to their needs...
For those who say the iPhone is not cheaper, its that the carriers subsidize it less because the phone itself is more valuable to customers. Compare the no-contract price of a shiny new Samsung Galaxy or Windows phone vs an iPhone 4s
Europe here, where we do none of the silly carrier subsidizing thing - or at least we can choose to get a pay-as-you-go or contract without a phone. You want a phone, you buy a phone.
I bought a phone about half a year ago. Spec-wise it is comparable to one of those fruit-phones - in some ways it packs a bit less, in other ways a bit more punch. Price-wise I would have needed to pay about three times as much for a comparable fruit phone. I'm talking normal retail prices here, taxes and all included.
In other words... you are wrong about 'iProduct being cheaper', at least when it comes to phones. Personally I think you are wrong about them being better as well, but that is more of a subjective choice than an objective observation.
As expected, there are many voices trying to bestow the blessings of the orchard on you. Well, folks, it might be true that the fruit company makes some nice hardware but - believe it or not - they are not the only choice, nor are they the best in many cases. One of those cases is the above mentioned traveler, who would be much better off using a cheap and more or less expendable machine instead of one of those things with the shiny please-steal-me fruit on the most exposed surface. You might also have noticed that the thread starter mentioned he (assuming someone called 'rover42' is a he) is on a tight budget? That alone should be enough to rule out the fruit factory.
If I were him I'd get a cheap ultraportable machine from a few years back, like a Dell X300 or a Lenovo X300 (strange that these two used the same type number for the same type of machine...). The Dell is cheaper (I got one 'almost like new' for around $28 (200 Swedish kronor), complete with docking station w/DVD/CD-RW and two batteries), the Lenovo is faster and lasts longer on a battery charge - and it costs a lot more. These (and similar) machines are perfectly capable of running recent Linux/*BSD distributions and are made for travel. They weigh slightly more than 1 kg and are small enough to fit just about anywhere.
Make sure you have some form of backup, either online or on an SD-card (for which the Dell sports a slot, which works fine in Linux). If the thing breaks beyond repair you just get another through $your_favourite_auction_site. If it gets stolen, you're out of some pocket change instead of a large investment. If the battery goes flat you crack it open, insert some fresh 18650 Li-Ion cells and you're good to go for another few years. With ~ 1.4 GHz of Pentium M (or better) and 1+ GB of RAM these machines provide enough computing power for your needs given that you are considering using a 700 MHz ARM-powered Raspberry Pi. As an added bonus you'll be saving a perfectly good machine from the scrap heap.
Android, IMO, suffers from usability problems caused from cramming too many small buttons on the screen.
To each their own. I changed the display resolution on my Android phone from 240 dpi to 160 dpi in order to cram even more 'small buttons' (and small characters, and small everything) on the screen. The thing has a 9,4 cm 480x854 display. I want to use each and every pixel. I have good eyes. Fortunately Android is open to this type of customisation, and I get to have the thing working the way *I* want it - not the way some designer thinks I should want it.
My brain vacillates between two different, equally disgusting concepts trying to imagine the device you just invented. In one of the images, someone is whacking a pool of, well, sludge, with a hammer. This seems rather pointless. The operator of said sludge hammer is thoroughly drenched in slimy goo, and smells accordingly.
The other image seems straight out of Lovecraft, where by some form of unknown magic a mass of sludge stays firmly attached to the end of a pole. This pole is wielded with dire consequences by one of the old ones. Anyone who gets to meet the business end of his sludge hammer does not live to tell the tale, nor do they die. They simply are to busy screaming to be able to tell anything.
Neither of these devices seem to be of use in getting rid of unwanted data on a fruitbook though. for those purposes may I suggest using a sledge hammer?
If so, tell her to go dumpster diving for one - or two, or three. The last time I bought a new laptop was in 2001... after that, not-really-new-but-perfectly-serviceable laptops have miraculously found their way to me, usually by way of someone tiring of it and dumping it on me ('if you can fix it you can have it'). One of them was lying in an actual dumpster, packed in a plastic bag together with the power supply. It just needed a hard drive (which had been removed to protect the innocent, I assume - the machine previously belonged to the municipality) and a few gigs of ram, and voila, one 'business model' HP 2GHz Pentium M, as good as new. I'm typing this on a revived HP dv6000, similarly acquired. Just yesterday I finished repairs on a brand-spanking new but still dumped Acer. This way, I might spend â50,- on a machine. I typically install Debian (for me) or Ubuntu (for those less technically inclined) on them and throw them to the wolves.
And you know what? These machines last... I'm still using that machine I bought new in 2001... the battery still holds power, enough to provide it with its own UPS for when Thor takes out the power lines again (which happens rather frequently around here). That machine was bought at a discount shop in the Netherlands, made by Wistron and sold under the name Medion. In other words, you don't need to spend an arm and a leg for one of those machines with a fruit on it to get something which will last. As a bonus these things are typically easier to maintain and upgrade than the afore-mentioned fruit machines, replacing batteries and drives just takes a switch and/or screw (with normal slit/phillips heads) or two. New parts can be found on the 'net for a pittance so keeping these things running for as long as they are deemed useful is generally not a problem.
On of these previously-owned machines, upgraded with an SSD and possibly some memory (if it has less than 2GB to begin with) sounds like it would service your sister perfectly well. She'll be able to get 10 of them and still not break her budget. Why add to the rubbish heap when you can adopt a perfectly serviceable orphan instead?
1) No insects -> no pollination -> no fruit or vegetables - unless you want to go around with a paint brush, busy like a bee pollinating your rock garden.
2) Also, but probably not as relevant, no insects -> no insectivores. No chicken for you, buddy. Might as well become a vegetarian. See 1 for your daily schedule.
3) And why do you think there won't be any insects? It only takes a few stowaways for all your base to belong to them...
The eclipse proved that the sun is only slightly larger than the moon. Now you just have to use a tape measure to get an accurate size for the moon. Too bad the astronauts didn't think to take one.
Who needs astronauts and tape measures when you have Three Wolf Moon? That moon don't look no bigger than a wolfs head, and wolfs we have a'plenty 'round here. Just grab one of 'm, measure its head and viola (sic).
No one's gonna slip a backdoor into your resistor.
Why not? There is ample space in a resistor to hide a microcontroller and an antenna, especially in the higher-power versions. No problem powering it either... If I were that devious Chinese resistor-peddler who knew this batch of resistors was destined for the US military-industrial complex I'd do just that: put some intelligence in the higher-power resistors. Something to protect the homeland. Something which waits patiently on the sideline, not interfering with the resistor until it receives a command - either through the antenna or maybe through power supply modulation or some other means of communication. When the command is received it could do several things... turn into a fuse... or turn into a bridge instead... or start acting like a transmitter...
Now imagine you just fired a gaggle of sidewinder missiles at a Chinese fighter jet, only so see them drop out of the sky because their seeker heads suddenly lost their magic smoke. Or your encrypted combat radio sidelines as a non-encrypted low-power transmitter. Or starts playing the modern-day version of Tokyo Rose. Or... use your imagination.
And that's only resistors. Capacitors, resonators, transformers, and all those other boring passive parts... nobody is going to slip a backdoor into those, right?
This should be good news for conference facilities (hotels, etc) outside the USA, and - conversely - bad news for USA-based operations. When faced with the choice of where to locate a conference or other mass gathering of like spirits, it will be much less attractive to choose a location within the USA, simply because there will be fewer attendants willing to subject themselves to these laws. Since these laws seem to apply to USA air space as well - meaning that any flight which enters USA airspace has to have its passenger details registered with the USA authorities, even if the flight never lands in the USA - I guess Canada and Mexico are not good alternatives.
I foresee a booming business for Iceland-based conference facilities:-)
the stuff is fun to play with but nobody has found a real good application for it in over a hundred years.
Viscous couplings have been made using dilatant (non-newtonian) fluids for quite a while now, at least since the 1985 VW Transporter 'Syncro' (4WD rear-engined van made by Volkswagen, quite popular here in Europe).
now they have shifted the goalposts and now the new metric is profitability.
Even more hilarious is how they seem to fail to realise that Apple's profit comes more or less directly from their own pockets. It reminds me of the scene in National Lampoon's Animal House where aspiring members of the Omega fraternity say 'Thank you sir, may I have another one' while they are smacked on the behind with a cricket bat.
Well, no, I guess you really like your iPhone but that does not mean it was 'the phone to put the FREAKING INTERNET IN YOUR POCKET' (why shout, btw?). There were many phones which did this before Apple got into the game of selling phones. Many operating systems, as well, with many applications. Some were mediocre (Windows Mobile, I'm looking at you), some were good (Maemo comes to mind). Given the hardware they ran on, some of them actually performed quite well as mobile web platforms. Even the aging HTC Prophet - with its blazing 200 MHz OMAP - which I used until january 2012 allowed me to browse the web quite comfortably using one of several browsers (Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and Netfront being the ones I used most), watch video using Coreplayer and Mplayer, read mail using a host of programs and more. Apart from the relatively modest hardware, Windows Mobile was what held back this phone the most. Still, it did have its virtues in that it was a relatively open system, if not by intent then at least in practice. And it *did* put the internet (freaking or not) in my pocket, either through GPRS/EDGE or through its Wifi connections. And it fit nicely in my pocket, with its smooth rounded corners and screen-dominated front.
In 2006 LG announced the 'Prada' with its capacitive touchscreen. Suddenly this was the thing to have, no more pesky pens to lose, no more scratched resistive touch screens. Apple must have thought the same thing when they launched the iPhone with the same type of screen less than a year later. They also seem to have liked the LG Prada's minimalistic design, given that the iPhone looked (and looks) just like it (minus two buttons).
While pure, unadulterated X11 might not be the thing you'd want to run on your phone or tablet because of the chatty network protocol, there are some X11 derivatives which can make this fly. Have a look at the x2go project for an example of what I mean. Having X11 on Android means the x2go app is only a short development cycle away, and that is good news for those of us who like to move around while still needing access to something which only wants to run a gui.
Slashdot Mirror
Auto-hiding scroll widgets have been around for ages, on everything from flash-driven text display widgets through video games. Even the 'touch screen' magic does not make this innovative, as touch screen equipped kiosks have been around for a long time as well - just show one of those displaying such a flash widget from the early 2000's and this patent meets its maker.
To be honest it should not even be necessary to point at auto-hiding scrollbars to defuse this patent. In essence it comes down to auto-hiding visual interaction widgets after a period of user inactivity, so all those auto-hiding pointers (from the lowly inverse block cursor in text-based interfaces to the mouse-driven arrows and other shapes in GUIs) should be enough.
Even on a mobile device.
Or on a touch screen.
Or on a combination of both.
Or on the mobile touch-screen-driven rounded cornered internet.
Why has the USPTO not been reined in? Is it all lawyers supporting lawyers supporting lawyers (ad infinitum) or does the political establishment still believe this is the way to further progress in the arts and sciences?
My first laptop was a Zenith Z-181 which I got for cheap (unlike this one, what are they thinking...) at one of those computer dump markets which used to be held quite often back then. The thing still works, but it is currently in storage for lack of usable floppies (it has two 720K 3.5" 'flip-up' drives), time and interest. Its dark-blue-on-light-blue screen (or the other way around if that was preferred) felt strangely familiar, coming from a Commodore 64. Even though it has been surpassed in almost every sense by later portable machines, I have yet to use a laptop with a better keyboard. And yes, that does include all those Thinkpads which I've acquired over the years.
Apple? They arrived on the scene in 2007, fashionably late to the PDA-phone-combination party. Why not try that with Ericsson (1999) or even Microsoft (2002). Just because Apple did a good spit-and-shine job on the concept of the touchscreen smartphone does not mean they invented it.
Some people pay the mob. Some people fight the mob. Samsung - and now Google - has chosen to fight the mob. I think they are right in doing so. When it comes to paying the danegeld, rule one is 'never pay the danegeld'. Just ask Shakespeare:
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
âfâfâfNo matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
âfâfâfAnd the nation that plays it is lost!"
It does not surprise me that IE has the lowest working storage use when idle (only one tab open) as parts of IE (eg. the rendering engine) are most likely loaded on boot because they are used elsewhere in the operating system.
And as to why this is even considered patentable in the US remains a mystery. And that is valid even without considering the fact that anyone who has followed Programming 101 would be able to come up with something like this. Just look at the majority of GUI-enabled (or -hobbled) MUAs which offer this functionality for email addresses and web links. Just look at the majority of phones of both the feature- and smart-variety which have been able to do just that for ages. All phones I've had over the years have been able to do this with phone numbers in SMS and (later) addresses and numbers in email. Not to mention the multitude of other programs which sported similar features (context-aware MUD clients, IRC programs, HTML mail gateways, Lotus Notes, etc) before this patent was granted. No, those programs did not run on 'mobile phones', but why is that important? The term 'mobile phone' is a misnomer when it comes to modern examples of the species which should really be called 'mobile computers' which happen to have 'phone' functionality built-in.
So, USPTO, would you care to explain why this patent was granted in the first place? The standard approach of 'grant patent, let the courts decide whether it sticks' does nothing to uphold the stated intent of patent law. The courts are busy, fallible, expensive and slow. The way things stand now the stated intent of patent law would be better served by abolishing patent law...
If programming languages were like tools... then this is what I'd prefer over this when I want to build myself a cabin.
Cars, bicycles, kitchen appliances, HVAC equipment, anything made of cast iron (which includes all my cookery stuff), need I go on?
Not true, it just means you'll be repairing stuff by replacing functional units (''the power supply module') instead of components ('that broken FET in the power supply'). I do this regularly to great effect.
Of course there are things which just can not be repaired by the average hacker - hard drive head assemblies come to mind. The big 'but' here is that once it gets common enough for repairs to need dust-free environments, a dust-free enclosure will become standard hacker equipment. It is not like building one of these is that much effort, I just have not felt the need yet.
In short, as long as stuff can be broken into individual functional units it can be repaired. It might be that the amount of function contained in one unit increases (discrete components -> 74XX TTL/40XX CMOS - > LSI/VLSI -> SoC -> ?) but even in the latter case it is possible - and sometimes worthwhile - to replace broken components.
I think you should really turn your own question around:
Why are you loyal to a brand? Why do you feel the need to support a commercial operation which has a singular stated goal, namely to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible - in other words to maximise profits? That is a very un-capitalistic thing to do. In a free market you - being a consumer - should not show any loyalty at all towards brands, manufacturers, suppliers or merchants. The market only works if both sides try to maximise their profits. You, as a loyal Apple follower, seem to have forgotten this. You show loyalty towards a market participant who takes the chance to make more money from you while spending less because he knows you won't go to the competition anyway - you are a loyal follower after all.
It seems to me those HP and Dell buyers understand something you don't: in a free market you are only as free as you allow yourself to be. Showing loyalty to a brand is the Stockholm syndrome of free market capitalism.
As long as 'everyone' consists of the relatively short list (compared to the total population) of people in need of a donor organ I don't see why it would be a problem to put one of them on a plane towards wherever a compatible organ just became available. That is what insurance is for after all. I don't see the problem in using existing infrastructure to potentially save some lives.
Should I add that I live in Europe, and thus am a contributor and beneficiary of a socialised health care system? By each according to their means, to each according to their needs...
Europe here, where we do none of the silly carrier subsidizing thing - or at least we can choose to get a pay-as-you-go or contract without a phone. You want a phone, you buy a phone.
I bought a phone about half a year ago. Spec-wise it is comparable to one of those fruit-phones - in some ways it packs a bit less, in other ways a bit more punch. Price-wise I would have needed to pay about three times as much for a comparable fruit phone. I'm talking normal retail prices here, taxes and all included.
In other words... you are wrong about 'iProduct being cheaper', at least when it comes to phones. Personally I think you are wrong about them being better as well, but that is more of a subjective choice than an objective observation.
As expected, there are many voices trying to bestow the blessings of the orchard on you. Well, folks, it might be true that the fruit company makes some nice hardware but - believe it or not - they are not the only choice, nor are they the best in many cases. One of those cases is the above mentioned traveler, who would be much better off using a cheap and more or less expendable machine instead of one of those things with the shiny please-steal-me fruit on the most exposed surface. You might also have noticed that the thread starter mentioned he (assuming someone called 'rover42' is a he) is on a tight budget? That alone should be enough to rule out the fruit factory.
If I were him I'd get a cheap ultraportable machine from a few years back, like a Dell X300 or a Lenovo X300 (strange that these two used the same type number for the same type of machine...). The Dell is cheaper (I got one 'almost like new' for around $28 (200 Swedish kronor), complete with docking station w/DVD/CD-RW and two batteries), the Lenovo is faster and lasts longer on a battery charge - and it costs a lot more. These (and similar) machines are perfectly capable of running recent Linux/*BSD distributions and are made for travel. They weigh slightly more than 1 kg and are small enough to fit just about anywhere.
Make sure you have some form of backup, either online or on an SD-card (for which the Dell sports a slot, which works fine in Linux). If the thing breaks beyond repair you just get another through $your_favourite_auction_site. If it gets stolen, you're out of some pocket change instead of a large investment. If the battery goes flat you crack it open, insert some fresh 18650 Li-Ion cells and you're good to go for another few years. With ~ 1.4 GHz of Pentium M (or better) and 1+ GB of RAM these machines provide enough computing power for your needs given that you are considering using a 700 MHz ARM-powered Raspberry Pi. As an added bonus you'll be saving a perfectly good machine from the scrap heap.
To each their own. I changed the display resolution on my Android phone from 240 dpi to 160 dpi in order to cram even more 'small buttons' (and small characters, and small everything) on the screen. The thing has a 9,4 cm 480x854 display. I want to use each and every pixel. I have good eyes. Fortunately Android is open to this type of customisation, and I get to have the thing working the way *I* want it - not the way some designer thinks I should want it.
My brain vacillates between two different, equally disgusting concepts trying to imagine the device you just invented. In one of the images, someone is whacking a pool of, well, sludge, with a hammer. This seems rather pointless. The operator of said sludge hammer is thoroughly drenched in slimy goo, and smells accordingly.
The other image seems straight out of Lovecraft, where by some form of unknown magic a mass of sludge stays firmly attached to the end of a pole. This pole is wielded with dire consequences by one of the old ones. Anyone who gets to meet the business end of his sludge hammer does not live to tell the tale, nor do they die. They simply are to busy screaming to be able to tell anything.
Neither of these devices seem to be of use in getting rid of unwanted data on a fruitbook though. for those purposes may I suggest using a sledge hammer?
If so, tell her to go dumpster diving for one - or two, or three. The last time I bought a new laptop was in 2001... after that, not-really-new-but-perfectly-serviceable laptops have miraculously found their way to me, usually by way of someone tiring of it and dumping it on me ('if you can fix it you can have it'). One of them was lying in an actual dumpster, packed in a plastic bag together with the power supply. It just needed a hard drive (which had been removed to protect the innocent, I assume - the machine previously belonged to the municipality) and a few gigs of ram, and voila, one 'business model' HP 2GHz Pentium M, as good as new. I'm typing this on a revived HP dv6000, similarly acquired. Just yesterday I finished repairs on a brand-spanking new but still dumped Acer. This way, I might spend â50,- on a machine. I typically install Debian (for me) or Ubuntu (for those less technically inclined) on them and throw them to the wolves.
And you know what? These machines last... I'm still using that machine I bought new in 2001... the battery still holds power, enough to provide it with its own UPS for when Thor takes out the power lines again (which happens rather frequently around here). That machine was bought at a discount shop in the Netherlands, made by Wistron and sold under the name Medion. In other words, you don't need to spend an arm and a leg for one of those machines with a fruit on it to get something which will last. As a bonus these things are typically easier to maintain and upgrade than the afore-mentioned fruit machines, replacing batteries and drives just takes a switch and/or screw (with normal slit/phillips heads) or two. New parts can be found on the 'net for a pittance so keeping these things running for as long as they are deemed useful is generally not a problem.
On of these previously-owned machines, upgraded with an SSD and possibly some memory (if it has less than 2GB to begin with) sounds like it would service your sister perfectly well. She'll be able to get 10 of them and still not break her budget. Why add to the rubbish heap when you can adopt a perfectly serviceable orphan instead?
1) No insects -> no pollination -> no fruit or vegetables - unless you want to go around with a paint brush, busy like a bee pollinating your rock garden.
2) Also, but probably not as relevant, no insects -> no insectivores. No chicken for you, buddy. Might as well become a vegetarian. See 1 for your daily schedule.
3) And why do you think there won't be any insects? It only takes a few stowaways for all your base to belong to them...
Who needs astronauts and tape measures when you have Three Wolf Moon? That moon don't look no bigger than a wolfs head, and wolfs we have a'plenty 'round here. Just grab one of 'm, measure its head and viola (sic).
Why not? There is ample space in a resistor to hide a microcontroller and an antenna, especially in the higher-power versions. No problem powering it either... If I were that devious Chinese resistor-peddler who knew this batch of resistors was destined for the US military-industrial complex I'd do just that: put some intelligence in the higher-power resistors. Something to protect the homeland. Something which waits patiently on the sideline, not interfering with the resistor until it receives a command - either through the antenna or maybe through power supply modulation or some other means of communication. When the command is received it could do several things... turn into a fuse... or turn into a bridge instead... or start acting like a transmitter...
Now imagine you just fired a gaggle of sidewinder missiles at a Chinese fighter jet, only so see them drop out of the sky because their seeker heads suddenly lost their magic smoke. Or your encrypted combat radio sidelines as a non-encrypted low-power transmitter. Or starts playing the modern-day version of Tokyo Rose. Or... use your imagination.
And that's only resistors. Capacitors, resonators, transformers, and all those other boring passive parts... nobody is going to slip a backdoor into those, right?
Right?
There is a (real) X-server for Android now, search the market for it. It goes by the prozaic name of 'X server'...
This should be good news for conference facilities (hotels, etc) outside the USA, and - conversely - bad news for USA-based operations. When faced with the choice of where to locate a conference or other mass gathering of like spirits, it will be much less attractive to choose a location within the USA, simply because there will be fewer attendants willing to subject themselves to these laws. Since these laws seem to apply to USA air space as well - meaning that any flight which enters USA airspace has to have its passenger details registered with the USA authorities, even if the flight never lands in the USA - I guess Canada and Mexico are not good alternatives.
I foresee a booming business for Iceland-based conference facilities :-)
Viscous couplings have been made using dilatant (non-newtonian) fluids for quite a while now, at least since the 1985 VW Transporter 'Syncro' (4WD rear-engined van made by Volkswagen, quite popular here in Europe).
Even more hilarious is how they seem to fail to realise that Apple's profit comes more or less directly from their own pockets. It reminds me of the scene in National Lampoon's Animal House where aspiring members of the Omega fraternity say 'Thank you sir, may I have another one' while they are smacked on the behind with a cricket bat.
Thank you Apple, please overcharge me a bit more.
Well, no, I guess you really like your iPhone but that does not mean it was 'the phone to put the FREAKING INTERNET IN YOUR POCKET' (why shout, btw?). There were many phones which did this before Apple got into the game of selling phones. Many operating systems, as well, with many applications. Some were mediocre (Windows Mobile, I'm looking at you), some were good (Maemo comes to mind). Given the hardware they ran on, some of them actually performed quite well as mobile web platforms. Even the aging HTC Prophet - with its blazing 200 MHz OMAP - which I used until january 2012 allowed me to browse the web quite comfortably using one of several browsers (Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and Netfront being the ones I used most), watch video using Coreplayer and Mplayer, read mail using a host of programs and more. Apart from the relatively modest hardware, Windows Mobile was what held back this phone the most. Still, it did have its virtues in that it was a relatively open system, if not by intent then at least in practice. And it *did* put the internet (freaking or not) in my pocket, either through GPRS/EDGE or through its Wifi connections. And it fit nicely in my pocket, with its smooth rounded corners and screen-dominated front.
In 2006 LG announced the 'Prada' with its capacitive touchscreen. Suddenly this was the thing to have, no more pesky pens to lose, no more scratched resistive touch screens. Apple must have thought the same thing when they launched the iPhone with the same type of screen less than a year later. They also seem to have liked the LG Prada's minimalistic design, given that the iPhone looked (and looks) just like it (minus two buttons).
While pure, unadulterated X11 might not be the thing you'd want to run on your phone or tablet because of the chatty network protocol, there are some X11 derivatives which can make this fly. Have a look at the x2go project for an example of what I mean. Having X11 on Android means the x2go app is only a short development cycle away, and that is good news for those of us who like to move around while still needing access to something which only wants to run a gui.