...whatever this new machine is, it is something they consider to be a new type of device that they wouldn't classify as anything like a GameCube or GBA successor.
Unfortunately for the world, that leaves only one option - it must be Virtual Boy II!
The world isn't black and white? Someone ought to let/. readers in on that little secret.
I take exception to that comment. I am a regular Slashdot reader, and I am perfectly aware that the world isn't black and white. For example, there's a nasty green bar just above the box where I'm typing this, and some grey buttons underneath it.
> For the price of the latest, greatest video card alone you can get all three consoles brand new plus a game...
And, for the price of a console, you can buy two video cards as powerful as the one inside it - or just one mid-range card, which will already produce better graphics than the console at a higher resolution. The point about the latest, greatest video card is that it has as much power as the next generation of consoles will in a few years time. I'll put it this way, I'm not holding my breath for a PS2 port of Doom 3.
And thus your argument fails at the first hurdle: it is easily demonstrable that your claim is nonsense. I have not paid a penny for all the air I've breathed in my life. I have never even been billed for the sunlight by which I see. And, well, I'm typing this in Mozilla Firebird, and I don't recall transferring any capital in order to gain that capability.
Note, by the way, that America does not possess the moon, despite the presence of an American flag there. Your beloved nation, leader of the free world, venerable democracy, and champion of capitalism and property rights, despite being the only nation so far to develop the technology required to take humans to the moon, has voluntarily given up her claim thereto - without receiving payment of any sort.
Damn, IHBT, haven't I? Oh well, I guess I'll probably HAND now.
I always understood transparency as being 100% translucent. In other words, if something is translucent you can sort of make out what's behind it, if something is transparent you see only what's behind it.
I think that's what's techically known as "invisible".
...lets drop this Redhat ditched desktop Linux crap, and focus on the fact that Redhat is duplicating effort by not basing their community developed distro on Debian.
Red Hat already had a perfectly good base for Fedora - it was called Red Hat Linux. It strikes me that "duplicating effort" would better describe what they'd be doing if they abandoned the software they've spend years developing and tried to rebuild it from scratch using a completely different setup.
Despite your dictionary quote (which you failed to attribute, so we can't assume it's the official English (UK or US English) definition)...
As ten seconds on dictionary.com will reveal, his quote is from The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. IOW, it has no authority whatsoever in the UK, where this story took place.
Not that there is an "official definition" of the term "personal computer". Only a handful of words have offical definitions of any sort, and those are basically limited to legal terms when used in court. Everything else is defined very loosely by usage. The ITC's decision was presumably based on what they deduced the average Briton would think of as a "personal computer", not whatever OED says.
Having a patent, and not using it, so that everyone can use your idea is a very different thing. In a sense it's almost like puting your idea in the public domain.
Except that it isn't.
Even if you can be trusted not to enforce your patent, what about the person who, say, buys the patent three years down the line after your company goes bust? Oh dear - looks like they bought it because they wanted to sue all the poor little developers who used your idea in the belief that it was "almost in the public domain".
Delphi 8 is NO LONGER wrapping the arcane win32 API, it will be wrapping.NET, which itself is very VCL like, so why bother?
Why bother? Well, um, could it possibly be something to do with backwards-compatibility? You know, allowing customers to upgrade without forcing them to rewrite all their existing applications and retrain all their programmers?
What you're describing is a system called "the welfare state", a form of socialism in which high earners are taxed and the proceeds are used to subsidise health, education, and housing for the poor.
Believe it or not, some countries actually do this. I'm told it's actually quite pleasant, from the point of view of the poor, but obviously it'll never catch on in America for as long as the country is ruled by the rich.
> Though, if you want to get really persnickety, ANIMAL was technically a Trojan horse, as it required human help to spread.
And most modern "email viruses" are the same - they rely on idiots opening attachments. But nobody describes them as "Trojan horses". Possibly because they aren't full of Achaean soldiers.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably you also want gravedigger to be removed from Hamlet, because the play's too serious to be cluttered with "unfunny dreck" like his patter?
Lighten up, it's one post out of hundreds, and some of us like our doom and gloom to be spiced with the odd attempt at wit.
*winces*
You have a point.
However - it still doesn't fix the problem of what happens when I want to play F-Zero X and the other half wants to watch Pride and Prejudice AGAIN!!!
Buy her the book. It's better than the film anyway.
Why don't they do it right - make a system-on-a-video-card and then create a Knoppix-like bootable layer for their games?
It's been done - the Creative Labs 3DO Blaster was a 3DO on an expansion card. It wasn't a success.
...whatever this new machine is, it is something they consider to be a new type of device that they wouldn't classify as anything like a GameCube or GBA successor.
Unfortunately for the world, that leaves only one option - it must be Virtual Boy II!
The world isn't black and white? Someone ought to let /. readers in on that little secret.
I take exception to that comment. I am a regular Slashdot reader, and I am perfectly aware that the world isn't black and white. For example, there's a nasty green bar just above the box where I'm typing this, and some grey buttons underneath it.
> For the price of the latest, greatest video card alone you can get all three consoles brand new plus a game...
And, for the price of a console, you can buy two video cards as powerful as the one inside it - or just one mid-range card, which will already produce better graphics than the console at a higher resolution. The point about the latest, greatest video card is that it has as much power as the next generation of consoles will in a few years time. I'll put it this way, I'm not holding my breath for a PS2 port of Doom 3.
Everything in life cost money
And thus your argument fails at the first hurdle: it is easily demonstrable that your claim is nonsense. I have not paid a penny for all the air I've breathed in my life. I have never even been billed for the sunlight by which I see. And, well, I'm typing this in Mozilla Firebird, and I don't recall transferring any capital in order to gain that capability.
Note, by the way, that America does not possess the moon, despite the presence of an American flag there. Your beloved nation, leader of the free world, venerable democracy, and champion of capitalism and property rights, despite being the only nation so far to develop the technology required to take humans to the moon, has voluntarily given up her claim thereto - without receiving payment of any sort.
Damn, IHBT, haven't I? Oh well, I guess I'll probably HAND now.
"If you do not occupy or otherwise improve your claimed property...
Could one not argue that he's improving it considerably by not being there?
So, what EXACTLY are the intellectual challenges of refuse collection, to give one example.
Hmm... persuading someone else that it's worth doing?
I always understood transparency as being 100% translucent. In other words, if something is translucent you can sort of make out what's behind it, if something is transparent you see only what's behind it.
I think that's what's techically known as "invisible".
I like getting my moneys worth from a movie ticket, bring on the 3 hour movies.
I bow before the might of your bladder. In the absence of intervals, however, not all of us are strong enough for such things.
You forgot "Advanced BASIC: The GOTO Statement"...
> I'm surprised they didn't engrave it on stone tablets in Sanscrit. Maybe they just didn't have the time...
I suspect Sanskrit would be beyond them, but I do believe they changed the font to Symbol in a fiendish method of encryption.
> a call really does cost you $ once that change is made.
Only in crazy places like the USA. Any cell phone company that tried to charge for receiving calls in the UK would be laughed out of business.
> Since there is no such thing as bad publicity...
But there is. That's why libel laws exist.
Er... what?
Red Hat already had a perfectly good base for Fedora - it was called Red Hat Linux. It strikes me that "duplicating effort" would better describe what they'd be doing if they abandoned the software they've spend years developing and tried to rebuild it from scratch using a completely different setup.
Despite your dictionary quote (which you failed to attribute, so we can't assume it's the official English (UK or US English) definition)...
As ten seconds on dictionary.com will reveal, his quote is from The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. IOW, it has no authority whatsoever in the UK, where this story took place.
Not that there is an "official definition" of the term "personal computer". Only a handful of words have offical definitions of any sort, and those are basically limited to legal terms when used in court. Everything else is defined very loosely by usage. The ITC's decision was presumably based on what they deduced the average Briton would think of as a "personal computer", not whatever OED says.
> they obviously meant "nutritional." I looked up the word in the dictionary and found that it simply means "edible."
Ah, like "organic" food, then. (What's inorganic food supposed to be? Pure salt?)
OF course they'll limit it to XP.
<sarcasm>Remember - IE is a part of the OS, not an application. You don't expect them to release the ToyTown theme for Windows 2000, do you?</sarcasm>
Having a patent, and not using it, so that everyone can use your idea is a very different thing. In a sense it's almost like puting your idea in the public domain.
Except that it isn't.
Even if you can be trusted not to enforce your patent, what about the person who, say, buys the patent three years down the line after your company goes bust? Oh dear - looks like they bought it because they wanted to sue all the poor little developers who used your idea in the belief that it was "almost in the public domain".
[Qt is] not free in any sense of the word on Windows.
What about the unofficial Win32 port of the GPL'd X11 version? (link)
Unfinished, yes, but an interesting project nevertheless. I must confess I'd like to know what TrollTech think of it...
Delphi 8 is NO LONGER wrapping the arcane win32 API, it will be wrapping .NET, which itself is very VCL like, so why bother?
Why bother? Well, um, could it possibly be something to do with backwards-compatibility? You know, allowing customers to upgrade without forcing them to rewrite all their existing applications and retrain all their programmers?
What you're describing is a system called "the welfare state", a form of socialism in which high earners are taxed and the proceeds are used to subsidise health, education, and housing for the poor.
Believe it or not, some countries actually do this. I'm told it's actually quite pleasant, from the point of view of the poor, but obviously it'll never catch on in America for as long as the country is ruled by the rich.
> Though, if you want to get really persnickety, ANIMAL was technically a Trojan horse, as it required human help to spread.
And most modern "email viruses" are the same - they rely on idiots opening attachments. But nobody describes them as "Trojan horses". Possibly because they aren't full of Achaean soldiers.