Whereas Apple, who dropped Skyhook too, had also replaced the functionality with their own implementation isn't doing the same thing?
All we have here is a company getting pissy their limited business model has been replaced on two very popular platforms. Tough titties. If they want, they can release their own applications that use their implementation, and then compete in the market. Too easy though, they know their toast is done. They're looking for a payout from the big boys before shutting up shop.
That actually sounds reasonable. Personally, I don't know anything about Skyhook's tech, but if there are some problems with it (or if the big boys didn't feel they could deliver) then this whole lawsuit is a non-starter. Fact is, arguing about such things without having all the facts at your command is kinda pointless (but does keep us all posting, so I guess it's good for Slashdot.)
In that case, why waste loadsacash going to court over it ?
This is the U.S. The real question is: why wouldn't you? Courts decisions and jury verdicts aren't always rational, and you might win something out of it. Also, there might be some background strategy going on here, more than just the lawsuit itself. Furthermore, there's always the everpresent, well, presence of Microsoft. Microsoft would drop ten mil in a heartbeat, if they could give Google some heartburn. Not saying that's the case here, but it has been in the past, and certainly Google's people ought to look into that possibility.
However, I dislike it when anyone says that twenty-thousand-odd deaths are of little consequence, and the GP's tone was indicative that he felt so because they were Americans.
Wait, what? Twenty thousand deaths? I thought the entire death toll from 9/11 was less than 3000. Unless I'm reading that wrong, you think that 9/11 killed more than 20,000 people.
But than, because most slash doters are hypocrite's. If something happened, loss of lives. They would be the first to bitch and moan that enough wasn't done.
I disagree. The vast majority of Slashdotters I've interacted with on this topic are dead-set against security theater (because it's stupid, wasteful and accomplishes very little.) Saying "most x are y" is not a very convincing argument.
And before decrying our concerns over privacy invasion, overreaction and ethnic profiling, keep in mind that our government has been doing a lot of bad things since 9/11 (and prior to that, actually.) In a word, overreacting. So our wanting to make sure that the Feds don't overreach any further than they have is entirely reasonable, and furthermore if we are going to be subject to additional loss of our rights, it had better be for a good reason. Accepting the a bunch of 3-letter organizations' collective word that they need any more power (much less what they've already arrogated to themselves) is something that I would also say "most Slashdotters are against." But that's just my perception: I don't claim to have any hard numbers of how many/.ers believe anything whatsoever.
I did the same thing with my wife. Had her using Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice. Bought her a Mac, and she's still using them, without much learning curve and virus free.
It's a good feeling, isn't it? One less thing you have to worry about. If you're like me, with a house full of computers to maintain plus a couple of servers, you look at Windows as being a significant time-waster. I have better things to do, and every time I read another article about the number of cracked Web sites with drive-by malware payloads I'm glad I switched.
My day job, alas, revolves around coding for Windows, and that's unlikely to change any time soon, unless I win the lottery or write a best seller. Of course, I'd have to actually play the lottery and/or write a book for that to happen.
The only fly in my ointment at the moment is that we have a couple of IBM Thinkpad R40 laptops. Now, the Thinkpad line has always been known as being Linux-friendly, and indeed I've run OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis, good ol' Debian and a couple of other distros on them. The problem is a bug in the machines' embedded controller firmware: none of the current distros will run the goddamn cooling fan! Still trying to get a fan control script of some kind to work: tons of them out there, but I haven't gotten any to run right yet.
He's probably assuming that the poster above wants to actually use his machine.
Well, that depends upon what you're using it to do. You don't need a fancy GUI for a lot of things. Take someone who's just doing the edit, compile, run routine for an embedded system, for instance. Or, maybe he's from some country where fast computers are hard to come by, and he's running on older hardware.
so... you throw away java, mono and.net, also kde, gnome,... what's left then?? I suppose you're a BSD guy, but I'm *very* curious (seriously! really!) what desktop are you using and what is your language of choice?
so... you throw away java, mono and.net, also kde, gnome,... what's left then?? I suppose you're a BSD guy, but I'm *very* curious (seriously! really!) what desktop are you using and what is your language of choice?
So, accountants are terrorists? Perhaps we should be taking a closer look at colleges that have accounting programs.
Accountants? No... they have to follow rules laid down by law, and follow directives issued by upper management. The MBA types who make big decisions, on the other hand, are definitely culpable. And that can result in explosions and death: take the petroleum industry, for example. Some of those outfits run their equipment too hard, without proper expenditures on training, safety and maintenance, and occasionally things blow up. Literally. Petroleum refining is a particularly dangerous activity, and requires continuous investment in safety. Not all refiners make that investment.
Whether you were blown to bits by a terrorist making a political statement, or an industrial "accident" that only occurred because your company cut back on (*cough*) unnecessary expenses, the fact is you're just as dead. Somebody made a decision that got you killed. The good thing about terrorists is that they frequently take themselves out of the picture while committing their crimes, whereas the corporate SOBs who get their own people killed generally get a free pass to do more of the same. There's always someone or something else to blame for their misdeeds.
And that's not even counting the deaths that have occurred over the years from calculated decisions to ship unsafe products. When a corporation trades in human suffering, balancing their estimated legal costs from lawsuits filed by grieving families against the savings garnered from poor manufacturing processes, well, who's really the terrorist here anyway.
Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."
I don't much care for Mt Dew Throwback, though. The HFCS version is my favorite soft drink and the real sugar I guess just doesn't taste artificial enough.
Probably just a matter of what you grew up with. As a kid, I loved Mountain Dew, but that was forty-odd years ago. It's never tasted quite right to me since.
Maybe that's because the corn syrup soda tastes better? Even if it were possible to have cravings for soda, that doesn't mean cancer is growing in you.
You must not have been around before the switch to corn syrup. Coca Cola was awesome back then.
Secondly, cancer is growing in all of us, all the time. Out of the trillions of cells that comprise the human body, some number of them are going to be malfunctioning at any given time. The reason we don't all die of tumors shortly after birth is because the immune system identifies them and eliminates them.
Any food product which has the capacity to make cancer cells divide even more quickly than they already do (which, according to that study I linked, is an attribute of corn syrup but not regular sugar) is certainly worth avoiding.
Well, would you be inclined buy something accurately labelled as "soy juice", or would you buy "soy milk" instead? Personally, I prefer moo cow fuck milk for both the honesty and the wholesome goodness, with the added benefit of not spending my time reading manufacturer labels.
Well, I was trying to point out that there's a lot in a name, which is why I said "... and still make your cancer cells multiply."
And yeah, I watched Lewis Black on Broadway too. Funny stuff.
It's not fraud, technically it is sugar. Anyone who actually cares about it (apparently you think it gives you cancer) will realize the change.
I point-blank did not say that corn syrup causes cancer: nor, I might add, did the article I linked. Guess you didn't bother to read it.
I just said the two aren't the same. Yes, chemically they are all "sugars" but that doesn't mean we can't be specific, nor does it mean that all compounds in that family have the same effect on the human body. Considering that just about everything we eat in this country is over-sweetened with either "real" sugar or corn syrup, it would be nice to have some idea if one is worse than the other, and why.
I avoid all kinds of sugar on general principle (I use unsweetened ketchup, unsweetened fruit juices... I really try hard to avoid the stuff.) Unsweetened foods are hard to find and often more expensive, but I know what they can do to me. Maybe I'm more aware of the risks than most, because my father died of complications from diabetes. But, if that study is correct and fructose does cause certain cancer cells to divide more rapidly, well that could (for example) be something for cancer patients to be aware of when planning their menu. It wouldn't surprise me to find that increased use of corn syrup in the past few decades has increased the prevalence of certain kinds of cancer, and we may very well find other significant differences between cane sugar and corn syrup: more research is needed.
If you read the article, you have quotes like this:
Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
And
Tumor cells thrive on sugar
In other words, while one type of sugar may be slightly worse than the other (I have no reason to doubt the study), it's like arguing whether it's worse to get stabbed or shot. Either one is bad.
No argument... but that's why I said "not necessarily." Obviously the jury is still out on which sweetener will shorten your life by the greatest amount, so I simply avoid both of them. Hell, Aspartame isn't exactly free of negative effects either. Basically, we Americans just have to work on removing that sweet tooth.
Kinda off topic, but is anyone else enjoying the "real-sugar" sodas that are in supermarkets? Man so delicious, I stocked up on it. I wish this was sold all the time.
Very much on-topic. I grew up on Coca Cola as a kid long before the switch to corn syrup, and I don't care what anyone says, high-fructose corn syrup is not the same as cane sugar. There was nothing quite like a tall glass bottle of Coke, ice-cold, on a hot summer's day. So yes, I have tried the "real-sugar" sodas (just for old time's sake) and yeah, it was good. Sad to say, thanks to the switch to corn-based sweetener, Coca Cola hasn't been "it" for some time now.
Why can't these guys do the right thing and stop making this evil stuff? Playing a shell game with the facts does not change reality.
Yes, well, you can thank a company called UOP for pioneering the process of making this stuff on an industrial scale (that was actually back in the sixties.) And you can also thank Congress for so fucking over the countries that used to grow cane sugar and sell it to us, which is why we even needed a substitute in the first place. Now, of course, those growers have switched to cocaine, cannabis, and other much more profitable crops.
Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."
Slashdot Mirror
Whereas Apple, who dropped Skyhook too, had also replaced the functionality with their own implementation isn't doing the same thing?
All we have here is a company getting pissy their limited business model has been replaced on two very popular platforms. Tough titties. If they want, they can release their own applications that use their implementation, and then compete in the market. Too easy though, they know their toast is done. They're looking for a payout from the big boys before shutting up shop.
That actually sounds reasonable. Personally, I don't know anything about Skyhook's tech, but if there are some problems with it (or if the big boys didn't feel they could deliver) then this whole lawsuit is a non-starter. Fact is, arguing about such things without having all the facts at your command is kinda pointless (but does keep us all posting, so I guess it's good for Slashdot.)
Obviously s/Microsoft/Google/ in that post.
Yah. I got that.
In that case, why waste loadsacash going to court over it ?
This is the U.S. The real question is: why wouldn't you? Courts decisions and jury verdicts aren't always rational, and you might win something out of it. Also, there might be some background strategy going on here, more than just the lawsuit itself. Furthermore, there's always the everpresent, well, presence of Microsoft. Microsoft would drop ten mil in a heartbeat, if they could give Google some heartburn. Not saying that's the case here, but it has been in the past, and certainly Google's people ought to look into that possibility.
I'm just gonna assume you're talking about Andy Rubin there, not me :)
Simon
Well, that's how I took it anyway.
real men carve the gears of their difference engine with an hammer and chisel.
I disagree. Real make those gears by gnawing granite blocks with their teeth.
Twenty thousand?
Just over *two* thousand people died in the 9/11 attacks. Better check your facts.
It was a damn typo. Geez.
However, I dislike it when anyone says that twenty-thousand-odd deaths are of little consequence, and the GP's tone was indicative that he felt so because they were Americans.
Wait, what? Twenty thousand deaths? I thought the entire death toll from 9/11 was less than 3000. Unless I'm reading that wrong, you think that 9/11 killed more than 20,000 people.
Typo. I meant "two thousand odd." Sorry.
But than, because most slash doters are hypocrite's. If something happened, loss of lives. They would be the first to bitch and moan that enough wasn't done.
I disagree. The vast majority of Slashdotters I've interacted with on this topic are dead-set against security theater (because it's stupid, wasteful and accomplishes very little.) Saying "most x are y" is not a very convincing argument.
/.ers believe anything whatsoever.
And before decrying our concerns over privacy invasion, overreaction and ethnic profiling, keep in mind that our government has been doing a lot of bad things since 9/11 (and prior to that, actually.) In a word, overreacting. So our wanting to make sure that the Feds don't overreach any further than they have is entirely reasonable, and furthermore if we are going to be subject to additional loss of our rights, it had better be for a good reason. Accepting the a bunch of 3-letter organizations' collective word that they need any more power (much less what they've already arrogated to themselves) is something that I would also say "most Slashdotters are against." But that's just my perception: I don't claim to have any hard numbers of how many
"Gravity is a conservative force."
Dammit, did the Tea-Party get to them too?
No, but they've begun measuring rocket engine power output in "Limbaughs".
So sue me.
I did the same thing with my wife. Had her using Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice. Bought her a Mac, and she's still using them, without much learning curve and virus free.
It's a good feeling, isn't it? One less thing you have to worry about. If you're like me, with a house full of computers to maintain plus a couple of servers, you look at Windows as being a significant time-waster. I have better things to do, and every time I read another article about the number of cracked Web sites with drive-by malware payloads I'm glad I switched.
My day job, alas, revolves around coding for Windows, and that's unlikely to change any time soon, unless I win the lottery or write a best seller. Of course, I'd have to actually play the lottery and/or write a book for that to happen.
The only fly in my ointment at the moment is that we have a couple of IBM Thinkpad R40 laptops. Now, the Thinkpad line has always been known as being Linux-friendly, and indeed I've run OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis, good ol' Debian and a couple of other distros on them. The problem is a bug in the machines' embedded controller firmware: none of the current distros will run the goddamn cooling fan! Still trying to get a fan control script of some kind to work: tons of them out there, but I haven't gotten any to run right yet.
He's probably assuming that the poster above wants to actually use his machine.
Well, that depends upon what you're using it to do. You don't need a fancy GUI for a lot of things. Take someone who's just doing the edit, compile, run routine for an embedded system, for instance. Or, maybe he's from some country where fast computers are hard to come by, and he's running on older hardware.
so... you throw away java, mono and .net, also kde, gnome,... what's left then?? I suppose you're a BSD guy, but I'm *very* curious (seriously! really!) what desktop are you using and what is your language of choice?
Who says he's using a desktop?
Honestly folks, I wasn't trolling. Sheesh.
so... you throw away java, mono and .net, also kde, gnome,... what's left then?? I suppose you're a BSD guy, but I'm *very* curious (seriously! really!) what desktop are you using and what is your language of choice?
Who says he's using a desktop?
Im sorry, what is a breakfast cereal prize?
It's something that you plug into your UCB port.
So, accountants are terrorists? Perhaps we should be taking a closer look at colleges that have accounting programs.
Accountants? No ... they have to follow rules laid down by law, and follow directives issued by upper management. The MBA types who make big decisions, on the other hand, are definitely culpable. And that can result in explosions and death: take the petroleum industry, for example. Some of those outfits run their equipment too hard, without proper expenditures on training, safety and maintenance, and occasionally things blow up. Literally. Petroleum refining is a particularly dangerous activity, and requires continuous investment in safety. Not all refiners make that investment.
Whether you were blown to bits by a terrorist making a political statement, or an industrial "accident" that only occurred because your company cut back on (*cough*) unnecessary expenses, the fact is you're just as dead. Somebody made a decision that got you killed. The good thing about terrorists is that they frequently take themselves out of the picture while committing their crimes, whereas the corporate SOBs who get their own people killed generally get a free pass to do more of the same. There's always someone or something else to blame for their misdeeds.
And that's not even counting the deaths that have occurred over the years from calculated decisions to ship unsafe products. When a corporation trades in human suffering, balancing their estimated legal costs from lawsuits filed by grieving families against the savings garnered from poor manufacturing processes, well, who's really the terrorist here anyway.
Am I the only one that got the Half Life reference?
No, I think I'm number three.
Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."
That is not a troll, mods. Cripes.
I don't much care for Mt Dew Throwback, though. The HFCS version is my favorite soft drink and the real sugar I guess just doesn't taste artificial enough.
Probably just a matter of what you grew up with. As a kid, I loved Mountain Dew, but that was forty-odd years ago. It's never tasted quite right to me since.
Maybe that's because the corn syrup soda tastes better? Even if it were possible to have cravings for soda, that doesn't mean cancer is growing in you.
You must not have been around before the switch to corn syrup. Coca Cola was awesome back then.
Secondly, cancer is growing in all of us, all the time. Out of the trillions of cells that comprise the human body, some number of them are going to be malfunctioning at any given time. The reason we don't all die of tumors shortly after birth is because the immune system identifies them and eliminates them.
Any food product which has the capacity to make cancer cells divide even more quickly than they already do (which, according to that study I linked, is an attribute of corn syrup but not regular sugar) is certainly worth avoiding.
What's in a name?
Well, would you be inclined buy something accurately labelled as "soy juice", or would you buy "soy milk" instead? Personally, I prefer moo cow fuck milk for both the honesty and the wholesome goodness, with the added benefit of not spending my time reading manufacturer labels.
Well, I was trying to point out that there's a lot in a name, which is why I said "... and still make your cancer cells multiply."
And yeah, I watched Lewis Black on Broadway too. Funny stuff.
It's not fraud, technically it is sugar. Anyone who actually cares about it (apparently you think it gives you cancer) will realize the change.
I point-blank did not say that corn syrup causes cancer: nor, I might add, did the article I linked. Guess you didn't bother to read it.
... I really try hard to avoid the stuff.) Unsweetened foods are hard to find and often more expensive, but I know what they can do to me. Maybe I'm more aware of the risks than most, because my father died of complications from diabetes. But, if that study is correct and fructose does cause certain cancer cells to divide more rapidly, well that could (for example) be something for cancer patients to be aware of when planning their menu. It wouldn't surprise me to find that increased use of corn syrup in the past few decades has increased the prevalence of certain kinds of cancer, and we may very well find other significant differences between cane sugar and corn syrup: more research is needed.
I just said the two aren't the same. Yes, chemically they are all "sugars" but that doesn't mean we can't be specific, nor does it mean that all compounds in that family have the same effect on the human body. Considering that just about everything we eat in this country is over-sweetened with either "real" sugar or corn syrup, it would be nice to have some idea if one is worse than the other, and why.
I avoid all kinds of sugar on general principle (I use unsweetened ketchup, unsweetened fruit juices
If you read the article, you have quotes like this:
Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
And
Tumor cells thrive on sugar
In other words, while one type of sugar may be slightly worse than the other (I have no reason to doubt the study), it's like arguing whether it's worse to get stabbed or shot. Either one is bad.
No argument ... but that's why I said "not necessarily." Obviously the jury is still out on which sweetener will shorten your life by the greatest amount, so I simply avoid both of them. Hell, Aspartame isn't exactly free of negative effects either. Basically, we Americans just have to work on removing that sweet tooth.
Kinda off topic, but is anyone else enjoying the "real-sugar" sodas that are in supermarkets? Man so delicious, I stocked up on it. I wish this was sold all the time.
Very much on-topic. I grew up on Coca Cola as a kid long before the switch to corn syrup, and I don't care what anyone says, high-fructose corn syrup is not the same as cane sugar. There was nothing quite like a tall glass bottle of Coke, ice-cold, on a hot summer's day. So yes, I have tried the "real-sugar" sodas (just for old time's sake) and yeah, it was good. Sad to say, thanks to the switch to corn-based sweetener, Coca Cola hasn't been "it" for some time now.
Why can't these guys do the right thing and stop making this evil stuff? Playing a shell game with the facts does not change reality.
Yes, well, you can thank a company called UOP for pioneering the process of making this stuff on an industrial scale (that was actually back in the sixties.) And you can also thank Congress for so fucking over the countries that used to grow cane sugar and sell it to us, which is why we even needed a substitute in the first place. Now, of course, those growers have switched to cocaine, cannabis, and other much more profitable crops.
Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."
That's not necessarily true.