Slashdot editors still apparently do not do any research before they post the stories. That has reduced the value of Slashdot as an advertising medium enormously.
I think it's a stretch to say that Google's entire existence... is dependent upon a patent. (ref: USPAT6285999)
Certainly that patent embodies the main idea that gave them much better search results, but that's only part of the equation. They also managed to:
a) have a nice clean interface when everyone else (Altavista, Yahoo etc) was filling their screens with more and more junk (it was the days of the ubiquitous "web portal" as a business idea)
b) have a fast response
c) scale with success
d) add features (notably advertising) without pissing everybody off
It was their execution as much as their idea that led to their success, and I think they'd be in a similar position with or without that patent.
I do agree with your core point though. There are good patents and bad patents. And this is probably a good one, since it's detailed, specific, probably non-obvious (not sure, never thought about the problem before their solution so hard to be objective) and was implemented by the inventor.
I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure the crusades were all about (initially) recovering Jerusalem. That's why there are crusader castles in Syria still today. By the 4th crusade they were pretty much just a cash grab across the far ends of Europe. The last one decided to sack Constantinople even though it was Christian.
Not a response to a Muslim invasion of Europe, which if anywhere, was happening in Spain (the Moors).
That's an entirely different thing and not what's being argued by the article.
I don't doubt that a tiger could do it (the evidence seems to prove that it can). But the article is not talking about jumping from a standing or any other start. It's saying: aerial velocity required to clear the fence with 55 degreee inclination is x, tiger can run faster than x, therefore tiger can clear fence. Those two x's are only marginally related at best but they are making a straight equation. That's the bad physics.
I don't doubt that your cats, and this big one, can jump. But they aren't going from full run to straight up at the same speed. They are possibly using the run to help compress their legs, but then it's all down to jumping. The speed of running has got almost nothing to do with it.
As the angle goes lower, the speed of running is more important, but at 55 degrees it isn't helping a lot.
From our calculations it was shown that a tiger only needs a little over 26 mi/hr to cross the 33 ft moat and clear the 12.5 ft high wall. From the current data that is available, a tiger can attain a maximum speed of 35 mi/hr.
35 mi/hr across the ground != 26 mi/hr at a 55 deg angle. I'd like to see how they propose converted that lateral velocity to the highly inclined one.
This is high school physics done badly. Very poor analysis.
Don't forget that XP was much more about the Win98 -> XP path than W2K -> XP (let's just forget about ME). The take-up of XP was Win98 folk moving to the W2K code base. W2K people didn't really need it.
Just to pull this discussion back a little from mental instability and mention his chess, his "game of the century", played at the age of 13 against a former US Open champion, is quite remarkable.
Thin is cool. Chunky is ugly. Phones are fashion items. You are not the target market, and actually, not representative of any significant market.
(don't worry, I'm with you, and I'm not representative of any significant market either).
Oh, and as others have pointed out, they have other models. That's the whole point of having different models. Different ones appeal to different people. This is not the one for you. Big deal.
The odds might be against you in a casino but that's not cheating. That's totally transparent and in the open. If you choose to play knowing that it's your decision. But the casinos don't cheat.
And of course Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work (could be on just one occasion) becomes Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job (implies regular behaviour) in the Slashdot headline.
Slashdot editing at it's marvellous best once again.
The obvious note here is that many of the enterprise software makers are switching to Software as a Service, shouldn't the open source community investigate the possibility of a Web OS?
Enterprise software makers do this as a way to increase their control, not because it is in their customers best interest.
Control is not a motivating factor for OSS. The best solution is. This will usually _not_ be software as a service.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly what the review said.
Why buy it and put it down, when they are quite comfortably burying themselves?
Sure, this is taking more time, but each defeat is another reminder that their original case had no merit. That's a good thing for the world to know.
You've researched that have you?
Certainly that patent embodies the main idea that gave them much better search results, but that's only part of the equation. They also managed to:
a) have a nice clean interface when everyone else (Altavista, Yahoo etc) was filling their screens with more and more junk (it was the days of the ubiquitous "web portal" as a business idea)
b) have a fast response
c) scale with success
d) add features (notably advertising) without pissing everybody off
It was their execution as much as their idea that led to their success, and I think they'd be in a similar position with or without that patent.
I do agree with your core point though. There are good patents and bad patents. And this is probably a good one, since it's detailed, specific, probably non-obvious (not sure, never thought about the problem before their solution so hard to be objective) and was implemented by the inventor.
For anyone in the real world, one word: Office
If you share documents with other people, you have to have Office.
I use OOo regularly, and I'm sorry, it ain't quite there yet with compatibility.
(Outlook is the other biggie of course, but not quite as ubiquitous as Word and Excel).
I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure the crusades were all about (initially) recovering Jerusalem. That's why there are crusader castles in Syria still today. By the 4th crusade they were pretty much just a cash grab across the far ends of Europe. The last one decided to sack Constantinople even though it was Christian.
Not a response to a Muslim invasion of Europe, which if anywhere, was happening in Spain (the Moors).
That's an entirely different thing and not what's being argued by the article.
I don't doubt that a tiger could do it (the evidence seems to prove that it can). But the article is not talking about jumping from a standing or any other start. It's saying: aerial velocity required to clear the fence with 55 degreee inclination is x, tiger can run faster than x, therefore tiger can clear fence. Those two x's are only marginally related at best but they are making a straight equation. That's the bad physics.
I don't doubt that your cats, and this big one, can jump. But they aren't going from full run to straight up at the same speed. They are possibly using the run to help compress their legs, but then it's all down to jumping. The speed of running has got almost nothing to do with it.
As the angle goes lower, the speed of running is more important, but at 55 degrees it isn't helping a lot.
Bingo. No wonder the big cats look happier these days then in olden-times when they had nothing but bare concrete to pad around.
Now they have realistic jungle environments to explore complete with cannon toys.
Just wait til the hippos find out!
Completely different application of force. Sorry not relevant.
35 mi/hr across the ground != 26 mi/hr at a 55 deg angle. I'd like to see how they propose converted that lateral velocity to the highly inclined one.
This is high school physics done badly. Very poor analysis.
Don't forget that XP was much more about the Win98 -> XP path than W2K -> XP (let's just forget about ME). The take-up of XP was Win98 folk moving to the W2K code base. W2K people didn't really need it.
You can see a version with commentary or an interactive chessboard version.
It's not Steve's obsession, it's the world's.
Thin is cool. Chunky is ugly. Phones are fashion items. You are not the target market, and actually, not representative of any significant market.
(don't worry, I'm with you, and I'm not representative of any significant market either).
Oh, and as others have pointed out, they have other models. That's the whole point of having different models. Different ones appeal to different people. This is not the one for you. Big deal.
And presumably these are not being called for release.
I take it that they are calling for release the format for "many different versions" of doc, xls, and ppt that ARE old obsolete file formats.
There may be something else in the release that implies a different intent, but not in the quote you extracted.
Ummmm, yes.
If you want someone else (for instance) to be able to write code to read the bytestream that your code writes.
Unless you want them to work out the format by reading your code.
That's the whole point. Five years in development yet there's no real reason to upgrade from the previous version.
Not inherently unstable but potentially unstable.
That's the candidate part of release candidate. There might still be things to fix, but there might not.
meme
Insightful? Idiotic more like.
The odds might be against you in a casino but that's not cheating. That's totally transparent and in the open. If you choose to play knowing that it's your decision. But the casinos don't cheat.
And of course Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work (could be on just one occasion) becomes Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job (implies regular behaviour) in the Slashdot headline. Slashdot editing at it's marvellous best once again.
You must have missed "Stuff that Matters"
You could try to respond to the whole article, as he did, rather than just a few selected lines taken out of context.
I think we've seen this exact same post about a dozen times before.
Enterprise software makers do this as a way to increase their control, not because it is in their customers best interest.
Control is not a motivating factor for OSS. The best solution is. This will usually _not_ be software as a service.