Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
Sorry to seem pedantic, but science works by creating hypothesis and testing them, not theories.
Theories need to be supported by a vast body of evidence, and should provide both an explanation and the ability to make falsifiable predictions. They start out as hypothesis, however once experimentation and observation bear out the hypothesis, and sufficient data is accrued to show that all the expected data fits the hypothesis, and that predictions made by the hypothesis continue to be valid, then the framework derived from the hypothesis can be called a theory.
The point being, once something in science is considered a theory, you're long past the creation and testing stages (although there is nothing wrong with continuing to validate new data against existing theories; and obviously once new data is available some theories become either no longer valid, or only valid for certain systems of constraints). What you were talking about above are hypothesis, and the difference is critical to make in this world of vast scientific illiteracy.
But in which direction will my thumbs "naturally" point when I rest my hands on the device? If I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360, my thumbs will "naturally" point in a somewhat different direction than if I've been playing a lot of PlayStation 3. And different people's thumbs are different sizes. Furthermore, hands will shift somewhat during gameplay.
The direction your thumbs point doesn't matter, as the iPad doesn't calculate the orientation of your fingers, merely where on screen they touch. If you want to put them on a 45 degree angle, that's fine. Naturally, up is still going to be towards the top of the screen, but with the bevel as a sort of guide this isn't difficult to maintain without looking at all.
Are you talking about the system described here and used for directional control in Super Mario 64 DS (2004), where the thumbstick recenters each time the thumb is lifted and replaced? If so, how easily do players adapt to "right thumb swipe up == jump"?
I don't play a lot of games, so I can't really say what the typical scenario is. However, from the ones I have which have some sort of "jump" feature, this is usually given a dedicated button, with the virtual gamepad acting more for direction than discrete actions. Different control surface requires a different input paradigm.
The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick.
Was this before the Wii U was first publicly demonstrated?
This functionality was demonstrated at the iPad 2 launch on March 2nd, 2011. According to Wikipedia, the Wii U was first announced in April 2011. So it seems like it was indeed.
Games on the iPad that require such controls usually use on-screen controls where your hands will naturally rest when holding the device. Effectively, parts of the sides and corners of the display become your control pad. Some emulate distinct buttons (such as in Prince of Persia), whereas others use a sort of virtual thumbstick.
The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick. I think the only reason why we haven't seen Apple really pushing this mode hard is that it works best in an all 802.11n environment with low and steady latency -- even though a number of games already support such a mode, for all too many consumers with unknown random wireless network setups the overall experience may not be all that great. And playing with a wire hanging out of the side of the device is a bit of a PITA.
What is with the love-in of having a dock? We live in a world of wireless accessories. There is no need for something like a tablet to have a ton of extra electronics to be able to handle a docking station connector and all of the necessary bus interfaces to go through it, when virtually everything you want to attach can be handled through the two major wireless standards already built into the device (Bluetooth and 802.11n or ac).
So why have a dock, when you can simply have your tablet pickup the devices on your desk wirelessly? My iPad already picks up my bluetooth keyboard, the network, and external speakers (AirTunes) automatically, and can handle an external display via AirPlay (if I owned an Apple TV, that is). Why bother with a) having yet another accessory to buy and b) the added bulk and cost of the electronics needed to support the dock?
Yaz
(Typed completely on an iPad, FWIW).
No, I think what Gates thinks is that everyone needs a tandem tractor-trailer unit. With a massive Windows logo and several giant "Intel Inside" stickers all over it.
(Typed on an iPad, FWIW).
Yaz.
"Overblown hyperbole"??? They changed their whole UI to make it more iOS-like.
No they didn't. The menu bar is the same as it always was. The Finder has no analogue in iOS. The Dock is still vastly more flexible and capable than what is in iOS.
So yes -- while a few things have changed, saying they've changed their "whole UI to make it more iOS-like" is overblown hyperbole. I'm willing to bet than less than 10% of the overall UI widgets and construction was changed in 10.8.
They made the scrollbars smaller, less colorful, and they actually disappear!
This isn't 1992 anymore. All modern Macs have shipped with mice and trackpads with scroll capability for what -- seven years now? Other than my wife, who still scrolls with scrollbars? Besides which, going with a higher contrast bar as they have now is easier for people with visual impairments. And there are options in System Settings to disable the auto-hiding if you don't like it.
They took the color out of Finder sidebar icons.
Oh, so changing the look of icons is something that has never happened in any other OS release ever? Apple has changed their icons with virtually every OS X release they've ever released -- certainly since I started running it back in the 10.2 days. I don't think you can fault them for keeping their branding consistent, and if you don't like the icons they use, you can still change them to whatever you want. Go out to the Internet and get yourself an icon set, or rip them out of a previous release.
They took visual progress feedback out of Mail.
No they didn't. You can bring it up either by hitting Control-Alt-0 (as a separate window), or by pressing "Show" and then pressing the middle button at the bottom of the display to roll up the Mail Activity frame (once rolled up, it will stay that way across invocations until you roll it back down). And if you don't like the new messages down the side style, go into Preferences -> Viewing, and check the "Use classic layout" box.
And so on. I could go on for a while.
Then please do, because you certainly haven't done much here to prove your thesis that the hyperbole hasn't been overblown.
I always find it funny that there is this set of people out there who complain that you can't tweak OS X's UI enough. Then there is a set of people who seem to refuse to use any of the various UI tweaking settings Apple provides. Funniest of all is the set of people who are in the intersection of those two sets, who complain they don't like the way Apple has provided some of the defaults, but then seem completely ignorant that each and every one of them is indeed readily configurable, and that they shouldn't have to click a few checkboxes to make the software work the way they want it to.
maps primary characteristic is accuracy. Everything else is icing.
SO if you want to buy icing and don't care about the cake, fine.
That doesn't mean the map is
better.
As I mentioned, here in my part of the world, the accuracy has been excellent.
And I disagree with your entire premise anyhow. Accuracy isn't everything. Cost is also significant. I don't mind a small reduction in accuracy if it means a significant reduction in data transfer costs. Speed is also significant -- again, I can deal with a small loss in accuracy so long as I get the results I need quickly.
Both of these areas are areas of improvement in Apple Maps. The vector maps are smaller to transfer than Google's big set of bitmapped tiles, and don't need to be reloaded anywhere near as often. This also improves speed -- I can't list the number of times I've been in places with marginal 3G access where I've had to wait several minutes for all of the bitmapped tiles form Google to load, but where Apple's maps load significantly quicker in a complete manner. For me, those things are better, and are significant improvements.
And as I've mentioned several times already, in the region of the world I live in, I have yet to find a flaw with Apple's Maps. I recognize that isn't true everywhere, but in the region of the world I spend most of my time the accuracy has been every bit as good as Google's Maps ever was. As such, for me it has been better. For others, I suspect it will also be an improvement once Apple gets their data in other parts of the world up to expectations (and I don't blame people for complaining about bad data in Apple's Maps -- they have every right to complain about it). However, in my case, accuracy as good as Google Maps, with better features, less data transfer, and faster response? Win, win, win.
...and at least in my part of the world, the data is pretty good too, only missing any useful 3D data. But I don't live in a particularly massive city, so I doubt we're a priority.
My feelings thus far can be summed up as follows: the app itself is actually quite good. I like the fact that the maps data is now vector based, instead of Google's bitmapped based data; do any significant zooming in Google Maps, and suddenly you're using more data to download new tiles. This doesn't happen to the same level in Apple Maps -- the maps themselves are crisp, clean, and detailed, with less data going across the wire. The turn-by-turn navigation is excellent, and recalculates nearly instantly.
From that perspective, I think Apple's Maps is a huge improvement over Google's. The data for my region of the world appears to be pretty complete as well, and doesn't have some of the phantom roads that Google Maps has had here in the past. However, I haven't done an extensive survey of each to have any true metric to base any actual feeling on.
Of course, like everyone else, I've seen all of the captures of problem areas people have found. I've seen these for Google Maps as well. It does appear that Apple really needs to work on the data portion of their maps in many regions of the world, but the app itself seems to be a great improvement over the previous Google Maps.
Nintendo waits until after the biggest shopping week and day of the year to release a minature version of a console that is already outdated?
Please people -- reading comprehension! And maybe understanding a bit of geography...
According to the summary, the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada. Not the US. And here in Canada, the biggest shopping week and day of the year is Boxing Day (December 26th).
Setting aside for a moment a number of US stores in this country holding sales on the same day as their US counterparts do on Black Friday, and some Canadian shops following suit to remain competitive with both US-based stores in Canada holding such sales and to help combat cross-border shopping, Black Friday isn't really much of a thing here in Canada. It's not a holiday here, people who work are at work that day. It's just another day.
Congratulations to you and everyone else who either a) through lack of reading comprehension, didn't notice that the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada, or b) don't know that Canada is still a sovereign country with different traditions and customs (and often prices) than the US.
But the standard price is $130, any do poor people really play knockoff consoles?
The price may be $130 in the US, but it's $149.99 from BestBuy Canada (you know, where the Wii Mini is being sold), making the Mini 2/3rds the regular price.
I can certainly see a market here for this, particularly for use in cottage country. Often in such situations, cottages aren't equipped with Internet connectivity, and parents may want a cheaper version of the console they already have at home to allow their kids to play the games they already own while at the cottage. Many of these places still have standard definition TVs as well -- you don't go away to the cottage to sit around and watch movies (we don't even have a TV at ours, but I certainly know many people in our cottagers association who do).
I guess we'd have to see how sales go after the holiday season. I won't be running out to buy one, but with a 33% price difference I can see price conscious families who want a second console (or their first if they don't own one already -- strange how new children keep popping up in this world...) may be attracted to this as a nice Xmas gift.
...to read this whose first thought was "Woo hoo! Big-ass RAM disk!"?
Apparently, there are SATA RAM disk assemblies out there, although apparently none that will work with DDR3 RAM (not that a quick search could find at least).
RAID (or perhaps LVM containerize) a pile of these suckers together, add in all those DIMMs, and you could have some seriously fast storage on your hands.
Practical? Probably for limited applications. Damn cool? Absolutely! It would be a like a Beowulf cluster of RAM disks...
Wait. You're trying to do real work on a tablet? I'll see you in 34 years after you write your first "grad school" paper using only a tablet.
I graduated from my M.Sc. program (Comp.Sci) a year and a half before the iPad 1 was released, so I didn't have the opportunity to use one to complete my 163 page thesis. That said, there are a variety of areas would it would have been put to very good use:
Reading/Organizing/Annotating Papers: as most computer science papers are readily available as PDFs, even from many decades past, being able to read, organize, and annotate papers on the iPad would have been wonderful. I could have easily read papers while on the bus, made notes, and kept them organized based on the parts of the paper they were suited towards.
Writing: this is a two-parter. There were many times when I was participating in some other activity when an idea would come along for something to add to or otherwise enhance my thesis. Jotting down shot notes during these times on an iPad would have been nice. More than that, using today's iPad, I would have been happy to write entire sections of my paper on my iPad -- as the paper was produced completely in LaTeX, it doesn't need anything more advanced than a text editor. Couple that with iCould synchronization, and I could author sections on either my desktop, laptop, or iPad, and have any changes made automatically synced and available on all the others. I doubt I would have used the iPad to compile the LaTeX document (that would still be better accomplished on a beefier system), but for composing and editing the text? I could completely see myself doing that.
As it was, the iPad wasn't available when I wrote my thesis. However, having owned and carried one around for the last year, if I had been able to leave my MacBook at home and taken an iPad with me to keep all my papers and do some writing and editing (I spent a lot or effort in the editing stage, often re-arranging written passages, editing equations, etc.), I would have readily done so.
It may not have been the sole device for this work, but it certainly would have held an important place in the effort, and would have made certain tasks much more pleasant.
Apparently Dawkins did not mind making negative comments about the muslim video while complaining about the comments that religious folk make about scientific claims.
Pot calling the kettle black much?
Nice straw an there -- the only negative comment he made about the video was this:
It's quite astonishingly badly done, as everybody agrees.
Have you not seen it? The production quality was beyond terrible, and was so amateurish a group of 8 year olds could have come up with someone better. And from the bits that have been released on YouTube, it doesn't even make any sense. Voices are obviously overdubbed in places, the sets are comical in how bad they are, and the dialog is incoherent. By any rational standards, it was "badly done".
Excuse me if I completely fail to see the equivalence you're trying to setup. He made a single negative comment that the film was bad, so somehow that should mean that religious fundamentalists should get a free pass when they use ignorance to criticise a well tested scientific fact? Really?
- isolates kids from their peer group based on criteria they don't understand, and prevents them from forming natural relationships with their classmates.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but as someone who was both inside and outside such classes, this is certainly not true, in significant part because being in an integrated class makes the problem worse.
Picture a kid in grade 4 (~9 years old) who could generally read, write, and speak at a grade 12 level (~17 years old). Put that kid in a class of children who may or may not even be able to read, write, or speak at a grade 4 level. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think all of those kids are going to socialize well with that kid, no matter how gentle, friendly, or outgoing he was, when they can't communicate ideas at the same level? Or do you think they'll just go with the simple route of ostracizing (and eventually try bullying) that kid?
I was that kid, and let me tell you -- it didn't work for me at all. In the times when I wasn't in an enriched class (at one point because my parents felt as you did, and worried I would somehow be socially stunted), I was usually ostracized by my classmates because it simply wasn't cool to be with the smart kid, or because I didn't have the same interest in music or fashion that the other kids did. Indeed, during these times I often socialized more with kids in later grades than myself, as the communications gap was much smaller. When I was in enriched classes, I had lots of friends and good relationships with my classmates, even when I didn't always share the same interests with them.
Putting all the kids in the same class doesn't magically make socialization easy when there are vastly differing levels of communicative ability. Indeed, virtually every class stratifies into groups based on differing levels of communications and interests, and if you're the one ultra-smart kid in a class of regular kids, you'll quickly find yourself in a strata all your own -- and kids can be merciless to other kids in their own strata (and not just due to intelligence -- I saw the same things happen to kids from less frequently represented religious and ethnic backgrounds face the same struggles, which is probably why most of my best friends throughout grade school were the Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu kids in my predominately white grade schools).
I don't necessarily disagree with everything you said above, but you totally missed the mark on that one.
My bible says "fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Proverbs 1:7). "Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart."
I think the modern scientific concept of "wisdom" and the religious/biblical meaning of "wisdom" differ greatly.
I don't know Prof. Dawkins, however I'll assume his definition of "wisdom" is along the lines of "being informed by current scientific theories that bear the preponderance of evidence, eschewing concepts for which there is no evidence, while being open to changes as more evidence and better models present themselves."
Unfortunately, the religious definition of "wisdom" typically winds up meaning "is able to quote bible/torah/koran verses verbatim".
The point being, "wisdom" is a very slippery word with a very nebulous definition that changes depending on who you're talking to. Which one do the verses you quote above refer to? Probably depends on who you ask, but I suspect most "experts" in this area would point towards religious wisdom rather than rationality.
Filesystems, generally speaking, aren't resilient to the underlying disk geometry changing after they've been laid down.
No, but many filesystems do have a way of flagging bad blocks as used, so that they can't be accessed. Depending on how the drive fails, as more blocks get marked as bad, the available free space can (conceptually) dwindle down to nothing without any changes in geometry. The simplest way is to claim the sectors as used by a "bad blocks file" so they can't be used for future writes -- which doesn't require any geometry changes.
That being said, it's been a very, very, very long time sine I've seen a disk fail in this manner. With over a billion sectors on a 500GB disk, chances are very good the entire drive is simply going to fail to function completely before every block is added to a filesystems bad blocks list.
Just to point out here the assumption of the question is wrong. Apple is proposing the exact opposite of ubiquitous computing. They instead have two products iOS and OSX which evolve semi-seperately so that data can pass between similar applications but that the applications are quite different.
Unfortunately, you've seriously abused the concept of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing doesn't require every computing device to be running the same software; instead it is the HCI idea that computing be implemented and "thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities."
Ideally, these computing devices can talk to each other in some manner (Internet, LAN, PAN, etc.), and interchange data. These devices may also contain sensors to read input from the real world, and could have actuators, displays, and other outputs to interact with the real world.
Everything running a single OS and the same apps, however, isn't a requirement of ubiquitous computing. It may not even be desirable, particularly when we consider minute-scale devices that don't yet exist where an embedded OS makes more sense. Specifically, "Windows Everywhere" isn't ubiquitous computing, it's a marketing strategy.
So great strawman there. Sorry I had to take it apart on you after you built it up and tried to knock it down.
I ride a bike in London, don't own a car and am in my 60s, to declare interest. I don't wear a helmet and am unwilling to do so.
The arguments that I citing in the heading are summarised here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost that is, neither car nor bike is particularly 'wrong' about any of this. The best thing [that we don't really have in London] is safe bike lanes.
So you've made the assumption that the only way you can have a head injury from cycling is by being hit by a car, and have built an entire argument around this premise then, huh?
Please allow me to relate the following two stories of accidents I've been personally associated with, one where the cyclist was wearing a helmet, and one where they weren't, with differing outcomes, and both occurring on cycling trails completely away from any motorized vehicles:
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, my brother (then a teenager) was riding helmetless on a cycling path, doing a good clip downhill when the front forks on his bike, without warning, broke off completely. As you can imagine from the physics, he landed face first on the pavement. He broke his skull in numerous places, broke his nose, jaw, and numerous teeth, had hair and skin ripped from his scalp, and suffered from a major concussion. At the hospital, my parents were told to expect that he may not make it through the night. He spent over a month in hospital, with his jaw wired shut. My grandmother sat at his bedside every day feeding him pureed watermelon through a straw. And while he has made a full recovery, 20+ years later he a) still has no memory of the incident, b) has numerous dead teeth, and c) bears the scars.
Two years ago I had an accident while cycling to work on a paved commuter cycling trail (a "mature urban cycling system" as someone terms such trails below), when I lost traction on a wooden bridge that spans a creek at the bottom of a hill. After sliding for 10m or so, my front wheel hit the pavement on the other side of the bridge at an angle, and I wound up going down hard. I broke my collarbone, impinged my rotator cuff, bruised all the ribs on one side of my bode, along with associated scrapes and bruises. I suffered no head injuries (and was assessed in hospital for concussion), but the impact at 20+km/h broke the helmet in half. I required a few months of physiotherapy for the collarbone, shoulder, and neck issues, but my head was fortunately unaffected.
So if you think your skull is somehow invulnerable, and there is no possible mechanisms for accidents and skull injuries because there are no cars nearby, then you are a total idiot. Helmets are cheap and effective, and there is no reason why any rational person shouldn't consider them standard gear when cycling. They do save lives -- and more importantly, minimize suffering.
I wouldn't wish what my brother and parents went through on anyone, including you. So good luck on your continued tempting of fate. I hope none of your loved ones ever has to hear the words "we don't know if he'll make it through the night" after you go out for a quick cycling trip.
Most colleges and universities offer these sorts of "service courses"; a sort of out-sourcing of expertise from one (or more) department(s) to another.
They are often required by students of non-CompSci degrees in order to become familiar with the basic software in use by their respective departments, in order to permit those departments to focus more time on teaching the material, and not the software.
Many faculties/departments have very exacting standards for how reports are formatted (i.e.: APA formatting and citations), or require Excel and/or Access experience due to their use in their faculties for data retention/organization/statistical analysis. Never mind that computing may have better solutions for these -- many of the professors in these departments aren't interested in computing, have a good knowledge of MS Office, and use it as a golden hammer to fit all their needs. They're interested in furthering their research, and not learning other toolsets. They want the students working under them to have a basic knowledge of the same tools as again, their purpose isn't to teach general purpose computing, but to get those students up and running quickly to further their own areas of research.
When I was doing my graduate work, I had several occasions to teach classes such as this (and several that were significantly more advanced). For some of them, we taught basically MS Office, a bit of RDBMS, and a little bit of scripting (Perl). We had other courses teaching C and FORTRAN to students studying other sciences (Physics, Chemistry, etc.). Typically, such courses are restricted such that CS students (and those in related fields of study) are disallowed from taking them, seeing as how they're considered far too basic.
Fortunately, most good schools (particularly if they have a COmputer Science department) do offer more advanced courses which you can take if you so desire. If you already have sufficient expertise in the area at hand, talk to a student advisor about an exemption (many of these courses, where they are mandatory, can be skipped if you can show sufficient proficiency in the subject matter at hand).
Before too many more people go off half-cocked, please allow me to remind everyone that every major tech company, particularly Apple, patents all sorts of crazy stuff that they never use. Here is an article detailing 10 patents from the last few years (the article is a year old) of crazy things that had/.ers (and others) predicting all sorts of weird and crazy stuff -- and not a single product has been released using any of them.
Remember when Apple patented touch gestures for the rear of an iPhone-like device? In the four or five iPhones released since then, have they ever implemented it? No. Seems doubtful they ever will at this point.
I'd wait until such a device actually exists in the wild before getting excited about it. Like a lot of companies, Apple simply builds up their patent portfolio for offensive and defensive purposes.
WTF? The iPhone was missing a major feature which Android has had for over two years, and which my regular phone has had since 2004? Navigation was one of my reasons for upgrading to a smartphone - so I wouldn't have to pay for a dedicated in-car GPS and map updates, and I was tired of squinting at a map on a 1.5" screen.
I've heard that Apple's contract with Google prevented them from providing turn-by-turn navigation using Google's maps data, which apparently was one of the big deciding factors as to why Apple ditched Google Maps and rolled their own solution. That's just what I've been hearing -- take it FWIW.
That having been said, there have long been third-party apps with turn-by-turn navigation.
The proprietary connector is only there to lock you into Apple products.
You only have to look at the pinout documentation of the (just retired) 30 pin connector to know that isn't true. The original 30 pin connector had communications lines for both USB and Firewire, permitting an iPod to connect to either port type using a single connector on the device side. Some of the pins were later used for composite video out (pin 8), and S-video chroma/luma (pins 9 and 10). Pins 11, 12, and 13 are used for standard RS-232 serial communications. Pins 2 - 6 were used for analogue audio in and out. So unless you can point me to a USB connector that provides analogue audio in and out, composite and S-video out, standard RS-232 out (and not RS-232 encapsulated within USB Bulk packets), and somehow also finds a way to jam Firewire into the cable, you have to admit that Apple had some very good reasons to use their own connector.
As for the new Lightning connector, I can't say. I haven't seen a pinout on it yet to know what signals are being put through it. If it's Thunderbolt compatible and/or has HDMI output onboard, then it probably wouldn't be sufficient to use a standard USB connector. If not -- then yes, it seems like a somewhat idiotic change to me, considering how many millions of devices and cables out there won't work with it.
Windows ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, but at the same time they have Office 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010
Why leave out WIndows versions prior to these? They often weren't all that much better...
DOS-based line: Windows 1.0, 2.0, Windows/286, Windows/386 (two separate products that were both effectively Windows 2.1 for different processors), Windows 3.0, Windows 3.0 MME, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 for Central and Eastern Europe, Modular Windows, Windows 3.11, Windows 3.2, Windows for Workgroups 3.1/3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME.
NT-based line: too many to bother listing, with all the various "editions"; I'll just link to the list here.
Version numbering inconsistency isn't new to Microsoft. They've switched from an independent number to processor type to release year to names and back freely as they've desired, all with any number of different editions. Version numbers (when used) may start arbitrarily at any value (such as the first NT release being 3.1), and version numbers may be skipped (MS Office had no v2.0 on Windows, and skipped internal version number 13).
Not that anyone else is much better these days. Personally, I don't really care what the version number is, so long as it's logically ascending (which MS seems to be poor at) so you can determine at a glance what release of a software product is newer than some other release without having to look it up.
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent
so this:
" If you do it and dont patent it doesn't count as prior art."
is just wrong.
In law yes, but in practice, no.
As I've already mentioned in this thread, patents are granted all the time where there is amply prior art, either because the patent applicant has hidden the prior art, has made it appear to be different enough to be ignored, or the patent examiner simply isn't aware of it and doesn't find it themselves.
And unfortunately, one the patent has been approved, you have to take the patent holder to court and prove prior art to get it invalidated.
So yes, in a perfect world any invention already known and used would invalidate a patent prior to being granted. However, in the world we actually live in, the examiners don't know about every unpatented idea/invention ever devised, and if they're not aware of it, can easily grant a patent to something that has ample prior art. At that point, the only way for it to be undone is to go to court, where the burden of proof will be on you to show that prior art covers the invention at hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
Sorry to seem pedantic, but science works by creating hypothesis and testing them, not theories.
Theories need to be supported by a vast body of evidence, and should provide both an explanation and the ability to make falsifiable predictions. They start out as hypothesis, however once experimentation and observation bear out the hypothesis, and sufficient data is accrued to show that all the expected data fits the hypothesis, and that predictions made by the hypothesis continue to be valid, then the framework derived from the hypothesis can be called a theory.
The point being, once something in science is considered a theory, you're long past the creation and testing stages (although there is nothing wrong with continuing to validate new data against existing theories; and obviously once new data is available some theories become either no longer valid, or only valid for certain systems of constraints). What you were talking about above are hypothesis, and the difference is critical to make in this world of vast scientific illiteracy.
Yaz
But in which direction will my thumbs "naturally" point when I rest my hands on the device? If I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360, my thumbs will "naturally" point in a somewhat different direction than if I've been playing a lot of PlayStation 3. And different people's thumbs are different sizes. Furthermore, hands will shift somewhat during gameplay.
The direction your thumbs point doesn't matter, as the iPad doesn't calculate the orientation of your fingers, merely where on screen they touch. If you want to put them on a 45 degree angle, that's fine. Naturally, up is still going to be towards the top of the screen, but with the bevel as a sort of guide this isn't difficult to maintain without looking at all.
Are you talking about the system described here and used for directional control in Super Mario 64 DS (2004), where the thumbstick recenters each time the thumb is lifted and replaced? If so, how easily do players adapt to "right thumb swipe up == jump"?
I don't play a lot of games, so I can't really say what the typical scenario is. However, from the ones I have which have some sort of "jump" feature, this is usually given a dedicated button, with the virtual gamepad acting more for direction than discrete actions. Different control surface requires a different input paradigm.
The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick.
Was this before the Wii U was first publicly demonstrated?
This functionality was demonstrated at the iPad 2 launch on March 2nd, 2011. According to Wikipedia, the Wii U was first announced in April 2011. So it seems like it was indeed.
Yaz
Games on the iPad that require such controls usually use on-screen controls where your hands will naturally rest when holding the device. Effectively, parts of the sides and corners of the display become your control pad. Some emulate distinct buttons (such as in Prince of Persia), whereas others use a sort of virtual thumbstick.
The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick. I think the only reason why we haven't seen Apple really pushing this mode hard is that it works best in an all 802.11n environment with low and steady latency -- even though a number of games already support such a mode, for all too many consumers with unknown random wireless network setups the overall experience may not be all that great. And playing with a wire hanging out of the side of the device is a bit of a PITA.
Yaz.
(Composed on an iPad, FWIW)
What is with the love-in of having a dock? We live in a world of wireless accessories. There is no need for something like a tablet to have a ton of extra electronics to be able to handle a docking station connector and all of the necessary bus interfaces to go through it, when virtually everything you want to attach can be handled through the two major wireless standards already built into the device (Bluetooth and 802.11n or ac). So why have a dock, when you can simply have your tablet pickup the devices on your desk wirelessly? My iPad already picks up my bluetooth keyboard, the network, and external speakers (AirTunes) automatically, and can handle an external display via AirPlay (if I owned an Apple TV, that is). Why bother with a) having yet another accessory to buy and b) the added bulk and cost of the electronics needed to support the dock? Yaz (Typed completely on an iPad, FWIW).
No, I think what Gates thinks is that everyone needs a tandem tractor-trailer unit. With a massive Windows logo and several giant "Intel Inside" stickers all over it. (Typed on an iPad, FWIW). Yaz.
"Overblown hyperbole"??? They changed their whole UI to make it more iOS-like.
No they didn't. The menu bar is the same as it always was. The Finder has no analogue in iOS. The Dock is still vastly more flexible and capable than what is in iOS.
So yes -- while a few things have changed, saying they've changed their "whole UI to make it more iOS-like" is overblown hyperbole. I'm willing to bet than less than 10% of the overall UI widgets and construction was changed in 10.8.
They made the scrollbars smaller, less colorful, and they actually disappear!
This isn't 1992 anymore. All modern Macs have shipped with mice and trackpads with scroll capability for what -- seven years now? Other than my wife, who still scrolls with scrollbars? Besides which, going with a higher contrast bar as they have now is easier for people with visual impairments. And there are options in System Settings to disable the auto-hiding if you don't like it.
They took the color out of Finder sidebar icons.
Oh, so changing the look of icons is something that has never happened in any other OS release ever? Apple has changed their icons with virtually every OS X release they've ever released -- certainly since I started running it back in the 10.2 days. I don't think you can fault them for keeping their branding consistent, and if you don't like the icons they use, you can still change them to whatever you want. Go out to the Internet and get yourself an icon set, or rip them out of a previous release.
They took visual progress feedback out of Mail.
No they didn't. You can bring it up either by hitting Control-Alt-0 (as a separate window), or by pressing "Show" and then pressing the middle button at the bottom of the display to roll up the Mail Activity frame (once rolled up, it will stay that way across invocations until you roll it back down). And if you don't like the new messages down the side style, go into Preferences -> Viewing, and check the "Use classic layout" box.
And so on. I could go on for a while.
Then please do, because you certainly haven't done much here to prove your thesis that the hyperbole hasn't been overblown.
I always find it funny that there is this set of people out there who complain that you can't tweak OS X's UI enough. Then there is a set of people who seem to refuse to use any of the various UI tweaking settings Apple provides. Funniest of all is the set of people who are in the intersection of those two sets, who complain they don't like the way Apple has provided some of the defaults, but then seem completely ignorant that each and every one of them is indeed readily configurable, and that they shouldn't have to click a few checkboxes to make the software work the way they want it to.
Yaz
maps primary characteristic is accuracy. Everything else is icing. SO if you want to buy icing and don't care about the cake, fine. That doesn't mean the map is
better.
As I mentioned, here in my part of the world, the accuracy has been excellent.
And I disagree with your entire premise anyhow. Accuracy isn't everything. Cost is also significant. I don't mind a small reduction in accuracy if it means a significant reduction in data transfer costs. Speed is also significant -- again, I can deal with a small loss in accuracy so long as I get the results I need quickly.
Both of these areas are areas of improvement in Apple Maps. The vector maps are smaller to transfer than Google's big set of bitmapped tiles, and don't need to be reloaded anywhere near as often. This also improves speed -- I can't list the number of times I've been in places with marginal 3G access where I've had to wait several minutes for all of the bitmapped tiles form Google to load, but where Apple's maps load significantly quicker in a complete manner. For me, those things are better, and are significant improvements.
And as I've mentioned several times already, in the region of the world I live in, I have yet to find a flaw with Apple's Maps. I recognize that isn't true everywhere, but in the region of the world I spend most of my time the accuracy has been every bit as good as Google's Maps ever was. As such, for me it has been better. For others, I suspect it will also be an improvement once Apple gets their data in other parts of the world up to expectations (and I don't blame people for complaining about bad data in Apple's Maps -- they have every right to complain about it). However, in my case, accuracy as good as Google Maps, with better features, less data transfer, and faster response? Win, win, win.
Yaz
...and at least in my part of the world, the data is pretty good too, only missing any useful 3D data. But I don't live in a particularly massive city, so I doubt we're a priority.
My feelings thus far can be summed up as follows: the app itself is actually quite good. I like the fact that the maps data is now vector based, instead of Google's bitmapped based data; do any significant zooming in Google Maps, and suddenly you're using more data to download new tiles. This doesn't happen to the same level in Apple Maps -- the maps themselves are crisp, clean, and detailed, with less data going across the wire. The turn-by-turn navigation is excellent, and recalculates nearly instantly.
From that perspective, I think Apple's Maps is a huge improvement over Google's. The data for my region of the world appears to be pretty complete as well, and doesn't have some of the phantom roads that Google Maps has had here in the past. However, I haven't done an extensive survey of each to have any true metric to base any actual feeling on.
Of course, like everyone else, I've seen all of the captures of problem areas people have found. I've seen these for Google Maps as well. It does appear that Apple really needs to work on the data portion of their maps in many regions of the world, but the app itself seems to be a great improvement over the previous Google Maps.
Yaz
Nintendo waits until after the biggest shopping week and day of the year to release a minature version of a console that is already outdated?
Please people -- reading comprehension! And maybe understanding a bit of geography...
According to the summary, the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada. Not the US. And here in Canada, the biggest shopping week and day of the year is Boxing Day (December 26th).
Setting aside for a moment a number of US stores in this country holding sales on the same day as their US counterparts do on Black Friday, and some Canadian shops following suit to remain competitive with both US-based stores in Canada holding such sales and to help combat cross-border shopping, Black Friday isn't really much of a thing here in Canada. It's not a holiday here, people who work are at work that day. It's just another day.
Congratulations to you and everyone else who either a) through lack of reading comprehension, didn't notice that the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada, or b) don't know that Canada is still a sovereign country with different traditions and customs (and often prices) than the US.
Yaz
But the standard price is $130, any do poor people really play knockoff consoles?
The price may be $130 in the US, but it's $149.99 from BestBuy Canada (you know, where the Wii Mini is being sold), making the Mini 2/3rds the regular price.
I can certainly see a market here for this, particularly for use in cottage country. Often in such situations, cottages aren't equipped with Internet connectivity, and parents may want a cheaper version of the console they already have at home to allow their kids to play the games they already own while at the cottage. Many of these places still have standard definition TVs as well -- you don't go away to the cottage to sit around and watch movies (we don't even have a TV at ours, but I certainly know many people in our cottagers association who do).
I guess we'd have to see how sales go after the holiday season. I won't be running out to buy one, but with a 33% price difference I can see price conscious families who want a second console (or their first if they don't own one already -- strange how new children keep popping up in this world...) may be attracted to this as a nice Xmas gift.
Yaz
That's actually quite old, having originated in 1991, and having been an in-joke on their website for quite some time. See: Sosumi
Yaz
...to read this whose first thought was "Woo hoo! Big-ass RAM disk!"?
Apparently, there are SATA RAM disk assemblies out there, although apparently none that will work with DDR3 RAM (not that a quick search could find at least).
RAID (or perhaps LVM containerize) a pile of these suckers together, add in all those DIMMs, and you could have some seriously fast storage on your hands.
Practical? Probably for limited applications. Damn cool? Absolutely! It would be a like a Beowulf cluster of RAM disks...
Yaz
Wait. You're trying to do real work on a tablet? I'll see you in 34 years after you write your first "grad school" paper using only a tablet.
I graduated from my M.Sc. program (Comp.Sci) a year and a half before the iPad 1 was released, so I didn't have the opportunity to use one to complete my 163 page thesis. That said, there are a variety of areas would it would have been put to very good use:
As it was, the iPad wasn't available when I wrote my thesis. However, having owned and carried one around for the last year, if I had been able to leave my MacBook at home and taken an iPad with me to keep all my papers and do some writing and editing (I spent a lot or effort in the editing stage, often re-arranging written passages, editing equations, etc.), I would have readily done so.
It may not have been the sole device for this work, but it certainly would have held an important place in the effort, and would have made certain tasks much more pleasant.
Yaz
Apparently Dawkins did not mind making negative comments about the muslim video while complaining about the comments that religious folk make about scientific claims.
Pot calling the kettle black much?
Nice straw an there -- the only negative comment he made about the video was this:
It's quite astonishingly badly done, as everybody agrees.
Have you not seen it? The production quality was beyond terrible, and was so amateurish a group of 8 year olds could have come up with someone better. And from the bits that have been released on YouTube, it doesn't even make any sense. Voices are obviously overdubbed in places, the sets are comical in how bad they are, and the dialog is incoherent. By any rational standards, it was "badly done".
Excuse me if I completely fail to see the equivalence you're trying to setup. He made a single negative comment that the film was bad, so somehow that should mean that religious fundamentalists should get a free pass when they use ignorance to criticise a well tested scientific fact? Really?
Yaz
- isolates kids from their peer group based on criteria they don't understand, and prevents them from forming natural relationships with their classmates.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but as someone who was both inside and outside such classes, this is certainly not true, in significant part because being in an integrated class makes the problem worse.
Picture a kid in grade 4 (~9 years old) who could generally read, write, and speak at a grade 12 level (~17 years old). Put that kid in a class of children who may or may not even be able to read, write, or speak at a grade 4 level. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think all of those kids are going to socialize well with that kid, no matter how gentle, friendly, or outgoing he was, when they can't communicate ideas at the same level? Or do you think they'll just go with the simple route of ostracizing (and eventually try bullying) that kid?
I was that kid, and let me tell you -- it didn't work for me at all. In the times when I wasn't in an enriched class (at one point because my parents felt as you did, and worried I would somehow be socially stunted), I was usually ostracized by my classmates because it simply wasn't cool to be with the smart kid, or because I didn't have the same interest in music or fashion that the other kids did. Indeed, during these times I often socialized more with kids in later grades than myself, as the communications gap was much smaller. When I was in enriched classes, I had lots of friends and good relationships with my classmates, even when I didn't always share the same interests with them.
Putting all the kids in the same class doesn't magically make socialization easy when there are vastly differing levels of communicative ability. Indeed, virtually every class stratifies into groups based on differing levels of communications and interests, and if you're the one ultra-smart kid in a class of regular kids, you'll quickly find yourself in a strata all your own -- and kids can be merciless to other kids in their own strata (and not just due to intelligence -- I saw the same things happen to kids from less frequently represented religious and ethnic backgrounds face the same struggles, which is probably why most of my best friends throughout grade school were the Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu kids in my predominately white grade schools).
I don't necessarily disagree with everything you said above, but you totally missed the mark on that one.
Yaz
My bible says "fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Proverbs 1:7). "Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart."
I think the modern scientific concept of "wisdom" and the religious/biblical meaning of "wisdom" differ greatly.
I don't know Prof. Dawkins, however I'll assume his definition of "wisdom" is along the lines of "being informed by current scientific theories that bear the preponderance of evidence, eschewing concepts for which there is no evidence, while being open to changes as more evidence and better models present themselves."
Unfortunately, the religious definition of "wisdom" typically winds up meaning "is able to quote bible/torah/koran verses verbatim".
The point being, "wisdom" is a very slippery word with a very nebulous definition that changes depending on who you're talking to. Which one do the verses you quote above refer to? Probably depends on who you ask, but I suspect most "experts" in this area would point towards religious wisdom rather than rationality.
Yaz
Filesystems, generally speaking, aren't resilient to the underlying disk geometry changing after they've been laid down.
No, but many filesystems do have a way of flagging bad blocks as used, so that they can't be accessed. Depending on how the drive fails, as more blocks get marked as bad, the available free space can (conceptually) dwindle down to nothing without any changes in geometry. The simplest way is to claim the sectors as used by a "bad blocks file" so they can't be used for future writes -- which doesn't require any geometry changes.
That being said, it's been a very, very, very long time sine I've seen a disk fail in this manner. With over a billion sectors on a 500GB disk, chances are very good the entire drive is simply going to fail to function completely before every block is added to a filesystems bad blocks list.
Yaz
Just to point out here the assumption of the question is wrong. Apple is proposing the exact opposite of ubiquitous computing. They instead have two products iOS and OSX which evolve semi-seperately so that data can pass between similar applications but that the applications are quite different.
Unfortunately, you've seriously abused the concept of ubiquitous computing . Ubiquitous computing doesn't require every computing device to be running the same software; instead it is the HCI idea that computing be implemented and "thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities."
Ideally, these computing devices can talk to each other in some manner (Internet, LAN, PAN, etc.), and interchange data. These devices may also contain sensors to read input from the real world, and could have actuators, displays, and other outputs to interact with the real world.
Everything running a single OS and the same apps, however, isn't a requirement of ubiquitous computing. It may not even be desirable, particularly when we consider minute-scale devices that don't yet exist where an embedded OS makes more sense. Specifically, "Windows Everywhere" isn't ubiquitous computing, it's a marketing strategy.
So great strawman there. Sorry I had to take it apart on you after you built it up and tried to knock it down.
Yaz
I ride a bike in London, don't own a car and am in my 60s, to declare interest. I don't wear a helmet and am unwilling to do so.
The arguments that I citing in the heading are summarised here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost that is, neither car nor bike is particularly 'wrong' about any of this. The best thing [that we don't really have in London] is safe bike lanes.
So you've made the assumption that the only way you can have a head injury from cycling is by being hit by a car, and have built an entire argument around this premise then, huh?
Please allow me to relate the following two stories of accidents I've been personally associated with, one where the cyclist was wearing a helmet, and one where they weren't, with differing outcomes, and both occurring on cycling trails completely away from any motorized vehicles:
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, my brother (then a teenager) was riding helmetless on a cycling path, doing a good clip downhill when the front forks on his bike, without warning, broke off completely. As you can imagine from the physics, he landed face first on the pavement. He broke his skull in numerous places, broke his nose, jaw, and numerous teeth, had hair and skin ripped from his scalp, and suffered from a major concussion. At the hospital, my parents were told to expect that he may not make it through the night. He spent over a month in hospital, with his jaw wired shut. My grandmother sat at his bedside every day feeding him pureed watermelon through a straw. And while he has made a full recovery, 20+ years later he a) still has no memory of the incident, b) has numerous dead teeth, and c) bears the scars.
Two years ago I had an accident while cycling to work on a paved commuter cycling trail (a "mature urban cycling system" as someone terms such trails below), when I lost traction on a wooden bridge that spans a creek at the bottom of a hill. After sliding for 10m or so, my front wheel hit the pavement on the other side of the bridge at an angle, and I wound up going down hard. I broke my collarbone, impinged my rotator cuff, bruised all the ribs on one side of my bode, along with associated scrapes and bruises. I suffered no head injuries (and was assessed in hospital for concussion), but the impact at 20+km/h broke the helmet in half. I required a few months of physiotherapy for the collarbone, shoulder, and neck issues, but my head was fortunately unaffected.
So if you think your skull is somehow invulnerable, and there is no possible mechanisms for accidents and skull injuries because there are no cars nearby, then you are a total idiot. Helmets are cheap and effective, and there is no reason why any rational person shouldn't consider them standard gear when cycling. They do save lives -- and more importantly, minimize suffering.
I wouldn't wish what my brother and parents went through on anyone, including you. So good luck on your continued tempting of fate. I hope none of your loved ones ever has to hear the words "we don't know if he'll make it through the night" after you go out for a quick cycling trip.
Yaz
Most colleges and universities offer these sorts of "service courses"; a sort of out-sourcing of expertise from one (or more) department(s) to another.
They are often required by students of non-CompSci degrees in order to become familiar with the basic software in use by their respective departments, in order to permit those departments to focus more time on teaching the material, and not the software.
Many faculties/departments have very exacting standards for how reports are formatted (i.e.: APA formatting and citations), or require Excel and/or Access experience due to their use in their faculties for data retention/organization/statistical analysis. Never mind that computing may have better solutions for these -- many of the professors in these departments aren't interested in computing, have a good knowledge of MS Office, and use it as a golden hammer to fit all their needs. They're interested in furthering their research, and not learning other toolsets. They want the students working under them to have a basic knowledge of the same tools as again, their purpose isn't to teach general purpose computing, but to get those students up and running quickly to further their own areas of research.
When I was doing my graduate work, I had several occasions to teach classes such as this (and several that were significantly more advanced). For some of them, we taught basically MS Office, a bit of RDBMS, and a little bit of scripting (Perl). We had other courses teaching C and FORTRAN to students studying other sciences (Physics, Chemistry, etc.). Typically, such courses are restricted such that CS students (and those in related fields of study) are disallowed from taking them, seeing as how they're considered far too basic.
Fortunately, most good schools (particularly if they have a COmputer Science department) do offer more advanced courses which you can take if you so desire. If you already have sufficient expertise in the area at hand, talk to a student advisor about an exemption (many of these courses, where they are mandatory, can be skipped if you can show sufficient proficiency in the subject matter at hand).
Yaz
Before too many more people go off half-cocked, please allow me to remind everyone that every major tech company, particularly Apple, patents all sorts of crazy stuff that they never use. Here is an article detailing 10 patents from the last few years (the article is a year old) of crazy things that had /.ers (and others) predicting all sorts of weird and crazy stuff -- and not a single product has been released using any of them.
Remember when Apple patented touch gestures for the rear of an iPhone-like device? In the four or five iPhones released since then, have they ever implemented it? No. Seems doubtful they ever will at this point.
I'd wait until such a device actually exists in the wild before getting excited about it. Like a lot of companies, Apple simply builds up their patent portfolio for offensive and defensive purposes.
Yaz
WTF? The iPhone was missing a major feature which Android has had for over two years, and which my regular phone has had since 2004? Navigation was one of my reasons for upgrading to a smartphone - so I wouldn't have to pay for a dedicated in-car GPS and map updates, and I was tired of squinting at a map on a 1.5" screen.
I've heard that Apple's contract with Google prevented them from providing turn-by-turn navigation using Google's maps data, which apparently was one of the big deciding factors as to why Apple ditched Google Maps and rolled their own solution. That's just what I've been hearing -- take it FWIW.
That having been said, there have long been third-party apps with turn-by-turn navigation.
Yaz
The proprietary connector is only there to lock you into Apple products.
You only have to look at the pinout documentation of the (just retired) 30 pin connector to know that isn't true. The original 30 pin connector had communications lines for both USB and Firewire, permitting an iPod to connect to either port type using a single connector on the device side. Some of the pins were later used for composite video out (pin 8), and S-video chroma/luma (pins 9 and 10). Pins 11, 12, and 13 are used for standard RS-232 serial communications. Pins 2 - 6 were used for analogue audio in and out. So unless you can point me to a USB connector that provides analogue audio in and out, composite and S-video out, standard RS-232 out (and not RS-232 encapsulated within USB Bulk packets), and somehow also finds a way to jam Firewire into the cable, you have to admit that Apple had some very good reasons to use their own connector.
As for the new Lightning connector, I can't say. I haven't seen a pinout on it yet to know what signals are being put through it. If it's Thunderbolt compatible and/or has HDMI output onboard, then it probably wouldn't be sufficient to use a standard USB connector. If not -- then yes, it seems like a somewhat idiotic change to me, considering how many millions of devices and cables out there won't work with it.
Yaz
Windows ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, but at the same time they have Office 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010
Why leave out WIndows versions prior to these? They often weren't all that much better...
DOS-based line: Windows 1.0, 2.0, Windows/286, Windows/386 (two separate products that were both effectively Windows 2.1 for different processors), Windows 3.0, Windows 3.0 MME, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 for Central and Eastern Europe, Modular Windows, Windows 3.11, Windows 3.2, Windows for Workgroups 3.1/3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME.
NT-based line: too many to bother listing, with all the various "editions"; I'll just link to the list here.
Version numbering inconsistency isn't new to Microsoft. They've switched from an independent number to processor type to release year to names and back freely as they've desired, all with any number of different editions. Version numbers (when used) may start arbitrarily at any value (such as the first NT release being 3.1), and version numbers may be skipped (MS Office had no v2.0 on Windows, and skipped internal version number 13).
Not that anyone else is much better these days. Personally, I don't really care what the version number is, so long as it's logically ascending (which MS seems to be poor at) so you can determine at a glance what release of a software product is newer than some other release without having to look it up.
Yaz
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent
so this: " If you do it and dont patent it doesn't count as prior art." is just wrong.
In law yes, but in practice, no.
As I've already mentioned in this thread, patents are granted all the time where there is amply prior art, either because the patent applicant has hidden the prior art, has made it appear to be different enough to be ignored, or the patent examiner simply isn't aware of it and doesn't find it themselves.
And unfortunately, one the patent has been approved, you have to take the patent holder to court and prove prior art to get it invalidated.
So yes, in a perfect world any invention already known and used would invalidate a patent prior to being granted. However, in the world we actually live in, the examiners don't know about every unpatented idea/invention ever devised, and if they're not aware of it, can easily grant a patent to something that has ample prior art. At that point, the only way for it to be undone is to go to court, where the burden of proof will be on you to show that prior art covers the invention at hand.
Yaz (inventor)