Its not all the patent offices fault. They have to follow the rules, and those rules were not set up for the torrent of patents they receive these days.
If you get too many patent applications, the process of establishing if prior art exists also gets swamped. Thus without a special effort, patents which have prior art can still get granted.
I've skimmed the patent in question, and it sounds like a new thing to me. There may be bits and pieces that invalidate some of what it does, but since the USPTO allows patents for software products (which has always struck me as dumb), this is probably valid.
I assume you're with the crowd that are (mis)using Slashdot's tagging feature to make editorial comments about window transitions not being a "feature"
Me? (I wrote the original post). I haven't even worked out how to do tagging yet, let alone abuse it...
Actually I turn window transitions off on every OS I use that has them, but that's because I'm still using my trusty old Gforce 6 series card, and the poor thing does choke a bit on the candy.
I'm into a little games programming on the side too. If you ignore the fact that the big players have all that money to spend, you can have quite a lot of fun.
remember that a lot of the greats of yesteryear were literally written on shoestring budgets, usually by small teams or loners. Most genres were created/defined by these very same small teams and lone developers.
Want to see some interesting history? Go read up on the development of the first ever Prince of Persia. I won't spoil it for you, but think 'motion capture'. If ever there was a story that could inspire someone to write their own games, that's it.
I'm an indie game developer, albeit a lone one, with no budget. I have plans though. My intention is to finish something I've been working on for a while and try to sell it. I have no idea how to market a game yet, but since it'll be barking ages before I'm ready for such things, its not really an issue.
The main reason I like gnome is that its a fast window manager with a low cruft index. This looks to me like Gnome trying too hard, and adding too many capabilities to what is, so far as I understand it, just a window manager. Why, for example include vnc? It's not like seperate client/servers for this task aren't available, and most are pretty good.
Is all this new stuff going to slow it down, that's the thing that interests me. If the team have too many things to maintain, just how good a job can they do?
Really? I'm trying real hard, but I don't see how "freedom requires religion" could in any way be considered secular.
Its easy, just re-define secular until it suits what the religious people want. Either that or he doesn't actually know what secular means.
After all, I have no idea what the point of Mormonism is, unless it means 'get rich by bugging people until they give us money', we can't all know everything.
Oh, yeah, complaining about wasting our money on war is just "flamebait"
Lose money? Ha.
The US made buckets of money in WW2 for example, it emerged as a world superpower as a result, with more money than a thing with lots of money. Wars require resources that have to be manufactured. Manufacturing those goods makes the companies money, and people get jobs, which gives them money. This helps the economy grow.
I'm not especially pro war, as in you wouldn't catch me joining up, but I am aware of the economic benefits it can bring.
The only time it doesn't is if your country is pwned. Even then its no all bad.
Japan has no military force beyond that required for self defence, and a small navy. That saves them a lot, and they got tons of money from the US post war to rebuild. Same for Germany. Its rebuilding was pretty much funded by the US. Same for the UK, which rebuilt using American money. The resultant trade links and diplomatic relationships have served the US well over the years.
Now the US is pouring money into Afganistan and Iraq. Tht might not be so good for the US fiscally right now, but it may pay off eventually.
I noticed today that in my local HMV they've got a sale on HD-DVDs. The blu-ray stand is right next to it. There were loads of HD-dvd's with lower price, and just a few Blu-ray, but they were spread out in the display so it looked like more to the casual observer.
Seems to me they're trying to dump their stock before the public wises up completely.
You know, part of taking responsibility is listening to expert opinions before making your decision.
Which experts, the ones working for the games industry, or the ones sponsored by 'pro family' groups?
Expert advice is ok up to a point, that point being not very far on what should be a relatively simple issue.
Young kids need exercise to build themselves up, and they won't get it by sitting on their backsides playing games. If you can't figure that one out for yourself 'expert' advice won't do jack.
A mum in my street with exactly the same access to information as me has two horrendously overweight and unhealthy kids (seriously, adult weight at 13, thats serious, and they started off thin). My kid likes the games, but he gets plenty of exercise, and wasn't allowed to start playing computer games a lot until I was sure he had a decent amount of time running about/playing in his life occurring *without* a special effort being made.
GR is only one of a large number of possible theories that all make similar predictions for the kinds of phenomena we have actually been able to observe. GR happens to be the one that was first written down, and as long as it worked, there has been no reason to consider any of the others.
There are others? I've never heard of any. At least not as an overall theory. I know there are theories as to the causes of specific phenomena, but those are, to my knowledge, within the General Relativity realm.
While the tree of life does have cycles, those are similar adaptations to similar problems, and can occur in diverse species which have been seperate for many millions of years.
Take the saber tooth adaption. That's been recurring since the pre-dinosaur reptilian era. Always to solve the same basic problem.
Is Pro family another word for 'don't do anything that would make baby jesus cry' or something? Good grief. I have a family, I'm reasonably sure I'm pro it, and I like games as they are. If somethings too violent I just don't buy it, end of problem. Do I need someone esle to tell me? Nope, I have a brain.
Remember when Hollywood started to think that any decent film had to have sex scenes in it? I mean the eighties and early nineties. They weren't legislated into stopping it, although there were the same pressure groups doing the rounds. It was a bums on seats problem. People weren't interested, so they didn't pay for the film, so they dropped the sex thing. There's only been one scene with sex scenes in it that I've enjoyed in recent years, and that's 'Free Enterprise'. There wasn't exactly much in that either. Ok Clerks 2 as well, but that was a donkey....um, bad example...
If people don't buy enough of the violent games, they'll stop making them, its simple business economics. If they keep on buying them, there's obviously a market, and it will be supplied, no matter what die hard 'pro family' bods say.
I'm interested in windows 7, simply because of this (supposedly) optimised kernel. Certainly I won't *ever* be purchasing Vista. I have one machine available that I need to use for vista builds of my software, but it doesn't get used (by me at least) for anything else, on account of being a pile of shit.
I liked windows 2k a lot, I learned Delphi programming on 2k box. These days I don't code on windows except for ports of my software, but XP is ok for games, and I still like and use MSoffice.
Unfashionable I know, but what can I say, I'm OS Neutral.
"After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?" wow, 1990 called, they want there argument back. Unless you are an incompetents boob, this is a non-issue these days.
Really? I know quite a few programmers who would tend towards saying your statement is nonsense, myself included. Last I checked, widget libraries still need some processor input, unless you have a magic widget set that operates on l33tness alone.
Just because processors are faster does not change the underlying problem, being that clock cycles spent on GUI related tasks are not being spent doing the important task at hand. If the processor is faster, you're still losing potential speed, just at a higher level. That's provided there is an important task at hand of course. I don't write software with much in the way of interaction, you set it up and off it goes. That's common to a great deal of scientific and system software, and many non trivial portions of interactive software.
I wouldn't mind a gui program that had large non interactive portions if it would kill the gui (unload from memory) while the non interactive portion was occuring.
I hope they paid for your cellphone plan, too, or that's a kinda crappy gift.
Nope, its a pay as you go thing, and yes, its a crappy gift.
I have no idea what possessed them to think I want one. I've been into computers and technology for years (being a scientist and all), but, and this is the important part, not all of it. TV also holds no interest more me, but I wouldn't go a day without the internet willingly.
I had an inkling this phone was a gift they intended a while back, and said absolutely no. Then it turned up anyway, accompanied by whines along the lines of 'you missed our call'.
Yes, that was my point. Never had a cell phone, never care to have one.
I was exactly the same as you till a couple of weeks ago, when some 'concerned friends' bought me one for the first time. I'm wondering what would be an acceptable period of time to wait before 'losing' it. I'm leaning towards a month, two at the most.
In this short time Its already irritated me, going off and distracting me all the time. I prefer email.
I can't help you with Vista, I'm apparently lucky to never have used it. XP is more than adequate for my current Windows needs.
I'm having to use Vista, at least minimally. My open source project has more windows users than linux ones (which I find bizarre for a console program),and like it or not, that means Vista compatibility has to happen.
I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed.
Neither do I.
Over the last five years I've written just one non trivial GUI application. All my serious work is shell based. After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?
And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot.
Lastly, why does Vista take 45% of one CPU just to handle frequent console printfs?
Why would a Microsoft "insider" risk their employment spilling well known issues about the XBOX 360 as "secrets" to a blog very read. That doesn't sound like a good career move.
It could be that they are planning on quitting anyway, people do leave jobs. Its not exactly a secret that the 360 is shoddily built though, is it.
About the only thing I can do is write letters to Congresspeople. Which I do. And vote. Which I do. I contribute to political organizations that I believe are helping to improve matters. What else would you suggest I do?
What else? I have no idea, I'm not you. Then again, perhaps you've heard of Rosa Parks? Just one little lady all alone. She seemed to do ok. Not the same problem, but she certainly had an effect.
I'm certainly darn sure that writing letters that (most likely) only interns read isn't the way forward. If that sort of thing worked the current mess wouldn't be happening. Nor is taking up arms the answer, that'd just get you locked up these days. Personally I'd go for non violent and persistent protest in person. Its hard to demonise a person who refuses to fight back, but also refuses to give up.
Slashdot Mirror
So If I start the code in a function one line down from the opening bracket I can get broadband in it?
Wow, Vim can do more than I thought.
It DOES have the advantage that it can look back in the browser history, but I'm not sure I see how that could benefit the user
Especially if the user in question has some things in their history they might not want popping up in front of others.
Its not all the patent offices fault. They have to follow the rules, and those rules were not set up for the torrent of patents they receive these days.
If you get too many patent applications, the process of establishing if prior art exists also gets swamped. Thus without a special effort, patents which have prior art can still get granted.
I've skimmed the patent in question, and it sounds like a new thing to me. There may be bits and pieces that invalidate some of what it does, but since the USPTO allows patents for software products (which has always struck me as dumb), this is probably valid.
I assume you're with the crowd that are (mis)using Slashdot's tagging feature to make editorial comments about window transitions not being a "feature"
Me? (I wrote the original post). I haven't even worked out how to do tagging yet, let alone abuse it...
Actually I turn window transitions off on every OS I use that has them, but that's because I'm still using my trusty old Gforce 6 series card, and the poor thing does choke a bit on the candy.
I don't do OS politics, I just y'know, use them.
I'm into a little games programming on the side too. If you ignore the fact that the big players have all that money to spend, you can have quite a lot of fun.
remember that a lot of the greats of yesteryear were literally written on shoestring budgets, usually by small teams or loners. Most genres were created/defined by these very same small teams and lone developers.
Want to see some interesting history? Go read up on the development of the first ever Prince of Persia. I won't spoil it for you, but think 'motion capture'. If ever there was a story that could inspire someone to write their own games, that's it.
I'm an indie game developer, albeit a lone one, with no budget. I have plans though. My intention is to finish something I've been working on for a while and try to sell it. I have no idea how to market a game yet, but since it'll be barking ages before I'm ready for such things, its not really an issue.
The main reason I like gnome is that its a fast window manager with a low cruft index. This looks to me like Gnome trying too hard, and adding too many capabilities to what is, so far as I understand it, just a window manager. Why, for example include vnc? It's not like seperate client/servers for this task aren't available, and most are pretty good.
Is all this new stuff going to slow it down, that's the thing that interests me. If the team have too many things to maintain, just how good a job can they do?
If it lands in your back yard, you get to spend 10 or 15 years in guantanamo bay to make sure you don't talk.
Nah, not unless they have a cell that's one milimeter high and fifty meters in radius, otherwise he wouldn't fit.
Really? I'm trying real hard, but I don't see how "freedom requires religion" could in any way be considered secular.
Its easy, just re-define secular until it suits what the religious people want. Either that or he doesn't actually know what secular means.
After all, I have no idea what the point of Mormonism is, unless it means 'get rich by bugging people until they give us money', we can't all know everything.
Oh, yeah, complaining about wasting our money on war is just "flamebait"
Lose money? Ha.
The US made buckets of money in WW2 for example, it emerged as a world superpower as a result, with more money than a thing with lots of money. Wars require resources that have to be manufactured. Manufacturing those goods makes the companies money, and people get jobs, which gives them money. This helps the economy grow.
I'm not especially pro war, as in you wouldn't catch me joining up, but I am aware of the economic benefits it can bring.
The only time it doesn't is if your country is pwned. Even then its no all bad.
Japan has no military force beyond that required for self defence, and a small navy. That saves them a lot, and they got tons of money from the US post war to rebuild. Same for Germany. Its rebuilding was pretty much funded by the US. Same for the UK, which rebuilt using American money. The resultant trade links and diplomatic relationships have served the US well over the years.
Now the US is pouring money into Afganistan and Iraq. Tht might not be so good for the US fiscally right now, but it may pay off eventually.
I noticed today that in my local HMV they've got a sale on HD-DVDs. The blu-ray stand is right next to it. There were loads of HD-dvd's with lower price, and just a few Blu-ray, but they were spread out in the display so it looked like more to the casual observer.
Seems to me they're trying to dump their stock before the public wises up completely.
You know, part of taking responsibility is listening to expert opinions before making your decision.
Which experts, the ones working for the games industry, or the ones sponsored by 'pro family' groups?
Expert advice is ok up to a point, that point being not very far on what should be a relatively simple issue.
Young kids need exercise to build themselves up, and they won't get it by sitting on their backsides playing games. If you can't figure that one out for yourself 'expert' advice won't do jack.
A mum in my street with exactly the same access to information as me has two horrendously overweight and unhealthy kids (seriously, adult weight at 13, thats serious, and they started off thin). My kid likes the games, but he gets plenty of exercise, and wasn't allowed to start playing computer games a lot until I was sure he had a decent amount of time running about/playing in his life occurring *without* a special effort being made.
GR is only one of a large number of possible theories that all make similar predictions for the kinds of phenomena we have actually been able to observe. GR happens to be the one that was first written down, and as long as it worked, there has been no reason to consider any of the others.
There are others? I've never heard of any. At least not as an overall theory. I know there are theories as to the causes of specific phenomena, but those are, to my knowledge, within the General Relativity realm.
As a matter of interest what would be the consequences to modern physics if Gravity waves do not exist?
There will be less for spectators to do when gravity scores?
While the tree of life does have cycles, those are similar adaptations to similar problems, and can occur in diverse species which have been seperate for many millions of years.
Take the saber tooth adaption. That's been recurring since the pre-dinosaur reptilian era. Always to solve the same basic problem.
Is Pro family another word for 'don't do anything that would make baby jesus cry' or something?
Good grief. I have a family, I'm reasonably sure I'm pro it, and I like games as they are. If somethings too violent I just don't buy it, end of problem. Do I need someone esle to tell me? Nope, I have a brain.
Remember when Hollywood started to think that any decent film had to have sex scenes in it? I mean the eighties and early nineties. They weren't legislated into stopping it, although there were the same pressure groups doing the rounds. It was a bums on seats problem. People weren't interested, so they didn't pay for the film, so they dropped the sex thing. There's only been one scene with sex scenes in it that I've enjoyed in recent years, and that's 'Free Enterprise'. There wasn't exactly much in that either. Ok Clerks 2 as well, but that was a donkey....um, bad example...
If people don't buy enough of the violent games, they'll stop making them, its simple business economics. If they keep on buying them, there's obviously a market, and it will be supplied, no matter what die hard 'pro family' bods say.
I'm interested in windows 7, simply because of this (supposedly) optimised kernel. Certainly I won't *ever* be purchasing Vista. I have one machine available that I need to use for vista builds of my software, but it doesn't get used (by me at least) for anything else, on account of being a pile of shit.
I liked windows 2k a lot, I learned Delphi programming on 2k box. These days I don't code on windows except for ports of my software, but XP is ok for games, and I still like and use MSoffice.
Unfashionable I know, but what can I say, I'm OS Neutral.
"After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?"
wow, 1990 called, they want there argument back. Unless you are an incompetents boob, this is a non-issue these days.
Really? I know quite a few programmers who would tend towards saying your statement is nonsense, myself included. Last I checked, widget libraries still need some processor input, unless you have a magic widget set that operates on l33tness alone.
Just because processors are faster does not change the underlying problem, being that clock cycles spent on GUI related tasks are not being spent doing the important task at hand. If the processor is faster, you're still losing potential speed, just at a higher level. That's provided there is an important task at hand of course. I don't write software with much in the way of interaction, you set it up and off it goes. That's common to a great deal of scientific and system software, and many non trivial portions of interactive software.
I wouldn't mind a gui program that had large non interactive portions if it would kill the gui (unload from memory) while the non interactive portion was occuring.
I hope they paid for your cellphone plan, too, or that's a kinda crappy gift.
Nope, its a pay as you go thing, and yes, its a crappy gift.
I have no idea what possessed them to think I want one. I've been into computers and technology for years (being a scientist and all), but, and this is the important part, not all of it. TV also holds no interest more me, but I wouldn't go a day without the internet willingly.
I had an inkling this phone was a gift they intended a while back, and said absolutely no. Then it turned up anyway, accompanied by whines along the lines of 'you missed our call'.
Yes, that was my point. Never had a cell phone, never care to have one.
I was exactly the same as you till a couple of weeks ago, when some 'concerned friends' bought me one for the first time. I'm wondering what would be an acceptable period of time to wait before 'losing' it. I'm leaning towards a month, two at the most.
In this short time Its already irritated me, going off and distracting me all the time. I prefer email.
GUIs are for two things and two things only:
1. A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)
2. Using firefox to look at pictures of pretty women-type people.
I believe you have those points in the wrong order.
Assuming you were ordering by importance that is....
I can't help you with Vista, I'm apparently lucky to never have used it. XP is more than adequate for my current Windows needs.
I'm having to use Vista, at least minimally. My open source project has more windows users than linux ones (which I find bizarre for a console program),and like it or not, that means Vista compatibility has to happen.
I are not like it btw...
I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed.
Neither do I.
Over the last five years I've written just one non trivial GUI application. All my serious work is shell based. After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?
And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot.
Lastly, why does Vista take 45% of one CPU just to handle frequent console printfs?
i seriously have to call bullshit on someone claiming they can measure an ocean to 0.2mm
Yarr, it be an average, I'm sure you've heard of them. Oh yes, and 0.2mm is a pretty big number, rather easy to measure.
Why would a Microsoft "insider" risk their employment spilling well known issues about the XBOX 360 as "secrets" to a blog very read. That doesn't sound like a good career move.
It could be that they are planning on quitting anyway, people do leave jobs. Its not exactly a secret that the 360 is shoddily built though, is it.
About the only thing I can do is write letters to Congresspeople. Which I do. And vote. Which I do. I contribute to political organizations that I believe are helping to improve matters. What else would you suggest I do?
What else? I have no idea, I'm not you. Then again, perhaps you've heard of Rosa Parks? Just one little lady all alone. She seemed to do ok. Not the same problem, but she certainly had an effect.
I'm certainly darn sure that writing letters that (most likely) only interns read isn't the way forward. If that sort of thing worked the current mess wouldn't be happening. Nor is taking up arms the answer, that'd just get you locked up these days. Personally I'd go for non violent and persistent protest in person. Its hard to demonise a person who refuses to fight back, but also refuses to give up.