You can't measure handwriting ability on a standardized tests. Therefore teachers refuse to teach it. When I informed my daughter that I was going to teach her at home and asked her what should be in the ciriculum, one of her main requests was cursive writing. And this was from a 7-year old. One of the big mistakes we make as a society is assuming the schools are responsible for our children's education. They are not. We as parents are responsible. Want your children to learn cursive? Teach them. Cursive writing guides are plentiful and free on the web. My biggest problem was choosing which style to use -- apparently there are many different ways of making some letters. In the end, I chose the style that was closest to my own cursive writing (which I haven't used in 30 years, since it is much faster for me to type.)
I would suspect that other traits indicating superior ability to bear and nurture children would also be pretty universal. Like large breasts and a wide pelvis, for instance. Can anyone point out a culture that doesn't find women's breasts attractive? (Other than the sub-cultures in Fire Island and the Castro District, of course.)
Now that I think about it, the Palm Pilot used gestures for some of the characters (e.g. a fish for K) in about 1990, so there is prior art. Using a finger instead of a stylus seems pretty obvious to anyone that has ever misplaced their stylus. Now, if they had a patent on multi-touch, then they might have a lawsuit against Apple, but few other vendors are currently supporting it.
Sounds like the patent is on gestures, not on touchpads. Surely there must be prior art for gestures? Apple just recently started pushing gestures as a competitive advantage for the iPhone/iTouch, so this might be a legit case.
I'm sorry, but that would violate my patent #96937642, "Method of effectively dealing with patent trolls by taking them out and shooting them". I'm afraid stringing them up by most of the obvious parts of their anatomy has also been already patented. I'm afraid you'll have to come up with a much more unique way of dealing with patent trolls.
Actually, I don't think 14 years for every invention is appropriate. The length of the patent should be proportional to the amount of time and money required to develop the invention. A new drug that requires several years and millions of dollars in clinical trials to prove safe and effective should be patentable for 14 years. An idea like "one click ordering" that requires a few beers, a few minutes, and a cocktail napkin to come up with should be given a much shorter period of exclusive use, e.g. 6 months to a year. Or perhaps 14 minutes...
no questions of why he's got lipstick smudges in the same tone that the pharmarep who just left wore. Did the doctor accidentally leave his fly open? 'Cause otherwise, I'm just a little concerned about how you managed to see those lipstick stains...
I watched a woman in slow-moving traffic talk on her cell as she ran into the SUV in front of her, then continue her cell phone conversation. Talk about misplaced priorities...
I was working for a 2-letter tech company in Corvalis. One of my computers had the company installed and configured Linux distro running on it, which cycled through screen savers. One of the screen savers put up fortune file quotes. One of the fortune files contained the Zippy the pinhead quote, "I want to kill everyone here with a cute, colorful Hydrogen bomb!!". Now imagine the reaction of a company rent-a-cop wandering through the empty cubicle farm at 3am and seeing this come up on a screen... I was called into a 9am meeting with security, immediately suspended for a week because "it was on your computer, so obviously you are responsible for it", and of course given no recourse for defending myself. Fortunately, one of my co-workers analyzed the computer, explained it to them, and a week later I was allowed to come back to work -- with no apology whatsoever for their overreaction or accusations of terrorism. Needless to say, I spent that week applying for jobs elsewhere, and a few month later one of those positions came through, and I was out of that madhouse. The worst part? I was suspended with pay -- which meant my project kept paying me for that week as it fell a week behind schedule since I was on the critical path.
It's not fucking rocket science. Yes it is. Many years ago, I implemented an embedded web server with custom slider controls in Javascript. Try as I may, I could not get the sliders to render the same in IE and Netscape. (Yes, I know, should have done a conditional and used completely different code for each browser. Ever hear of "deadlines"?) So I eventually had to give up and just make it work with IE. Hopefully the situation has improved by then, but the main problem is that the most popular browsers out there are not standards compliant. Get back to me when Firefox and IE pass the ACid3 Browser Test, 'cause right now they both fail. (IE fails quite spectacularly.) Opera, on the other hand, supposedly passes with flying colors.
Enzyte, despite the conviction of the founder and his mom for fraud, is still in business. They are still heavily advertising on TV, and apparently they are expanding and hiring. So there doing quite well for a company whose business model was proven unlawful in court.
Downloading material is not copyright infringement. Distributing copyrighted material (uploading) is. No one should be punished for downloading unless it can be proven that it was their intent to distribute the material to others. Unfortunately, the P2P protocols are built around the premise that everything you download is automatically shared with other people. Plus, the RIAA goes to great lengths to attempt to confuse people about the difference between downloading and uploading.
Let's put it this way -- if receiving on unauthorized copy of copyrighted material was actionable, then I could just copyright something, arrange to have someone else email it to everyone in the world, then start suing everybody who didn't delete the email!
While I agree with points 1, 2, and 3, as you point out, locking accounts after X number of invalid PIN/password attempts leads to a very well known DoS attack. Best to just disable access for an hour or less after 3 bad PINs; requiring customer service intervention for something that happens all the time can get very expensive. I would also point out that most small company voice mail system don't have a customer service representative to redirect to (like the company I work for, for example. The best you can do is redirect to the receptionist, who doesn't have admin access to the Cisco phone system.)
Slashdot Mirror
You can't measure handwriting ability on a standardized tests. Therefore teachers refuse to teach it. When I informed my daughter that I was going to teach her at home and asked her what should be in the ciriculum, one of her main requests was cursive writing. And this was from a 7-year old. One of the big mistakes we make as a society is assuming the schools are responsible for our children's education. They are not. We as parents are responsible. Want your children to learn cursive? Teach them. Cursive writing guides are plentiful and free on the web. My biggest problem was choosing which style to use -- apparently there are many different ways of making some letters. In the end, I chose the style that was closest to my own cursive writing (which I haven't used in 30 years, since it is much faster for me to type.)
I would suspect that other traits indicating superior ability to bear and nurture children would also be pretty universal. Like large breasts and a wide pelvis, for instance. Can anyone point out a culture that doesn't find women's breasts attractive? (Other than the sub-cultures in Fire Island and the Castro District, of course.)
but it only took the company one more shot to get it good enough to ship to their customers whom they've trained to pay good money for crap
Now that I think about it, the Palm Pilot used gestures for some of the characters (e.g. a fish for K) in about 1990, so there is prior art. Using a finger instead of a stylus seems pretty obvious to anyone that has ever misplaced their stylus. Now, if they had a patent on multi-touch, then they might have a lawsuit against Apple, but few other vendors are currently supporting it.
Sounds like the patent is on gestures, not on touchpads. Surely there must be prior art for gestures? Apple just recently started pushing gestures as a competitive advantage for the iPhone/iTouch, so this might be a legit case.
Snowboarding robot?!? I thought that was the swimming robot!
Why do the British drink warm beer?
Refrigeration by Lucas!
Drive around with a bunch of doughnuts, and you'll attract the attention of every cop in the county.
So, you are saying the following is patentable?
if (metabolitesTooHigh)
increaseDosage();
else if (metabolitesTooLow)
decreaseDosage();
Oh no! Now they will sue me for copyright infringement!
I'm sorry, but that would violate my patent #96937642, "Method of effectively dealing with patent trolls by taking them out and shooting them". I'm afraid stringing them up by most of the obvious parts of their anatomy has also been already patented. I'm afraid you'll have to come up with a much more unique way of dealing with patent trolls.
Actually, I don't think 14 years for every invention is appropriate. The length of the patent should be proportional to the amount of time and money required to develop the invention. A new drug that requires several years and millions of dollars in clinical trials to prove safe and effective should be patentable for 14 years. An idea like "one click ordering" that requires a few beers, a few minutes, and a cocktail napkin to come up with should be given a much shorter period of exclusive use, e.g. 6 months to a year. Or perhaps 14 minutes...
no questions of why he's got lipstick smudges in the same tone that the pharmarep who just left wore. Did the doctor accidentally leave his fly open? 'Cause otherwise, I'm just a little concerned about how you managed to see those lipstick stains...
I watched a woman in slow-moving traffic talk on her cell as she ran into the SUV in front of her, then continue her cell phone conversation. Talk about misplaced priorities...
I was working for a 2-letter tech company in Corvalis. One of my computers had the company installed and configured Linux distro running on it, which cycled through screen savers. One of the screen savers put up fortune file quotes. One of the fortune files contained the Zippy the pinhead quote, "I want to kill everyone here with a cute, colorful Hydrogen bomb!!". Now imagine the reaction of a company rent-a-cop wandering through the empty cubicle farm at 3am and seeing this come up on a screen... I was called into a 9am meeting with security, immediately suspended for a week because "it was on your computer, so obviously you are responsible for it", and of course given no recourse for defending myself. Fortunately, one of my co-workers analyzed the computer, explained it to them, and a week later I was allowed to come back to work -- with no apology whatsoever for their overreaction or accusations of terrorism. Needless to say, I spent that week applying for jobs elsewhere, and a few month later one of those positions came through, and I was out of that madhouse. The worst part? I was suspended with pay -- which meant my project kept paying me for that week as it fell a week behind schedule since I was on the critical path.
You do know cutegirl8 and littlesarah are both fat, balding, middle-aged men, don't you?
It's not fucking rocket science. Yes it is. Many years ago, I implemented an embedded web server with custom slider controls in Javascript. Try as I may, I could not get the sliders to render the same in IE and Netscape. (Yes, I know, should have done a conditional and used completely different code for each browser. Ever hear of "deadlines"?) So I eventually had to give up and just make it work with IE. Hopefully the situation has improved by then, but the main problem is that the most popular browsers out there are not standards compliant. Get back to me when Firefox and IE pass the ACid3 Browser Test, 'cause right now they both fail. (IE fails quite spectacularly.) Opera, on the other hand, supposedly passes with flying colors.
Sure, but can you use it effectively with just one hand?
Good thing the guy's name wasn't "Jack D. Ripper"...
Enzyte, despite the conviction of the founder and his mom for fraud, is still in business. They are still heavily advertising on TV, and apparently they are expanding and hiring. So there doing quite well for a company whose business model was proven unlawful in court.
Why not just tattoo the information directly onto their forehead or hand?
Finally, a phone that can automatically disable the ringer when the phone's owner is having sex (or snoring).
Downloading material is not copyright infringement. Distributing copyrighted material (uploading) is. No one should be punished for downloading unless it can be proven that it was their intent to distribute the material to others. Unfortunately, the P2P protocols are built around the premise that everything you download is automatically shared with other people. Plus, the RIAA goes to great lengths to attempt to confuse people about the difference between downloading and uploading.
Let's put it this way -- if receiving on unauthorized copy of copyrighted material was actionable, then I could just copyright something, arrange to have someone else email it to everyone in the world, then start suing everybody who didn't delete the email!
"BT" stands for "Big Titties", something the British are particularly fond of. In fact, they are so popular, they even have a website for them here.
While I agree with points 1, 2, and 3, as you point out, locking accounts after X number of invalid PIN/password attempts leads to a very well known DoS attack. Best to just disable access for an hour or less after 3 bad PINs; requiring customer service intervention for something that happens all the time can get very expensive. I would also point out that most small company voice mail system don't have a customer service representative to redirect to (like the company I work for, for example. The best you can do is redirect to the receptionist, who doesn't have admin access to the Cisco phone system.)
How am I going to read my own IPV6 address when I forget it when it's tattooed on my ass? Much better to tattoo it on the forehead or the hand