99% of sheep want 1 advanced feature in their word processor. Thing is, they all want a different advanced feature which the other 98% will consider unnecessary.
You missed a 3rd type; those who think they're too good for the rules. They think rules are for bad drivers but that they can speed, weave through traffic, and tailgate because they're "good" drivers.
As a driver who has seen traffics lights with older bulb types covered by snow, I cite the Safety First principle, and the concept of driving more cautiously in inclement weather. But really, undeserved snotty responses aside, would it be that much of a complication to add some switchable heat to the LED lights? The energy issue is only one of several that is driving the change to LEDs. They last longer, are brighter, more directional, have many more independent "bulbs" that can fail without losing the whole light, and probably some others that I can't think of.
Processes resulting in physical changes are patentable. Like, for instance, a process for curing rubber.
Processes that reult in symbolic results, like an algorithm, are just math, and math has never been patentable in the US. Otherwise, you could patent thinking, which would be untenable.
Software is the latter, IMO.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
If you use an FPGA, then you're not designing the NAND and NOR gates, are you? You're just configuring some switches for the physical device(s) that were probably already patented. Though the probability is that most of the relevant patents have already expired.
Finally, in no way does IQ correlate to one's ability to proficiently code.
Really? So someone with an IQ of 80 is going to be able to learn to write code just as well as someone with an IQ of 120?
Also, 6.7% of the 9th grade population is (in the US) more than 280,000 students. That would be a lot of coders even if only 10% of the 6.7% learned to write code.
I imagine Microsoft has no problem with being "forced" to remove support for custom XML elements now that the enterprise threat posed by OpenOffice has waned. Others [blogspot.com] saw this coming and warned that Microsoft's OOXML was a marketing gimmick pretty much from the start.
ODF vs OOXML has little or nothing to do with this lawsuit. The custom XML capabilities of MS Office application that were the object of this lawsuit are not part of the OOXML file format specification; by definition it could not be a custom schema if it's defined in the spec.
Fortunately, i4i is not asking you to pay damages. (Strictly speaking, they could. In turn you might be able to recover those damage payments from MS)
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
YMMV, but I don't remember any MS TV advertising that hasn't run in the last couple of years. And those ads would basically convince me to never use MS products (except that I can't avoid their products).
I may be wrong, but I don't even remember MS having TV ads before the incomprehensible Seinfeld ads. (print ads I've seen all over the place, but I've never paid much attention to them) Lately I've seen a lot of of MS TV ads, but they don't inspire me ("I asked them to make Windows easier" WTF is that supposed to mean exactly?)
You are confusing marketing with advertising. Networking effects purposefully pursued (and sometimes illegally enforced) were part of Microsoft's marketing efforts.
people that understand
people that don't understand
and the unmeasured majority of people that are in a state of superposition of understanding and not understanding
To keep in tune with your analogy, what if the client decides that the bathroom needs to be bigger and there needs to be a small garden in the living room and they don't like one of the pillars that's needed to support the original design.
Speaking as someone who does mechanical design blueprints and specs, sounds like business as usual to me.
In my experience, I've found it much easier to find Linux programs to do what I want, unless you're looking for a specific program rather than a way to do a particular task. YMMV
That joke reminds me of the Don King biopic, where he follows a boxer around the men's room trying to talk him into signing with him. After Don King urinates, and they go to shake hands on on the deal, the boxer looks askance (I forget most of the dialog) and Don King says "I wash my hands before I touch my dick." After which you realize, he had washed his hands first.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
On the contrary, rather than making wholesale changes to the functioning of the adult body, one of the common ways for mutations to successfully work into the gene pool is to make small changes that affect the way the embryo develops. This study will help us understand those processes.
Does simply sticking a gloved hand in a cage determine that [the fox is tame] so readily?
To evaluate the foxes for tameness, we give them a series of tests. . . . they are scored for tameness and assigned to one of three classes. The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. (Even Class III foxes are tamer than the calmest farm-bred foxes. Among other things, they allow themselves to be hand fed.) Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the “domesticated elite,” are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
Is that even a genetic predisposition?
Perhaps the changes observed are just behavioral.
We cross-bred foxes of different behavior, cross-fostered newborns and even transplanted embryos between donor and host mothers known to react differently to human beings. Our studies showed that about 35 percent of the variations in the foxes’ defense response to the experimenter are genetically determined. . . . To ensure that their tameness results from genetic selection, we do not train the foxes.
I like how they treat collective nouns as plural, because (in English) it avoids the male/female pronouns. Much better to say "they" instead of "he/she" (or to get accused of sexism by only using "he") when referring to the Contractor in a spec.
Slashdot Mirror
No, not really, they're all sheep.
Applying your insight to the original comment:
99% of sheep want 1 advanced feature in their word processor. Thing is, they all want a different advanced feature which the other 98% will consider unnecessary.
You missed a 3rd type; those who think they're too good for the rules. They think rules are for bad drivers but that they can speed, weave through traffic, and tailgate because they're "good" drivers.
As a driver who has seen traffics lights with older bulb types covered by snow, I cite the Safety First principle, and the concept of driving more cautiously in inclement weather. But really, undeserved snotty responses aside, would it be that much of a complication to add some switchable heat to the LED lights? The energy issue is only one of several that is driving the change to LEDs. They last longer, are brighter, more directional, have many more independent "bulbs" that can fail without losing the whole light, and probably some others that I can't think of.
mod the anonymous coward up.
Its trivial to make a light fixture that wont ice up, just make it perfectly smooth and sealed and vaguely concave
Really, there are many snow conditions where that won't work.
i4i has no grounds to seek restitution from me, even if I continue to use an unpatched Word.
Actually, if you use features covered by their patents, they do have grounds to sue you. Proving damages would be a different story.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
Processes resulting in physical changes are patentable. Like, for instance, a process for curing rubber.
Processes that reult in symbolic results, like an algorithm, are just math, and math has never been patentable in the US. Otherwise, you could patent thinking, which would be untenable.
Software is the latter, IMO.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
If you use an FPGA, then you're not designing the NAND and NOR gates, are you? You're just configuring some switches for the physical device(s) that were probably already patented. Though the probability is that most of the relevant patents have already expired.
Finally, in no way does IQ correlate to one's ability to proficiently code.
Really? So someone with an IQ of 80 is going to be able to learn to write code just as well as someone with an IQ of 120?
Also, 6.7% of the 9th grade population is (in the US) more than 280,000 students. That would be a lot of coders even if only 10% of the 6.7% learned to write code.
I imagine Microsoft has no problem with being "forced" to remove support for custom XML elements now that the enterprise threat posed by OpenOffice has waned. Others [blogspot.com] saw this coming and warned that Microsoft's OOXML was a marketing gimmick pretty much from the start.
ODF vs OOXML has little or nothing to do with this lawsuit. The custom XML capabilities of MS Office application that were the object of this lawsuit are not part of the OOXML file format specification; by definition it could not be a custom schema if it's defined in the spec.
I would like to know where my damages are.
Fortunately, i4i is not asking you to pay damages.
(Strictly speaking, they could. In turn you might be able to recover those damage payments from MS)
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
YMMV, but I don't remember any MS TV advertising that hasn't run in the last couple of years. And those ads would basically convince me to never use MS products (except that I can't avoid their products).
I may be wrong, but I don't even remember MS having TV ads before the incomprehensible Seinfeld ads. (print ads I've seen all over the place, but I've never paid much attention to them) Lately I've seen a lot of of MS TV ads, but they don't inspire me ("I asked them to make Windows easier" WTF is that supposed to mean exactly?)
You are confusing marketing with advertising. Networking effects purposefully pursued (and sometimes illegally enforced) were part of Microsoft's marketing efforts.
people that understand
people that don't understand
and the unmeasured majority of people that are in a state of superposition of understanding and not understanding
To keep in tune with your analogy, what if the client decides that the bathroom needs to be bigger and there needs to be a small garden in the living room and they don't like one of the pillars that's needed to support the original design.
Speaking as someone who does mechanical design blueprints and specs, sounds like business as usual to me.
You talk as if bundling IE was the only issue.
Inform yourself.
In my experience, I've found it much easier to find Linux programs to do what I want, unless you're looking for a specific program rather than a way to do a particular task.
YMMV
That joke reminds me of the Don King biopic, where he follows a boxer around the men's room trying to talk him into signing with him. After Don King urinates, and they go to shake hands on on the deal, the boxer looks askance (I forget most of the dialog) and Don King says "I wash my hands before I touch my dick." After which you realize, he had washed his hands first.
We should not shy away from the obvious implications for human evolution.
So we'll get white spots on our foreheads, our ears will get droopy, our snouts shorter and wider, and our tails will curl up?
great.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
On the contrary, rather than making wholesale changes to the functioning of the adult body, one of the common ways for mutations to successfully work into the gene pool is to make small changes that affect the way the embryo develops. This study will help us understand those processes.
Does simply sticking a gloved hand in a cage determine that [the fox is tame] so readily?
To evaluate the foxes for tameness, we give them a series of tests. . . . they are scored for tameness and assigned to one of three classes. The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. (Even Class III foxes are tamer than the calmest farm-bred foxes. Among other things, they allow themselves to be hand fed.) Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the “domesticated elite,” are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
Is that even a genetic predisposition? Perhaps the changes observed are just behavioral.
We cross-bred foxes of different behavior, cross-fostered newborns and even transplanted embryos between donor and host mothers known to react differently to human beings. Our studies showed that about 35 percent of the variations in the foxes’ defense response to the experimenter are genetically determined. . . . To ensure that their tameness results from genetic selection, we do not train the foxes.
It also wouldn't be that hard to put a circuit breaker or some sort of relay in the battery itself to protect against this kind of failure.
It's internal shorts that are bigger the problem, the kind you get when the battery is crushed. So the GP is off mark.
That one was tested by Mythbusters.
IIRC, they concluded that it was almost impossible to launch the bumper accidentally.
I know what you mean.
"humongous" is a gazillion times better than "ginormous".
I like how they treat collective nouns as plural, because (in English) it avoids the male/female pronouns. Much better to say "they" instead of "he/she" (or to get accused of sexism by only using "he") when referring to the Contractor in a spec.