Ah, but putting icons on a grid has been a design pattern of the desktop for ages and ages. No, it's putting icons with rounded corners on a grid that's completely new and innovative. The average user was cutting himself on those sharp corners of old. And everybody wonders why nobody likes Windows 8.
The Christian Science Monitor she founded is known to be one of the few actual moderate and unbiased periodicals in publication, so she gets a pass for her healing by prayer.
Besides which, Christian Scientists nowadays see prayer purely as a supplement, which is harmless by itself. That they're willing to change one of their founding tenets also says a lot about the church itself.
They don't need to miniaturize nukes. A conventional warhead on an ICBM will do quite a bit of damage. Manufacture them in sufficient quantities and it's practically the same as a nuke. Sure, cities might not be wiped off the face of the map in one strike, but the damage will be significant.
Their ultimate goal is not the U.S. but U.S. interests: South Korea and Japan. And if they hit Japan, nobody in Asia is going to be terribly vocal about the fact. The U.S. is making a lot of noise only because of this. They're not terribly afraid of NK missiles hitting San Fran or Seattle (though that's a consideration). They're scared they'll lose their bases in Asia, which will open the door to Chinese dominance in the area. And as Japan holds quite a bit of the national debt, the U.S. is afraid they'll lose a big buyer of their Treasury securities.
China on the other hand, is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, China needs to keep up NK propped up. Otherwise, there'll be a few million refugees swarming across the border, and the northern provinces will be overwhelmed. There's already a lot people crossing over as is, enough that Korean might as well be a second language to Chinese up near the border. On the other hand, NK is going to destabilize the region, and that's bad for business. China's infrastructure is not quite where it needs to be where they can go toe to toe with Europe and North America (U.S. primarily). Until then, they don't want someone making a mess of the place and opening up the area for anyone to grab, like what happened at the end of WWII.
Are you kidding? Macros are one of the, if not the most-used features of Excel in business (small and large).
Excel is effectively a lightweight database, and the macro functionality provides a quick and dirty way for Joe sixpack to get into the data without having to write queries. Everybody uses Excel. Even people who don't know what a database is use Excel. Excel is used everywhere to track everything from orders to invoices to HR information (in which case, the spreadsheet is locked behind a password).
Excel only fails for large amounts of data. And when I say large, I mean humungous--hundreds of GB to TB worth. It also fails when an outside vendor needs an interface into the data. But it's more than sufficient for all small business database applications, and sufficient even for most large business database applications, especially in-house data sets that are not too large.
And it's everywhere, and the main reason why nobody is going to crack the MS Office golden egg in the business and enterprise market. Powerpoint, Word, those are just supporting applications in the business world, present and useful, but not deal breakers. Excel and its macros is the key to Microsoft's dominance.
Basically, a system that provides intelligent summarization based on the weight of the reviewer. This exists, to a point, in that readers can mark a review as "helpful" or "not helpful". But I don't believe it's calculated into the final star rating of the product, and I know it's not calculated across reviews.
IMDB seems to have a pretty good weighing system for summarizing the reviews' star ratings. Maybe Amazon should take a page out of that book instead of just implementing sweeping and somewhat arbitrary policies. An intelligent weighing system at least gives them more fine-grained control over their review results.
human hands are really bad for punching, you get open bleeding knuckles in no time, and injuries if your fists and arms are misaligned
This is largely true for punching things other than flesh, and doing so repeatedly. Most people wouldn't be able to withstand more than a few (glove-less) punches to the face. Most people would get a concussion and not stand back up from just one well-placed haymaker. And that's the most natural form of punching (albeit not the most effective).
Martial arts, when poorly taught, will result in such injuries however. In particular, straight punches need to be done right to avoid injury, but that's also why people don't naturally punch straight.
Patents should be granted based (in addition to the current prior art and novel conditions) on having a working device originating from the applicant exhibiting the behavior to be patented, and some ability to purchase a product that exhibits this behavior (they don't necessarily have to be the same). The patent then covers products (which can be a component) that exhibits this behavior.
This way, software running on a general purpose CPU cannot be patented, because the behavior runs on somebody else's product (i.e. fails prior art test). Likewise, genetic modifications cannot be patented, as the organism would be a product of its parent(s), and not of the applicant. However, a novel way to insert genes is patentable (the product being the device actually performing the gene insertion). If, however, the method is actually some kind of natural process, again, it fails the prior art test.
The patent pending process would be used for patent applications that have passed all other tests but does not have a working device and/or a method of sale for said device. There would be a window between these, which could be as you suggested, five years. In fact, applications that are in this state can be transferred from entity to entity, so that the inventor has the ability to sell the patent within this window without needing to incur the cost of making a product and selling it.
Then, patents should be up for renewal after some time, at which time the only condition for granting the renewal is again, having a product exhibiting the patented behavior for sale.
When the government grants a monopoly, it's no longer capitalism. That having been said, infrastructure can be handled by free-market capitalism. But we as a society chose to not do so, because of the inefficiencies a capitalistic approach causes (imagine setting up peering agreements for sewer rights in the 18th or 19th century).
Instead, either limited monopolies are granted to maintain a certain piece of the infrastructure (energy, communications), or the government just does it (transportation).
Also, don't forget that free markets tend towards monopolies. Strict regulations (anti-trust and trust busting) are needed to either prevent or dissolve this.
I don't think regulation is sufficient. Any regulation enacted can just as easily be pushed back, the past 20 years have demonstrated. The government needs to take a hold of the infrastructure outright.
Several factors are at play, and they all contribute to the problem.
Without going into too many specifics (it is late), the summation of all the failures comes down to the deregulation and the failure to prevent monopolies of the communications and media industry over the past 20 years. In fact, certain attempts to "deregulate" result in stronger regulation elsewhere that ultimately promotes and enforces monopolies in these industries.
From allowing certain companies to hold onto multiple media distribution channels, to allowing larger and larger mergers, to outright granting monopolies and then not properly regulating them and enabling competition, this is all due to the idea that companies will somehow behave themselves and act according to the manner prescribed in the textbooks. It is due to a breakdown in the line that divides the duties of the government (to serve the public) and the duties of corporations (to serve the shareholders), where corporations are allowed to do the job that the government should instead be doing.
The financial crisis showed us this is untrue, and that didn't even involve government-sanctioned monopolies. What we saw there that was directly due to deregulation was banks indiscriminately spending, with no real return on investment strategy except wild speculation and some hope. In this case, the hope led to big paper numbers on the balance sheets, which led to big bonuses. With the telecos, you're actually seeing the polar opposite: not spending any money and letting the business stagnate. The extra money, once again, falls into people's pockets as big bonuses.
They are two extremes, and seemingly different, but they result in one and the same: a collapse of the industry. For banks, it's through disorder. For the telecos, it's through stagnation. These are two sides of the same coin. Where one is a cancer, the other is old age. Both lead to certain death.
The key (to everything, not just to government regulation or to the economy), is to find and maintain a balance between the two extremes. The coin should not land on either side, it needs to land on the edge. Taking the middle road, the center, is the only way to achieve and maintain prosperity. Of course, everybody ignores this idea these days, because short term gain is far more important than long term benefits, due directly to the unseemly mentality of making as quick a buck possible while doing as little as possible.
Of course, it's all pointless theory if the government is just going to step in and bail all of the failures out every time.
If there ever was a story where the pictures are worth more than any amount of words, this would be it. I'd go as far as to say that this would otherwise be a non-story if there are no pictures.
I put my most-used programs in the quick launch portion of the taskbar. I also auto-hide my taskbar (which has its own shares of annoyances, but I won't go into that here).
The pinned apps in the start menu are nice, but I reserve that list for programs that I use often but not all the time, and for programs that could be superseded by a different program altogether (e.g. a media viewer or non-Word text editor).
The difference? One click vs two for programs I bring up all the time (I still have to bring my mouse to the bottom to get to the buttons). Differentiating the important programs from the less-important programs, and hence not cluttering a single space with everything.
That's because UI people suddenly realized some 10, 15 years ago, that the keyboard and keyboard interfaces are faster than graphical interfaces. Graphical interfaces are better for certain things, e.g. finding options and settings. This is meta-work; it is work that the user needs to do to figure out how to do actual work. But the keyboard is better for getting actual work done.
To provide an example, seeking and launching a very specific program is actual work. Looking through a list of all installed programs, perhaps to find what to launch, is meta-work.
Windows used to be centered around the GUI. POSIX OSs are centered around the keyboard. Apple sought and found a middle ground. Have a GUI for meta-work, use the keyboard for actual work. With 7 and 8 (mostly 7 it'd seem), Windows seems to be moving towards the latter paradigm as well.
I think you are confusing the perspective of lawyers with the perspective of military veterans. As for the combat veterans I have known they seem perfectly fine with the notion that some speech will get you a kick in the ass or a punch in the face from your fellow citizen.
FTFY. It's partly what's causing society to denigrate into a mass of only the lowest common denominator. The idea that the text of the law says something (or doesn't say something) means that it embodies the spirit and purpose of the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but putting icons on a grid has been a design pattern of the desktop for ages and ages. No, it's putting icons with rounded corners on a grid that's completely new and innovative. The average user was cutting himself on those sharp corners of old. And everybody wonders why nobody likes Windows 8.
This is largely true of many, if not most Christian denominations. The problem is that when most Christians help others, they try to "save" them too.
The Christian Science Monitor she founded is known to be one of the few actual moderate and unbiased periodicals in publication, so she gets a pass for her healing by prayer.
Besides which, Christian Scientists nowadays see prayer purely as a supplement, which is harmless by itself. That they're willing to change one of their founding tenets also says a lot about the church itself.
The moon even has most of those.
That's no moon...
They don't need to miniaturize nukes. A conventional warhead on an ICBM will do quite a bit of damage. Manufacture them in sufficient quantities and it's practically the same as a nuke. Sure, cities might not be wiped off the face of the map in one strike, but the damage will be significant.
Their ultimate goal is not the U.S. but U.S. interests: South Korea and Japan. And if they hit Japan, nobody in Asia is going to be terribly vocal about the fact. The U.S. is making a lot of noise only because of this. They're not terribly afraid of NK missiles hitting San Fran or Seattle (though that's a consideration). They're scared they'll lose their bases in Asia, which will open the door to Chinese dominance in the area. And as Japan holds quite a bit of the national debt, the U.S. is afraid they'll lose a big buyer of their Treasury securities.
China on the other hand, is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, China needs to keep up NK propped up. Otherwise, there'll be a few million refugees swarming across the border, and the northern provinces will be overwhelmed. There's already a lot people crossing over as is, enough that Korean might as well be a second language to Chinese up near the border. On the other hand, NK is going to destabilize the region, and that's bad for business. China's infrastructure is not quite where it needs to be where they can go toe to toe with Europe and North America (U.S. primarily). Until then, they don't want someone making a mess of the place and opening up the area for anyone to grab, like what happened at the end of WWII.
That's because nobody argues with the Word. /ducks
And that is where you separate the men from the boys.
So to speak.
Are you kidding? Macros are one of the, if not the most-used features of Excel in business (small and large).
Excel is effectively a lightweight database, and the macro functionality provides a quick and dirty way for Joe sixpack to get into the data without having to write queries. Everybody uses Excel. Even people who don't know what a database is use Excel. Excel is used everywhere to track everything from orders to invoices to HR information (in which case, the spreadsheet is locked behind a password).
Excel only fails for large amounts of data. And when I say large, I mean humungous--hundreds of GB to TB worth. It also fails when an outside vendor needs an interface into the data. But it's more than sufficient for all small business database applications, and sufficient even for most large business database applications, especially in-house data sets that are not too large.
And it's everywhere, and the main reason why nobody is going to crack the MS Office golden egg in the business and enterprise market. Powerpoint, Word, those are just supporting applications in the business world, present and useful, but not deal breakers. Excel and its macros is the key to Microsoft's dominance.
Basically, a system that provides intelligent summarization based on the weight of the reviewer. This exists, to a point, in that readers can mark a review as "helpful" or "not helpful". But I don't believe it's calculated into the final star rating of the product, and I know it's not calculated across reviews.
IMDB seems to have a pretty good weighing system for summarizing the reviews' star ratings. Maybe Amazon should take a page out of that book instead of just implementing sweeping and somewhat arbitrary policies. An intelligent weighing system at least gives them more fine-grained control over their review results.
Nuts and soy are common allergens. Hemp, well, nobody's going to fall for that one.
Well, the former is worth $700 mint, while the other is about $200...
comScore has such information. However, their latest report (linked) is currently for October and compares against July.
human hands are really bad for punching, you get open bleeding knuckles in no time, and injuries if your fists and arms are misaligned
This is largely true for punching things other than flesh, and doing so repeatedly. Most people wouldn't be able to withstand more than a few (glove-less) punches to the face. Most people would get a concussion and not stand back up from just one well-placed haymaker. And that's the most natural form of punching (albeit not the most effective).
Martial arts, when poorly taught, will result in such injuries however. In particular, straight punches need to be done right to avoid injury, but that's also why people don't naturally punch straight.
Patents should be granted based (in addition to the current prior art and novel conditions) on having a working device originating from the applicant exhibiting the behavior to be patented, and some ability to purchase a product that exhibits this behavior (they don't necessarily have to be the same). The patent then covers products (which can be a component) that exhibits this behavior.
This way, software running on a general purpose CPU cannot be patented, because the behavior runs on somebody else's product (i.e. fails prior art test). Likewise, genetic modifications cannot be patented, as the organism would be a product of its parent(s), and not of the applicant. However, a novel way to insert genes is patentable (the product being the device actually performing the gene insertion). If, however, the method is actually some kind of natural process, again, it fails the prior art test.
The patent pending process would be used for patent applications that have passed all other tests but does not have a working device and/or a method of sale for said device. There would be a window between these, which could be as you suggested, five years. In fact, applications that are in this state can be transferred from entity to entity, so that the inventor has the ability to sell the patent within this window without needing to incur the cost of making a product and selling it.
Then, patents should be up for renewal after some time, at which time the only condition for granting the renewal is again, having a product exhibiting the patented behavior for sale.
Not sure about warding off other people, but I hear it's a really effective method of scaring off crows.
Evolution is not the word you're looking for. The phrase you're looking for is natural selection.
When the government grants a monopoly, it's no longer capitalism. That having been said, infrastructure can be handled by free-market capitalism. But we as a society chose to not do so, because of the inefficiencies a capitalistic approach causes (imagine setting up peering agreements for sewer rights in the 18th or 19th century).
Instead, either limited monopolies are granted to maintain a certain piece of the infrastructure (energy, communications), or the government just does it (transportation).
Also, don't forget that free markets tend towards monopolies. Strict regulations (anti-trust and trust busting) are needed to either prevent or dissolve this.
I don't think regulation is sufficient. Any regulation enacted can just as easily be pushed back, the past 20 years have demonstrated. The government needs to take a hold of the infrastructure outright.
Several factors are at play, and they all contribute to the problem.
Without going into too many specifics (it is late), the summation of all the failures comes down to the deregulation and the failure to prevent monopolies of the communications and media industry over the past 20 years. In fact, certain attempts to "deregulate" result in stronger regulation elsewhere that ultimately promotes and enforces monopolies in these industries.
From allowing certain companies to hold onto multiple media distribution channels, to allowing larger and larger mergers, to outright granting monopolies and then not properly regulating them and enabling competition, this is all due to the idea that companies will somehow behave themselves and act according to the manner prescribed in the textbooks. It is due to a breakdown in the line that divides the duties of the government (to serve the public) and the duties of corporations (to serve the shareholders), where corporations are allowed to do the job that the government should instead be doing.
The financial crisis showed us this is untrue, and that didn't even involve government-sanctioned monopolies. What we saw there that was directly due to deregulation was banks indiscriminately spending, with no real return on investment strategy except wild speculation and some hope. In this case, the hope led to big paper numbers on the balance sheets, which led to big bonuses. With the telecos, you're actually seeing the polar opposite: not spending any money and letting the business stagnate. The extra money, once again, falls into people's pockets as big bonuses.
They are two extremes, and seemingly different, but they result in one and the same: a collapse of the industry. For banks, it's through disorder. For the telecos, it's through stagnation. These are two sides of the same coin. Where one is a cancer, the other is old age. Both lead to certain death.
The key (to everything, not just to government regulation or to the economy), is to find and maintain a balance between the two extremes. The coin should not land on either side, it needs to land on the edge. Taking the middle road, the center, is the only way to achieve and maintain prosperity. Of course, everybody ignores this idea these days, because short term gain is far more important than long term benefits, due directly to the unseemly mentality of making as quick a buck possible while doing as little as possible.
Of course, it's all pointless theory if the government is just going to step in and bail all of the failures out every time.
If there ever was a story where the pictures are worth more than any amount of words, this would be it. I'd go as far as to say that this would otherwise be a non-story if there are no pictures.
This certainly would've been true had Nazi Germany won the war.
this is wild hyperbole
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I put my most-used programs in the quick launch portion of the taskbar. I also auto-hide my taskbar (which has its own shares of annoyances, but I won't go into that here).
The pinned apps in the start menu are nice, but I reserve that list for programs that I use often but not all the time, and for programs that could be superseded by a different program altogether (e.g. a media viewer or non-Word text editor).
The difference? One click vs two for programs I bring up all the time (I still have to bring my mouse to the bottom to get to the buttons). Differentiating the important programs from the less-important programs, and hence not cluttering a single space with everything.
That's because UI people suddenly realized some 10, 15 years ago, that the keyboard and keyboard interfaces are faster than graphical interfaces. Graphical interfaces are better for certain things, e.g. finding options and settings. This is meta-work; it is work that the user needs to do to figure out how to do actual work. But the keyboard is better for getting actual work done.
To provide an example, seeking and launching a very specific program is actual work. Looking through a list of all installed programs, perhaps to find what to launch, is meta-work.
Windows used to be centered around the GUI. POSIX OSs are centered around the keyboard. Apple sought and found a middle ground. Have a GUI for meta-work, use the keyboard for actual work. With 7 and 8 (mostly 7 it'd seem), Windows seems to be moving towards the latter paradigm as well.
I think you are confusing the perspective of lawyers with the perspective of military veterans. As for the combat veterans I have known they seem perfectly fine with the notion that some speech will get you a kick in the ass or a punch in the face from your fellow citizen.
FTFY. It's partly what's causing society to denigrate into a mass of only the lowest common denominator. The idea that the text of the law says something (or doesn't say something) means that it embodies the spirit and purpose of the law.
Dopey Higgs takes away 3 GeV, Sleepy Higgs is another 3. Meanwhile they can't seem to find Bashful Higgs.