If there's no surgery, it's just a object - a tool, an item of functional clothing, more-or-less
Not entirely true. Contact lenses for example are all regulated. As is pretty much anything that performs any sort of medical exam or diagnostic that a medical practitioner relies on to make a diagnosis or treatment decision.
There's also the fact that they actually are traditionally expensive to make and fit.
They are also generally each one manufactured to order.
They also tend to be loaded with patents and royalties for everything from the design to the specifics of the materials.
The cost of custom prosthetic may also presume more than one may be required to refine the fit after you've worn it for a while, or to get the fit just right.
The doctor may then take the now very high cost of the the item and build in his time to fit, assess, and follow up with you into the price of the item inflating it even higher.
So the $thousands$ you pay for "an X" might actually cover "as many Xs as it takes to get it right plus all the doctors time working with you to get it right"
The US and its allies actually killed a relatively small number of Iraqis
As for what Saddam did: Anfal ~ 180,000? Another 10-20,000 in other atrocities? Call it 200k?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... Which figure are you arguing isn't valid? We're looking at 100k at least, civilians directly, and violently killed. The the larger numbers, showing indirect deaths... like people dying because they couldn't get to the hospital for X or Y or Z because we blew up all the infrastructure? Easily adds up to another 100k. Multiple estimates are in excess of 500k total. I don't think you can bleat "George Soros" and pretend those people aren't dead because of the war.
Not to mention we sacrificed another 4500+ allied lives to do all this too. Again far more than Saddam ever inflicted on us, even if you give him credit for 9/11 which would be asinine.
I'm VERY skeptical of your claim that we killed fewer Iraqi's than Saddam did, and I KNOW we tossed more allied lives than Saddam ever claimed.
The world is far better off with Saddam's regime being replaced by a democratic government.
Tell that that to the thousands of Iraqi's WE KILLED to make that happen.
We probably killed or led to the death via our war of more Iraqi's than Saddam did -- and I'm not forgetting that Saddam attempted genocide of Kurd's in the 80s either.
...which is a problem that is better-solved by having the local conglomerate provide a temporary, fast(ish) pipe for press over cable/*DSL, with a couple of well-configured 802.11g access points on non-overlapping channels (and another 802.11n at 5GHz, just because), with some decent QoS rules on a router and the WPA key of the day taped to the front of the judge's bench.
And the press will still ignore largely it, bring in all their crap, and turn it on.
Or, you know, hardwiring the court recorder's system...
This is the best solution. But running wire is a PITA.
Making mid-production changes in parts without changing the part number -- at least the customer-visible part number -- is not unheard-of, it's common.
Its not merely common its 'frustratingly common'.
I've experienced this time and again ordering replacement parts for a variety of cars. Usually the differences don't matter. The replacement is shaped a bit different, improved in some way, or the material is slightly different, the item has been cost reduced in some way perhaps, or suppliers were changed, and the part still works and still fits fine... but its not identical to the original.
That's generally not a big deal unless its a trip part. Then its maddening.
For example, I ordered a replacement rocker switch for my 911 power window some months ago, by part number. The part that arrived was in a slightly different finish -- the original was a glossy black plastic, the replacement was a slightly textured/matte black plastic. It was different, not merely "new" vs "showing some wear".
It fit and worked fine, but didn't match the switch for the passenger side window (which was right next to it on the drivers armrest) 100%.
But GPL is indeed cancerous, intentionally so. Interacting with GPL code is a mine field if you don't want to GPL your code as well, there was no lie in that.
Cancer spreads and is difficult to stop.
The GPL is entirely opt-in, and a 4 year old can understand the so-called 'mine field':
Do I want to release my code as GPL?
Yes? Then feel free to use other GPL code in your code. No? Then don't.
It is no more difficult than any other software development. Do you want to release something via the BSD license? Great. Can you willy-nilly link to code from other licenses as part of that? Nope. You have to be just as thoughtful with that too.
Ditto for any license... including the desire to release proprietary code. You can't just go around slurping code from around the internet -- and incorporating it in your product. Not just because of the GPL... but because you can't just include other people's random code in your product.
The GPL doesn't make this more or less tricky. It just represents a pile of code that's available to you to use if you want to reidstribute GPL code, and that's unavailable to you if you do not.
you cannot buy iOS, Windows Store or Android apps from BestBuy
Obviously I was referring to the boxes of Office Home and Student that you CAN walk out of best buy with. Next time I'll preface it with "Windows and Mac OS" so you can keep up.
The point stands though that neither Bestbuy for windows and mac os versions of software, nor Apple iTunes Apps Store enforces any sort of "are you a business or not" when making a purchase.
if you have an enterprise account to deploy to iPads
Then you wouldn't use it. Just as you wouldn't use your Microsoft Enterprise Volume License account to buy Windows and Mac OS versions of office home and student.
You are able to mix the app ownership models on a single device; so they'd just buy office home and student on individual accounts for each ipad that needed it.
You don't necessarily need Outlook [...]
You don't necessarily need Word and Excel either. But for the sake of THIS argument, we are assuming you DO. Likewise we're assuming the need for a competent supported exchange mail client.
Why did you disagree with him "um no[...]" and then set out to say exactly why he is right?
"Now it is true that while traveling at mach 5 the horizontal distance it drops will be much less over a unit of distance traveled than a slower shell,"
Pretty much exactly what he said.
"but it is still falling."
He never said it wasn't. He said 'less affected' not 'not affected'.
I would be shocked if the targeting computers did not take gravity into account - unless they are skipping the computers and just using the force.
So now you are mocking him for what he said, after repeating him. Well played.
You'll notice that there was virtually no griefing or trolling in old MMOs. Why? Because you didn't survive a day without the aid of anyone else.
Quite the opposite. EQ1 fostered such things as deliberately dropping trains on people you were pissed off at. Camping their corpses (in PVP) or training things to a corpse and Feign death / memwipe to leave them there in PVE. They'd also steal your kills, ninja your loot, pull the named after you cleared to him...
People were absolute douchebags on a regular basis.
Ever tried to get anything accomplished alone in old school DAoC? Or, hell, EQ? You were dependent on the rest of the server to get your gear back in case you died in some godforsaken corner.
This part is true, but that just forced the trolls to form into teams of like minded trolls... and that enabled new kinds of team trolling... e.g. having a high level shaman troll heal and buff your low level noobie harrassing troll to make him invincible as he ran around ganking people (in PVP) or make him that much more effective at training etc.
Then they'd log off their troll alts, login their main, and go off and raid with a large group of 'friends' who thought they were just another fine upstanding player.
Because trolls are not the game makers' problem, it's the players' problem.
The players need tools to deal with the trolls though.
For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.
I posted in another thread several examples; most of them revolving around a kitchen or living room 'family computer' especially the common scenario where the keyboard and mouse stored in a drawer.
Then for various quick casual interactions, like to check the weather, check twitter/facebook, start a netflix movie, start playing some music... etc you do it all with the screen without even bothering to get out the mouse and keyboard.
When they want to do any real work they pull out the kb and mouse and don't touch the screen.
I know people who have those big desktop all in one touch screens, and that's how they use them.
Is it a critical must have feature? I don't think so, but its convenient, and its not like they paid a lot extra for it vs a non-touchscreen version.
I owned a 90s era PocketPC, and hey, no slide to unlock.
90s era? I seem to recall those needing a stylus, and not working with a finger at all. I don't stylus free touch showing up until right around the iphone did.
And for that, the ideal solution is to use your tablet as the interface and Allcast to project it onto the TV
So if your doing math in the kitchen... you want to allcast some music from a tablet to the TV in the living room on another floor as the "ideal solution" instead of just using the computer in front of you? How is that idea?
In any case the fact that you can also do most of these tasks with a tablet + TV most of the time is great, you could also just use the keyboard and mouse for all those scenarios too. But so what? There is only one way to do things in your house?
If you take away someone's livelihood because of their beliefs and not because of their ability to do a job...
I am not taking away someones livelihood.I am choosing not to do business with them. That difference cannot be hand-waved away.
If you disagree, you haven't considered why most people join boycotts and it is precisely that -- to force a point of view.
The vast majority of boycotts are to force a business to change a specific business practice - like cutting down a park to build a factory or pulling a feature from a product or something else that affects consumer directly; very very few of them are over "their CEOs beliefs on some social issue" - unless the CEO goes out of their way to make that position known; in which case its fair game.
In this particular case; it sounds like it it wasn't the CEOs intention to draw attention to the cause; but regardless its out there now, and you really can't expect the world to put the genie back in the bottle.
Seriously, you think I'm going to sit and type and then reach up to the screen to do something?
No, nobody thinks that.
What is the use case for this that I'm missing?
A 20"+ HP that you saw in a store is aimed at the consumer family computer market. The use case, is its sitting on a desk in the kitchen or living room, and sometimes people will interact with it entirely by touch, without sitting down at the desk.
Maybe grandma is visiting and one of the kids wants to show her some pictures... tap, tap, tap, slideshow.
Getting ready for school, want to check the weather forecast... tap tap.
Doing some math homework? keyboard and mouse are in the desk drawer out of the way, textbook, pen, paper, and scrap paper spread out on the desk. tap - tap play some music. song comes up you don't like, tap- skipped.
Ok, math is done, time for that English essay. math textbook and paper away... keyboard and mouse come out. And you don't touch the screen for the next 2 hours.
NOBODY thinks you are going to sit there hard at work, hands on the keyboard and mouse and that you are periodically going to reach up to tap or swipe something. But there are all kinds of casual interactions that one can imagine where one will just use the screen entirely and not bother to use the keyboard and mouse... especially in households where the keyboard and mouse may be stored in a drawer when someone's not using it.
There's a reason why business workstations rarely have touch screens; and all the touchscreens are being aimed at the home consumer "family computer" area. Because unlike a business desktop, there are lots of imaginable "casual use" cases for a touch screen at home.
I know a couple people with them now, and they use them exactly as I described. If the kids just want to do something quick like start some music or watch netflix on it, they just use the screen instead of the keyboard and mouse. Given that they do keep the wireless keyboard and mouse in a drawer when they aren't using it, being able to use the computer for something quick like that is actually pretty cool.
Just a requirement? Ah, that's it then. Everything is possible, it just needs a requirement.
Is it?
cure for cancer. bullet proof t-shirt lightsabre space elevator flexible display cold fusion affordable efficient solar panel a cpu with i7 performance that runs at room temperature even a lightweight battery that can run a current smartphone for a month and charges in 10 minutes
Ideas are easy. I can come up with them all day.
There are teams of engineers, researchers, programmers, and other specialists working on most of those problems already. The one's that come up with solutions deserve a patent. They might even come up with multiple substantially different solutions each worth its own patent.
Isn't that requirement someone coming up with the idea of what they want to do?
Patents are on inventions, not ideas. Patents are on solutions to a problem, not on the statement of the problem itself. If you read a typical software patent, they are ALL contorted to try and make the solution to a simple programming task an "invention" because you need a physical 'invention' to patent something. In this case the invention involves combining handheld computer equipped with a touchscreen, and so forth, as if that was really part of the "solution".
You now see how a patentable idea comes about.
It should be for solving a problem for which the solution is not immediately obvious to several million people the minute you present them with it.
"Slide to unlock" when you've already got the underlying hardware is not an "invention". There are no interesting problems to solve to make it happen, its just a matter of doing it, and any programmer can do it. Its a task, you could give it to a million programmers, and they'd all be able to implement it, and they'd all do it in much the same way. Detect finger down in region A, detect finger moving from region A to region B, detect finger up. The 'detect finger' stuff is that hard part, but THAT was already solved by the invention of capacitive multi-touch display. The slide to unlock is about as innovative as displaying a clock on computer screen once you've already got a window manager.
It's funny how everytime your argument gets backed into a corner you come out with another argument that disproves your earlier one:
Again. That would be your argument, not mine.
If that is indeed the case then having a Home and Student version of the iPad version of Office is no different to having an Home and Student version of the desktop version,
So it is the same?
yes the desktop version comes with Outlook
Oh, so then its NOT the same, gotcha. I'm so glad you sorted that out for us.
but if you need that [emphasis mine]
"that" being what exactly? I presume "that" is a good exchange capable outlook client.
then you won't have any use for the iPad version of Office anyway
Why not? If the word and excel meet your needs it certainly would. After all, it has a good exchange capable client.
since an iPad won't cut it.
If you need desktop versions of word and excel, then yes, having an ipad for your email sitting next to it won't cut it.
What was your point, because it seems like you failed to even make one this time.
So they should get 2 patents.:) One for the idea of continuous sliders, and another for finding a method of approximating it on hardware that wouldn't have been able to keep up with the idea?
So for something so obvious for people not to have come up with over a span of 10 years?
IMO the patentable part should be in the technique of the invention. Slide to unlock may have taken a while to apply... but actually implementing it the moment it was requested was within the capability of every programmer on the planet... all the way back to 1991, without notes, without assistance... just the requirement itself is enough to implement it.
She also said in the tests that it was one of the least preferred ways to use a switch
And she was right. Can you imagine having to move long slider switches like that in any sort of regular GUI.
It -only- is useful for a switch you don't want to make too easy to use, which is exactly what you want for an unlock function on a phone that you don't want activating itself in your pocket etc.
To show a patent claim is not new, you have to show that a single piece of prior art shows everything in the patent claim. This piece of prior art wouldn't do that, since it doesn't show a hand-held electronic device,
I bet I could lift her computer.:)
doesn't really show "continuous" movement as opposed to switching between several icons, and it doesn't show unlocking a device.
Actually the slider demoed at 2:58 in the video shows a static background image On ------- Off, with the 'slider' box moving continuously back and forth along with the gesture motion.
" Here, the usability study at the end of the video seems to argue away from using sliders as touch-screen switches. But that may not be a strong enough disparagement of their use, nor does it necessarily argue away from its combination with an unlocking system."
Indeed; she even says (paraphrasing) "the a sliding gesture is more difficult, but reduces errors".
Another requirement is non-obviousness - 35 USC 103. Under this requirement, you can show that a patent claim is obvious by showing that a combination of prior art references together teach each and every element in the claim and that they could be reasonably combined. So, if the Claim is A+B+C+D and one reference shows A+B and another shows C+D and they could be combined, that shows that the Claim is obvious.
The offensive thing here is that arrival of a portable touchscreen makes a lot of things about it obvious. We already had done the prior research on touch screen controls -- right up to and including the finding that the slide gesture in particular was just awkward enough that it was good for preventing accidental activation of the touch screen control.
Then a decade or so later, we have portal touchscreen device and they are looking for a touch screen control to access it that would be suitable -- the key characteristic being that it prevents accidental activation.
It doesn't take a super genius to connect those dots. Slide-to-unlock was GOING to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
If there's no surgery, it's just a object - a tool, an item of functional clothing, more-or-less
Not entirely true. Contact lenses for example are all regulated. As is pretty much anything that performs any sort of medical exam or diagnostic that a medical practitioner relies on to make a diagnosis or treatment decision.
There's also the fact that they actually are traditionally expensive to make and fit.
They are also generally each one manufactured to order.
They also tend to be loaded with patents and royalties for everything from the design to the specifics of the materials.
The cost of custom prosthetic may also presume more than one may be required to refine the fit after you've worn it for a while, or to get the fit just right.
The doctor may then take the now very high cost of the the item and build in his time to fit, assess, and follow up with you into the price of the item inflating it even higher.
So the $thousands$ you pay for "an X" might actually cover "as many Xs as it takes to get it right plus all the doctors time working with you to get it right"
The US and its allies actually killed a relatively small number of Iraqis
As for what Saddam did:
Anfal ~ 180,000?
Another 10-20,000 in other atrocities?
Call it 200k?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Which figure are you arguing isn't valid? We're looking at 100k at least, civilians directly, and violently killed. The the larger numbers, showing indirect deaths... like people dying because they couldn't get to the hospital for X or Y or Z because we blew up all the infrastructure? Easily adds up to another 100k. Multiple estimates are in excess of 500k total. I don't think you can bleat "George Soros" and pretend those people aren't dead because of the war.
Not to mention we sacrificed another 4500+ allied lives to do all this too. Again far more than Saddam ever inflicted on us, even if you give him credit for 9/11 which would be asinine.
I'm VERY skeptical of your claim that we killed fewer Iraqi's than Saddam did, and I KNOW we tossed more allied lives than Saddam ever claimed.
The world is far better off with Saddam's regime being replaced by a democratic government.
Tell that that to the thousands of Iraqi's WE KILLED to make that happen.
We probably killed or led to the death via our war of more Iraqi's than Saddam did -- and I'm not forgetting that Saddam attempted genocide of Kurd's in the 80s either.
...which is a problem that is better-solved by having the local conglomerate provide a temporary, fast(ish) pipe for press over cable/*DSL, with a couple of well-configured 802.11g access points on non-overlapping channels (and another 802.11n at 5GHz, just because), with some decent QoS rules on a router and the WPA key of the day taped to the front of the judge's bench.
And the press will still ignore largely it, bring in all their crap, and turn it on.
Or, you know, hardwiring the court recorder's system...
This is the best solution. But running wire is a PITA.
That's generally not a big deal unless its a trip part
trim part
Making mid-production changes in parts without changing the part number -- at least the customer-visible part number -- is not unheard-of, it's common.
Its not merely common its 'frustratingly common'.
I've experienced this time and again ordering replacement parts for a variety of cars. Usually the differences don't matter. The replacement is shaped a bit different, improved in some way, or the material is slightly different, the item has been cost reduced in some way perhaps, or suppliers were changed, and the part still works and still fits fine... but its not identical to the original.
That's generally not a big deal unless its a trip part. Then its maddening.
For example, I ordered a replacement rocker switch for my 911 power window some months ago, by part number. The part that arrived was in a slightly different finish -- the original was a glossy black plastic, the replacement was a slightly textured/matte black plastic. It was different, not merely "new" vs "showing some wear".
It fit and worked fine, but didn't match the switch for the passenger side window (which was right next to it on the drivers armrest) 100%.
But GPL is indeed cancerous, intentionally so. Interacting with GPL code is a mine field if you don't want to GPL your code as well, there was no lie in that.
Cancer spreads and is difficult to stop.
The GPL is entirely opt-in, and a 4 year old can understand the so-called 'mine field':
Do I want to release my code as GPL?
Yes? Then feel free to use other GPL code in your code.
No? Then don't.
It is no more difficult than any other software development. Do you want to release something via the BSD license? Great. Can you willy-nilly link to code from other licenses as part of that? Nope. You have to be just as thoughtful with that too.
Ditto for any license... including the desire to release proprietary code. You can't just go around slurping code from around the internet -- and incorporating it in your product. Not just because of the GPL... but because you can't just include other people's random code in your product.
The GPL doesn't make this more or less tricky. It just represents a pile of code that's available to you to use if you want to reidstribute GPL code, and that's unavailable to you if you do not.
you cannot buy iOS, Windows Store or Android apps from BestBuy
Obviously I was referring to the boxes of Office Home and Student that you CAN walk out of best buy with. Next time I'll preface it with "Windows and Mac OS" so you can keep up.
The point stands though that neither Bestbuy for windows and mac os versions of software, nor Apple iTunes Apps Store enforces any sort of "are you a business or not" when making a purchase.
if you have an enterprise account to deploy to iPads
Then you wouldn't use it. Just as you wouldn't use your Microsoft Enterprise Volume License account to buy Windows and Mac OS versions of office home and student.
You are able to mix the app ownership models on a single device; so they'd just buy office home and student on individual accounts for each ipad that needed it.
You don't necessarily need Outlook [...]
You don't necessarily need Word and Excel either. But for the sake of THIS argument, we are assuming you DO. Likewise we're assuming the need for a competent supported exchange mail client.
Why did you disagree with him "um no[...]" and then set out to say exactly why he is right?
"Now it is true that while traveling at mach 5 the horizontal distance it drops will be much less over a unit of distance traveled than a slower shell,"
Pretty much exactly what he said.
"but it is still falling."
He never said it wasn't. He said 'less affected' not 'not affected'.
I would be shocked if the targeting computers did not take gravity into account - unless they are skipping the computers and just using the force.
So now you are mocking him for what he said, after repeating him. Well played.
You'll notice that there was virtually no griefing or trolling in old MMOs. Why? Because you didn't survive a day without the aid of anyone else.
Quite the opposite. EQ1 fostered such things as deliberately dropping trains on people you were pissed off at. Camping their corpses (in PVP) or training things to a corpse and Feign death / memwipe to leave them there in PVE. They'd also steal your kills, ninja your loot, pull the named after you cleared to him...
People were absolute douchebags on a regular basis.
Ever tried to get anything accomplished alone in old school DAoC? Or, hell, EQ? You were dependent on the rest of the server to get your gear back in case you died in some godforsaken corner.
This part is true, but that just forced the trolls to form into teams of like minded trolls... and that enabled new kinds of team trolling... e.g. having a high level shaman troll heal and buff your low level noobie harrassing troll to make him invincible as he ran around ganking people (in PVP) or make him that much more effective at training etc.
Then they'd log off their troll alts, login their main, and go off and raid with a large group of 'friends' who thought they were just another fine upstanding player.
Because trolls are not the game makers' problem, it's the players' problem.
The players need tools to deal with the trolls though.
Reminds me of viewing porn as a child and watching the images slowly "come into focus".
Or the images on google image search. Today.
For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.
I posted in another thread several examples; most of them revolving around a kitchen or living room 'family computer' especially the common scenario where the keyboard and mouse stored in a drawer.
Then for various quick casual interactions, like to check the weather, check twitter/facebook, start a netflix movie, start playing some music... etc you do it all with the screen without even bothering to get out the mouse and keyboard.
When they want to do any real work they pull out the kb and mouse and don't touch the screen.
I know people who have those big desktop all in one touch screens, and that's how they use them.
Is it a critical must have feature? I don't think so, but its convenient, and its not like they paid a lot extra for it vs a non-touchscreen version.
Snowden didn't run to the People with his juicy intelligence; he took it to Putin.
He didn't take it there.
Our Glorious Government and Dear Leaders trapped him there.
I owned a 90s era PocketPC, and hey, no slide to unlock.
90s era? I seem to recall those needing a stylus, and not working with a finger at all. I don't stylus free touch showing up until right around the iphone did.
And for that, the ideal solution is to use your tablet as the interface and Allcast to project it onto the TV
So if your doing math in the kitchen... you want to allcast some music from a tablet to the TV in the living room on another floor as the "ideal solution" instead of just using the computer in front of you? How is that idea?
In any case the fact that you can also do most of these tasks with a tablet + TV most of the time is great, you could also just use the keyboard and mouse for all those scenarios too. But so what? There is only one way to do things in your house?
If you take away someone's livelihood because of their beliefs and not because of their ability to do a job...
I am not taking away someones livelihood.I am choosing not to do business with them. That difference cannot be hand-waved away.
If you disagree, you haven't considered why most people join boycotts and it is precisely that -- to force a point of view.
The vast majority of boycotts are to force a business to change a specific business practice - like cutting down a park to build a factory or pulling a feature from a product or something else that affects consumer directly; very very few of them are over "their CEOs beliefs on some social issue" - unless the CEO goes out of their way to make that position known; in which case its fair game.
In this particular case; it sounds like it it wasn't the CEOs intention to draw attention to the cause; but regardless its out there now, and you really can't expect the world to put the genie back in the bottle.
Seriously, you think I'm going to sit and type and then reach up to the screen to do something?
No, nobody thinks that.
What is the use case for this that I'm missing?
A 20"+ HP that you saw in a store is aimed at the consumer family computer market. The use case, is its sitting on a desk in the kitchen or living room, and sometimes people will interact with it entirely by touch, without sitting down at the desk.
Maybe grandma is visiting and one of the kids wants to show her some pictures... tap, tap, tap, slideshow.
Getting ready for school, want to check the weather forecast... tap tap.
Doing some math homework? keyboard and mouse are in the desk drawer out of the way, textbook, pen, paper, and scrap paper spread out on the desk. tap - tap play some music. song comes up you don't like, tap- skipped.
Ok, math is done, time for that English essay. math textbook and paper away... keyboard and mouse come out. And you don't touch the screen for the next 2 hours.
NOBODY thinks you are going to sit there hard at work, hands on the keyboard and mouse and that you are periodically going to reach up to tap or swipe something. But there are all kinds of casual interactions that one can imagine where one will just use the screen entirely and not bother to use the keyboard and mouse... especially in households where the keyboard and mouse may be stored in a drawer when someone's not using it.
There's a reason why business workstations rarely have touch screens; and all the touchscreens are being aimed at the home consumer "family computer" area. Because unlike a business desktop, there are lots of imaginable "casual use" cases for a touch screen at home.
I know a couple people with them now, and they use them exactly as I described. If the kids just want to do something quick like start some music or watch netflix on it, they just use the screen instead of the keyboard and mouse. Given that they do keep the wireless keyboard and mouse in a drawer when they aren't using it, being able to use the computer for something quick like that is actually pretty cool.
No, this is just the first step towards it. The one with the actual start menu and apps in windows is still coming soon.
Just a requirement? Ah, that's it then. Everything is possible, it just needs a requirement.
Is it?
cure for cancer.
bullet proof t-shirt
lightsabre
space elevator
flexible display
cold fusion
affordable efficient solar panel
a cpu with i7 performance that runs at room temperature even
a lightweight battery that can run a current smartphone for a month and charges in 10 minutes
Ideas are easy. I can come up with them all day.
There are teams of engineers, researchers, programmers, and other specialists working on most of those problems already. The one's that come up with solutions deserve a patent. They might even come up with multiple substantially different solutions each worth its own patent.
Isn't that requirement someone coming up with the idea of what they want to do?
Patents are on inventions, not ideas. Patents are on solutions to a problem, not on the statement of the problem itself. If you read a typical software patent, they are ALL contorted to try and make the solution to a simple programming task an "invention" because you need a physical 'invention' to patent something. In this case the invention involves combining handheld computer equipped with a touchscreen, and so forth, as if that was really part of the "solution".
You now see how a patentable idea comes about.
It should be for solving a problem for which the solution is not immediately obvious to several million people the minute you present them with it.
"Slide to unlock" when you've already got the underlying hardware is not an "invention". There are no interesting problems to solve to make it happen, its just a matter of doing it, and any programmer can do it. Its a task, you could give it to a million programmers, and they'd all be able to implement it, and they'd all do it in much the same way. Detect finger down in region A, detect finger moving from region A to region B, detect finger up. The 'detect finger' stuff is that hard part, but THAT was already solved by the invention of capacitive multi-touch display. The slide to unlock is about as innovative as displaying a clock on computer screen once you've already got a window manager.
It's funny how everytime your argument gets backed into a corner you come out with another argument that disproves your earlier one:
Again. That would be your argument, not mine.
If that is indeed the case then having a Home and Student version of the iPad version of Office is no different to having an Home and Student version of the desktop version,
So it is the same?
yes the desktop version comes with Outlook
Oh, so then its NOT the same, gotcha. I'm so glad you sorted that out for us.
but if you need that [emphasis mine]
"that" being what exactly? I presume "that" is a good exchange capable outlook client.
then you won't have any use for the iPad version of Office anyway
Why not? If the word and excel meet your needs it certainly would. After all, it has a good exchange capable client.
since an iPad won't cut it.
If you need desktop versions of word and excel, then yes, having an ipad for your email sitting next to it won't cut it.
What was your point, because it seems like you failed to even make one this time.
Maybe it's me, but I saw that as discrete jumps:
So they should get 2 patents. :) One for the idea of continuous sliders, and another for finding a method of approximating it on hardware that wouldn't have been able to keep up with the idea?
So for something so obvious for people not to have come up with over a span of 10 years?
IMO the patentable part should be in the technique of the invention. Slide to unlock may have taken a while to apply... but actually implementing it the moment it was requested was within the capability of every programmer on the planet... all the way back to 1991, without notes, without assistance... just the requirement itself is enough to implement it.
She also said in the tests that it was one of the least preferred ways to use a switch
And she was right. Can you imagine having to move long slider switches like that in any sort of regular GUI.
It -only- is useful for a switch you don't want to make too easy to use, which is exactly what you want for an unlock function on a phone that you don't want activating itself in your pocket etc.
To show a patent claim is not new, you have to show that a single piece of prior art shows everything in the patent claim. This piece of prior art wouldn't do that, since it doesn't show a hand-held electronic device,
I bet I could lift her computer. :)
doesn't really show "continuous" movement as opposed to switching between several icons, and it doesn't show unlocking a device.
Actually the slider demoed at 2:58 in the video shows a static background image On ------- Off, with the 'slider' box moving continuously back and forth along with the gesture motion.
" Here, the usability study at the end of the video seems to argue away from using sliders as touch-screen switches. But that may not be a strong enough disparagement of their use, nor does it necessarily argue away from its combination with an unlocking system."
Indeed; she even says (paraphrasing) "the a sliding gesture is more difficult, but reduces errors".
Another requirement is non-obviousness - 35 USC 103. Under this requirement, you can show that a patent claim is obvious by showing that a combination of prior art references together teach each and every element in the claim and that they could be reasonably combined. So, if the Claim is A+B+C+D and one reference shows A+B and another shows C+D and they could be combined, that shows that the Claim is obvious.
The offensive thing here is that arrival of a portable touchscreen makes a lot of things about it obvious. We already had done the prior research on touch screen controls -- right up to and including the finding that the slide gesture in particular was just awkward enough that it was good for preventing accidental activation of the touch screen control.
Then a decade or so later, we have portal touchscreen device and they are looking for a touch screen control to access it that would be suitable -- the key characteristic being that it prevents accidental activation.
It doesn't take a super genius to connect those dots. Slide-to-unlock was GOING to happen.
Apple's patent claim is for a portable device that uses a single image.
Android's slide to unlock works from both left to right and right to left; so its completely different too right?
And if I implement Apple's slide to unlock EXACTLY, but put it on a screen built into a fridge, they can't touch me?
Yeah. Right.