Correct. Its a single-linked list of items that happen to be exactly the members of another single-linked list. The traditional double-linked (forward-and-back) list is a specific example of this, though what the patent claims is more general.
This is a non-trivial problem that comes up frequently enough that a general solution would be useful.
You'll have to be more specific as to what is a "non-trivial problem" that this would be a "general solution" too, but, no, I don't think how to create an ordering with search performance equal to that of an ordered linked list out of items that are already all of the members of another linked list is exactly a "non-trivial" problem.
There's one claim for a list where the nodes have two pointers, and another where the nodes have three pointers. A double-linked list is a specific implementation of the first claim, where the two sort orders happen to be forward and backward.
Right, a traditional doubly-linked list is a specific case of what is claimed in Claim 1 (probably the most generally useful), where one sort order happens to be the inverse of the other.
His claim is broader than that, since his two sort orders can be unrelated to each other, but since a double-linked list falls into his definition, his first claim is certainly not novel. And, of course, nothing he claims would be non-obvious to a programmer, but I have no idea how one goes about showing that in court.
It might be easiest to illustrate that by showing that it is a special case of something widely used an understood: that is, in this case, that it's nothing more than a traditional linked list, used in the exact way that traditionally one uses a linked list: to impose a sort order on a set of ADTs. That is, suppose you have a set of unlinked data structures and convert them into a linked list by adding a new data element to each of the structures which is a pointer to create an ordering, putting a special null pointer value in the last element, and creating a special external pointer to the "head" element. Suppose you then want to create a new ordering on the same set of data structures. Anyone familiar with the process used to create the first ordering would do the same thing: take the data structures as they exist now, and add a new data element to each structure containing a pointer to the next element on the new ordering, put a null pointer in the last element with the new ordering, and keep a pointer to the "head" of the new ordering. Now, suppose I want to impose a third ordering on the same set of data structures? Well, I add another pointer to each data structure...
Imposing an order on a set of data structures by appending a pointer to each structure pointing to the next is creating a single linked list, which is clearly well-established and familiar to anyone even remotely skilled in the field. The output of that operation is a new set of data structures (they can, of course, be used now as a linked list, that's the point, but they are still just another set of data structures). Imposing an order on that new set of data structures by appending a pointer on each structure pointing to the next to create a new single linked list with a distinct order is exactly the same as the operation to create the first single linked list.
Our government needs to more clearly delineate what software can and cannot be patented in order to prevent more ridiculous patents.
That may be true in general, but I don't think it is here. Current law (35 USC 102) prohibits an item from being patented if "(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or..." It also provides (35 USC 103) that "A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains."
Multiply linked lists aren't novel or nonobvious, they are widely used; this particular application may not be documented elsewhere other than in the special case of traditionally doubly-linked lists—most references I can find use multiple linkage to do something more than provide yet another sort order—but only because in most applications where you need to keep multiple sort orders you'd usually want to do it a different way (like a binary search tree of pointers to the data objects for each different sort order), not because the method is even remotely innovative.
That being said, I'd bet a diligent search would find something describing this exact application prior to 2001 (that is, multiple pointers used to maintain two or more entirely unrelated full-list sort orders, not just a forward-reverse pair, or multidimensional ordering, or something like that.)
It's got just a few layers of management and at the top 183 cardinals report to the Pope.
As do a whole lot more archbishops, bishops, eparchs, archeparchs, and other ordinaries. However, the fairly flat formal heirarchy of the Church hardly reflects the reality of the practical administration of the Church, which is rather more labyrinthine.
As you can easily read, the licensing of the software is completely at the authors discretion, sometimes at the users discretion, but never at a third parties. Even with GPLv3 released, and the software being "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" TiVo is safe for a little while yet, unles they choose to release under GPLv3!.
Um, no, they are safe until they use software released under GPLv3. Releasing their own code under v3 that they received under v2 will not impose the additional limitations of freedom that v3 imposes on licensees on Tivo, it will impose them on anyone receiving the software from Tivo.
Then why aren't we currently holding users civilly liable for damages inflicted by their poorly configured machine?
Because a "poorly configure machine" usually would only be a basis for liability in negligence, but will generally only will produce pure economic damages rather than personal injury or property damage, and negligence liability generally will not lie for pure economic damages. Of course, where there is a special relationship that exists, or a different basis for liability (or I suppose if a negligently "poorly configured machine" was the proximate cause of personal injury or property damage) people can be held liable for damages.
Just because there were more bugs reported and fixed in one product than another does not mean that product is more secure.
Actually, the argument here is because a product has less bugs reported and fixed, it is therefore more secure than one with less bugs reported and fixed.
That this metric is clearly bogus is, well, pretty obvious, since with two initially identical products, with the same bugs reported, the product which has the fewest bugs fixed will be rated "more secure".
If it hasn't become clearer in the last couple of years, there really isn't such a thing as "free" software.
Sure there is: all software whose copyright is released into the public domain and which is not encumbered by patents or other restrictions is completely and absolutely free.
Most of what people call "free" software (including, certainly Free Software as defined by RMS and the FSF) is software that provides considerably less freedom to the people wishing to use and redistribute than such genuinely free software, in order to serve the ideological, financial, ego, or other interest of the person releasing it as so-called "free" software (n.b., I'm not saying this is a bad thing.)
Viral "free" software licenses like the GPL are primarily aimed at encouraging more software to be released which allows the users of the new software the same limited set of freedoms viewed as important by the crafter of the viral license, they achieve this by limiting the other freedoms granted to the user (compared to public domain, truly free, software). Other "free" software licenses serve to protect other interests of licensors by restricting freedom; for instance, the BSD license mostly serves to assure that the original licensor's copyright notice, disclaimer of warranty and liability, and ability to avoid being used to promote derivative works without consent are preserved.
I am likewise not a lawyer (though I am a law student) and I think you are largely correct: specifically, the GPL ought to, if its goal is to protect the four freedoms and guarantee that that protection is passed on, do just that. It should define the four freedoms, license their exercise and explicitly disclaim any limitation on them based on any legal theory, privilege, or prerogatie available to the licensor, whether existing or arising in the future, and require those distributing derived works to use the same license which does the same.
The more the GPL evolves to tightly bind itself to a series of special cases and particular narrow legal theories, the more brittle and less future-proof it will be, the less understandable it will be to those considering using it, and the more it will produce the possibility of terms that become ambiguous as the legal context they are tailored to shifts—a particular danger where ambiguities in offers and agreements are construed against the drafter.
The GPL should as straightfowardly and unambiguously as possible address itself to actions, not legal theories, except to the extent that particular legal rights must be explicitly and by-name invoked or disclaimed. And even then, those explicit disclaimers or invocations and related terms should be clearly linked to the more general action they intend to license or prohibit.
Plan 9, and even moreso its derivative Inferno, is a "usable operating system" under most reasonable definitions. As are numerous of the others suggested.
How many people browse the web under Syllabe, Haiku, ReactOS, FreeDOS ???
Browsing the web is not the only important application of a computer. Saying there are two basically free operating systems, GNU/Linux and BSD is inaccurate in the same way as saying that there are three computer operating systems, Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Once upon a time, the now-eponymous portable derived its name from the small sections (deemed "cells") into which a city was divided in order to keep voice calls smooth and uninterrupted.
"Eponymous" is an adjective that applies to a person that gives a name to something (a work of art, a city, a tribe, whatever); you could, I suppose, generalize it to an object, but if you did the portable wouldn't be "eponymous", since the portable doesn't give its name to the small sections, the small sections would be eponymous, the portable would be the eponym that takes its name from the eponymous sections.
And its odd to say they were "deemed" cells, which suggests that the designation is some kind of subjective opinion. One might simply say that they are cells, under the general definition "any of various small compartments or bounded areas forming part of a whole", or that they were named ("dubbed", perhaps, the less-common "d" word you were looking for) cells by analogy to either the architectural or biological use of the term.
Today, it almost seems that voice calls are the least-used function of most phones, while Wi-Fi and WiMax use ever-growing amounts of network bandwidth.
"Almost seems" means that, in fact, it does not seem that this is the case, which rather undermines the point you seem to be trying to make.
Both make the "cellular" moniker obsolete.
I think this overstates the case; used as a telephone the device remains "cellular", it simply has uses that go beyond that as a telephone. But as long as you are calling it a "phone", the "cellular" modifier still applies. Now, admittedly, many phones are also PDAs or palmtops or internet appliances or media players as well as telephones. But, so? My fax is also a computer printer and is used that way more often than to make or send a "facsimile" of some other existing physical document over telephone lines, its still a fax machine.
Is it time for a new name, or is a rose by any other name still as sweet?
In addition to all the problems with the leadup of the question, it also seems somewhat outdated: the industry doesn't seem to use the term "cellular" much any more, having preferred for years "wireless" or "mobile", which focus on the devices' utility to consumers rather than the underlying implementation, and that's pretty much the only usage that subject to much planned change. Of course, common use has adopted "cell" as a common name for the devices (as often as not as a noun by itself: "call me on my cell!"), but I suspect that trying to change that is as fruitful as trying to get people to stop using "glass" as a generic name for handleless drinking containers just because those are qutie often made of plastics.
If you can manage to find someplace that will provide a 5% annual interest—not all difficult with a large initial deposit—$1.3 million will provide a fairly comfortable first-world middle-class income of $65,000 a year with no depletion of the principal; if you are willing to accept an income typical of entry-level jobs for college graduates in the US, say $30,000 to $40,000, you can actually grow the principal a few percent a year.
Of course, if you want to do significantly better than inflation, you'll probably still have to do some work (but if you can $1.3 million exploiting online game items while in school, you can probably do that at a much lower intensity level with very little effort to keep building that initial pot.)
One thing that stuck out about this review is that it didn't even have room for something nice to say about the Zune. Not one thing. I'm sure a high school student could write me a review with a PROS/CONS table that would be more informative than this. I find it very hard to believe that this reviewer managed to not find anything good about the Zune.
A review that goes out of its way to find something positive to say is a bad review, ditto one that does the same for something negative. A good review focusses on what it is likely to be important (of course, there is subjectivity involved here, as in every other part of a review), and lets the chips fall where they may on whether those important aspects end up being positive or negative for a product.
Here's a simple question I didn't see answered anywhere, "Did it work?"
If it does, but not in a way that makes it stand out positively or negatively from the competition, there is no reason to waste space in a review addressing that question.
And then Apple enters your review. I can understand a comparison to other competitive MP3 players but you just start using the brand name Apple. Why? Why not give me a rundown of this versus iRiver or Creative's MP3 players?
Why Apple? Oh, I don't know, maybe because they are the dominant player in the market, and therefore the main thing that people are considering the Zune as an alternative too.
I don't think anything in it is wrong, as such, but it really doesn't say all that much. It sort of meanders through a few stories vaguely relating to the idea that "without an organizing vision, direction doesn't happen." But it seems to me that that while that's vaguely interesting, its not really a problem with the OSS community.
While, of course, the OSS community doesn't have a single vision for any piece of OSS software, quite a lot of OSS projects do and, as his story alludes, OSS projects that have a following but languish either for lack of vision or because the project owner has misguided vision—unlike closed-source projects which, while they may not tend to lack vision, are no less likely to have a misdirected vision than their open-source counterparts—can be rescued by forking.
And plenty of OSS projects do have a vision, direction, roadmap, etc. Sure, there's probably a lot of stuff that gets released under an open-source license (or straight into the public domain) because the author is essentially "done" with it and throwing it out to the community to do with what they will, but certainly open-source players like Apache, Mozilla, etc. have a vision for their main projects, and members of the community are attracted to and contribute to projects, no doubt, largely because of how they see the project's vision as compatible with their own. The "solution" McFarland offers is what it seems to me almost every major open-source project is already openly trying to do: allow the community to contribute, but institute a degree of top-down control in terms of timelines, roadmap, and assignments to make sure that the grunt-work necessary to have a polished project gets done.
I probably wouldn't call it "acting like the Cathedral", the openness of many successful projects to community process and innovation, while retaining a kind of top-down vision, is something of a synthesis: the Cathedral harnessing the energy of the Bazaar, the Bazaar borrowing the focus of the Cathedral. And you see something like it in the embrace by some commercial, formerly closed-source vendors of both open-source software and increasing community involvement. If I had to name the model, I'd call it the "Congregation" or "Assembly", a less-propietary Cathedral, a small portion of the Bazaar united by a common purpose and direction to accept, in the context of a project, some degree of authority and leadership (but not the exclusive ownership and control of the Cathedral.)
I'm eternally confused when it comes to the legislation. When someone says "net neutrality legislation," they can mean legislation to PROTECT net neutrality, legislation to PROTECT phone/cable company's rights to offer preferential treatment, or neither. Adding to the confusion is that, without legislation affirmatively protecting neutrality, there is nothing to stop the phone/cable companies from going ahead with their plans with or without their legislation anyway.
Well, the FCC appears to be enforcing some degree of net neutrality under its existing regulatory mandate without either side's legislation having been passed, though there is no guarantee it would continue that policy in the future, and its not entirely clear how much even the current FCC is going to enforce as far as neutrality is concerned.
In fact, any interactive communications could stand to take a dive (VOIP, streaming video, etc) with the advent of Net Neutrality legislation.
Um, no. That's not what TFA says. TFA says those thing are all threatened by the absence of net neutrality legislation.
Of course, TFA also says that gaming shouldn't really be threatened, because without net neutrality, ISPs are better off leaving gaming alone and taxing Google and monopolizing VOIP. (Though given the scale of the gaming industry, I can't see them not also taxing game servers as well as Google. It's a big pool of money, and if they have the legal power to demand a cut, they will.)
...the original settlers of the lands now forming the United States were Christians coming from denominations that class as "fundamentalist",...
Er, no, they weren't. Christian Fundamentalism is a movement within Protestantism that arose in mid-19th Century, and modern Christian Fundamentalism is defined by a number of theological views that weren't prominent even within Fundamentalism until the early 20th Century; there weren't any denomoniations that would properly be classified as "fundmanentalist" in the time leading up to the establishment of the United States in the 18th Century.
The original settlers of the United States came from diverse religious backgrounds, they were mostly Christian, but not universally Protestant and certainly didn't (as a class) have much in common with modern fundamentalists as opposed to other modern strains of Christianity.
Given that poverty is on the decline your understanding of the word "increasingly" is at odds with how I generally use it.
Given that the percentage of the population under half of, 3/4 of, or the full poverty line has increased every year since 2000 for which statistics are available (except a slight dip in the percentage under the full poverty line from 2004 to 2005), I think your understanding of "decline" is at odds with how I generally use it.
I think its more likely that Google will just team up with an existing (preumably, some version of Linux) open-source OS distribution in a cross-promotion deal and by dedicating Google staff time to submitting code (and chrome) for it (and to work particularly on getting key applications working well on it): it provides the same insurance against Microsoft leveraging their OS/Browser position against Google that a "GoogleOS" would, and is what Google has essentially done in the browser space with their relationship with Mozilla (and RealNetworks).
It doesn't say the national average or any other meaningful statistics. It's just those 100 schools.
The phrase you emphasized, "largest 100 public school districts", does not refer to "100 schools".
Each of the two largest districts (New York Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District) has more students than most states; the top 100 districts account for about a quarter of the total student population of the country (at least, as of 1999-2000.) While they certainly may not be representative, its a far wider swath than you portray it when you confuse "100 school districts" with "100 schools".
Nice for localising, sure, but how usable will Japanese, Indian, or Arabic script URLs -- for example -- be for those who do not have access to the respective sets or keyboard layouts?
The only case they'd be less usable is if someone didn't have access to the appropriate input method and was getting the URLs in some non-electronic form where they couldn't, say, cut-and-paste into the browser address bar or wherever else they needed the URL.
Frankly, I think this is pretty much a non-problem.
Paul Graham describes several of the problems with school in this essay, but it boils down to: schools are full of disrespect for students and busy work and forced curriculum, rather than open to interesting learning opportunities.
Those aren't bugs, they are features. How else is school supposed to prepare students for life as corporate (or government) drones?
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Correct. Its a single-linked list of items that happen to be exactly the members of another single-linked list. The traditional double-linked (forward-and-back) list is a specific example of this, though what the patent claims is more general.
You'll have to be more specific as to what is a "non-trivial problem" that this would be a "general solution" too, but, no, I don't think how to create an ordering with search performance equal to that of an ordered linked list out of items that are already all of the members of another linked list is exactly a "non-trivial" problem.
Right, a traditional doubly-linked list is a specific case of what is claimed in Claim 1 (probably the most generally useful), where one sort order happens to be the inverse of the other.
It might be easiest to illustrate that by showing that it is a special case of something widely used an understood: that is, in this case, that it's nothing more than a traditional linked list, used in the exact way that traditionally one uses a linked list: to impose a sort order on a set of ADTs. That is, suppose you have a set of unlinked data structures and convert them into a linked list by adding a new data element to each of the structures which is a pointer to create an ordering, putting a special null pointer value in the last element, and creating a special external pointer to the "head" element. Suppose you then want to create a new ordering on the same set of data structures. Anyone familiar with the process used to create the first ordering would do the same thing: take the data structures as they exist now, and add a new data element to each structure containing a pointer to the next element on the new ordering, put a null pointer in the last element with the new ordering, and keep a pointer to the "head" of the new ordering. Now, suppose I want to impose a third ordering on the same set of data structures? Well, I add another pointer to each data structure...
Imposing an order on a set of data structures by appending a pointer to each structure pointing to the next is creating a single linked list, which is clearly well-established and familiar to anyone even remotely skilled in the field. The output of that operation is a new set of data structures (they can, of course, be used now as a linked list, that's the point, but they are still just another set of data structures). Imposing an order on that new set of data structures by appending a pointer on each structure pointing to the next to create a new single linked list with a distinct order is exactly the same as the operation to create the first single linked list.
That may be true in general, but I don't think it is here. Current law (35 USC 102) prohibits an item from being patented if "(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or..." It also provides (35 USC 103) that "A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains."
Multiply linked lists aren't novel or nonobvious, they are widely used; this particular application may not be documented elsewhere other than in the special case of traditionally doubly-linked lists—most references I can find use multiple linkage to do something more than provide yet another sort order—but only because in most applications where you need to keep multiple sort orders you'd usually want to do it a different way (like a binary search tree of pointers to the data objects for each different sort order), not because the method is even remotely innovative.
That being said, I'd bet a diligent search would find something describing this exact application prior to 2001 (that is, multiple pointers used to maintain two or more entirely unrelated full-list sort orders, not just a forward-reverse pair, or multidimensional ordering, or something like that.)
As do a whole lot more archbishops, bishops, eparchs, archeparchs, and other ordinaries. However, the fairly flat formal heirarchy of the Church hardly reflects the reality of the practical administration of the Church, which is rather more labyrinthine.
That rather overstates the case, don't you think?
Um, no, they are safe until they use software released under GPLv3. Releasing their own code under v3 that they received under v2 will not impose the additional limitations of freedom that v3 imposes on licensees on Tivo, it will impose them on anyone receiving the software from Tivo.
Actually, the argument here is because a product has less bugs reported and fixed, it is therefore more secure than one with less bugs reported and fixed.
That this metric is clearly bogus is, well, pretty obvious, since with two initially identical products, with the same bugs reported, the product which has the fewest bugs fixed will be rated "more secure".
I am likewise not a lawyer (though I am a law student) and I think you are largely correct: specifically, the GPL ought to, if its goal is to protect the four freedoms and guarantee that that protection is passed on, do just that. It should define the four freedoms, license their exercise and explicitly disclaim any limitation on them based on any legal theory, privilege, or prerogatie available to the licensor, whether existing or arising in the future, and require those distributing derived works to use the same license which does the same.
The more the GPL evolves to tightly bind itself to a series of special cases and particular narrow legal theories, the more brittle and less future-proof it will be, the less understandable it will be to those considering using it, and the more it will produce the possibility of terms that become ambiguous as the legal context they are tailored to shifts—a particular danger where ambiguities in offers and agreements are construed against the drafter.
The GPL should as straightfowardly and unambiguously as possible address itself to actions, not legal theories, except to the extent that particular legal rights must be explicitly and by-name invoked or disclaimed. And even then, those explicit disclaimers or invocations and related terms should be clearly linked to the more general action they intend to license or prohibit.
Plan 9, and even moreso its derivative Inferno, is a "usable operating system" under most reasonable definitions. As are numerous of the others suggested.
Browsing the web is not the only important application of a computer. Saying there are two basically free operating systems, GNU/Linux and BSD is inaccurate in the same way as saying that there are three computer operating systems, Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
"Eponymous" is an adjective that applies to a person that gives a name to something (a work of art, a city, a tribe, whatever); you could, I suppose, generalize it to an object, but if you did the portable wouldn't be "eponymous", since the portable doesn't give its name to the small sections, the small sections would be eponymous, the portable would be the eponym that takes its name from the eponymous sections.
And its odd to say they were "deemed" cells, which suggests that the designation is some kind of subjective opinion. One might simply say that they are cells, under the general definition "any of various small compartments or bounded areas forming part of a whole", or that they were named ("dubbed", perhaps, the less-common "d" word you were looking for) cells by analogy to either the architectural or biological use of the term.
"Almost seems" means that, in fact, it does not seem that this is the case, which rather undermines the point you seem to be trying to make.
I think this overstates the case; used as a telephone the device remains "cellular", it simply has uses that go beyond that as a telephone. But as long as you are calling it a "phone", the "cellular" modifier still applies. Now, admittedly, many phones are also PDAs or palmtops or internet appliances or media players as well as telephones. But, so? My fax is also a computer printer and is used that way more often than to make or send a "facsimile" of some other existing physical document over telephone lines, its still a fax machine.
In addition to all the problems with the leadup of the question, it also seems somewhat outdated: the industry doesn't seem to use the term "cellular" much any more, having preferred for years "wireless" or "mobile", which focus on the devices' utility to consumers rather than the underlying implementation, and that's pretty much the only usage that subject to much planned change. Of course, common use has adopted "cell" as a common name for the devices (as often as not as a noun by itself: "call me on my cell!"), but I suspect that trying to change that is as fruitful as trying to get people to stop using "glass" as a generic name for handleless drinking containers just because those are qutie often made of plastics.
If you can manage to find someplace that will provide a 5% annual interest—not all difficult with a large initial deposit—$1.3 million will provide a fairly comfortable first-world middle-class income of $65,000 a year with no depletion of the principal; if you are willing to accept an income typical of entry-level jobs for college graduates in the US, say $30,000 to $40,000, you can actually grow the principal a few percent a year.
Of course, if you want to do significantly better than inflation, you'll probably still have to do some work (but if you can $1.3 million exploiting online game items while in school, you can probably do that at a much lower intensity level with very little effort to keep building that initial pot.)
No, its quite possible to move songs onto or off of the iPod with other application (though not, I think, purchased [i.e., DRM-protected] songs].
I don't think anything in it is wrong, as such, but it really doesn't say all that much. It sort of meanders through a few stories vaguely relating to the idea that "without an organizing vision, direction doesn't happen." But it seems to me that that while that's vaguely interesting, its not really a problem with the OSS community.
While, of course, the OSS community doesn't have a single vision for any piece of OSS software, quite a lot of OSS projects do and, as his story alludes, OSS projects that have a following but languish either for lack of vision or because the project owner has misguided vision—unlike closed-source projects which, while they may not tend to lack vision, are no less likely to have a misdirected vision than their open-source counterparts—can be rescued by forking.
And plenty of OSS projects do have a vision, direction, roadmap, etc. Sure, there's probably a lot of stuff that gets released under an open-source license (or straight into the public domain) because the author is essentially "done" with it and throwing it out to the community to do with what they will, but certainly open-source players like Apache, Mozilla, etc. have a vision for their main projects, and members of the community are attracted to and contribute to projects, no doubt, largely because of how they see the project's vision as compatible with their own. The "solution" McFarland offers is what it seems to me almost every major open-source project is already openly trying to do: allow the community to contribute, but institute a degree of top-down control in terms of timelines, roadmap, and assignments to make sure that the grunt-work necessary to have a polished project gets done.
I probably wouldn't call it "acting like the Cathedral", the openness of many successful projects to community process and innovation, while retaining a kind of top-down vision, is something of a synthesis: the Cathedral harnessing the energy of the Bazaar, the Bazaar borrowing the focus of the Cathedral. And you see something like it in the embrace by some commercial, formerly closed-source vendors of both open-source software and increasing community involvement. If I had to name the model, I'd call it the "Congregation" or "Assembly", a less-propietary Cathedral, a small portion of the Bazaar united by a common purpose and direction to accept, in the context of a project, some degree of authority and leadership (but not the exclusive ownership and control of the Cathedral.)
Well, the FCC appears to be enforcing some degree of net neutrality under its existing regulatory mandate without either side's legislation having been passed, though there is no guarantee it would continue that policy in the future, and its not entirely clear how much even the current FCC is going to enforce as far as neutrality is concerned.
Um, no. That's not what TFA says. TFA says those thing are all threatened by the absence of net neutrality legislation.
Of course, TFA also says that gaming shouldn't really be threatened, because without net neutrality, ISPs are better off leaving gaming alone and taxing Google and monopolizing VOIP. (Though given the scale of the gaming industry, I can't see them not also taxing game servers as well as Google. It's a big pool of money, and if they have the legal power to demand a cut, they will.)
Er, no, they weren't. Christian Fundamentalism is a movement within Protestantism that arose in mid-19th Century, and modern Christian Fundamentalism is defined by a number of theological views that weren't prominent even within Fundamentalism until the early 20th Century; there weren't any denomoniations that would properly be classified as "fundmanentalist" in the time leading up to the establishment of the United States in the 18th Century.
The original settlers of the United States came from diverse religious backgrounds, they were mostly Christian, but not universally Protestant and certainly didn't (as a class) have much in common with modern fundamentalists as opposed to other modern strains of Christianity.
Given that the percentage of the population under half of, 3/4 of, or the full poverty line has increased every year since 2000 for which statistics are available (except a slight dip in the percentage under the full poverty line from 2004 to 2005), I think your understanding of "decline" is at odds with how I generally use it.
I think its more likely that Google will just team up with an existing (preumably, some version of Linux) open-source OS distribution in a cross-promotion deal and by dedicating Google staff time to submitting code (and chrome) for it (and to work particularly on getting key applications working well on it): it provides the same insurance against Microsoft leveraging their OS/Browser position against Google that a "GoogleOS" would, and is what Google has essentially done in the browser space with their relationship with Mozilla (and RealNetworks).
The phrase you emphasized, "largest 100 public school districts", does not refer to "100 schools".
Each of the two largest districts (New York Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District) has more students than most states; the top 100 districts account for about a quarter of the total student population of the country (at least, as of 1999-2000.) While they certainly may not be representative, its a far wider swath than you portray it when you confuse "100 school districts" with "100 schools".
The only case they'd be less usable is if someone didn't have access to the appropriate input method and was getting the URLs in some non-electronic form where they couldn't, say, cut-and-paste into the browser address bar or wherever else they needed the URL.
Frankly, I think this is pretty much a non-problem.
This is stunning news! The first shipment of the two newest, hottest consoles have sold out, and retailers who have sold out plan to get more!
I never would have expected this!
Next we'll see a story on sciece.slashdot.org "Sun expected to rise again tomorrow!"
Those aren't bugs, they are features. How else is school supposed to prepare students for life as corporate (or government) drones?