It looks like the patent is basically converting privacy settings stored somewhere (probably in a database) to text. Wouldn't this be the same as any other reporting tool? Crystal Reports is probably the most well-known, and it's been around for many years.
Good catch. That's what I get for reading the posts above mine that talk about him working for a private company and not paying attention to the summary/article.
They're only allowed to fire people for any ol' reason if the state is an "at will employment." Which Massachusetts is. It sucks that he got fired, and he definitely shouldn't have been fired, and there are probably many people now who won't want to work for that company, but he probably doesn't have any legal grounds for suing the company for wrongful termination.
Oh so if someone calls you an asshole, and finds maybe 10 other people who can confirm this as true, it's ok? Because it's "proven"? Calling someone an asshole can never be slander because it isn't a statement of fact (unless you meant "asshole" anatomically, which is such a nonsensical statement that it wouldn't be considered a statement of fact).
No, they are not standard. PST is either Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Summer Time. Which can be a bit annoying. I've never heard of PST being Pacific Summer Time. Neither has Wikipedia, so I would assume that it's either something local to where you live, or you're just making it up. The standard abbreviation for the timezone during the summer is PDT (Pacific Daylight Time).
EST is GMT -5 (EDT, Eastern Daylight Time, is GMT -4). CST is GMT -6, MST (Mountain Standard Time) is GMT -7, and PST is GMT -8. According to Wikipedia, there is no AST; Alaska Standard Time (GMT -9) is abbreviated AKT, and Atlantic Time (GMT -4; used in eastern provinces in Canada, such as New Brunswick) is abbreviated ET.
If it were a two-lane road, sure, I wouldn't be too worried about a motorcycle passing me on the right. On a one-lane road, passing on the right is very dangerous and very illegal.
You said it - "standard" time.
We all know how USA likes to not use standard units. Exactly. Everyone knows that timezones like EST and PST aren't standard.
It's 18:30 (6:30pm) in Germany currently, June 17th. FF3 was supposed to available all day, from the moment we woke up (or 00:00, for all of us who were awake). [Citation needed]
It's the cyclists who act as if they own the road, not the drivers. Oddly, it's only bicycles that act like this, motorcycle drivers are probably the most polite people out there. I see plenty of stupid motorcycle riders around here. Quite a few will go between cars in adjacent lanes. A couple weeks ago, I got passed by a motorcycle. On the right. On a one-lane street.
Like any other group, there are some motorcycle riders with a clue, and some without.
XP Home isn't an SMP kernel. XP Pro is. That may have changed with SP3 (I honestly haven't bothered to check), but with SP2 and earlier, XP Home can't utilize more than a single logical or physical processor. Since most computers are going dual core.... *shrugs* That would be interesting, since I remember running an SMP box before XP was released (can't remember if it was Win2k or Win98). SMP support would be a strange thing to remove.
From Wikipedia's entry on Social Contract:
According to Thomas Hobbes and canonical theory, the essence is as follows: Without society, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms. The downside of this general autonomy is that it includes the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own self-preservation; there are no positive rights, only laws of nature and an endless "war of all against all" (Bellum omnium contra omnes, Hobbes 1651). In other words, anyone in the state of nature can do anything he likes; but this also means that anyone can do anything he likes to anyone else. You're using a different definition of "natural right" than I am. I'm talking about natural rights being the same behavioral freedom that animals in nature have, while you're talking more about what I would usually call human rights (which I completely support, of course). Since there is no single definition, though, neither one of us is really wrong.
And you did not answer the two conditional questions I posed immediately after that sentence you quoted. Assuming the two questions you mean are:
1) Where is it written down? Wikipedia's article has decent information about the general concept, and you can probably find some books from the original philosophers in your local library.
2) How does it justify everyone's natural rights being violated? Well, like I said, the purpose of a social contract is that you give up certain natural rights (e.g. the natural right to kill someone and take their stuff) in exchange for protection from other people exercising those same natural rights.
Also, my purpose here is not to simply say "I don't like it" and leave, but to get discussion going that can eventually lead to candidates being elected who would rather uphold rights than violate them, eventually overturning the laws that do violate our rights. Depends on how you define "rights". I'm perfectly happy giving up my right to take someone's stuff if it means my stuff won't get taken by someone else. If you're talking about rights as defined in the United States Constitution (speech, association, religion, privacy, public trials, etc.), then I'm with you in wanting to ensure that they are protected from violation by the government.
Am I agreeing to this contract every second (since birth) that I do not quit my job, take all of my property on a plane, and spend my life savings moving to another country? Basically, yes. The purpose of a social contract (in a grossly over-simplified way) is that every member of the society agrees to it, which greatly lessens the threat of arbitrary violence. If you don't wish to agree to a social contract, you're free to leave the society; if you break the contract, society can remove you by force (e.g. put you in prison).
Except, of course, that its orbit crosses that of Neptune. That minor technicality relegates Pluto to status as a minor planet. Wouldn't that imply that Neptune hasn't cleared its orbit either, and therefore isn't a planet?
Personally, I won't be happy with the classification until they make it a standard to refer to them as a binary. It can be "binary plutoids", or "a binary dwarf planet", or whatever exact terminology they want, but their barycenter lies between them, not inside one of them, and that should make them a binary. Pluto's moon (or whatever you want to call it today) is Charon, not Eris.
I definitely agree that the US government's current solution (he said, trying to keep a straight face) is a complete crock of shit. I apologize if I didn't make that clear enough. My point was that terrorism is a legitimate problem, even if it's currently being addressed in a very ineffective and generally bad way.
You seem to be under the impression that "terrorists" are a real problem. Why? Maybe because they kill people and try to intimidate and control through fear those that they don't kill? Just because many politicians have used the term "terrorist" in the same way "communist" was used 50 years ago, with the same anything-goes, mostly ineffective solution, that doesn't mean that terrorism isn't a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed.
Not that my anecdotal experience is worth more than your anecdotal experience, but I remember the exact opposite. Several years ago, I had a problem with JPEG's not rendering correctly. I contacted my video card manufacturer's support, assuming it was a video card problem (some things would render fine, others wouldn't, so my first guess was the video card). I was told that it was a known manufacturing defect in some AMD CPU's. I contacted AMD, and they said that it was odd that the problem would show up after owning the CPU for about a year, but they had me send it to them to check out. I ended up getting a replacement that was a little faster than the old CPU.
It doesn't have Edit -> Preferences alongside Tools -> Options anymore, just a single location at Tools -> Options. The Ubuntu version of RC1 only has Edit -> Preferences, and it really annoys me. I'm surprised nobody has complained about it enough to get it changed.
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It looks like the patent is basically converting privacy settings stored somewhere (probably in a database) to text. Wouldn't this be the same as any other reporting tool? Crystal Reports is probably the most well-known, and it's been around for many years.
The Jews weren't monotheists originally. They believed in the existence of other gods, but they were only supposed to worship one.
I don't think it's as much really believing in the existence of other gods as acknowledging the fact that other people believed in other gods.Good catch. That's what I get for reading the posts above mine that talk about him working for a private company and not paying attention to the summary/article.
EST is GMT -5 (EDT, Eastern Daylight Time, is GMT -4). CST is GMT -6, MST (Mountain Standard Time) is GMT -7, and PST is GMT -8. According to Wikipedia, there is no AST; Alaska Standard Time (GMT -9) is abbreviated AKT, and Atlantic Time (GMT -4; used in eastern provinces in Canada, such as New Brunswick) is abbreviated ET.
If it were a two-lane road, sure, I wouldn't be too worried about a motorcycle passing me on the right. On a one-lane road, passing on the right is very dangerous and very illegal.
1:00 PM EST (GMT -5) would actually be 18:00 GMT. We're in EDT (GMT -4) for the summer though. The summary used the wrong timezone abbreviation.
Like any other group, there are some motorcycle riders with a clue, and some without.
1) Where is it written down? Wikipedia's article has decent information about the general concept, and you can probably find some books from the original philosophers in your local library.
2) How does it justify everyone's natural rights being violated? Well, like I said, the purpose of a social contract is that you give up certain natural rights (e.g. the natural right to kill someone and take their stuff) in exchange for protection from other people exercising those same natural rights. Also, my purpose here is not to simply say "I don't like it" and leave, but to get discussion going that can eventually lead to candidates being elected who would rather uphold rights than violate them, eventually overturning the laws that do violate our rights. Depends on how you define "rights". I'm perfectly happy giving up my right to take someone's stuff if it means my stuff won't get taken by someone else. If you're talking about rights as defined in the United States Constitution (speech, association, religion, privacy, public trials, etc.), then I'm with you in wanting to ensure that they are protected from violation by the government.
I definitely agree that the US government's current solution (he said, trying to keep a straight face) is a complete crock of shit. I apologize if I didn't make that clear enough. My point was that terrorism is a legitimate problem, even if it's currently being addressed in a very ineffective and generally bad way.
Not that my anecdotal experience is worth more than your anecdotal experience, but I remember the exact opposite. Several years ago, I had a problem with JPEG's not rendering correctly. I contacted my video card manufacturer's support, assuming it was a video card problem (some things would render fine, others wouldn't, so my first guess was the video card). I was told that it was a known manufacturing defect in some AMD CPU's. I contacted AMD, and they said that it was odd that the problem would show up after owning the CPU for about a year, but they had me send it to them to check out. I ended up getting a replacement that was a little faster than the old CPU.