Right. And Google really doesn't care if any of these ideas actually work and get implemented, as long as they patent all the work and eventually troll patent cash down the line for unfinished research. If you think that Google's in 95% of these projects for anything other than the patents they'll churn out as the result, you're sorely mistaken.

I think this is everyone's biggest issue with Open Source. It also seems to be the "least wanted" by programmers working on the projects.

As a professional tech writer, I've offered my services to a few open source projects that I'm a fan of but feel have a major lack of documentation. In each case I've been rejected. I've basically been told, "Our programmers write all of our documentation." The existing documentation in each case might as well say "just figure it out." I've offered GUI design in the past as well. Lets just say this didn't go over well at all.

It seems that Open Source is a programmers club more than anything. It's a real shame. There's so much talented work going into the development of the software that it would be nice if the rest of the work (documentation, gui design, graphic design, etc) was doled out to the experts. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you're not super talented at everything.

Please reread that last sentence and decide to delete it. It's racist and it's debatably slander towards Microsoft implying that they a) assume that all MLK Blvds are dangerous or in bad areas of town and b) their patent actually goes so far as to always exclude MLK Blvds from walking paths. You're not defending your point by linking to that St. Petersburg Times article, either.

I agree, the only time a "saturated market" exists is when you're talking about items that aren't often replaced or when people aren't buying those items. If the market was saturated, we'd see GOOD new cell phones showing up at discount outlets being sold for a loss. WebOS products weren't didn't fail because the market was saturated, they failed because of poor marketing and not listening to what consumers wanted hardware wise. While I liked the pebble design, the market wants 4"+ screens or Apple products. Had the hardware been more appealing to the masses, the OS would have caught up. I sold a number of people on WebOS products, despite their dislike of the hardware, after demoing the software. IMO, WebOS and WP7 are the only two mobile OSes that make sense from a usability perspective.

The issue isn't fast food, it's regular restaurants. At restaurants where you order an entre instead of ala cart items, the entre is usually way too big.

I just get the Southwestern chicken salad if I have to go to McDonalds. It's actually pretty good. They recently stopped putting transfats in their crispy chicken as well, so sometimes I'll even treat myself to that! People should stop slamming McDonalds so much. They actually do have a handful of fairly healthy menu alternatives. I'd actually RATHER eat their salad than their burgers, it just tastes better.

Don't worry, that was an typo on the editor's part. I clearly remember Hugh Jackman describing it like getting a "Fiero without a paint job."

No it doesn't, it upscales your games from 720p or less to 1080p. The only games that are true 1080p are some live arcade games. If you're lucky, the title screen/menu screen in your games will be true 1080p. All the 1080p blurb on the back of the box means is that the xbox will upscale the game. Same goes with the PS3, there are a small handful of titles that will run native in 1080p (I want to say 3). 1080p will be a huge deal next generation, especially for those with large 1080p tvs or people who play at a desk attached to a monitor. You'll definitely be able to see the difference.

Why does everyone bill this the 720? This thing should be called the Xbox 1080. Everyone's billing their next gen systems as being 3x as powerful (360x3, do the math). Also, the next gen systems will all do 1080p. Despite marketing, there are only a small handful of current gen console games that run at 1080p. Even if the game states 1080p on the box, it's generally just stating that it will upscale the game to 1080p. The only real 1080p you're getting are menus and title screens.

Windows 9 is going to be everything and nothing at once. They're stripping the kernel to its core and use it as the basis for all their products. Desktop OS, mobile OS, Xbox, set top boxes, etc. It's going to be a great thing for MS because they'll be able to focus on improving a unified core. Basically, they're trying to do with Windows what everyone has been doing with Linux for years, make it something that's easily scalable and customizable across a family of products.

It's going to save MS a ton of money and allow them to focus on keeping their products secure and fast instead of constantly having to patch crappy modules of code that have been carried over for a decade. Microsoft is a lot smarter than people give them credit for, they're just such a huge entity that it takes a while for their plans to build inertia.

I said, I'm glad we don't have mosquitos anymore. I'm just not happy about the fact that I have a vortex of bats flying around my patio. There's usually about 50 circling at all times and over 100 living in my shingles. When you have to power wash your patio once a week because it's covered in guano (that carries disease), it gets to be a bit much...

It's not uncommon for them to actually get in the house. About once a year one manages to fly in while I'm hauling groceries or have a sliding glass door open.

I don't know about fruit bats, but we definitely have bat issues in my area. Anything that thins the bat population would be great by my book. I'm definitely glad I haven't seen a mosquito in years now, not happy that I have to deal with a patio full of bat guano due to the fact that bats are protected.

If so, I suggest creating your own business and get ready to bid on some work. No one is going to do this in house, they're going to take bids on conversions. I used to work at a company that made quite a bit of money off of paying people, per page, to OCR patents, correct OCR errors, and tag the document in XML. And I can assure you that, because of the way the government works, the majority of the work will go to minority owned small business. The work is easy and you can get college kids to do it for peanuts.

Thank you, other guy on /. with some grasp of English....