Only really useful if you're doing inappropriate things with your wrist.

Come on. You can't power a phone from the energy of the phone's own display. That would be like living off your own...*OK--that is so gross I can't even make the joke in a feeble attempt at /. Karma* Wait, I just made the joke, while not making the joke andapologizing for not making it. I guess you can make something from nothing.

Skepticism withdrawn.

What about the "Special Protection" of free speech? Yes, Pharma isn't a big fan of that one. "We'd really rather people didn't have the ability to provide honest feedback about our listed side-effects such as rectal bleeding and--uh--death, Mr. Zuckerberg. We definitely don't want them having an actual conversation on our page. They might mistakenly think that the 50,000 people saying Pharma is about profit and not cure, speak for us."

Poor babies.

If you said more than 100 then there's a 99.9% likelihood that you are either a liar, a poor counter, or an atrociously poor coder. There are well documented studies that indicate a highly competent engineer writes 12-15 lines of code a day on average. Now why is that number accurate? Because coding is the tip of the ice berg so to speak. There's a tremendous amount of analysis that goes into writing correct code whether it be in the design, debugging, or maintenance phases.

If you are cut and pasting, then you suck. If you are counting boiler plate or code generation, then you can't count (because you don't count that). If you are lying, nice job fucko--way to ruin the poll.

Competent coders make extensive use of pre-existing code, spend most of their time refactoring and deleting code, reuse code copiously, and make use of frameworks and third-party products to do the legwork.

Show me 100+ lines of code you wrote today that doesn't fit the above Criteria of Suck, and I will show you buggy, poorly thought out code that will cost you hours tomorrow or down the road trying to fix.

What they've come up with isn't non-obvious. Any group of experienced engineers can come up with this optimization. That's the litmus test and this fails. If you do extensive research on the properties of materials and build a super-strong alloy--OK. That's a patent. But if someone asked me to come up with a way to optimize notification times based on actual delivery, I and a bunch of people I know could come up with this without much struggle. Not appropriate for a patent. Just because Google was the first company to get the people controlling engineering time to sign-off on implementing this trivial solution, doesn't make it patent-worthy.

The patent system is broken and it's hurting our ability to innovate.

But it fails the "any fucking idiot in this business can come up with this" test.

The goal isn't to arrest people. The goal is to cow the masses with a demonstration of force. Such are the mechanics of oppression.

I do not want to receive (or give) that type of DNA sample, thank you!

Yeah, it's called Agile development and results in less misspending and mistakes and more building that you want.

This is the same kind of technology used to take 3 innocuous beams of light and explode your head at the point where they cross-over, and my phone has alarmingly accurate location information these days...

I can see it now. Sprint hires hacker to hack the T-mobile phone network and in a single keystroke explode their customer base; other networks follow moments later. The first and final act in what is later to be known as the Carrier Wars.

It may not be like that, but it certainly is like giving away the OS of game systems for free and heavily subsidizing the cost of the hardware to get people on your platform and then generate profit off the software sales. Every vendor does that, and we've got Simian running on millions of devices. I believe they are still the biggest install base, but were for a long while even so. I don't pay money for iOS on an iPhone either. Or maybe I do, but who can tell since it's all rolled into a big contract which ostensibly covers the hardware and service for 2 years, makes no mention of licensing fees for iOS.

Google isn't doing anything different than the rest. Fuck, iOS is locked to one companies hardware platform. And people are whining because anyone can use Android? Shame on you, Google. You're supposed to screw everyone more; that's why we think you are doing something illegal. I'm not a Google fanboi, but this particular topic is a non-issue. It's just patent-trolling bastards trying to justify their predatory exploitation of a broken patent system. That's it.

Someone must have the "Wipe to Clean" patent on cleaning your butt. That's only reason I can explain the abundance of crap patents like "Slide to Unlock." I'll be submitting my patent for "Pour into Glass" for beverages; I'm sure to make a killing.

So, I just went to the store and dropped $30 on the Oblivion Platinum Edition with the two expansions, expressly for the purpose of knocking around aimlessly. I'd purchased Oblivion years ago when it came out, and it had fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. I went to the store to take a look at new games, and Oblivion won hands-down. I say your comments are entirely accurate. I paid $30 for a 5 year old game to avoid the gaming-as-a-movie feeling that is all too common now. The gaming industry today reminds me in some ways of the software industry years ago when the MBAs arrived and started managing, only now it's the movie-style production managers taking over with "let's give them an immersive experience". Guess, what? Games are about the experience I CREATE, not the one you try to give me. Games are best when they give you the elements necessary to create a story, not when the designer gives you a story. Books are for that. You don't play Chess so someone can tell you, "You're going to win with mate in 5 after 43 movies, unless you take the Knight at move 21--then you win in 48 movies. Get to it!" I don't play games for that experience either.

I remember sunny Sunday afternoons playing FF VII on the deck for hours and hours. Ahh. I'd spend another $30 RIGHT NOW for that. :-)

Incorporating feedback is the death of creativity. The uniqueness of the artist's perspective and expression is greatness. The ability to produce what other's want isn't art; it's business. This trend of monitoring user behavior is nothing more than marketing to maximize profit. The singularly amazing game experiences will always be the uncompromising vision of those with the courage to make a statement and public opinion be damned. Giving people what they want is foolish. Giving people what they need is wise. Knowing the difference is genius. I'd have to say Blizzard's work is the epitome of this problem. Deplorably average in every way and catering to the profit line without taking risks; watered down, derivative (a hodge-podge of cultural homages and recycled tripe--Warcraft I, II, III, etc.)

Fuck that.

Explanation #1: Car is invented. Buggy whip manufacturers go out of business. Internet is invented. Traditional news goes out of business.

Explanation #2: A free market dictates that the consumer will pay for the level of quality that they want. A trend away from traditional journalism indicates that the consumer is getting sufficient quality from the internet. The consumer is a lot more honest about what the consumer wants than the FCC is.

Explanation #3: Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.