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Comment Re:it will never die... (Score 1) 663

I predict that people will still support the Dvorak layout for years to come, regardless of evidence for or against it's usefulness based purly off being differnt or a desire to believe that stupidity stops people from seeing Dvorak's improvements and thus anyone who does use the layout is a better human being.

And as long as there are Dvorak users around, there will be people like you who cannot tolerate the existence of happy non-conformists, and feel obligated to get in their face. And when they happily tell you, "I'm fine, thank you. Now piss off," you can feel content that there are people in the world obviously more ignorant than you.

Comment Re:Firefox extension? (Score 1) 308

“Absolutely” it is possible — if the Chrome developers would do something so utterly foolish as to spend hundreds of hours writing an API emulation layer for Chrome, add tons of hooks into the base browser code to support the emulation layer, add massive code bloat, slow the browser, find some way to make this jive with their multiple-process execution model, probably only work with a limited number of extensions, and saddle everything they do to the design decisions that Mozilla may make in the future. In short, yeah, if they re-write Chrome to be no different than Firefox, and thus erase it's entire reason for existing, it would work.

How in blazes are “installed by the end user” and “deeply tied to Mozilla's internal API” contradictory? Do you even know what an XPI is? Evidently not. Go Google it and stop making such a fool out of yourself.

Comment Re:The Memristor is NOT Fundamental (Score 1) 86

Actually, I would like to understand this point as well, so I'm not sure about all this "HP Conspiracy" stuff. Sounds like an honest question to me.

If components were ever discovered that could couple Flow and Charge, or Flow and Flux, why would those not be "fundamental"?

Why was there only one missing circuit element? Why not three?

Comment Re:Firefox extension? (Score 1) 308

No, this is completely false. You are confusing plugins with extensions. Plugins are compiled to architecture-specific machine code, and Chrome already supports them.

Plugins allow you to display content types that your browser does not natively support. Flash is a plugin. So is Java applet support. Extensions extend the browser itself, and are deeply tied to Mozilla's internal API.

Mozilla extensions are written in XUL and Javascript. Chrome does not and will never support XUL. And, as the Javascript in Extensions calls into the Mozilla/XUL object model, that won't work on Chrome either.

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 426

OS X has a habit of introducing radically new APIs in newer versions of the OS, such as Core Animation in Leopard. There are usually lots of goodies that developers can't help but play with, which then make their apps non-backward compatible. This then cascades to the end-user purchasing OS upgrades from Apple. Now, I may be wrong, but I doubt that there is anything in Core Animation that requires Leopard. Apple could choose to create installable versions of the newer APIs for Tiger (and perhaps Panther). However, they have no financial incentive to do so.

Now, Microsoft also introduces new APIs. The difference is that Microsoft has historically back-ported APIs to previous versions of the OS. For example, WIndows XP shipped with DirectX 8.1. When DirectX 9 came out, Microsoft released it for both Windows 2000 and XP. The same can be said for .NET. (2.0 supports W2K, 3.0 does not - but it does support XP). Of course, now Microsoft is following Apple's lead, and DirectX 10 only installs on Vista.

Comment Re:Looking to test Bilski? (Score 1) 225

Ok, Mr. AC, apparently you don't understand the meaning of the words "overly simplified". It was an analogy. Get a clue. Nor was I saying that every new use for an existing machine could not be patented.

But what is certain: If the process is not intrinsically tied to a specific machine, and if the process does not perform some sort of transformation of one thing into something else, it cannot be patented.

Trivialize it if you wish. Patent lawyers are freaking out. They at least don't think it's trivial.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081103134949355
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081105132651542
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081109185020183
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081112034806294
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081102011538422

Comment Re:Vs. Mootools? (Score 4, Interesting) 154

I have not used Mootools. I was first exposed to jQuery when I was trying to integrate WYMEditor into my company's CMS. When we ran into an issue, where we needed to add a CSS class to some server-side-generated code that we could not touch, the answer from somebody on a forum was, "Just use jQuery," and I was shown a one-liner that did exactly what we needed. Not only that, it was instantly understandable. My initial reaction, having struggled with doing this manually in the past, was, "It can't be that easy." Of course, I have used it in countless ways since then. I personally find it quite self-documenting.

Comment Re:Looking to test Bilski? (Score 1) 225

Your point is well taken. I was not aware of this distinction.

Now, the next step in the right direction would be a ruling to the effect that a method claim cannot be recast as an apparatus claim, just to avoid the machine requirement. i.e., that if there is no essential difference between a method claim and an apparatus claim when the apparatus incorporates a general-purpose machine, the apparatus claim, by the same standard, should be denied.

Comment Re:Looking to test Bilski? (Score 5, Informative) 225

Apparatus claims are not sufficient to get around In re Biski. Simply adding the words "On a computer" or "On a handheld device" (or long drawn-out complicated descriptions which equate to the same), to a process that is, in itself, purely algorithmic or an abstract process that could equally apply to any number of pre-existing machines, does not rise to the level of the machine requirement in In re Biski.

I like to put it his way (though this is overly simplified, perhaps): If you come up with a novel way to use a screw driver, you cannot patent your method, because you didn't have to invent the screw driver to do it. The screw driver already existed.

In this patent, you could substitute the words, "web page displayed in a browser, running on a hand-held computer with a touch screen" for the bulk of the claim copy. Well, none of that qualifies a process as unique to a specific machine. The fact that there are many different devices that meet his description, devices that are in no way intrinsically linked to this patent, brings this into direct conflict with In re Bilski.

Comment Re:Firefox 3.1b with Trace-Monkey (Score 2, Informative) 371

Very few FF3.0 plugins will work on 3.1beta.

Actually, most of them will, if you install the Nightly Tester Tools add-on. You can then force compatibility on any or all of your add-ons.

YMMV, but in my case, the following work fine in 3.1 beta 1: iMacros, Adblock Plus, DownloadHelper, Firebug, Flashgot, Foxmarks, and Web Developer Toolbar.

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