America uses first-inventor-to-file not first to file. If the invention is already disclosed to the public you can't get a patent on it. First to file only matters when two applicants kept their inventions secret and then file patent applications. (their is a grace period after public disclosure where you can still file an application) Prior art can still invalidate patents. Applications published to GitHub publically would be prior art. Private repo's might not be.. Apps published to the app store would be prior art. An unpublished app might not be.

Making innovative software was a good way to get sued before the Supreme Court stepped in. Google had to spend more money on patents and litigation than it did on R&D. Small start ups were being squeezed by lawyers. There are about 11 million profesional software developers and another 7.5 hobiest programmers. These programmers produce code everyday. Every line of code coud be patented. Every line of code should be prior art. Do you think the patent office examines the 1.2 million apps in the Itunes app store? Does it keep up to date on GitHub's 3.4 million users? Every update, every submission is prior art. None of it is looked at. Patents on software is a bad joke.

Or they can let anyone put reviews on any business. So they get reviews on more businesses. This improves their reputation among readers. Who can visit the site and find reviews on everything. That is what they did. If you want something else then create your own review site. I'm sure it will work out great with having less reviews than Yelp.

Office Phone OS

They are not your reviews. They are other people's reviews about you. You don't own them or control them in any way. People put thier reviews on Yelp because they want the reviews to be seen. They are opting in to being on Yelp when they post the review on Yelp.

So apparently there is some poor town named Cowpens where a battle occured. At least it wasn't named after a person. That would be a terrible last name.

Coding is not a pejorative. It is a perfectly fine verb describing the creation of code. Code Monkey uses the non pejorative "code" with the pejorative "monkey". You can add the word monkey to other nouns to creat other pejoratives. Grammer Monkey, Slashdot Monkey.

It isn't true that Universities don't focus on practical coding. In school I had to code many things. They had to work. Many students cheat. They have other people do their assignements. Or they do the assignments with a study group. Or they use google to find the solutions to problems. They get out of school and cannot program simple things. This is why internships are so important. Companies need to try out people before the commit to them. They need to work with for a few weeks to see if they are fakers.

mille passuum or 1000 paces was the Roman mile.

I would also argue that "Intelligent Design" isn't Christian. Arguing that God exists because the world is made the same way a human would make it isn't biblical. An all knowing God doesn't need reason to create anything. An all powerfull God does not care about efficiency. Human asthetics from human culture/biology isn't going to influance how God creates the world. Intelligent Design anthropomorphizes God into a man. You wind up with Zeus instead of a pillar of fire/burning bush/rock of ages.

well ok, on a cynical note there will be lots of people driving cars. But rich people who own these cars are going to be terrible drivers. So giving them manual controls won't help a great deal.

So what does that entail? Taking a road test every 5 years? Every year? 16 year old kids can pass the current tests. But they are not wonderful drivers. Now imagine those 16 year olds never getting any better at driving. Becoming 30 year olds who need to look in the manual to remember what lever is the turn signal.

That is very short term thinking. 15 years after driverless cars are released your going to have a whole generation of people who never learned to drive a car. People who get the license and then forget everything because they haven't touched the wheel in 10 years. There is not going to be anyone quilified to drive a car. You will just have millions of amatuers with a skill level of a 16 year old.

The laws will be rewritten once this gets closer to being a real thing. Google can continue to do what it wants on its test tracks.

Swing Copters has a poor rating because it has terrible controls. Getting past the hammers is pure luck. A copycat that actually makes it possible to control the copter would have a better rating.