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Comment You don't have to (Score 4, Insightful) 216

The way this is setup isn't that that you code everything in natural language, rather it is just a shortcut to look up the correct formal language. Instead of searching/browsing documentation looking up the exact names of the functions you want and how to chain them, you just type what you want in natural language. If it interpreted you correctly, then great it saved you several minutes, and now you know the real syntax to use in the future. If not, well you only lost a couple seconds.

The idea of mixing natural language like this isn't so weird; the first step that most programmers would take in looking up documentation when they don't even know the name of the library the functionality is located in is to perform a natural language search on web browser, and then go from there. This just takes it one step further and streamlines the process, which is perfect for a interactive language.

Comment Re:Troll (Score 4, Insightful) 794

Homeopathy is not silly; it is a lie. If you sell it, you're lying to people. So it matters that Whole Foods sells it, as it casts doubt on their grasp of science, which indicates their "healthly" foods are just marketing to the credulous.

Products in regular supermarkets are also filled with lies, and both have products that better than the other in some way or the other. Solution: make your own decision rather than expecting a corporation to base their decisions on science rather than on what sells best.

Comment Re:Bad news for Wolfram alpha (Score 4, Informative) 54

I just did some queries and the only copyright statement I see is the standard one at the bottom of their page. They do have a legitimate copyright on their pages, including the layout, design and the content which they created. That notice doesn't necissarily imply that they claim to own the facts that are being displayed. In fact, they frequently provide citations for those facts, which implies that they don't claim to own them.

Comment Re:I remember Doom 3. (Score 1) 108

Personally, I think the Doom concept translates poorly to modern gaming. Tolkien-esque fantasy is to RPGs -- revolutionary in its time, but bland and generic today. Modern games need distinctive characters, settings, stories, and gameplay to succeed (artistically, anyway). Modern games need distinctive characters, settings, stories, and gameplay to succeed (artistically, anyway).

I disagree. The recent Serious Sam releases were great, and showed that the old-school FPSs formula still makes for a good game in today's world. Fast paced, lots of shooting, and meaningless plot. The good character helped, but it was the gameplay that really made it stand out. The problem with Doom 3 wasn't that it failed to add all the things that modern FPSs have, but rather that it failed to replicate the fun gameplay of the originals.

Comment Not sending history to Valve (Score 4, Informative) 511

The biggest part of his announcement is that this checking is done client side; your DNS history is not sent to Valve. They also only record MD5 hashes that match the cheat sites they are looking for, not your entire DNS history. Finally, they claim to only check for DNS lookups of servers used by the cheat software itself, not just websites where you might read about and download cheats (although in some cases I imagine these could be the same), and use this as a second check after the client has already detected a cheat installed on you machine. So simply visiting cheat software websites without using them shouldn't get you banned.

Comment Depends on how you measure. (Score 1) 177

If you consider just current employees, about half started before me and half after me. But if you consider everyone I have worked with at this job, probably close to 4/5 have since moved on to other jobs. Since most people here either stay all the way till retirement, or for just a few years, without much middle ground, the second measure will continue to grow much faster than the first.

Comment Not a standard. (Score 4, Informative) 249

The W3C standard for Regions has mostly been created by Adobe ... I thought standards were there to implement not argue with.

CSS Regions is not a W3C standard. It is a Working Draft. The entire point of publishing a working draft is to solicit feedback from the community. There have been several working drafts that were never promoted to final recommendations, because there was no community consensus that they were a good idea. What Google and Mozilla are doing is a perfectly constructive part of the standardization process.

Comment This is being done client-side (Score 1) 79

A new error code won't help, because for that to work the original website would have to send it. But if a link is broken, then they already negelcted to send a usefull response code. This feature is about how the client responds to a 404 error, in which case the most honest thing to do is show the user the 404 message that the site provided, but also let them know that they can access an older version of the page if they wish. Which is pretty much how the existing Wayback plugins work.

Comment Redirect, don't 404. (Score 3, Insightful) 79

None of those examples should result in a broken link if you are maintaining your website correctly. And this feature is only "fixing" broken links; that is links that once existed and are now 404'ed.

If you want to discontinue a product, then replace those pages with one that explains that the product is discontinued, and provides links to simular current products, as well as the support page for the discontinued product. If a users is clicking on links in reviews or forum posts about your old product and receive 404's, or redirection to a completely unrelated and unhelpfull page on your site, they will be frustrated with or without this feature.

In the second case, just redirect the entire demo website URL tree to a current list of examples.

In the third case, you shouldn't do that without redirecting the old url to the new one. Seriously, are you trying to make your content hard to find?

Again, redirect to the new menu.

In no case is sending a user a 404 useful or benificial, nor is it the most appropriate thing to do according to the HTTP standard. If you really want to be pendantic then send a 301 or 303 to perform the redirect, otherwise use URL rewriting, or just change the contents of the existing URL, whichever is easiest. The user should only see a 404 if they clicked an invalid link that was never a real URL for your website. Otherwise, you have failed your users, and it's no-one's fault but your own if they choose to use a service that tries to make up for your short-commings.

Comment You are misinterpreting this ruling. (Score 5, Informative) 143

If you sue someone for patent infringement you have always had the burden of proof, even before this ruling. All this ruling is saying is that if you threaten to sue someone, and they go to a judge first asking you to put-up or shut-up, the burden is still on you as the patent holder, same as if you had sued them.

Secondly, this ruling does nothing to limit the discovery process. As a small inventor suing a big company you still have the same subpoena powers during discovery as you did before.

In other words, the Supreme Court simply reaffirmed that accused infringers are innocent until proven guilty, regardless of the procedural nuances of how the lawsuit is initiated. None of the concerns you voiced will become worse due to this ruling.

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