This is exactly the wrong case to use for the argument of a broken patent system, I think, primarily because Microsoft DID know about the patent and deliberately ripped the feature off with the intent to crush the company's product out of the competition. In fact, if I recall correctly, they worked with i4i, visited with them, and were pretty blatant about the whole thing.

So while I often think that the patent system has a LOT of problems (a LOT a lot of problems), this particular case is one where Microsoft is getting what they deserve, in my opinion. i4i isn't a patent troll... Microsoft pretty much came along, took what they wanted, and expected their size and superior market share to protect them. That's not good enough.

I would conjecture that those who feel they are good at multitasking do _not_ feel this -- and that's both why they feel they are good at multitasking, and why they are actually bad at it.

Yes. And anyone who has ever played with a gamer who fancies him or herself a multitasker knows this. They never seem to understand that you're pissed off for a reason. Subtle outbursts like, "OMG, turn the damn movie off, stop IMing your friends, and pay attention to the screen. There's a reason the rest of us don't want to group with you and that you suck at doing quests!" seem to confuse them, because they are GOOD at multitasking!

Not that I'm bitter. *coughs*

Amen.

I used to live in a city neighborhood where cars kept getting jacked from my apartment parking lot. The girl who lived directly above me kept having her red SUV stolen for joyrides despite her car alarm. (She couldn't believe I didn't have a car alarm.) The big black pickup truck next to my car got stolen. My car? Never touched. No one seemed to want a 9-year-old Buick Skylark when the rest of the lot was filled with freaking nice cars or popular cars that could be sold for parts. So I might have been a grad student with a crappy car, but at least my car was always there.

Let me help you understand: the problem is that the consequences are inappropriate to the conduct. Your line of reasoning would have everyone accept whatever consequences are in place, no matter how draconian.

I don't know about the GP's line of reasoning, but mine pretty much goes, "If you sign a contract with someone and break the terms of it, expect them to treat you like you've broken the contract."

I don't really think this is about copyright infringement or anything else so much as it is that the student presumeably signed both network/computing contracts and housing contracts that laid out regulations and consequences. I would assume that using university networks to commit copyright infringement is probably specifically mentioned in one or both of the agreements.

If you don't like the possible consequences of contract clauses, don't sign them. If you do sign a contract, don't break the conditions unless you are prepared for the consequences. This is not a case of "A law is unfair and its consequences are too harsh." The consequences in this case are SOLELY the result of his decisions to live in a dorm and use uni resources for something he had agreed not to do. So he had choices. Don't live there. Don't use uni resources. Don't do it. Or take the consequences.

Sadly, you read the source of my quote and chose to focus on that rather than on what I'd actually said. Should you care to look, the study's results are published a number of other places, but I admit that USA Today had the pertinent bit I needed all in one place for me to quote.

The point is that in many places, literacy begets literacy. Print newspapers aren't losing readers to online newspapers so much as newspapers are losing dedicated readers overall.

As to the guy reading through the four-day-old USA Today on your plane flight (I've done that flight--my butt is still recovering), people read at different speeds and levels. While I could wish that everyone would pick up certain books that I think are fantastic and read them, I've come to realize that so long as someone is reading something, you haven't lost the battle. (I'd rather he was reading an old USA Today than flipping through some of the POS magazines that are all glossy ads, but that's my personal bias.) Besides, who knows what sort of week he'd had? I'm a librarian and a bibliophile, and I've had a week or two in my life where I couldn't read a book to save my life. I just didn't have the energy or attention span. Usually those weeks involved long periods in hospital waiting rooms flipping a quarter with my brother over who got first pick of the crossword puzzles in the various newspapers we'd managed to scrounge.

I've certainly had certain parents treat the Harry Potter books with the sort of contempt you've just shown USA Today. Apparently if it wasn't considered a classic novel by 1950 for some people, it isn't something anyone should waste their time reading.

So no, I do not think of USA Today as a great journalistic newspaper. I don't believe I ever made that claim or probably ever will. My argument was with the premise that print newspaper readers are replacing their newspapers with online newspapers.

Yes, this is an OT response. I should really know better.

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.

I'm curious. Do you know the poster, or are you basing this solely on his /. post?

Because simply saying that "some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments" does not mean he lacks faith or favors another economic system. He just might not share the same views as certain elements of those two groups. Many people are Christians or of another faith but are uncomfortable with some of the views of other Christians. Many people are capitalists but think that there's such a thing as hard-core capitalism that could be tempered. Very few systems encompass people who immediately share all beliefs without offense.

In particular, I think there's a big difference between saying "I made some Christians uncomfortable or offended them" and saying that someone presented a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith. In that context you are assuming that Christianity is the only faith, and that only by supporting atheism or possibly agnosticism would someone make a Christian uncomfortable. It simply depends on the Christian. The poster could easily be a Christian who disagreed with them on certain topics, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or... you get the point.

Except that I'm not convinced that this is a replacement of traditional print media by Internet sources so much as it is simply a decline in news readership. As a librarian, I've found that I don't really compete with bookstores. The more people read from the library, the more they also tend to buy from the bookstore. It tends to be a synergistic relationship.

On a related note, Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller put out his annual Most Literate Cities study, which looks at what literary resources are available and used.

From a USA Today article on this year's study:

The findings come at a time when newspaper circulations across the USA are declining, and online newspaper reading is increasing. Miller's analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the availability of free online news is not to blame for the decline in newspapers' print circulation -- and that neither is the decline in bookstores across the country caused by the rise in online book buying.

Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers.

So I don't think it's necessarily that people are actually choosing to read their news online instead of subscribe to a traditional newspaper. I think more people are just not reading in general and may happen across news online as they do other things--but that isn't the point of their Internet usage.

And if we aren't reading, will that leave us with just television reporters? :O