You're not wrong, but you are getting in the way of everyone's two minutes hate over patents.

The only reason they patented it is so that if they do make an actual product, it's harder for any patent trolls to sue them.

It's very likely that there are dozens of incredibly similar patents floating around out there, but the fact that Apple has been granted a patent for their implementation means that it's far more difficult for someone else to sue them because Apple can always point to their own patent as proof that the patent office obviously considered their implementation different enough and therefore unlikely to infringe.

It really doesn't matter though as I don't think Apple will actually bring this to market. They've got patents for hundreds of other things that have never seen the light of day, but when you're a billion dollar company, spending a little bit of time and money to potentially stop any lawsuits targeting your company are worth it.

There's that aspect, but it's also so that if Apple ever does make a product like this (they probably won't) it will be far more difficult for some other company with an overly broad patent similar to this to sue them.

If the case were to go to court, all Apple would need to do is point at their own patent in claim that the patent office obviously thought their implementation was different enough from whatever company X has (Apple's patent might even list Company X as prior art. The actual patent has) and then company X has to argue that Apple's patent is invalid or it will have a really difficult time getting any damages.

The patent system has turned into an arms race where it's far better to simply patent something you might never produce just because on the off chance that you do, someone else probably has a patent that's similar enough to sue you over it. Basically the cost of filing for the patent is less expensive than the cost of dealing with the legal costs if you don't have one.

I'd avoid SVN for anything that isn't a flat text file, otherwise it becomes a pain to merge or determine what the actual difference between two files is. I'm not aware of anything that will make viewing diffs for Word documents human readable. Never mind that some of the people who need to use it will probably be a afraid of it or have even more basic problems like forgetting to commit.

If they're not doing anything that requires absolute security or precise formatting, something like Google docs might work reasonably well. It's simple to use and doesn't require the users to understand the complexities of version control. No idea if there's anything that can be hosted locally in case the company can't or would prefer not to put the data on Google's servers.

Citation needed.

There's a slang dictionary that lists it as a slang word for "penis" from ~40 years prior to it appearing in Bugs Bunny cartoons, but it doesn't appear to be used in that context in the cartoons. The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the term may have been used ironically prior to the cartoons to mock an individual as a poor hunter rather than it's original meaning of a great hunter, but notes that it wasn't until the 80's that it was widely used to mean an idiot, geek, etc.

If you have evidence to suggest otherwise, please let me know. I couldn't find anything to support that claim after a few minutes of Google searching to support that it's been a well known slur (I can't recall hearing it recently so it may have fallen out of favor) outside of the generation that grew up using it. Seems far more likely that a cartoon unintentionally lead to the language shift because it used a reference that children were unlikely to understand as anything other than an insult.

All of that aside, "nimrod" is at worst on the same level as "dork" or "geek" but is probably closer to calling someone a "doo doo head". Only a nimrod would try to insult someone by calling them a nimrod.

20% yearly growth means that they will double their revenue in a little under four years.

People's failure to understand exponential growth is astounding.

To think Google needs an increasing rate of growth on top of an already immense, but consistent yearly rate of growth to be successful is idiotic. Ten years of 20% yearly growth would mean that Google has roughly six times the revenue as they do now in a decade. If you had a 10% increase every year in the growth rate, after a decade Google would have over 100 times their current revenue. The first example might not even be realistic and the second doesn't even come close to making sense.

Actually, wouldn't you need to demonstrate that the observed outcome (less women in technology) is due to some form of bias or discrimination also a conclusion made with out evidence?

For example, We can observe that on average males are taller than females. One could hypothesis that this is due to some social factor (i.e., lack of encouragement to grow at a young age) or any number of other causes, but to claim that any cause is correct and then require someone to prove you wrong if they want to claim it is not the reason is begging the question.

Making a claim in either direction requires some data. It would probably be better of the poster to whom you responded to have phrased their statement as "Girls aren't getting into technology . . ." which is simply just stating the observed outcome we can measure.

No one said Microsoft (or anyone else) has to use the school system to push their program. Would creating after school programs or summer coding camps aimed at young girls not be a reasonable solution?

If the school doesn't want to play ball it doesn't mean that Microsoft can't use other avenues to achieve their goals.

If the corporations care so much what's stopping them from creating after school programs or summer camps targeted at young girls?

They don't need to go through the school system to effect change in young children.

Some countries do have what amounts to squatter's rights in that if you occupy and otherwise unoccupied dwelling for a long enough duration you can claim it as a residency and the actual owner will not be able to evict you.

I tried to find that, because like you I speculated that there was probably a large amount of disparity, but I couldn't find anything with a quick search and didn't have time to do much digging. The figures may very well not be available or not possible to reasonably estimate. It's certainly possible that they are, but I don't care enough to go looking. If someone does have them though I would be curious.

According to an article in the Havana Times the average salary in Cuba (as of 2012) was ~$22 based on a report released by the Cuban government. A few other sources from a quick Google search were in the same ballpark so I'll assume that's reasonable.

So Netflix is roughtly 1/3 of an average monthly salary, which is still a considerable amount, but I would imagine that given the limited access to internet there, the cost of Netflix is hardly the largest barrier.

I suspect that the U.S. removing embargoes and trading with Cuba will do a lot to improve their economy. The tourism industry is also likely to see a lot of growth. I don't see how this will "eat them alive" though.

What's the alternative? Keep driving for us until some other company produces self-driving cars and you're out of the job anyway?

Someone is going to do it, so it makes far more sense for Uber to have a business model that allows the company to continue to exist once it reaches that point. If you're going to ask progress to stop so that certain jobs can be saved, why not get rid of your car and go back to a horse and carriage since the automobile wiped all of them out.

I wasn't aware that the German people owned the means of production or that private property was abolished.

Don't confuse Socialism with a Social Democracy. One tends to end in utter failure. The other tends to actually work quite well.

It's one thing to know that someone was brutally executed and quite another to see it. Perhaps it was done to push support for military intervention against ISIS. Knowing Fox there's some angle that they're working and I don't think it's as simple as money. Even the act of posting the video and the conversation it creates is going to shape and drive a debate on the subject, even if a very small number of people actually watched it.

Money seems like too simple of an explanation because I imagine most of the clicks are going to the blogs that are now outraged that Fox displayed the video at all. If anyone sees a traffic spike it's going to be the other sites that just throw out short opinion pieces devoid of any real content that can be consumed in a minute or so by the majority of people who don't care about the video itself but are more interested in the drama surrounding it.

Regardless of whether Fox is right or their reasons are right, they're probably going somewhere with this or trying to turn it into something to push their agenda.