Reminds me of when I was in France, and still having trouble understanding the spoken French language. I was talking to a guy who asked me, in translation, "Brothers, sisters, one, two, three?" It took me a while to figure out he wanted to know how many siblings I had. Dumbing down the question like that didn't help me understand him any better, it made it worse. Using correct French grammar and simply slowing it down would have been much more helpful.

I imagine Wolfram Alpha is like that.

Reminds me of the movie The Green Slime I saw when I was way too young to be watching late-night TV.

It's not just you; the question is ambiguous. What does "environment" mean? Is it the type of desktop software (Enlightenment, Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ...), the version of the desktop software (2.8 -> 2.12 -> 2.26), the window manager (Compiz, Metacity, twm, ...), your theme (Bluecurve, Clearlooks, Mist, Oxygen, ...), or simply your desktop background?

I typically select my desktop theme when I upgrade the OS every few years, and otherwise I don't touch the software. The background picture may change after 6-18 months.

Not just the PC; I recall the Apple II used an analog joystick as well, and the Atari 400/800 used the same method described in the abstract for their paddle controllers. Those were in the market nearly 20 years before the patent was even filed!

I remember Ask Jeeves used to be able to answer questions, until they were taken over by advertising. From that point all I ever got from them was links to other sites that were selling something maybe partially or tangentially related to your question.

Thank goodness Wikipedia came along.

"My UID is prime... is yours?"

Erm, yes, I think it is. Thanks for asking!

So is mine. But I have to admit not only did you beat me to the punch, but your UID is way lower too. Congrats.

"About 25 percent of the Dutch population downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music ..."

"... illegal downloaders representing 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally"

This tells me that at least 44% of the Dutch population doesn't purchase DVDs, games, or music. That's assuming that all downloaders also purchase. If nearly all downloaders don't purchase, then anywhere up to 99.9% of the population isn't buying any of it.

Does that say something about the quality of commercial products?

I take that back -- the scammer called again just now.

I wonder if that's the same scammer who's been calling me almost every day for the last two months? My caller ID box shows a Florida number (561-xxx-xxxx, which could be a fake), so I never pick up, but the caller never left a message until just last week. Then I had his pitch captured on my voice mail: it was from "Imperial Majesty Cruise Lines" claiming I've received a free cruise. I've reported every instance to the national Do Not Call registry, but the calls just kept coming until a few days ago.

I think sending the FTC a complete transcript of each voice mail message may have helped.