Quite the opposite, if you file and are granted a patent for something that is later ruled invalid, there should be substantial penalties for the filer, because the purpose of a patent application is a government granted monopoly, leveraging the legal power and force of government to suppress other business. If you tell the government that you've done something novel that isn't, and prevent competition through that mechanism, there are substantial social costs (none of the benefits of invention, but all of the costs of a monopoly).

So you target STANDARDS. OGL/OGLES is a universal standard, even Apple supports it.

So, not only do you mention two separate implementations, but you handily leave out the various extensions that are required for various cards to do the same thing.

Whilst it's common (and often justified) to have a pop at the carriers for delaying or preventing updates to devices, it's worth pointing out that I've got access to a whole range of Android devices direct from a number of different OEMs and not a single one of them has yet received an OTA update to fix this vulnerability.

The carriers may still slow down this process, but it's already going slow enough with just the OEMs involved.

Came to say this. Left satisfied.

True enough. But there _are_ occasionally exceptional individuals that managed to build great things without state support.

A local example is the old Great Northern Railway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)

we need to pray 50 times a day, each time we start a task, and each time we finish a task.

This is a Warhammer 40K comment waiting to happen. Blah blah appease the machine spirits blah blah.

I read The Tipping Point and Freakonomics in the same time period, and found this to be very true. I was amused when Gladwell did the whole 'clean streets lower crime' sthick, with anecdotal evidence and what not, and Freakonomics happened to call bullshit on that, with statistics and data.

That's not one of meat's many uses.

Hmm. If the south had won, then yes, the two newly formed countries would have had their clocks reset.

The North won, which maintained the line of governance, so the US of A has lasted since 1776 or whenever. The CSA lasted for a few years.

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." --Mel Brooks.

Quite the edge case, as you'll agree, I'm sure. But I think we'll also agree that the effort going into this new feature, which will affect few people in any meaningful way, could probably be better put towards optimizing the base software, which would benefit many, if not all, users.

Sure, but I think the idea is that if your spreadsheet doesn't do all the calculations it needs to do more or less instantly, on any computer built within the last ten years, you're either a) horribly misusing your spreadsheet, or b) using a horribly written spreadsheet program.

It's kinda like redesigning your VW Bug to be able to back up to a full-on commercial loading dock to load groceries.

Now that said, sure, why the hell not? The GPU is just sitting there, might as well make use of it. But it's more along the lines of 'why the hell not' than 'this will make it faster!'

Lux, sestnik, samosud.

They should have left it in, and made it optional. "Family and Friends sharing is currently disabled. To enable this functionality, you and the people you share with must both enable the feature, which will involve your XBone checking in via Internet every 24 hours, or disabling your shared games until the checkin can occur."

Maybe the Kinect can be programmed to identify your age by the onion on your belt (as that was the style of the time) and automatically, for example, increase the font size on your screen. Stuff like that.