I agree, I love my vehicle to be as silent as possible. But I'm not a "Car Guy" :/

I thought it was pretty cool, for a gadget, I'm curious to see just how useful it really is. http://slashdot.org/submission/2345093/mastercards-get-a-facelift

Hehe, you beat me to it!

You are very correct! That is precisely what I meant :) I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention ;)

I was just getting on to comment about Tesla. Here Here!

Note "Some definition of Humorous"
"
humorous (hjumrs)

— adj
1. ***funny***; comical; amusing
2. displaying or creating humour
3. archaic another word for capricious

funny (fn)

— adj , -nier , -niest
1. causing amusement or laughter; humorous; comical
2. ***peculiar; odd***"
-Dictionary.com, 2012-10-31 @ 12:21PM PST


The whole point being, they are suing someone for using their patent, whose own patented and licensed material was utilized as a visual aid in their patent application. This brings "fair use" into play. My opinion, for whatever it is worth, would be that the use of those specific visual aids wouldn't fall under "fair use" and could be used by Microsoft against the Patent Holders.

Now, I'm also not condoning the use by Microsoft of a Patented technique without first acquiring a license. But I've a general distaste for attempts at patenting method of producing GUI elements or generally trying to patent anything to do with a GUI, save perhaps for some proprietary technology that facilitates a more rapid and memory efficient method of displaying GUI elements. That would be an invention. There is nothing special about displaying a grid of "tiles" as a "Tile" could easily be considered a Border-less Child Window of a Multi-Document Interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface) being displayed in "Tiled" mode. Something that has existed possibility since Windows 3.0 released on May 22, 1990 (so would say the Might, but fallible WikiPedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager). Further, windows are sizable and their contents scale-able. So, MDI with border-less child windows scaled to fit the screen or some other bounds.

I again state, "I'm not FOR Microsoft(or anyone for that matter) using a patented technology or technique without first acquiring the license.". I do however suggest that it has already been patented under another name before and, in general, such "technologies" should not be patent-able in the first place.

My $0.02 is that the arrangement of GUI elements or categories of GUI elements, visual queues, etc. Should not be patent-able. I have, rather a strong opinion on the subject. So I'm going to end it here.

Among other things, I find it humorous ( for some definition of humorous ) that in Figure 1 they show "Tiles" of Outlook Express and Explorer.

If I told you, then SkyNet would know! So ... "I'llll Neeevvveerrr Teeeelllllll..." (head rotates 360 degrees)

And a wonderful place for me to make heinous spelling and grammatical errors :) *misinformation

That the internet is place for me to give prying eyes miss-information ;)