Red Hat Enlists Community in Fight Against Patent Trolls
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 14th Feb 2009 09:13 UTC, submitted by stickster
Legal Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them -- they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA, meaning they produce nothing of value other than money from those whom they sue (or threaten to sue) over patent issues. They're alleging infringement of patents on a user interface that has multiple workspaces. Hard to say just what they mean (which is often a problem in software patents), but it sounds a lot like functionality that pretty much all programmers and consumers use.
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zombie process
Member since:
2005-07-08

Speaking as a child of the 70s who was forced to learn both systems in public school, I can tell you that learning wasn't the major issue, it was the fact that nothing besides the rulers we used t measure things changed. No speed limit signs were changed to reflect mph/kph, no gages were changed to reflect gallons/liters, etc. It was learned, but for all intents and purposes, useless (kind of like the OSI model :-P).

And let's face it, kilograms suck - something that heavy needs to have something larger than a gram as in intermediary - even when we were learning this stuff, being told that something was about 500 grams made no sense at all.

Reply Parent Score: 2

StephenBeDoper Member since:
2005-07-06

And let's face it, kilograms suck - something that heavy needs to have something larger than a gram as in intermediary - even when we were learning this stuff, being told that something was about 500 grams made no sense at all.


Agreed there. I've often thought the same thing about metric distance measurements - centimetres are too small, metres are too large. Canada standardized on the metric system long ago, but most of us know our height in feet rather than centimetres.

There is the "decimetre" unit (1 decimetere == 10 centimetres), and I assume there is an equivalent for mass (decigrams?) - but they're almost never used outside of elementary school math & science exercises.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Soulbender Member since:
2005-08-18

There is the "decimetre" unit (1 decimetere == 10 centimetres), and I assume there is an equivalent for mass (decigrams?) - but they're almost never used outside of elementary school math & science exercises.


That's a Canadian problem. The decimeter is frequently used in other places. I've never heard anyone having problems with meters and grams being too small.
I cant help but wonder how you two can work with computers since, you know, there are just way too many bytes to a kilobyte. Where's the decibyte (or perhaps ounce of bytes) when you need it?

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unclefester Member since:
2007-01-13

The kg is actually a very convenient measure. A litre of water weighs very close to 1kg. In Australia we simply ask for 1/2kg of chicken or say some one is 1.8m tall.

In Australia (like Britain) we never measured height in just inches but always feet and inches eg 6'1" not 73 inches. Weight of people was always expressed in stones (14 pounds) and pounds not just pounds eg 10st 5lbs not 145 lbs.

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dagw Member since:
2005-07-06

There is the "decimetre" unit (1 decimetere == 10 centimetres), and I assume there is an equivalent for mass (decigrams?) - but they're almost never used outside of elementary school math & science exercises.

Really? Certainly here in Sweden decimeters and hektograms( 100 g ) are used all the time. Hektograms are for example a common unit when buying things like food by weight.

But to be honest I've never seen it as a problem to talk about 400 grams or 170 cm, nor have I ever heard anybody complain about it before.

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