Slashdot Mirror

I already did it. It didn't work out. You can read on my blog for details (automatic english translation> )

Once again, thanks for your reaction and for having identified yourself. I have meanwhile published a detailed analysis of Google's Bilski brief on my blog. It's certainly not "anti-software-patent". It stops far short of arguing that software shouldn't be patentable. It just says some software patents are too abstract, some are too "conventional", but of course, Google's own patents would not be affected by what they proposed. Not at all.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/call-phones-from-gmail.html
The "IPProPortal" link just generates hits for that site while adding nothing. Slashdot got played.

So, Google gets to know who you call, their number, and when (in relation to everything else you're doing on Google). In exchange for selling this information about yourself and the person you're calling you get low rates. Or at least lower than using the cell on your desk. Depending on distance called, and your cell deal.

I guess a lot of people will be fine with that. I'm not keen on how it puts the person called into their system.

Psalms 74:14
http://bible.cc/psalms/74-14.htm

Surah 2:35-74
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/06/surah-2-35-74-allah-turns-jews-into.html

As @jonored already pointed out, Prius uses NiMH. But lithium is coming, so whatever. Your hyperbole repeats the error of the OP. The onus is entirely on you to demonstrate that producing and eventually recycling 40 pounds of lithium or nickel (the battery weighs hundreds of pounds, but it's not pure metal) is worse for the environment than producing then burning tons of gasoline. Apparently you don't understand concepts like "several orders of magnitude". Neither lithium or nickel is particularly toxic, unlike the LEAD ACID batteries in conventional cars.

There is no lithium shortage. Bolivia and Argentina each have salt flats full of the stuff. The American lithium mine in Kings Canyon shut down because prices were low. And if and when prices rise, it's in every gallon of seawater. The metal in the battery is not the most expensive part and there are no subsidies for lithium or nickel production. If batteries are "massively expensive" then so are the tons of gasoline a well-engineered hybrid or electric vehicle will save in operation.

You don't seem to understand that a battery is a storage medium, not a consumable. After production, there are no byproducts from lithium or nickel whatsoever, it just sits in a battery until recycled. And I proved it avoids the burning of tons of gasoline, which does pollute, even ignoring the CO2.

As money is at least a conservative representation of environmental impact.
  No, it's a pretty USELESS representation. You can buy a big truck for less than a Prius that took much more raw materials and pollution to make. You seem to be hoping that the economic analysis of break-even points somehow relates to environmental payback, but it doesn't. Same problem with your nonsensical sentence about cost efficiency, which is also nothing to do with pollution. Drive less and you pollute less, someone more talented than you can do the math to work out how much.

I provided facts and math backing up the comparative environmental benefits of a new Prius vs. a used Honda. You spouted an incoherent stew of false statements and unrelated topics.

this is great news. anyone know if it will be global, and not just US based ?

For now, it is U.S. based. From the GMail Blog:

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days

Here you can listen online http://uvb-76.blogspot.com/2010/08/august-23-2010-935am-pst-voice.html

I have a slightly different point of view. Knew it would only take 10 seconds of googling to find it.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/03/barstool-tax-policy.html

The moral. MANY as in nearly half the current population does not pay any taxes. Nearly 40% GET money. Free glorious money/programs/food/etc. Is it enough to kick back at the pool on? Hell no. It is not meant to be (though many seem to think it should be). We literally pay people to not work. In some cases are better off not having a job. I know a few 'poor' people who do rather well. It is amazing what you can get used to. Just so long as you are willing to ignore any phone call you get from anyone because it may be a creditor. There is a whole 'underground knowledge' on how to game the system. Trust me they have it worked out and are doing very well. I have also known people who truly need these programs. Yet the leaches I find make me want to vomit.

You also have a flawed concept of how our economy creates money. It is not pretty. For example Ron Paul does. Yet his ideas would crash the whole thing and you would be living the south american wages dream in no time. Our economy right now creates money by borrowing from the future. Yep they have loads of cash in the future. It is called an interest rate. If you want to see a wall street banker freek out faster then anything say the word deflation to him. Why? They borrow money. LOTS of money. If you have a mortgage you better hate deflation as well. It is why right now many people are 'upside down' in their mortgage. The housing market is currently deflating. It is also why no one can actually get a loan very easily right now. No one wants to loan out money on something that is worth less than it was yesterday as the collateral is falling in price. As if the person defaults you can not get your money back. Until the property market stabilizes (and the 8k rebate checks only drug the problem out) you will continue to see mass deflation and mass unemployment. Loans are what drive our economy. Many companies have revolving credit lines that run their business. It wasnt always like this. It used to be gold. Which was a fixed size and asset. But some bright econ major figured out you could loan your brains out and borrow from the future and create growth now. Instead of later when you can really afford it. It works for awhile. But it is a ponzi scheme. Eventually it will unwind. Currently congress and the office of the president (and the couple of dozen before him) keep the scheme going. Why? They have borrowed HUGE sums of money from foreign governments. They want those loans (in the form of bonds) to go down in value. That is done thru inflation. Ever wonder why they ride the inflation like it a s&m sub? Thats why.

As to why bubbles form. Its easy TOO much money in the system. In 92-95 we were in the midst of a decent recession. Which was equal to the inflation we had in the 80s. Almost a cossin wave. Then some bright spark in the wall street arena said 'we have too much paper work help us'. They unhooked the laws that protected us since the 1930s. Then congress had a moment of 'lets help everyone buy a home even if they can only marginally afford it'. A perfect storm was created. By 97-98 it almost all flew apart. Hedge funds suddenly had a huge influx of cash and they were using that cash to play dollars against f origin currency. From all these cool new loans they could make. The fed was ontop of that one and it was a 'small' crash and it almost unraveled the very value of the dollar it was also kept very quiet. Then by 2000 we had another crash. The dot com crash. This was created from the same pool of cash but was invested into any 2 bit scheme that came along that had the word internet on it. Another one in 2004 (commodities). Then another in 2007-2008 (commodities and housing loans). Each one bigger than the previous. There was/i

alot of wolves and bears.

Wow, that sounds really dangerous and awesome. How would you keep them tied together without fighting?

(The Alot is better than you at everything)

... I've got fcamera on my N900, it works even better now that I've overclocked the phone a touch.

It was just a simple apt-get install fcamera away.

Alot of software...

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

I'm not a grammar Nazi, but I think you (and everyone else) can appreciate the humor in the link. "Alot" is actually two words: "a" and "lot". ;)

they need to develop and then provide the code to a program which the others can compile and test. it should identify works to which they hold copyright while not claiming works to which others hold copyright and without any mistakes either.

go for it.

meanwhile: http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

You'll note thay evil "Hollywood" kind of lay down on the oppression job, allowing An American Carol to be released in 1600+ theaters, and Proud American to be released in 750 theaters, and Expelled to be released in over 1000 theaters, the widest release of a documentary in history. As far as soul-crushing propaganda machines go, we are not getting the memos out, apparently.

Or this:

Oooo, look. Data. Let's take the top 15 moneymakers from the last few years. These tend to be both the movies that had the most promotional push, and also biggest audience (or cultural) impact. It's a rough metric, but the movies don't get any more or less politicized as you go down the list -- they tend to alternate between horror movies and failed rom-coms. You want a tighter look, go parse the lists yourself. From the best box-office site on the web, the truly magnificent Box Office Mojo:

Top 15 movies in 2005 (so far):

Revenge of the Sith -- claimed by both liberals and conservatives, and both of you are idiots. It's a Star Wars movie, jackass, sixth and last in the most famous franchise in history.
Hitch - date doctor. rom-com
Madagascar - animated children's film about zoo animals
Batman Begins -- comic book movie, but pro-torture/vigilanteism!
War of the Worlds - sci fi thriller about courage in adversity, value of family
Fantastic Four - comic book movie (position my guess based on opening weekend)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith - dueling sexy hit men. violent, but no politics or religion.
The Longest Yard - comedy remake.
Robots - animated children's film about robots
The Pacifier - SEAL who takes care of kids. family comedy.
Are We There Yet? -- family comedy. Guy bonds with Girlfriend's kids
Monster-in-Law -- Straight-up rom-com. Got Jane Fonda in it, but all she betrays is J-Lo. Hardly a Hollywood staple anymore, first movie in fifteen years
The Ring Two -- horror sequel, but theme is about mother saving son
Constantine -- comic book movie. Is shockingly pro-heaven in the whole God v. Satan thing.
Sin City -- Okay, agreed. The singular most morally reprehensible thing on the list (and in my mind, most reprehensible movie in theaters for a considerable amount of time). However, please note it was made outside the studio system. Rodriguez shot it as an indie. And hey, you people didn't have to go see it. Won't last the summer in this spot.

Top 15 in 2004:

Shrek 2 -- animated family film & sequel
Spiderman 2 -- objectively pro-science! comic book adaptation.
Passion of Christ -- another indie. And, I say, good for Mel for making something he believed in. However anti-semitic.
Meet the Fockers -- comedy
The Incredibles -- animated superhero movie. Value of family theme.
Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban -- children's book adaptation
The Day After Tomorrow -- Hmm. I guess if you're someone who believes this movie is pitching the whole climate change issue as its central theme rather than a convenient way to bring about big-budget mayhem, I can spot you this one. Of course, you then have to argue that Roland Emmerich is objectively pro-alien, and Independence Day was a vicious assault on the Clinton's Adminstration's lack of a coherent anti-alien policy. But, you know what, I'll spot you.
The Bourne Supremacy -- sequel, spy thriller
National Treasure -- treasure hunt, adventure movie
Polar Express -- animated adaptation of children's book
Shark Tale -- animated children's movie
I, Robot -- book adaptation
Troy -- historical epic. Anti-war? Well, not many ways to spin the Iliad.
Ocean's Twelve -- sequel to a remake. look, celebrities! looking cool!
Fifty First Dates -- rom-com

Fahreneit 9/11 is down at 17 here, by the way -- between Van Helsing a

What if it was intentionally uploaded by the copyright holders themselves, or by those they authorized to do so?

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-viacom-wanted-to-buy-youtube-uploaded-its-own-clips/32061

quote:
      For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

For half a billion dollars, we could have had half a stealth bomber.

Yeah, but something tells me this isn't what the hippies had in mind when they said "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"...

It doesn't matter whether the procurement chain diverts the money to defense contractors or for texbook publishers: a bureaucracy's first order of business is to protect itself by expanding its mandate - and by extension, its budget.

[quote]First, FreeBSD's ZFS may be "well underway", but it's showing no signs of being usable any time soon. Let it suffice to say that anyone paying attention or using FreeBSD ZFS for much more than one or two small servers is likely to agree that their implementation is not "enterprise ready" as they so arrogantly claim.[/quote]

Hmm, it's been usable for many of us for quite some time. Not to say there haven't been problems with it, but less the equivalent point in OpenSolaris history since FreeBSD is able to import well tested code and patches for issues the first gen ZFS had in OpenSolaris.

[quote]Second, I'm not so stupid as to fool myself into thinking ports on BSD is a sustainable administrative tool. Nexenta, and I believe Illuminos, use apt.[/quote]

Again, many of us have used ports with great success for a long time. Personally, I find it easier than working with deb packages, and far easier than working with rpm's.

[quote]FreeBSD appears to be in decline as a project. I can't speak for developer activity, but I can say that their ability to actually ship code that works has become diminished since 7.1 or so. Entire subsystems have not worked for quite some time, yet they keep shipping it and saying "it'll be fixed in a couple years" (referring to USB and AHCI). Quite a few drivers have also had regressions.[/quote]

Wow this is like a broken record. The are no problems with either AHCI or USB for the vast majority of users. There were some changes to USB in 8.0, eg switched to being based off of libusb, device renaming, etc. AHCI and some the other related controller drivers were new in 8.0 as well, There were a few corner cases that didn't work well, but it's seen widespread usage with a great deal of success. The updates included in 8.1 address the corner cases and some further performance improvements. It's hard knowing what your issue is since you speak in generalities, but I assure you there are far more happy FreeBSD users than people like you.

[quote]In addition to ZFS, the Solaris kernel has dtrace, zones, and BrandZ.[/quote]

It's true OpenSolaris's zone are more advanced than FreeBSD jails, but for most uses the differences negligible. BSD Jails also integrate nicely with ZFS and FreeBSD's GEOM layer. OpenSolaris also has XEN dom0 support, I'm surprised you didn't take the opportunity to bag on FreeBSD's lack of it.

[quote]ZFS on Solaris/OpenSolaris/Nexenta is usable today. Not only does it "have" it, but you're able to trivially export an iSCSI device, use deduplication, and (not 100% sure on this one, just read about it having been added to Solaris in April) do differential filesystem snapshots. FreeBSD's implementation has none of this, giving it little more appeal than current btrfs on mdraid (and in some ways, less).[/quote]

It's trivial to export ZVOL on FreeBSD as iscsi targets. Granted it's not quite as nice as OpenSolaris since FreeBSD doesn't have an iscsi target in it's base system but there is a great one in ports and with a two minute wrapper script you have exactly the same functionality.

People talk of deduplication like it's some sort of magic bullet, but I think most of those people have no idea the overhead that imposes on the file system. Once they discover the resources necesscary to run it effectively, much of the enthusiasim fades away. It's a really a very select usage were deduplication would be economically feasible to implement.

Doesn't seem like you understand much about ZFS. Differential snapshot are integral to ZFS, you can't have ZFS with getting it so yes FreeBSD does have differential ZFS snapshots. Perhaps you're misidentifying this? http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2010/03/zfs-snapshot-differences.html Interesting, they have integrated diff into ZFS now. Trivial to do without the integration, if that's actually a make or break feature you need a new sys admin.

While you're getting some learning here, you s

In short:

• Completely useless patronizing first part (if they had proper arguments, why would they need to start with ridiculing people who recycle?).Frankly, what was the point of this first part? Save yourself ten minutes of your life, and skip right to parts 2 and 3.
• Completely bogus numbers about recycling glass and paper
• Stupid "save the trees" strawman about recycling paper. Yes, trees grow back, but recycling paper costs less energy thus saving trees indirectly (due to less polution)
• Stupid bit about "eco-friendly" landfills. Ever wondered why landfills nowadays are mindful of the environment? Maybe because people became concerned of the old ways (which were indeed a stinky mess), and improved their ways? 40 years earlier, Penn & Teller would have ridiculed eco-friendly landfills the same way that they now ridicule recycling.
• When recycling was "new", infrastructure to recycle everything was not yet in place everywhere, and some of the "sorted" trash did indeed end up in the same landfills than its non-sorted counterparts. However, this was a temporary problem which went away once enough recycling capacity was available.

...and why the GPL is superior. With the GPL, it is prohibited to take work private that has been built by the community. The BSD license /* encourages */ it. I see on the website of an deeply involved OpenSolaris developer where he is complaining about Oracle not adhering to the spirit of the open source license. I suggest that there is only the /* letter */ of an agreement whenever "push comes to shove." Spirit goes out the window.

I saw this poster in 1999 on a fellow's cubical wall at a place where the company I worked for was putting in a software system, in Rhode Island. The blog where the picture is hosted from provides the text below the picture. It was commissioned by The National Head Start Association. For those that it matters to, the person who put up the poster was black. It was no surprise when I saw it for the first time, as I found previously that he placed a lot of emphasis on being able to communicate effectively with those around him.

Your politically correct stance does not help people. In order to overcome prejudices it is best to focus on our similarities with others rather than on our differences. Once that is done, the differences don't matter as much. We cannot focus on anything if we cannot communicate. It doesn't help communication when one community works so hard on creating a wholly new dialect, if not language, just so that they can be more different.

In case the site is not available, or for those that don't care to click, here is the text:

"I HAS A DREAM" written over the image of the man. Below the image was the following text:

"Does this bother you? It should. We've spent over 400 years fighting for the right to have a voice. Is this how we'll use it? More importantly, is this how we'll teach our children to use it? If we expect more of them, we must not throw our hands in the air and agree with those who say our children cannot be taught. By now, you've probably heard about Ebonics (aka black [sic] English). And if you think it's become a controversy because white America doesn't want us messing with their precious language, don't. White America couldn't care less what we do to segregate ourselves.

The fact is language is power. And we can't take that power away from our children with Ebonics. Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and all the others who paid the price of obtaining our voice with the currency of their lives embrace this? If you haven't used your voice lately, consider this an invitation."

("SPEAK OUT AGAINST EBONICS", The National Head Start Association, 1651 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, The New York Times, October 9, 1998, A19 [National Edition])

Anecdotal evidence from at least one author doing self publishing puts the Kindle selling 60x more than Apple's ibook:

Publishers might be looking at enriched or enhanced ebooks as their new big-ticket items to replace hardcovers. But the major ebook retailer, Amazon, isn't set up for video. Kindle isn't even able to do color yet. That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month.

I can assure you that I want to find out the truth about this, and I believe it's very honorable of you to have made a disclosure.

I have read Google's Bilski brief, and it only argues against business method patents and "abstract patents" on software, not against software patents in general. It also argues against patent inflation in this area, but that still isn't the same as opposing software patents.

I saw more than one passage recognizing the idea that future innovation should always be patentable.

The problem is that even if common sense may make some such wordings look like demands to abolish software patents, substantive patent law has its own logic and terminology. Here in Europe, we have a law that excludes computer programs "as such" from the scope of patentable subject matter. Still a Microsoft FAT patent and a Siemens XML document generator patent were upheld. New Zealand, too, now has to deal with the problem of how to tell software patents from "technical inventions" int his area.

What Google sent to the SCOTUS was against the Bilski business method patents, and went a little beyond, but was very far from demanding the abolition of patents that read on software. The European Patent Office, which grants tons of software patents all the time, could subscribe to every single one of Google's demands and still justify every single software patent grant it makes.

Again, forget common sense in connection with substantive patent law. Lots of wording will look on the surface as if they do away with softwaer patents -- without actually doing so if they had to be applied by a court.

I can assure you that I want to find out the truth about this, and I believe it's very honorable of you to have made a disclosure.

I have read Google's Bilski brief, and it only argues against business method patents and "abstract patents" on software, not against software patents in general. It also argues against patent inflation in this area, but that still isn't the same as opposing software patents.

I saw more than one passage recognizing the idea that future innovation should always be patentable.

The problem is that even if common sense may make some such wordings look like demands to abolish software patents, substantive patent law has its own logic and terminology. Here in Europe, we have a law that excludes computer programs "as such" from the scope of patentable subject matter. Still a Microsoft FAT patent and a Siemens XML document generator patent were upheld. New Zealand, too, now has to deal with the problem of how to tell software patents from "technical inventions" int his area.

What Google sent to the SCOTUS was against the Bilski business method patents, and went a little beyond, but was very far from demanding the abolition of patents that read on software. The European Patent Office, which grants tons of software patents all the time, could subscribe to every single one of Google's demands and still justify every single software patent grant it makes.

Again, forget common sense in connection with substantive patent law. Lots of wording will look on the surface as if they do away with softwaer patents -- without actually doing so if they had to be applied by a court.

I can assure you that I want to find out the truth about this, and I believe it's very honorable of you to have made a disclosure.

I have read Google's Bilski brief, and it only argues against business method patents and "abstract patents" on software, not against software patents in general. It also argues against patent inflation in this area, but that still isn't the same as opposing software patents.

I saw more than one passage recognizing the idea that future innovation should always be patentable.

The problem is that even if common sense may make some such wordings look like demands to abolish software patents, substantive patent law has its own logic and terminology. Here in Europe, we have a law that excludes computer programs "as such" from the scope of patentable subject matter. Still a Microsoft FAT patent and a Siemens XML document generator patent were upheld. New Zealand, too, now has to deal with the problem of how to tell software patents from "technical inventions" int his area.

What Google sent to the SCOTUS was against the Bilski business method patents, and went a little beyond, but was very far from demanding the abolition of patents that read on software. The European Patent Office, which grants tons of software patents all the time, could subscribe to every single one of Google's demands and still justify every single software patent grant it makes.

Again, forget common sense in connection with substantive patent law. Lots of wording will look on the surface as if they do away with softwaer patents -- without actually doing so if they had to be applied by a court.

link 1.
link 2.
link 3.
link 4.

You're a fucking idiot, you know that?

The bit where you enter their password might make it a little bit tricky.

I submit Exhibit A, showing that Foursquare and Gowalla (at least... who knows how many other apps) send usernames and passwords in plaintext.

I recently wrote a blog post about this over here: http://lockethepundit.blogspot.com/2010/08/does-iran-really-have-peaceful-nuclear.html

good post like websiteVideoklip Müzik Dinle

You don't need a proxy or perl to game facebook places... you can do it by changing one line in your about:config and hard code "geo.wifi.uri"

I wrote up a full tutorial on my blog for those who are interested.

Well, unfortunately, that plain text thing isn't limited to the hack. I intercepted the traffic coming from their iPhone app and it sends your passwords in plain text too.

I did a simple Wireshark session with Foursquare's iPhone app and found they're sending my username and password in plain text over HTTP - they don't encrypt anything at all and they do it every time you open the Foursquare app.

You can see the Wireshark screenshot at my : blog post.

I'm removing the Foursquare app from my iPhone now. It's way too dangerous.

http://carnal0wnage.blogspot.com/2010/03/fking-with-foursquare-goes-msf-style.html

'How does this work? would google have to hunt down every single android phone and destroy/wipe its software?'

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/exercising-our-remote-application.html

"After the researcher voluntarily removed these applications from Android Market, we decided, per the Android Market Terms of Service, to exercise our remote application removal feature on the remaining installed copies to complete the cleanup...The remote application removal feature is one of many security controls Android possesses to help protect users from malicious applications. In case of an emergency, a dangerous application could be removed from active circulation in a rapid and scalable manner to prevent further exposure to users. While we hope to not have to use it, we know that we have the capability to take swift action on behalf of users' safety when needed."

soccer is definitely a full contact sport. With the only protection gear used on your shins! This is why fouls are much more important in the game. In American football it hurts just as much. Even though there is heavy padding you still are hitting and getting hit by beasts of men. Also the better the protection technology gets the harder these players seem to hit each other. Similar effect in car airbags. Having the protection makes you care less about consequences so you go all out. This also hurts

There's a fundamental error in the InfoWorld analysis referenced above:

Oracle simply asks for absolutely standard remedies in this situation. There's nothing evil about it, and it cannot be reasonably interpreted as a strategy to destroy open source as a whole or anything like that.

I'm saying this even though I opposed Oracle's acquisition of Sun. I just want to point out that if a case like this goes to court, the plaintiff will always ask for those kinds of remedies. There's nothing unusual about it. In fact, asking for less would be unusual and would probably confuse the judges as to what Oracle actually wants.

Intellectual property rights are exclusive rights. That's the way the law has designed them -- it's not a matter of Oracle being evil. Those IPRs entitle a right holder to enforce exclusivity. That necessarily means to ask for an injunction, and under such circumstances as the ones of this case (with copyright in play), also the destruction of infringing material.

The way to prevent that scenario from materializing is a license agreement between Oracle and Google. So it's up to the two parties to sit down and negotiate, and I believe we as a community should now expect both of them to be constructive. The court can't impose a license agreement on the two of them. If the court has to rule, it will -- if Oracle is right -- have to enforce exclusivity. That's sort of binary, whereas a license agreement would offer much more flexibility.

It's regrettable that they couldn't work this out before the matter was taken to court. But it's not too late until there is a final court ruling.

There's some confusion out there about how Google would be in a better position from a patent point of view if it had used existing Java code under the GPL (OpenJDK, phoneME). The Android ecosystem as a whole would have had other benefits (such as making it much harder for the makers of Android-based phones to keep important parts of their source code closed) but it wouldn't really help as far as Oracle's patent infringement allegations are concerned.

The GPLv2 (under which OpenJDK and large parts of phoneME are available) does not contain an explicit patent grant. Only an implicit one. As a result, any fork (derived/modified version) is probably not covered.

The InfoWorld article that this Slashdot story refers to talks a lot about forking as a possible strategy -- especially toward the end, where MySQL is also mentioned. I was very much involved with the debate over whether Oracle should get to acquire MySQL (together with Monty, MySQL's original author/founder, I opposed the deal). In that context, it was also a subject of debate whether MySQL forks would be safe from Oracle patent threats in the future. Eben Moglen, who was basically part of Oracle's legal team and had botched the patent aspect of GPLv2 (thus tried to fix the problem with GPLv3), argued that GPLv2 would take care of those forks. However, the European Commission, which (unlike Moglen) is impartial and has vast legal resources, concluded that the implicit patent grant does not -- at least not reliably, but probably not at all -- protect forks.

If you're interested in more detail on the question of whether Google would be or would have been better off with GPLv2, here's a link to the related part of a blog posting of mine. It discusses that question and right thereafter (or you can go there directly) explains that my work related to Oracle's acquisition of MySQL was not an effort to change MySQL's license away from the GPL to something else. I have meanwhile published documents from the process that serve as conclusive evidence that I argued vehemently against -- not for -- a license change. Still, the GPLv2's limitation concerning patent claims against forks is a fact.

There's some confusion out there about how Google would be in a better position from a patent point of view if it had used existing Java code under the GPL (OpenJDK, phoneME). The Android ecosystem as a whole would have had other benefits (such as making it much harder for the makers of Android-based phones to keep important parts of their source code closed) but it wouldn't really help as far as Oracle's patent infringement allegations are concerned.

The GPLv2 (under which OpenJDK and large parts of phoneME are available) does not contain an explicit patent grant. Only an implicit one. As a result, any fork (derived/modified version) is probably not covered.

The InfoWorld article that this Slashdot story refers to talks a lot about forking as a possible strategy -- especially toward the end, where MySQL is also mentioned. I was very much involved with the debate over whether Oracle should get to acquire MySQL (together with Monty, MySQL's original author/founder, I opposed the deal). In that context, it was also a subject of debate whether MySQL forks would be safe from Oracle patent threats in the future. Eben Moglen, who was basically part of Oracle's legal team and had botched the patent aspect of GPLv2 (thus tried to fix the problem with GPLv3), argued that GPLv2 would take care of those forks. However, the European Commission, which (unlike Moglen) is impartial and has vast legal resources, concluded that the implicit patent grant does not -- at least not reliably, but probably not at all -- protect forks.

If you're interested in more detail on the question of whether Google would be or would have been better off with GPLv2, here's a link to the related part of a blog posting of mine. It discusses that question and right thereafter (or you can go there directly) explains that my work related to Oracle's acquisition of MySQL was not an effort to change MySQL's license away from the GPL to something else. I have meanwhile published documents from the process that serve as conclusive evidence that I argued vehemently against -- not for -- a license change. Still, the GPLv2's limitation concerning patent claims against forks is a fact.

Look at this graph: http://linuxinsecurity.blogspot.com/

Please do. Notice how the graphs show Windows with 10-12% of the issues unpatched?

That's the problem. Well that and the missing graph showing "time to patch"...

Some graduate students in my department put together some simple models for zombie apocalypses and the results don't look well for humans: http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2010/07/zombpocalypse.html

The defining advantage of high speed rail, restaurant cars, when things go wrong generally things slow down

Let me introduce you to a little concept me and a few hundred thousand scientists like to call "momentum".

Here's a portrait of what happens when things go forcibly wrong on a massive object moving at a quarter the speed (or slower) of the proposed system:

http://marketrewind.blogspot.com/2010/05/european-train-wreck.html

Mechanical failure of the train itself MAY just result in it slowing down. But there's also track failure to consider, or tampering, or some idiot putting logs in front of a train (and yes, a single large log can derail a train as was done to a local fright/coal train near where I live a year or two ago).

No hassle at the train station, buy you ticket, dump your luggage and get on the train, no strip searches, no harassed children, no you name sounds like somebody else's name

All because no-one uses the train. What happens if it becomes a primary route? Just one or two incidents and the TSA is there with a body scanner.

no stolen notebooks and cameras

What the hell?

On a train you not only get stuff stolen at the station but also from you while you sleep. Never taken a train in Europe, have you?

Of course in the 21st century private cabin

What makes you think there will be more than a handful of space-wasting private cabins on a train? What makes you think to try and make it profitable they will not pack in seats like airlines do?

how much can yet get down on they way there and on the way back and still enjoy the restaurant car and of course the view.

While you are "enjoying" $4 cokes from the single restaurant on the train I'll be eating a fine meal in whatever city I arrived at long before you because I travelled by plane.

Airports are hellish but they are at least a compressed hell. I have have been on a number of trains and while they can be fun for a lark they are not an efficient means of travel. You might as well advocate crossing the Atlantic via boat for all the same reasons you just gave...

That's way too much if you're planning on scanning the entire population looking for autism, but as this article notes it could be useful for diagnosis:

The first thing to remember is that this is a scientific paper, and this result is first and foremost of research interest: it provides clues towards the biology, and ultimately the causes, of autism.

But let's suppose you're a clinician and you have someone who you suspect may have autism, but you're not sure. They're a tricky one, a borderline case. You use this system on their brain and it says they are autistic. Should that factor into your decision? It depends. The fact is that rather than an either-or result, the SVM returns a distance from the hyperplane for each brain. You can see this clearly in the plot above.

In my opinion, if you have a borderline case, and the machine says he's borderline, then that's not much help, and it doesn't matter if he's just over the line, or not quite over it. You already knew he was borderline.

But if the machine says that he's deep into the autism space, then I think that is something. It tells you that his brain is very typical of people with autism.

I actually think that the individualistic perspective of our species is ridiculous: We are linguistic animals and without that culture we could neither think nor do many of the other quintessentially human activities. Hence, language evolution is integrally part of our species evolution. IMHO.

PS nice Hindenberg sig there.I actually met the owner of the White Dwarf in 2002: http://airshipworld.blogspot.com/2007/08/white-dwarf-pedal-powered-personal.html

At the risk of being serious, factual, and pedantic, you didn't use lowercase "i" for the numeral "1"; you used lowercase "l" (el).

@anyone thinking this is a joke: It's true. Since it was perfectly obvious from the context whether the character was supposed to be a numeral or an alpha character, many typewriters didn't bother including a separate key for the numerals "0" and "1". For example

Yeah

5)Interest rates -- Up to 90 days, same as cash (use your imagination)

4)Insurance Coverage -- Up to $100,000 coverage in case of an accident, Variable-rate deductible as low as $1000.

3)Cell phone data -- Up to 2GB of data per month included (some months, you only get 100K and have to pay 0.1 cents per Kilobyte (= $0.10/Kilobyte ) for more

2)Gas Stations -- fuel additive concentrations -- Up to 90% unleaded fuel (some days, the gas will be 100% additives, but you'll never find out anyways)

1)State lottery jackpots -- "Jackpot: up to $1,000,000" -- (Some jackpot winners who got the numbers right may found they have only one $1.)

Not really.

The biggest advantage these have over cheap NAS boxes is bang for the buck in terms of horsepower. The Lacie NAS appliances you mention come with 400 Mhz processors at 16 MB of RAM.

The SheevaPlug and GuruPlug each come with a 512 MB of RAM and 1.2Ghz processor. Also, GuruPlug has 802.11g WiFi capability in addition to the wired Ethernet connectivity.

And I say this as an owner of a reflashed Linksys NAS 200, which not only serves files, but also serves as a print server for my network, a capability that Cisco/Linksys doesn't include in the box.

I commented on this elsewhere in this discussion: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1756418&cid=33275698

Indeed, Apache is covered, and so are lots of other things that go way beyond the Linux kernel. The problem is that the OIN has that completely arbitrary approach to determining what's on the list and what's not. I actually suggested four alternative ways to address that problem, but it seems they don't want to change anything. They want the OIN to continue to be totally intransparent (which in terms of litigation would be understandable, but the definition of the scope could be a transparent process). And they want it to simply benefit the six companies owning it, but not the 100+ licensees including Google.

Pylons typically have four large legs widely spaced apart ... They also typically have 6 arms ...

Ah, so we should fashion them after a four-legged Buddha? Although, "Centaur Buddha" sounds more like a 90s alt-punk band...

Both Google and Oracle are licensees of the OIN. The OIN patent agreement is meant to be a non-aggression pact between its members, with respect to "the Linux System".

Given that Android is a Linux distro ...

I don;t see how Android being a Linux distro is relevant in an "aggression" conducted on Java-related patents. Would you please care to elaborate?
Not saying that I do agree with software patents, not saying that OIN is a good or a bad thing, just saying that Linux != Java != Dalvik, thus the OIN issue have little relevance in my opinion. I mean, some (countries/govs) can agree to a non-proliferation nuclear pact and disagree on a carbon emission trading scheme, right?

SCO is a copyright case. While copyright litigation can also cause problems, there's a fundamental difference: you don't infringe copyright inadvertently. Theoretically you could, but practically you won't just by coincidence write a significant number of lines of code the same way someone else did. But patents are broad and you can infringe them totally unknowingly. That's why programmers who make independent creations never have to worry about copyright but unfortunately do have to worry about patents.

Concerning standardization, both Oracle and Google (as well as IBM and Red Hat) are member of "OpenForum Europe", a lobby group in the EU that pushes for "open standards". Here's a blog posting in which I criticized the hypocrisy of that group last month. If you look at the flawed Java Community Process, that's also a serious standardization problem.

All large corporations try to use the patent system or standardization processes and standards policy to their advantage...

SCO is a copyright case. While copyright litigation can also cause problems, there's a fundamental difference: you don't infringe copyright inadvertently. Theoretically you could, but practically you won't just by coincidence write a significant number of lines of code the same way someone else did. But patents are broad and you can infringe them totally unknowingly. That's why programmers who make independent creations never have to worry about copyright but unfortunately do have to worry about patents.

Concerning standardization, both Oracle and Google (as well as IBM and Red Hat) are member of "OpenForum Europe", a lobby group in the EU that pushes for "open standards". Here's a blog posting in which I criticized the hypocrisy of that group last month. If you look at the flawed Java Community Process, that's also a serious standardization problem.

All large corporations try to use the patent system or standardization processes and standards policy to their advantage...

For years I've been criticizing all those fake solutions to the patent problem, such as "patent pledges" or the Open Invention Network (OIN). Both Google and Oracle are licensees of the OIN. The OIN patent agreement is meant to be a non-aggression pact between its members, with respect to "the Linux System".

Given that Android is a Linux distro (and a strategically very important one), it should be fully covered by the OIN as the self-proclaimed protective shield for the Linux ecosystem. Consequently, Oracle should be prohibited by the OIN cross-license agreement to sue its fellow OIN licensee Google. I'm not the only one to have raised that question. I saw Simon Phipps (OSI board member, former chief open source exec at Sun, now at ForgeRock) and Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center (and formerly FSF) raise the same kind of question on Twitter/identica. Now TheRegister contacted the OIN and wanted a comment on Oracle vs. Google, and the OIN declined to comment.

By the way, Eben Moglen promoted the OIN big time at LinuxCon, just a few days before Oracle announced its lawsuit.

What's certainly not a fake solution (although difficult to achieve) is the proposal to abolish software patents. The EndSoftPatents.org campaign runs the software patent wiki and has a pretty informative Wiki page on Oracle vs. Google.