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Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.

Well, it seems that our system has more checks and balances than the UK does. We have 50 individual sovereign states that are still willing to flip Washington off every now and then. We have the Supreme Court which has shot down or at least severely constrained many attempts by the Executive and Legislature to violate our founding documents. The Upper House of our Legislature isn't toothless and actually has the power to stop legislation. We also (yeah I couldn't resist) have guns ;)

I'm hard pressed to think of what checks and balances remain under the British system. The House of Lords was defanged a long time ago and if the Monarchy ever refused Royal Assent I'm sure that would be end of it as an institution. Hopefully our friends across the pond will wake up before it's too late.....

Those checks and balances are largely useless if most of the population honestly believes in the "safety is more important than freedom" type of fear-mongering. Pragmatically, this means only that those who would like to transform the USA into a totalitarian state just need to be more patient. Or they just need to remain underground.

What do I mean by underground? Look at how long the warrantless-wiretapping was going on, illegally, before it was exposed. Then look at how the Bush administration retroactively granted the telcos immunity from prosecution for assisting this illegal program (if that isn't a violation of "no ex post facto" then it should be). So, how many such illegal activities are happening right now that we don't know about?

It might be tempting to look at the UK and think we're so much better off. That's your ego talking because it wants to feel like a part of something greater than itself, namely, the national ego. But let's say that you are correct, that the USA really is better off than the UK. We're certainly walking down the same path. So, perhaps the UK is a little ahead of us and has already travelled farther down that path. That means that If we don't change soon, the UK is merely providing a vision of our immediate future. How about if we travel a completely different path that doesn't lead to the same destination before we make comparisons? I prefer not to be on a sinking ship at all. I like that much better than wondering whether the ship I'm on is sinking more slowly than the adjacent ships.

Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.

Well, it seems that our system has more checks and balances than the UK does. We have 50 individual sovereign states that are still willing to flip Washington off every now and then. We have the Supreme Court which has shot down or at least severely constrained many attempts by the Executive and Legislature to violate our founding documents. The Upper House of our Legislature isn't toothless and actually has the power to stop legislation. We also (yeah I couldn't resist) have guns ;)

I'm hard pressed to think of what checks and balances remain under the British system. The House of Lords was defanged a long time ago and if the Monarchy ever refused Royal Assent I'm sure that would be end of it as an institution. Hopefully our friends across the pond will wake up before it's too late.....

iPod Touch gets Bluetooth after OS upgrade

Not copyright. Patents..

In other words, Intel claims patents over much of the technology that makes an x86 an x86, and AMD agreed (back in 2001--the patent cross-licensing agreement that's in dispute in this issue). AMD could hardly walk away from the agreement now* and continue to manufacture x86-descended CPUs--their previous acceptance of the patents would be evidence against them in Intel's inevitable patent infringement suit.

No, I Am Not A Lawyer. And I'm sure it's nuanced much more finely than this. But that's kinda the Sesame Street version of how this is shaping up.

Patents.

* Yes, I know, AMD isn't disclaiming the license agreement; they're saying the new Globalfoundaries fab has rights to those licenses because it's an AMD subsidiary; Intel's saying they aren't and therefore don't inherit the licenses. If it becomes a full-out patent lawsuit nuclear exchange, AMD might be in a position of manufacturing x86s without license, which would be bad, or not manufacturing x86s at all, which would be worse, or not allowing Globalfoundaries to manufacture x86s, which would be stupid.

Well as you're obviously feeling left out,
here's one that came out last week for you.

Not really. If you did some research you would realize the summary is wrong. It should be fixed. It was the former administration that was secretive. Obama officially denounced this practice, per the article:

In one of his first acts as president, Obama signed a memo saying FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure."

Expect people to keep coloring things so that it sounds like nothing has changed until it becomes obvious enough to everyone that it has that one sounds like a loon for saying it. After that expect a large contingent of loons to keep spouting the lunacy, because they are too loony to realize that they are loons ;-)

Lawsuit from what? Slowing down P2P traffic which is mostly illegal downloads anyways?

It does not matter how many people illegally download stuff, people also legally download massive amounts of data. Such as those who download Linux isos. When I signed the contract for my access there was no limits in it, only a part where it said they'd provide a speed of up to XXX. I don't download massive amounts of data with or without P2P but I did and I found out my ISP was throttling certain data streams, and it bothered me, I'd file a complaint with the FCC first then if it continued and had the money would at least talk to a lawyer. Though not a court case the FCC has already ruled Comcast throttling of BitTorrent was illegal.

Falcon

Wouldn't that be the perfect os for the next version of the XO? They already have lots of apps for the arm platform. And Nokia could be a big sponsor for the XO.

Is it a coincidence that Nokia has announced plans to sell laptops? http://news.cnet.com/Nokia-considering-entering-laptop-industry/2100-1044_3-6249114.html?tag=mncol

Or airport fingerprint scanning. Using 10 fingers, rather than just one, should help make the "Gummie finger" forgery technique somewhat more difficult. (Previously discussed on Slashdot, and in articles such as http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-915580.html) Basically, fingerprint scanners are _all_ easily misled by fingertips made of gelatin with the fake print overlaid on them. The necessary tools are vaguely decent copies of the victim's fingerprint, such as those from police files, a printer, a bowl of gelatin, and some skill with a knife.

But fingerprint forgery turns out not to be that difficult, especially against automated systems that have to auto-correlate such semi-random shapes.

I think you were looking for these....

VCR seen as PC storage device

or the links here

Sounds like the best way to waste a weekend and a few bucks. Oh wait, I can take the same money, and go drinking with a pretty girl. :) One may get me laid. One is pretty much guaranteed not to. I'll let you figure out which one is which.

These may seem far fetched to you, but they are possibilities that become unpossibilities one you start switching devices to non-ubiquitous filesystem. So, here's the bigger question: why close those doors?

Its best to avoid making assumptions as to what someone else may find far fetched, I in no way disagree with the value of interoperabilty. The only reason linux and TomTom use FAT is for interoperability not because Microsoft has some amazing "IP" and everyone wants FAT. However, you do bring up an important point, the bigger question, why close those doors? Considering the threat to all the hardware manufacturers affected by the interoperability issues you highlight it seems its time to dump the dead weight baggage of Microsoft's FAT patent lunacy and bring an open format to ubiquity.

April 16, 2008 ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Usage of Linux in embedded development projects crossed a threshold this year, with more than 50% of the 812 respondents saying that they are currently using it. Usage of Linux has been growing year over year, but didn't cross the halfway mark until 2008. More than 61% believed their company would be using Linux within the next two years.

December 04 2003 Microsoft to Charge for FAT File System

January 11, 2006 Microsoft's FAT Patent Upheld

January 13, 2006 FAT Patent Means Hardware Dollars For Microsoft

February 20, 2007 Ballmer repeats threats against Linux

February 25, 2009 Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims

Hardware manufacturers are caught in a catch 22, decouple from the Microsoft monopoly and risk losing market as I assume you are suggesting or remain fully engaged in the Microsoft monopoly and have your margins, market, and product plans somewhat dictated by Microsoft.

As someone who has worked in the brutally competitive hardware industry for many years I can see that its time for hardware manufacturers to show some back bone and beat down the fat and lazy leech that Microsoft has become.

Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015.

The article says they've saved that 50m since 2004. I'd be interested to see what the savings are over the long term, given that people cite long-term costs ('Total Cost of Ownership' or TCO in MS-speak) as a factor in the whole Windows-Linux debate.

Don't get me wrong - I'd like to see Linux succeed, but have there been many really big-scale rollouts of this nature that show that the flexibility and choice that Linux/FOSS offers trumps the inflexible but less costly (in terms of training/config) Windows/proprietary alternatives?

One thinks immediately of the Munich Linux rollout, but this link suggests that it has been delayed (I haven't been following the story).

Citation needed? Here it is: Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft null and void

These same two patents were also invalidated in the U.S. for a while, but they were subsequently upheld after an appeal.

Citation needed? Here it is: Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft null and void

These same two patents were also invalidated in the U.S. for a while, but they were subsequently upheld after an appeal.

Setting aside the idiocy in assuming that the patents are valid after being rejected twice by the USPTO before finally being revalidated and ...

GPL V2 Terms and Conditions

11. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Library at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library.

Microsoft does have the presidence in their favor due to the final decision of the USPTO and forcing Lexar to pay them off for their lame patents, but only a fool would simply give in to extortion.

Except for the fact that he nominated a net neutrality backer as head of the FCC...

CNet story

The old MP3 topic comes around once again. It's a pity the article doesn't give more data and how the research was conducted.

Indeed, people probably prefer what they're used to. No matter how many times people pronounce the death of high quality audio because of increasing sales MP3 players and music, an interesting side effect happens. Vinyl sales and turntables keep on going up. Sure, the new vinyl sales numbers are not stratospheric compared to digital distribution, it's, nonetheless, amazing that not only vinyl has survived, but it's growing amid all this. (Steve Guttenberg from CNet wrote about this today.)

Mal Waldrom used to hang out in a 2nd hand audio store and no matter how hard the owner of the store tried to give him a proper hifi system, he persisted on listening to his portable CD player with plastic Sony speakers. He said that the music system was only there to remind him of the music that existed in his head. Admittedly, he had the advantage of having played with jazz greats and no matter which system, the music in his head was indeed better.

The guy makes it sound all common sense. [Artist] checks out (say) The Pirate Bay and sees their latest hit available. They run a client, jot down IP addresses, and report to the appropriate ISPs. Bad pirates get disconnected for stealing the work of [Artist]. Who could complain?

The trouble is - we know that's not how it'll work. It won't be [Artist] feverishly protecting their livelihood. It'll be [script], executed by an "IP protection" service acting as an agent for an Industry representative, running a drag-net search and spamming cease-and-desist letters. The ISP will be running [script2] to parse those emails and notify / disconnect users. The dragnet script will make mistakes. Often. Only the end users will be paying for those mistakes by trying to re-establish their (increasingly important) connection after being victim of said script.

How do we know this? We can study from history.

Fine, but why is that the case for MS and not for anyone else? Could it be, perhaps, that it's because Microsoft never really had or enforced any standards about how development should be done, where things should be written, and so on? Why does one installer want to create C:\ATI\Drivers while another dumps everything into the main Program Files folder, for example?

What's the alternative? Microsoft blacklists applications? In your example, both installers are wrong. Microsoft has its own installer system which works fine, but what can they do if developers don't use it? Nothing.

The only real alternative would be for Microsoft to have implemented something like UAC years and years ago, but then we'd have the exact same thing we have now, just ... years and years ago.

If the user is incapable of understanding security problems then why is it helpful for them to authorize this kind of thing? Might as well just not ask them at all, since they're not going to understand.

Well, yes, but that's true of every security system ever.

Untrue. Off the top of my head I remember reading about that Debian ssh flaw (which, incidentally, had been fixed and pushed to the repositories by the time I even saw it on slashdot) and that Intel driver a while ago that crashed a bunch of beta Ubuntu installs.

And off the top of my head, I remember an article yesterday saying Firefox had more security bugs than IE, Opera, and Safari combined. Here it is: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10190206-83.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 This being Slashdot, now you're obligated to tell me in all the ways that article is flawed, because surely it can't be true! Gasp!

We're talking about an OS where viewing certain websites can lead to arbitrary code execution, and where even reading certain types of emails can be an issue.

We're also talking about an OS with hundreds of millions of uneducated users who hit "Accept" "Install" to every piece of malware they see. That's a unique situation with Windows, so I don't see statistics on the amount of malware for it being relevant to that for any other OS.

But from the ground up it's lightyears ahead of anything Microsoft has ever done, or likely will ever do.

Except for NT had more, finer grained, and better, security controls than Linux for a decade. If you're going to compare a Workstation/Server OS like Linux with Windows, you have to compare to the Workstation/Server version of Windows... and NT's security model compares very favorably with Linux in that arena. It's only in the last few years that Linux has been treated like a desktop system.

Yes. UAC was years in the making and was a hilariously poor attempt at making something that pretended to increase security.

Which brings up my original point, what *should* have they done instead? You've offered no answers, just gripes.

I'm no fan of Mormonism, or Catholicism or Islam for that matter, all of which are backwards, right-wing religions, so I agree with most of your post.

But I don't really see what this particular dispute over trademarks has to do with Mormonism. Whether non-owners of a trademark paying for search results under those terms as keywords is, or ought to be, a violation of trademark law has been argued over in a number of states, and I don't see particularly clear religious faultlines in that debate. If supporting that position is somehow related to Mormonism, does that mean that eBay is run by Mormons?

Mozilla on Wednesday released an update to the Firefox Web browser that its developers said fixes eight security issues found in Firefox 3.0.6, six of which were rated critical.

The most serious of the vulnerabilities fixed in version 3.0.7 could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on a victim's computer, Mozilla warned in security advisories Wednesday.

Some of the mainframes in question are apparently built out of "Intel" processors (presumably either x86-64 or Itanium);

In a past they were using Itanium, presumably for the mainframiness. More recently they've begun migrating to Xeon. As the rest of the industry previously observed, Unisys now feels that there just aren't that many real benefits to Itanium.

IBM was pushing Windows NT 3.51 on the mainframe back in the 1990's. This is decades old ! http://news.cnet.com/Windows-NT-on-mainframes/2100-1001_3-207931.html People just lost interest because it was so profoundly expensive that even mainframe shops couldn't afford it.

The "Supreme Court loosens patent 'obviousness' test"

Actually, despite the misleading headline, that CNet article describes the SCOTUS decision as *tightening* the test (i.e., making it harder to pass) -- which most of us would regard as a good thing, in reducing the number of no-shit-Sherlock patents and thereby making it harder for patent trolls to sue the modern world into oblivion. What the SCOTUS loosened were the criteria for what constitutes "obvious". From the CNet article:

That standard requires that for an invention to be declared obvious, some "teaching, suggestion or motivation" must exist to show that a person of ordinary skill would have thought to combine certain elements.

Critics have argued that in practice, written evidence is required to pass that test, which has made it harder to overturn allegedly obvious patents and rendered it easier to obtain them from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the first place. Technology companies say that's especially hard for them to prove because of the speedy rate at which they tend to develop new products and ideas.

"It's not written down, it's not published, it's not the subject of scholarly discussion, and that's where the Federal Circuit was basically looking," Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, Oracle, Red Hat and Verizon, said in an interview with CNET News.com on Monday.

The justices were sympathetic to those criticisms. "The diversity of inventive pursuits and of modern technology counsels against limiting the analysis in this way," they wrote. "In many fields it may be that there is little discussion of obvious techniques or combinations, and it often may be the case that market demand, rather than scientific literature, will drive design trends."

Hardware and software makers have also argued that they're especially threatened by the standard because they would like to be able to rearrange at will the thousands of pre-existing components that compose their products. Some say the lax rules have sparked a stampede of so-called patent "trolls" who make a living off predicting those incremental changes to existing high-tech inventions, landing patents, and then going after companies for infringement.

The CNet article headline is terrible, and suggests the opposite of what actually happened. Basically, the newer looser criteria for what constitutes "obvious" actually *tighten* the test, and should (ideally) make it harder for trolls to game the system.

Cheers,

There needs to be a test that goes beyond "prior art" for software patents. Namely, if a software solution is obvious given the problem and the tools, then it should not be patentable.

There is a test for non-obviousness. The "Supreme Court loosens patent 'obviousness' test"

Falcon

When was this?

The Microsoft threat to kill Office for the Mac happened during negotiations leading up to 1997 as outlined in some court documents. Microsoft was in negotiations with Apple over patent disputes and considered abandoning Office for Mac, understanding it would do "a great deal of harm immediately" to Apple. There are a few other stories outlining the questioning of Bill Gates about this and the ultimate outcome of the settlement - the famous $150 million investment Microsoft made in Apple. Some said immediately that "Microsoft saved Apple" (and still say it), except Apple had $1.7billion in the bank at the time and could have operated for quite a while without selling another product. Doing the math, Microsoft profited quite handsomely from the sale of Apple stock in 2003.

When was this?

The Microsoft threat to kill Office for the Mac happened during negotiations leading up to 1997 as outlined in some court documents. Microsoft was in negotiations with Apple over patent disputes and considered abandoning Office for Mac, understanding it would do "a great deal of harm immediately" to Apple. There are a few other stories outlining the questioning of Bill Gates about this and the ultimate outcome of the settlement - the famous $150 million investment Microsoft made in Apple. Some said immediately that "Microsoft saved Apple" (and still say it), except Apple had $1.7billion in the bank at the time and could have operated for quite a while without selling another product. Doing the math, Microsoft profited quite handsomely from the sale of Apple stock in 2003.

Listening to some freetards trot out the "convicted monopolist" line is like me calling Redhat a bunch of "convicted patent infringers". I don't, however, because I am not a douchebag.

Using the term "freetard" pretty much denotes that you are in fact a douchebag. I won't hold that against you though. Regarding the remainder of that sentence however; Microsoft (fairly or unfairly in your opinion does not matter) has been convicted of monopolistic practices in several courts.

1). http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
2). http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39119500,00.htm
2). http://law.jrank.org/pages/12388/Sherman-Antitrust-Act-Microsoft-Settlement-Twenty-First-Century-s-First-Major-Antitrust-Settlement.html
4). Google for yourself

Now.. can you provide links to any article that shows that Redhat has indeed violated patents; as proven in a court of law or similar venue? I found a single instance of Redhat (co-defending with Novell as it happens) being sued for patent infringement. Coincidentally, the company behind this suit appears to be a patent troll headed up by former Microsoft GM of IP licensing. Regardless, there has yet to be a conviction, if there is even one forthcoming.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10041995-92.html

"Open-source software may be moved freely from one project to another; though license particulars sometimes erect barriers, both Chrome and WTL use relatively liberal licenses. "

so- you say they 'stole' the UI-- does that mean it's ok to move code freely, but not UI appearance?

here is the link to the atricle that actually talks about the $79 Million dollar tab, with all sorts of links to all the related article stuff...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10184454-93.html?tag=mncol;posts

The problem with both Chrome and Safari is a lack of an add-on community. One of the things that continues to make Firefox a success is that the user community has added all the niche functionality anyone would ever want and more.

The President is appointing the legal staff of the BSA and RIAA to the top law enforcement positions in the land, and the MPAA has initiated the revolving door maneuver with Assistant Attorney General John Malcolm. It seems to me that the more things change the more they remain the same. What we've done is change who our government is sold out to.

Apparently with the change of administrations imaginary property has become the new military industrial complex because of a focus shift from foreign to domestic policy, in accordance with the party predilection. We're pulling out of wars with other people and engaging ourselves. Next step: disarm the victim. Yay! I can't wait to see how this turns out. I would rather we engaged foreign people if we have to fight at all, but my true preference would be to relax and let stuff sort itself out.

The headline might as well read "Sun's McNealy wishes for invisible pink unicorn."

With RIAA Lawyers running the DOJ, the RIAA is transforming into a US government agency.

Now their antics re. DoS'ing suspected torrent sites will not only be legal but an act of the gov't.

Not only will gov't money will be budgeted for catching the file traders, and probably some money from the economic stimulus packages to help bail out the recording industry and encourage innovation, it will be a gov't initiative.

Along with a new and improved patent enforcement department to help make it more cost-effective for companies having difficulty collecting license fees from people infringing on patents like one-click (due to millions of small infringers, and formerly expensive legal processes required to enforce a patent)

There's Trapster and NMobile to start...

There's Trapster and NMobile to start...

Meanwhile, the App Store is dealing with a flood of titles that shows no sign of slowing, making it somewhat difficult to keep tabs on the higher-quality games.

Just get Apple to block the lower-quality games then. Don't they do that already with other apps in the store?
( Link was first hit from an "apple blocks competitor" Google search ).

Vista Media Center refuses to record certain TV shows:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9943631-7.html

Loose all your music when you upgrade or reinstall
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about14833.html

Get falsely accused by Microsoft of piracy - "Windows Genuine Advantage falsely accuses millions"
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/01/8690.ars
Now it can lead to "Reduced functionality mode"

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server)"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Jon

Google must be losing confidence in their ability to compete on merits alone.

I think Google is pissed by Microsofts recent actions* and wants to send a big "How dare you fsck with us!" message back to Redmond. I totally support Google is in this case and even think it is the right thing to do, because Google is a company that is strong enough to fight back where other misfortunate companies could not. To think that (of all companies) Microsoft wanted to sue google for anti-trust.

Google, give 'em hell!

* http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10082800-93.html

it's been widely debated that the FAT patent would not hold up on a review

Already happened. In 2004 a request for re-examination was examined. In 2005 the patent claims were initially rejected. In 2006 the patent claims were upheld. Microsoft wins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Appeal
http://news.cnet.com/Microsofts-file-system-patent-upheld/2100-1012_3-6025447.html

Skip the ads and get the PDF of the complaint:

http://media.techflash.com/documents/tomtomComplaint.pdf

A quickie read of it still has me going "WTF!?" a lot. Seriously - they patented such things like:

"Vehicle Computer System with Wireless Connectivity"

"Portable Computing Device-Integrated Appliance"

A quick look at the dates these things were granted, and most gadget geeks' memories should spark something: Most of this crap shouldn't have been patentable in the first place (wish they appended the patents to the complaint, though... it'd make things a lot easier to eyeball and evaluate in one spot).

I'm guessing MSFT is just hoping to force a settlement, so that they can then use it as a cudgel... thing is, Microsoft is using a lot of OSS code nowadays too (IIRC in MSN/Live Messenger, Visual Studio 2008, and etc - linky here).

"We're very focused on both Apple as a competitor and Linux as a competitor," Ballmer said.

And concerns regarding Google's open-source mobile operating system Android are not far behind.

"I think the dynamics with Linux is changing somewhat," Ballmer said. "I assume we'll see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones, and we'll see Google more and more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before."

"The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android," Ballmer said.

Apple's market share in the PC space is growing due to the iPhone and iPod, all thanks to OS X.

The truth of the matter is that Linux and OS X are eroding Microsoft's dominance, but OS X is the bigger player.

While the cases are not exactly the same, the community response was. Most admins thought that he was right and that he did not do anything wrong and that he would eventually win in court. He didn't.

Thirteen years later his conviction for hacking into the company's systems expunged, but that is a big chunk of time to pay.

Anyhow ... his milage may differ, but I won't bet on it.

"Our own research, however, has concluded that open source software exposes users to significant and unnecessary business risk, as the security is often overlooked, making users more vulnerable to security breaches,"

"That's not to say that commercial software isn't without risks, but any flaws on commercial applications tend to get patched a lot faster than on open source, as the vendors producing the software have a lot more to lose than an open source programmer,"

"New variant of Conficker worm circulates"

In his particular case, his website was fighting against states and municipalities that were trying to claim copyright on their laws and restrict their distribution, and he had previously had done similar work with data from both the SEC and US Patent Office:

Tech activist takes on governments over 'copyrighted' laws
Patent office slammed for not posting data

So yes, I'm guessing that his website might give him some suitable experience for this position.

In his particular case, his website was fighting against states and municipalities that were trying to claim copyright on their laws and restrict their distribution, and he had previously had done similar work with data from both the SEC and US Patent Office:

Tech activist takes on governments over 'copyrighted' laws
Patent office slammed for not posting data

So yes, I'm guessing that his website might give him some suitable experience for this position.

After more digging, I think I get it now.

A fraud action actually was brought by those injured by Rambus' purportedly fraudulent actions, i.e. the other memory manufacturers. The FTC wanted to also punish Rambus, so it brought a separate anti-trust case against Rambus, which was decided for Rambus by an appellate court, and that is what was just turned down for review by the Supreme Court.

The fraud actions failed after juries decided that Rambus had been showing off these technologies before the standards board meetings, and that the JEDEC standards board rules don't clearly require disclosure of the patents. Source:
link.

For what it's worth though, Rambus seems to be having difficulties enforcing its patents. Apparently, it destroyed key documents related to them.
Source:
link.

Wrong This article is about how the gaming industry may be the only one that is recession proof. Well, that and hard liquor. People still need an escape from reality.

Slashdotters from the prior related story suggested the following tweaks to make SSL connections more obvious and identified:

    Site name in "Site ID Button":
        http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9974672-33.html
    Yellow background in address bar:
        http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9974221-33.html

Slashdotters from the prior related story suggested the following tweaks to make SSL connections more obvious and identified:

    Site name in "Site ID Button":
        http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9974672-33.html
    Yellow background in address bar:
        http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9974221-33.html

If that is the case (it probably isn't lets face it)

What probably isn't the case? Are you disputing that the mobile phone market is at least hundreds of millions? Or that most phones these days have Internet access?

then it won't stay that way for long - checkout http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10164745-78.html.

That's interesting to see, and I'm sure that Flash will start to make its way onto phones - however, a product being available on high end phones as of 2010 is a long way from 99% penetration. Most people only buy a new phone every few years, and most people don't buy smartphones.