The issue, it transpires, is that although the full lossless/lossy hybrid MP3 file is transferred to players, only the lossy element can be played back.
requiring a certain level of investment towards the development of the entity behind a patent (relative to what the investment capability of the filer is)
Since when does such a person have nonzero investment capability?
So, requiring that people sell their invention won't work because it tramples on other's patents. This is why some industries (e.g., semi-conductors) rely on cross-licensing deals.
That's not what the OP said. He said "investment". In your GM example, sale of the adapter kits could be considered "investment".
2) The patent system is already a two-way street. You give the public knowledge of your invention (versus keeping it a trade secret), and the government gives you an invention.
Not a fair one, since the public's knowledge of your invention is worthless unless you license them. If someone innovates upon your innovation, they need your permission. A patent just means they can innovate first, ask second, and pray not to be sued third. On a side note, WTF does "the government gives you an invention" mean? A more accurate phrasing would be "the government gives you a monopoly." We all know from economics 101 that monopolies tend to be bad for the public in the long run (see M$ for an empirical example).
If you aren't willing to pay that price (give up your trade secret) you can go the Coke formula route and hope that no one comes up with a Pepsi or RC for your product.
Trade secrets are much weaker, legally speaking, than patents.
VirtualBox is fairly good even on mediocre hardware. The more RAM and CPU the better, but you don't need a quad-core with 8 gigs of RAM just to run a virtualizer. Heck, you don't even need a dual core for that. Do make sure you have lots of RAM though (I have ~2 gigs, and ~2 gigs swap as well, though Linux never uses it anyway). YMMV, so don't use this info for anything mission-critical.
There's only a difference between non-public/nda/non-published and sensor as long as there are no leaks and no traitors. After that, it's censorship.
Unless you'd agree that under your definition of censorship killing off wikileaks.org would not be censorship. Once the information is out, it requires censorship to bring it back in. Contrary to what idiots will claim, this has a good chance of success.
So I'm trying to log on to Comcast to look at my bill. It's one of those places you log on every three years or so, so I can't remember anything about the account. I gave them my name and they give me a secret question asking "What is your favorite drink?" Well who the hell has a special favorite drink? So I plug in a few answers and finally try "milk". Bingo, I'm in. Change the password to my standard website name hash, poke around, get confused, and realize... wait a second... this isn't my account. My name is fairly rare, but I guess not rare enough.
I don't really have any way of resetting it to what it was before, and for some reason there was no email verification involved. So I whistled quietly as I closed the window and called customer service instead.
Bad idea. They'll probably remember you as "that weird guy that insisted on using Linux/not using Windows/what-have-you" and accuse you of "hacking".
And even funnier (as noted by colbert himself, although he seems to think it really is the COS behind it), is #2 (which was #1 before colbert) is "Xenu" due to the push from that part of the internet we aren't supposed to talk about.
Did he seriously say that? Why can't he be buggered to do a quick Google/Wikipeida/what-have-you?
Flash works fine, thank you very much. It's in the repos, and I suppose you could make it the default, and even if you don't, Applications->Add/Remove, type "flash" in the search box, choose the prominently placed (second on the list, using the default sorting) item marked "Macromedia Flash plugin" (whose blurb could probably be understood by the average luser), and hit apply. Nowhere do you need to go to anything that's particularly complex (no synaptic package manager, no aptitude, no apt-get, you can use a nice easy frontend for synaptic). The only snag is that the average luser might not know to go to the Applications menu in the first place; all you need is a dialog box with a time out (read:OK doesn't work for a few seconds; Firefox already uses these when installing addons as a protection against scripts) to pop up instead of the usual plugin chooser (which is a bit of kludge on Linux since it doesn't really work unless you're (stupidly) running as root, but if it's worth it the plugin is usually in the repos anyway).
Tangentially related note: I think those dialog boxes are a possible solution to the whole "user clicked OK because M$ taught him to, now he doesn't know [something important]", but they shouldn't be overused or the user will find a workaround for them too.
(self reply)...unless they're concerned about the Ken Thompson back door I suppose... (see the Jargon File on "back door" if you don't get it; I'm too lazy to make a link)... but if you're paranoid enough to still be concerned about that of all things, you're probably the NSA or working for them, given the annoyance of the coding on the bare metal you'd need to do to have absolute certainty.
[snip] I bet GCC has more running applications in the world than any other compiler.
Since AFAIK programs compiled with gcc don't inherit the GPL, it seems likely that any company that doesn't have ultradeep pockets/paranoid lawyers would be using it, even for closed source development.
I think it's more of a "TLDR" kind of issue: when Linux geeks start going on about the things M$ has done, the ignorant public gets bored, so they write Linux off as boring. What we need is a snappy little ad that can convey all this information in a few seconds, like a shot of the verdict in one of those EU v. M$ cases or something...
Is that supposed to mean something? I wanted to post ascii art of your joke flying over my head, but the filter got in the way (too bad) (anyone who responds with "woosh" is totally redundant, and will probably be modded funny as a result of this parenthetical).
Actually, that's one of those things people don't get. Slack has been around the longest, and is still the most table and unmolested distro there is. They've been doing it right for years, while others have come and gone.
I've no use for tables. The real question is, can it graph?
I'd have liked at least to have a "you have 50 windows open and a script is trying to open another window, do you want to allow this? no, and don't ask me again" prompt at some point...
If the popup blocker can't stop it, what makes you think the browser can?
Slashdot Mirror
iPods can play Apple Lossless, which is closed-source and probably patented.
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
What about In Re Bilski (too lazy to linkify, sorry!)?
What are you smoking? RTFS:
The issue, it transpires, is that although the full lossless/lossy hybrid MP3 file is transferred to players, only the lossy element can be played back.
From the OP:
requiring a certain level of investment towards the development of the entity behind a patent (relative to what the investment capability of the filer is)
Since when does such a person have nonzero investment capability?
So, requiring that people sell their invention won't work because it tramples on other's patents.
This is why some industries (e.g., semi-conductors) rely on cross-licensing deals.
That's not what the OP said. He said "investment". In your GM example, sale of the adapter kits could be considered "investment".
2) The patent system is already a two-way street.
You give the public knowledge of your invention (versus keeping it a trade secret), and the government gives you an invention.
Not a fair one, since the public's knowledge of your invention is worthless unless you license them. If someone innovates upon your innovation, they need your permission. A patent just means they can innovate first, ask second, and pray not to be sued third. On a side note, WTF does "the government gives you an invention" mean? A more accurate phrasing would be "the government gives you a monopoly." We all know from economics 101 that monopolies tend to be bad for the public in the long run (see M$ for an empirical example).
If you aren't willing to pay that price (give up your trade secret) you can go the Coke formula route and hope that no one comes up with a Pepsi or RC for your product.
Trade secrets are much weaker, legally speaking, than patents.
IANAL, but the court would probably just throw the whole suit out as nonsense.
Irony totally intended.
VirtualBox is fairly good even on mediocre hardware. The more RAM and CPU the better, but you don't need a quad-core with 8 gigs of RAM just to run a virtualizer. Heck, you don't even need a dual core for that. Do make sure you have lots of RAM though (I have ~2 gigs, and ~2 gigs swap as well, though Linux never uses it anyway). YMMV, so don't use this info for anything mission-critical.
You still to code on the bare metal for absolute certainty; this is like a rootkit.
There's only a difference between non-public/nda/non-published and sensor as long as there are no leaks and no traitors. After that, it's censorship.
Unless you'd agree that under your definition of censorship killing off wikileaks.org would not be censorship. Once the information is out, it requires censorship to bring it back in. Contrary to what idiots will claim, this has a good chance of success.
O RLY?
So I'm trying to log on to Comcast to look at my bill. It's one of those places you log on every three years or so, so I can't remember anything about the account. I gave them my name and they give me a secret question asking "What is your favorite drink?" Well who the hell has a special favorite drink? So I plug in a few answers and finally try "milk". Bingo, I'm in. Change the password to my standard website name hash, poke around, get confused, and realize... wait a second... this isn't my account. My name is fairly rare, but I guess not rare enough.
I don't really have any way of resetting it to what it was before, and for some reason there was no email verification involved. So I whistled quietly as I closed the window and called customer service instead.
Bad idea. They'll probably remember you as "that weird guy that insisted on using Linux/not using Windows/what-have-you" and accuse you of "hacking".
And even funnier (as noted by colbert himself, although he seems to think it really is the COS behind it), is #2 (which was #1 before colbert) is "Xenu" due to the push from that part of the internet we aren't supposed to talk about.
Did he seriously say that? Why can't he be buggered to do a quick Google/Wikipeida/what-have-you?
They do. Scientology hates public mention of Xenu since it undermines what little credibility they've got left.
Flash works fine, thank you very much. It's in the repos, and I suppose you could make it the default, and even if you don't, Applications->Add/Remove, type "flash" in the search box, choose the prominently placed (second on the list, using the default sorting) item marked "Macromedia Flash plugin" (whose blurb could probably be understood by the average luser), and hit apply. Nowhere do you need to go to anything that's particularly complex (no synaptic package manager, no aptitude, no apt-get, you can use a nice easy frontend for synaptic). The only snag is that the average luser might not know to go to the Applications menu in the first place; all you need is a dialog box with a time out (read:OK doesn't work for a few seconds; Firefox already uses these when installing addons as a protection against scripts) to pop up instead of the usual plugin chooser (which is a bit of kludge on Linux since it doesn't really work unless you're (stupidly) running as root, but if it's worth it the plugin is usually in the repos anyway).
Tangentially related note: I think those dialog boxes are a possible solution to the whole "user clicked OK because M$ taught him to, now he doesn't know [something important]", but they shouldn't be overused or the user will find a workaround for them too.
Jamie Hyneman endorsed Linux. If you don't know who he is, you might as well get started now.
Better them than Microsoft.
(self reply) ...unless they're concerned about the Ken Thompson back door I suppose... (see the Jargon File on "back door" if you don't get it; I'm too lazy to make a link)... but if you're paranoid enough to still be concerned about that of all things, you're probably the NSA or working for them, given the annoyance of the coding on the bare metal you'd need to do to have absolute certainty.
[snip] I bet GCC has more running applications in the world than any other compiler.
Since AFAIK programs compiled with gcc don't inherit the GPL, it seems likely that any company that doesn't have ultradeep pockets/paranoid lawyers would be using it, even for closed source development.
Neither. Whoever corrected you is wrong and/or wasting everyone's time. It's "Linux", except to the dedicated GNU fanboi.
I think it's more of a "TLDR" kind of issue: when Linux geeks start going on about the things M$ has done, the ignorant public gets bored, so they write Linux off as boring. What we need is a snappy little ad that can convey all this information in a few seconds, like a shot of the verdict in one of those EU v. M$ cases or something...
Is that supposed to mean something? I wanted to post ascii art of your joke flying over my head, but the filter got in the way (too bad) (anyone who responds with "woosh" is totally redundant, and will probably be modded funny as a result of this parenthetical).
Praise be brother.
Actually, that's one of those things people don't get. Slack has been around the longest, and is still the most table and unmolested distro there is. They've been doing it right for years, while others have come and gone.
I've no use for tables. The real question is, can it graph?
Ahhh, I never claimed people aren't out to get you, I'm claiming that paranoia won't help you find out.
No it won't help, but it is great fun if they are.
[snip]
Maybe I'm just being naive but firewalling off an entire country (noted exception: China) seems really impractical.
What are you smoking?
I'd have liked at least to have a "you have 50 windows open and a script is trying to open another window, do you want to allow this? no, and don't ask me again" prompt at some point...
If the popup blocker can't stop it, what makes you think the browser can?