Are these patents of real inventions (as in, products at least made but not released) or just patents of product ideas? Some of these are extremely unlikely to have existed (did they have foldable displays back in 2001?), though I could be wrong.
Like dokuwiki, for example. It's simple to set up and configure, and is pretty powerful (especially through the use of plugins). I'm fairly certain it fits your criteria.
Why should anything "die"? People choose solutions based on their individual merits. If something doesn't work, exchange it for something that does. I'm sure certain people find NoSQL-type databases perfect for their needs.
In short, people should just shut up about other people's choices and get on with their own.
According to the FA, the controversy seems to concern two different but interrelated issues:
Trademark assignment and copyright assignment
The first is probably more clear cut than the second one. Trademark is controlled by the person(s) it has been assigned to. As long as Mr. Vermuelen holds the trademark to the name Nexuiz, or as long as there is no trademark assigned to anybody for the name Nexuiz, Illfonic is most likely clear on this matter.
The second, and most controversial issue is that of the relicencing of the Nexuiz/DarkPlaces codebase. Even though, according to the Nexuiz forums, Illfonic seems to have struck a deal with the primary developers of Nexuiz and DarkPlaces, I'm not sure if that would be enough. DarkPlaces is arguably not such a big change over the original GPL'd Quake engine codebase, and even if it was, I'm not really sure if copyright can be reassigned without some kind of consensus amongst most (major) developers. Does each contributor hold the copyright for his work under the GPL or do the contributions end up under a single copyright holder?
Regardless of the legal issues, this is a really crappy way to treat your community and developers. They have every right to feel betrayed. This forum thread is a great read, and proves that the community is sane about their demands towards Illfonic, Mr. Vermuelen and LordHavoc.
One of the main issues with GTK has been the lack of any serious corporate sponsorship. Really, money goes a long way, not only in helping people contribute more time to the project, but also in setting goals.
That said, Clutter is still an Intel project, and probably will remain so for the time being. Intel has stated that MeeGo will remain forward-compatible to Moblin, but for how long, that remains in question.
As far as I know, Clutter will eventually be integrated into GTK+ 3.x, just like Cairo and Pango, so maintainership will probably be passed from Intel to the GTK maintainers, if Intel decides to drop support.
The Linux Foundation also did this in 2009. Here are last year's winners.
Also, I'm pretty sure that good results come from people who know their tools, and not from the tools themselves. A large amount of the video-editing tools on Linux leave a lot to be desired, but they're still light-years ahead of what was available, say, 20 years back. People made (and still make) good videos/movies without any kind of digital intervention, so that snide remark is probably debatable.
The summary seems to create the assumption that the same developers which are abandoning the Wii are moving to the iPhone.
I'm not even sure how something like this would work. The economics are different, the scale is different, hell, even the target consumers are probably different.
At that price point, I'd expect it to come with some kind of (legal) obligation towards Google. Can I take the device, nuke ChromeOS and load my own GNU/Linux distribution? Do I have to register the device with Google?
Maybe I'm wrong and maybe the price point is realistic in accordance with the cost of manufacturing. I'd expect that Google, effectively being an advertising company, would have some rules in place to ensure the "fair" use of their investment.
...as it doesn't specify a single kernel. [source] It's more of a unified platform for development on Samsung phones.
It also probably uses EFL, as Samsung was recently shown to sponsor the development of Enlightenment and its supporting libraries [source]
With Nokia moving to a unified development environment across most of their devices, it's really not a surprising move for the #2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
I know Interplay is nothing like it used to be when it came out with Fallout or Planescape:Torment, but suing the maker of these original games just because you have the rights to continue their legacy doesn't quice feel right.
Now, I'm sure the lawyers don't see it that way. Interplay should be careful what they sign.:)
...according to the numbers, the pigeon transferred about 4194304 kilobytes (for the sake of argument, the BBC article says it transferred a 4GB Memory Stick, which I'll assume was filled up and that it can actually hold that much of data) in 7617 seconds, which is about 550 kilobytes per second in normal transfer speed. Not an unreasonable speed, a decent 6Mbps connection should be able to do that much.
The most expensive ADSL program advertised by Telcom is a 4096/512kbps program, which I think (at least in Greece) would get you speeds up to ~400 kilobytes per second. In NORMAL conditions.
But that is download speed. And the test measured upload speed. So the real figure they should be testing against is about 50 kilobytes per second in upload speed (at least in Greece it does, if uploading with a 512kbps upstream connection).
Still, 4% completed in 2 hours, 16 minutes and 57 seconds is about 22 kilobytes per second upstream, which is about 50% lower than what it should be. Still a very large margin.
Slashdot Mirror
Google should be fined for doing the government's job without a licence.
Now gimme that data!
...and how is .h264 an open standard, again?
Are these patents of real inventions (as in, products at least made but not released) or just patents of product ideas? Some of these are extremely unlikely to have existed (did they have foldable displays back in 2001?), though I could be wrong.
Like dokuwiki, for example. It's simple to set up and configure, and is pretty powerful (especially through the use of plugins). I'm fairly certain it fits your criteria.
...all the researchers are men and have never met any women.
Why should anything "die"? People choose solutions based on their individual merits. If something doesn't work, exchange it for something that does. I'm sure certain people find NoSQL-type databases perfect for their needs.
In short, people should just shut up about other people's choices and get on with their own.
According to the FA, the controversy seems to concern two different but interrelated issues:
Trademark assignment and copyright assignment
The first is probably more clear cut than the second one. Trademark is controlled by the person(s) it has been assigned to. As long as Mr. Vermuelen holds the trademark to the name Nexuiz, or as long as there is no trademark assigned to anybody for the name Nexuiz, Illfonic is most likely clear on this matter.
The second, and most controversial issue is that of the relicencing of the Nexuiz/DarkPlaces codebase. Even though, according to the Nexuiz forums, Illfonic seems to have struck a deal with the primary developers of Nexuiz and DarkPlaces, I'm not sure if that would be enough. DarkPlaces is arguably not such a big change over the original GPL'd Quake engine codebase, and even if it was, I'm not really sure if copyright can be reassigned without some kind of consensus amongst most (major) developers. Does each contributor hold the copyright for his work under the GPL or do the contributions end up under a single copyright holder?
Regardless of the legal issues, this is a really crappy way to treat your community and developers. They have every right to feel betrayed. This forum thread is a great read, and proves that the community is sane about their demands towards Illfonic, Mr. Vermuelen and LordHavoc.
For those just in, here's an article covering Perelman and his theorem.
This wikipedia entry covers some controversies following the article.
One of the main issues with GTK has been the lack of any serious corporate sponsorship. Really, money goes a long way, not only in helping people contribute more time to the project, but also in setting goals.
That said, Clutter is still an Intel project, and probably will remain so for the time being. Intel has stated that MeeGo will remain forward-compatible to Moblin, but for how long, that remains in question.
As far as I know, Clutter will eventually be integrated into GTK+ 3.x, just like Cairo and Pango, so maintainership will probably be passed from Intel to the GTK maintainers, if Intel decides to drop support.
The Linux Foundation also did this in 2009. Here are last year's winners.
Also, I'm pretty sure that good results come from people who know their tools, and not from the tools themselves. A large amount of the video-editing tools on Linux leave a lot to be desired, but they're still light-years ahead of what was available, say, 20 years back. People made (and still make) good videos/movies without any kind of digital intervention, so that snide remark is probably debatable.
The summary seems to create the assumption that the same developers which are abandoning the Wii are moving to the iPhone.
I'm not even sure how something like this would work. The economics are different, the scale is different, hell, even the target consumers are probably different.
At that price point, I'd expect it to come with some kind of (legal) obligation towards Google. Can I take the device, nuke ChromeOS and load my own GNU/Linux distribution? Do I have to register the device with Google?
Maybe I'm wrong and maybe the price point is realistic in accordance with the cost of manufacturing. I'd expect that Google, effectively being an advertising company, would have some rules in place to ensure the "fair" use of their investment.
...as it doesn't specify a single kernel. [source] It's more of a unified platform for development on Samsung phones.
It also probably uses EFL, as Samsung was recently shown to sponsor the development of Enlightenment and its supporting libraries [source]
With Nokia moving to a unified development environment across most of their devices, it's really not a surprising move for the #2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
The full report is also up on wikileaks, along with some background info.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations%2C_14_Sep_2006
Wouldn't it be better if they provided some information on avoiding the potential infection apart from 'not showering'?
Doesn't not showering harbor other kinds of health risks?
I'm still waiting to get my own Barney costume. Cheaper and more controversial.
With pigeons, because, apparently, they're better than most broadband connections.
I know Interplay is nothing like it used to be when it came out with Fallout or Planescape:Torment, but suing the maker of these original games just because you have the rights to continue their legacy doesn't quice feel right.
:)
Now, I'm sure the lawyers don't see it that way. Interplay should be careful what they sign.
...according to the numbers, the pigeon transferred about 4194304 kilobytes (for the sake of argument, the BBC article says it transferred a 4GB Memory Stick, which I'll assume was filled up and that it can actually hold that much of data) in 7617 seconds, which is about 550 kilobytes per second in normal transfer speed. Not an unreasonable speed, a decent 6Mbps connection should be able to do that much.
The most expensive ADSL program advertised by Telcom is a 4096/512kbps program, which I think (at least in Greece) would get you speeds up to ~400 kilobytes per second. In NORMAL conditions.
But that is download speed. And the test measured upload speed. So the real figure they should be testing against is about 50 kilobytes per second in upload speed (at least in Greece it does, if uploading with a 512kbps upstream connection).
Still, 4% completed in 2 hours, 16 minutes and 57 seconds is about 22 kilobytes per second upstream, which is about 50% lower than what it should be. Still a very large margin.
That is all.