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User: icebike

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  1. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    The $2B is composed of a few cents for each android (and IOS) device sold, from every DEVICE maker, (including Apple, which is largely BSD based). It is not because they use Android, it is because the MicroSD cards use Fat32, exFat, and the usb protocol increasingly uses Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), which is also patented by Microsoft.

    Android itself does not include exFat/Fat32/MTP (Although the reference distribution of Android has hooks for these to be installed if the manufacturer wants, as does every Linux distribution.)

    Google doesn't pay for this at all, because it is the device manufacturers that pay a secret amount to include these features. People want a easy way to move a mountain of music onto and off of their phones, and most of them only understand getting out a cable and plugging into a USB port.

    Of course they could release the phones with ext3 or just about any other free file system, but then they would have to release drivers for all versions of windows. Microsoft has consistently refused to support ext(n) in any version of windows. (ext2/3 support is available from third parties, but Microsoft forces you to turn off driver signing in order to use it, and they refuse to allow third party ext drivers to be signed. )

    One of these days Google will buy incorporate it into Android, and disabuse people that you need to plug your Android into any PC just to move media.

  2. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Any support contract you want.
    Get it from IBM, SUSE, Red Hat, Canonical, and 50 other companies.

    Contrary to your risk-avoidance mentality, the banks don't run ti Microsoft every time they have a problem with an ATM machine.
    The OS manufacturer is not on call for you, either on your desktop machine or you server, or your ATM.

  3. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    No one is violating patents, they (andorid) choose to use FAT32. So they license Fat32. No part of the android kernel or linux violates patents.

    Microsoft isn't collecting "patent claims" (what ever the hell that means), they are collecting license fees, as are a lot of other companies who's chips and radios are used in android.

    Unlike a radio chip, or a sound processing chip, Fat32 can be replaced in seconds any time the Android consortium wants to. It exists mostly as a convenience to the end-user.

  4. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 2

    Exactly. They waived any right to appeal, because their patent is going to be invalidated.

  5. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    The patent is being challenged, and because it has been reduced to simple math it is unpalatable.
    There is no cash settlement. Bedrock is running for the hills, and can't afford to face an appeal, because they know they will lose again, so they settle and get out of not having to pay Google any lawyer fees.

    You sir, are an idiot.

    Shall we look into how many suits are pending against Microsoft??? Shall we?

  6. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    It would be cheaper, but that is not the argument.

    Wake up and read a newspaper.

    Credit card companies are sustaining billion multi dollar losses every month. They are being hauled before congress.
    All of this so that the credit card companies and banks can continue to use insecure card and hopelessly out of date operating systems from the company with the worst security record in the industry.

  7. Re:Seems reasonable on Russia Backs Sending Top Students Abroad With a Catch · · Score: 1

    Tough sell.

  8. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Yeah it is that simple.

    You don't even need to port them. Just encapsulate them and run them as binary blobs, just exactly the way nic drivers and video drivers were originally moved to Linux.

    The manufacturers will fall all over themselves trying to help. The want out from under Microsoft's thumb too.

  9. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    So you think there is no support for Linux?
    I bet you have never heard of that little company called Red Hat, or Suse, or IBM, or Canonical?
    And I bet you've never actually got a Microsoft engineer on the phone either.

  10. Re:Seems reasonable on Russia Backs Sending Top Students Abroad With a Catch · · Score: 1

    If it were that easy, why would Russia be passing this new law financing, and then (apparently) forgiving the tuition?

    If you are one of the highly sought after career category, you would be surprised how many impediments are removed from your path. Besides, you only address one country. Canada will take anything that breathes and walks. Some countries couldn't care less. And Snowden will probably end up in Brazil.

  11. Re:Reinforcing the term on Google Glass User Fights Speeding Ticket, Saying She's Defending the Future · · Score: 3

    So a legal GPS is an illegal monitor as well? I've never seen a definition of "monitor" that didn't make GPS illegal if it made DVD watching illegal (but I have seen laws that indicate that a monitor used for GPS was legal, but never a distinction in what a "monitor" was).

    Nope, there is a special exemption in California law for GPS or Navigation only devices.
    There didn't use to be such an exemption, and Garmin and Tom Tom users could get cited.
    Those two companies got together and lobbied for a change in the law.

    There was one other state where GPS was illegal, and they changed their law too.

  12. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nice try:

    ORDER granting 829 Stipulation of Dismissal filed by Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC, Google Inc. The verdict rendered in this matter is VACATED and all claims for relief asserted by Bedrock against Google are DISMISSED with prejudice.

    http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/6:2009cv00269/116887/830/

    Bedrock also lost to Yahoo and Amazon, over the same patent and they have thrown in the towel.

  13. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 4, Informative

    Banco do Brasil moved to linux ATMs in 2008. IBM backends, Linux ATMs. As has Banrisul, largest southern region bank in Brazil.

    Third biggest ATM country in the world, and you haven't heard of it?

  14. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Its actually not that hard to move software from Windows to Linux these days.
    The investment in that code is easily preserved with a recompile.
    There are even packages that will convert the bulk of your windows API calls for you.

    The point is they are being taken for Billions by hackers, they are going to be taken for millions and millions by Microsoft, and they are going to have to replace equipment in every one of those ATMs anyway as the country moves to smart chip cards.

    Surely you can't be suggesting continuing to run on XP forever?

  15. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Your an idiot.
    There is no patented code in linux.

  16. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 2

    Because data may be data but proprietary protocols are proprietary protocols. If you replace one side with new software, who's going to support the other side?

    Who ever is supporting it now.
    The existing protocols can remain in place. The existing backends can remain in place. Data is Data whether sent by Windows or Linux.

    Were you somehow under the impression that the entire internet was rebuilt specially for you
    each time you got a new computer or switched from Windows to Linux, to Mac?

  17. Re:Never challenge lawyers to a battle of lawsuits on Russia Backs Sending Top Students Abroad With a Catch · · Score: 1

    Look, cops aren't going to chase all over hell rounding up people for skipping out on a student loan.
    Its a civil matter, and we have enough of our own criminals to catch, let alone Russian absconders.

    Hell, our cops won't even round up terrorists when Russian security tells us they are dangerous, instead we let them bomb marathons.

  18. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Why would the network side have to be replaced?
    Data is data.

  19. Re:Freakin' Riders. on Incandescent Bulbs Get a Reprieve · · Score: 1

    But they don't.
    Put one of each in a multi bulb fixture and see for yourself.

  20. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your spewing FUD.

    Google, Amazon, IBM, and even Microsoft themselves are all HUGE Linux users.
    Big business isn't afraid of Linux.

  21. Re:Obviously! on Why the Major Labels Love (and Artists Hate) Music Streaming · · Score: 1

    When you are streaming, you can't know for sure how many are listening.
    Its not a separate tcp stream for each remote device.

  22. Re: Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 2

    Why not?
    Nobody has successfully proven a patent infringements in Linux.
    Even Microsoft has given up, and is now a major Linux contributor.

  23. Re:should have gone with a browser... on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 1

    I'd wager there is nothing in the typical ATM that a Rasbperry Pi couldn't handle.

  24. Re:The Market? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because Microsoft can be sued if they need to?

    Ah, no. Not going to happen.
    Your hardware, you installed the software,
    You managed it for the last 10 years,
    You probably didn't apply patches...

    No way that ever gets a dime out of Microsoft in court.

  25. Re:Price? on 95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a reason why people do this, and it's not just lazyniess..

    Still, you would have thought they would have learned a few lessons by now.

    JPMorgan is buying a one-year extension and will start converting its machines to Windows 7 in July;

    Anything that can run Windows 7 could run linux.
    Anything that can run embedded Windows 7 would have no problem running linux.
    Or OpenBSD.
    You can replace the entire motherboard and processor with something 10 times as expensive as a Raspberry Pi for $350, and still save money over paying Microsoft extensions for every terminal.

    There will be several companies dragged before congress. There have been multi-billion dollar losses. How many times do you have to let hackers make you their bitches before you cry uncle and at least look at a Linux solution?