Slashdot Mirror


User: geoffspear

geoffspear's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,534
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,534

  1. Re:Maybe on Will Mac mini Lead the Charge to Smaller Desktops? · · Score: 1

    The processor speeds of the cubes are a lot lower. Plus they're old, used machines. Just buy a mini and stick it in a tissue box.

  2. Re:What if.. on HP Pays Intergraph $141m to Settle Patent Dispute · · Score: 1
    Buy from someone else, whose components won't get you sued?

    Unfortunately, Intel's big enough that it would most likely take 2 or 3 of the major PC manufacturers refusing to buy their legally questionable products before they'd care.

    I wonder if somone suing every single person with a PC would get Congress' attention and get patent law changed.

  3. Re:A Book? Are you kidding? on Firefox In Print · · Score: 1
    This is probably why O'Reilly is making lots of money in the publishing industry, and you're not.

    You'll have to excuse businesses for not taking advice for someone with a link to a pyramid scheme in their signature.

  4. Re:Necessary? on Firefox In Print · · Score: 1
    not everyone started out with Netscape 1.0 then learned subsequent features as they were added

    I still use Mosaic 0.6, you insensitive clod!

  5. Re:One button mouse flamage here on Will Mac mini Lead the Charge to Smaller Desktops? · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't see how anyone can possibly operate a computer with only 3 buttons, 1 of which is a tiny clickable scroll wheel. My mouse has 18 buttons, and I couldn't possibly do without any of them.

  6. Maybe on Will Mac mini Lead the Charge to Smaller Desktops? · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If the Mac Mini sells well, everyone will copy the idea. If not, it will disappear like the Cube and no one will ever build anything like it again.

    Of course, the cube's problem wasn't the design, it was the price tag. If they'd sold the cube for $500, it would have been a big hit, and you'd see grey cubes everywhere, from other computer manufacturers to George Foreman CubeGrills.

  7. Re:How is HP reliable? on HP Pays Intergraph $141m to Settle Patent Dispute · · Score: 2, Informative
    No, you're punished for knowingly violating a patent you knew about.

    They should have checked in advance, and then either not used the patented device, or demanded that their supplier indemnify them. Yes, it would be stupid to check for patents on a technology if you're just going to use it anyway.

  8. Re:Lets face it on US ISP Terminates Iranian News Website · · Score: 1
    You're talking to an American there. You'll have to remember that Bush voters get upset when you damn English people misuse the American language by spelling things in your newfangled English way.

    And don't you try to tell us that the English were using the language first... That's just the revisionist history of reality-based whatchamacallits.

  9. Re:Patents can be enforced against Linux on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1

    How do I know that there was proprietary software before the GPL was written? Well, for one thing, when RMS wrote the original Emacs General Public License, in 1985, he mentioned that the reason the GPL was necessary was because other licenses, which existed before the GPL, took away your rights.

  10. Re:Serious rights issues?? on No Pictures, Thanks · · Score: 1

    Eh. All the other camera manufacturers would lobby against it, because such a law would require them to license HP's patent or go out of business.

  11. open source tech? on Take-Two to Publish Next Civilization Game · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they don't give me the source to the program, I don't see what "open source tech" has to do with anything. Windows has open source tech in it too, from BSD, but that's hardly a selling point.

  12. Re:I always liked Douglas Adams on Asteroid Named After Douglas Adams · · Score: 1
    Umm... Since when did England become the Universe?

    Prediction: the movie will flop in the US.

    I also tend to think it won't be as good as I wish it would be (which doesn't have much at all to do with commercial success), simply because it doesn't have the benefit of being rewritten by DNA as the scenes are being shot/as the publisher is demanding a manuscript that's already way over the deadline.

  13. Serious rights issues?? on No Pictures, Thanks · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Umm, no.

    This is probably the most useless patent ever filed. It allows HP to attempt to sell a device that no one will buy, because what it does is prevents someone from photographing the owner with a camera, also produced by HP, that no one will buy, because it can be scrambled.

    The best part is, the end of the article mentions that HP doesn't plan on a commercial use for the patent, for exactly that reason.

    Up next, Smith and Wesson announce a device that will prevent you from being killed by someone using a specific model of gun that they make. Get yours now; you can't afford to be vulnerable to 0.0001% of the guns in the world!

  14. Re:The GPL is better for patents on a practical le on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1

    From what I can tell, Mr. Levien is granting the use of one patent, "Method and apparatus for suppressing moire patterns". All of the rest of the patents he's so generously allowing me to use are expired, and I can use them as much as I want without his permission.

  15. Re:Patents can be enforced against Linux on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1
    Thanks for the revisionist history. The sizes of the communities prove nothing. Linux surpassed BSD because there were concerns that BSD's code might be vulnerable to the sort of thing SCO's trying to do to Linux, long before SCO even existed.

    The problem wasn't that people worried that corporations would steal there code; the problem was the rumors that UCB stole code from AT&T and that BSD was on shaky legal ground. By the time the Regents eliminated the issue, Linux has already caught on.

    You might as well argue that Windows' market share is so big because everyone loves software activation schemes and Microsoft's EULA. In reality, a combination of luck and good business sense got Microsoft early control of the market, which snowballed because of perceived cost of switching to something else combined with the fact that a majority of software is written just for Windows, because it's got a majority of market share. It's a vicious circle, and the average user doesn't care whether Windows is really technically or politically superior to the alternatives; they just go with what's compatible with the software they own or the macchine they've got at work.

  16. Re:kitchen computer on Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades · · Score: 1

    Clearly Black & Decker needs to release a new line of their Spacemaker appliances that will mount in a standard rack along with an Xserve. I need a 4U toaster oven.

  17. Re:Changes made to EU stores as well on Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades · · Score: 1

    When did Apple start building machines in the US? My last machine was built in Taiwan and my iPod was assembled in China.

  18. Re:Patents can be enforced against Linux on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1
    Proprietary software existed before the GPL was written. Therefore, it's FSF's job to provide code that can be used in closed source projects.

    Or do your absolute statements only apply if the conclusions agree with your politics?

  19. Re:GPL compatible? on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1
    That's nitpicking. In that case, conversely, any bit of source code you can legally get your hands on is GPL compatible, as you can mix it with your GPL code as long as you don't want to distribute it to anyone. Every single Linux user can put Sun's code into their own personal fork of Linux, as long as they don't share it with their friends.

    If I can't use code and then release it under a BSD license, it's not compatible with my BSD license.

  20. Re:Patents can be enforced against Linux on Sun Grants Access to 1,600+ Patents · · Score: 1
    The FSF's participation in the Open Source community seems to be cynical; they intend to fragment the Open Source community rather than supporting it.

    Otherwise, I'd be able to use GPL'ed code in my BSD-licensed projects.

  21. Re:Someone else check...not the airport? on Apple's First 2005 Mac OS X Security Update Is Out · · Score: 4, Informative
    No, it has nothing to do with keeping anything secure. They use the machine's MAC address because it was a good way to generate unique message IDs, but it has nothing at all to do with the network the message was sent over.

    They will continue to use the builtin ethernet MAC address to generate IDs, but now they're sticking some random junk on the end and putting them through a hash function first, so the receiver of your message can't get your MAC address from it.

  22. Re:Pointless policy at work? on Cell Phone On A Chip · · Score: 1

    Right, and sodium isn't dangerous because I need salt to survive. Thanks for your excellent medical analysis.

  23. Re:Pretty Ironic... on Geeks in Management? · · Score: -1, Redundant

    That's not ironic, it's an oxymoron. Like Swiss cheese.

  24. Re:Different question on Kahle v Ashcroft Appeal Filed · · Score: 1
    Besides which, that clause seems to be explaining why Congress is being given this power, not limiting the power.

    One could argue that the "more perfect union" clause in the Preamble makes every single act of the government unconstitutional, because government officials, being human beings, are not capable of perfection. Good luck convincing the Supreme Court of the framers' intent on that one.

  25. Re:Rest of your life and beyond on Kahle v Ashcroft Appeal Filed · · Score: 1
    Thanks for a great idea... I'm putting a clause in my will demanding that my coffin be dug up once a year so any profits I've made after my death can be put in there, in cash.

    The pharaohs were fools... they only got themselves buried with the wealth they were able to accumulate before death.