Thanks for the awesome link! It crosses my cool gadget hacking threshold... I'm gonna give these apps a try. I just hope I don't brickify my wife's iPhone!
Good point, but Apple isn't providing the desired feature set. They never have and never will. They depend on 3rd party software for a huge percentage of all interesting applications on Macs. Apple wont get them for the iPhone, tremendously limiting it's usefulness.
Worse than the cell-vendor locks are the application locks on the iPhone. Most of us are unwilling to buy a $600 phone and then hack it, potentially rendering it unusable. The application space for the iPhone are huge, yet we can't do dick. We could port Skype/OpenWengo/Gizo, gaim, and provide a shell. Can you believe there are zero native games on the iPhone? My wife uses an iPhone, but until I can legally program the damned thing, I'm not getting one.
It turns out that few GUI programmers are good with data structures, and slow GUIs plague many applications as a result. My favorite is list boxes when they contain thousands of elements. Every implementation I've seen chokes. Here's a specific one on Linux: The stupid Nautilus file browser. Try viewing a directory with > 10000 files sometime... good luck. Even viewing/usr/bin is stupidly slow. GUI programmers love introducing N^2 loops, and there are often N^3 loops.
So, TXT in short is hardware DRM, right? Will it do more? I'd love to know that my Linux kernel has been compiled signed by the vendor, and not hacked by any virus. Will TXT significantly mitigate viruses, worms, spy-ware, and the like? Will it allow vendor signed Linux kernels to be trusted to play DVDs out-of-the-box in the US? Will it help commercial companies port their products to Linux without fear of hacking? Will it allow FlexLM to finally be semi-secure? Will it get the damned bot-hackers off the gaming networks? If it will in fact do all that, I'm not sure I'm opposed, but of course, the proof is in the making.
It's interesting to speculate what could happen when solar becomes cheap enough. If it becomes cheaper or more desirable than alternatives, we could afford to increase the world's installed panels by 10X in one year, here in the US (obviously, we'd have trouble building that many factories in one year). So, we could potentially see a lot higher than 45% growth for a while.
Well, here's an apology: I personally apologize for being an American and not doing more to stop our government from it's recent brainless actions, including invading Iraq, causing a rise in terrorism world-wide, and putting the breaks on democratic reforms in our own country, and others through our own terrible example to the world. I voted against Bush both times, donated $100, to the EFF to help them sue AT&T, and ran bushshitlist.org for a while, to help educate people about his mistakes. And I'm no Republican hater - my favorite president since I've been alive is the Bush Senior.
Fortunately, even we Americans eventually wise-up. Bush is the most hated president in America since I've been alive (early 60's). I don't bother running bushshitlist.org anymore, because even the National Enquirer now publicizes the stupidity of many of this administrations actions. I've found that Americans fall into several groups, and we have very little mobility between them. The 'religious right' is hard-core in the Bush camp, making up 18% of Americans, and the majority of Bush's remaining meager support. Both Democrats and Republicans split about 20% of Americans that I call "glass eaters": smart people who would rather eat glass than criticize a president from their own party. There are also plenty of stupid people in every country, and we Americans are no exception. You gotta love Brittney Spear's support of Bush, for example. You also gotta love the stupidity of the Dixie Chicks attacking Bush. The dumber of us let actors and performers affect our opinions, and we tend to elect them to high offices. Then, there's a minority of Americans who can make up their own minds, and have at one point supported a Republican or a Democrat, based on their performance. This last category is the largest group, but unfortunately the others tend to outvote us.
All that said, America is still the world's greatest country, in my not so humble opinion. We've just got some clean-up work to do.
I'm probably just ill-informed, but aren't CD's just plain old 16-bit, with no compression, and great sound quality? The summary says 'CDs', but the link refers to technologies used on DVDs, which are highly compressed. As for annoying volumes, TV commercials really piss me off. It's illegal to crank commercial volumes, but every local station does it anyway - advertisers love it. I have to turn down the volume every time a stupid loud commercial comes on.
I agree, though don't give up on batteries. A123 Systems for example, uses less polluting non-explosive technology that are efficient, easily dosposed of, charge fast, deliver lots of power, and last a very long time. Their only real drawback right now is that A123 Systems wants a lot of $ for their product, since the market seems willing to pay it. Competition will eventually solve that problem.
The real enemy here is coal. Over the next 25 years, I expect a major shift to plug-in hybrid and all electric vehicles, as oil becomes more expensive. However, at $50/ton, nothing competes with the price of coal. The fuel is so damned cheap that power companies want to build more low-efficiency, highly polluting plants to burn even more coal. We'll run out of regular oil long before coal, so most of the real damage we can do to the Earth's environment is likely to be done through coal. Oil shale and oil sands may keep our gasoline engines running, but it'll simply be cheaper to run off the grid and burn all that cheap coal. Solar and possibly biofuels may become darned cheap, and we can always build more nuclear plants. But with coal sitting there, waiting to be burned practically for free, coal will continue to be the East Coast's #1 fuel for powering the grid, until we get so PO-ed by climate change, poor health, and smog, that we force our leaders to convert to clean fuels.
Thanks for the debunking, though all I had to do was multiply 100,000 miles times $3.25 to realize it was bunk. If Prius owners had the $325,000 to spend on a car, they'd all drive Porches or better.
Ha ha! Yes, Tesla Motors doesn't make a car for you and me (yet). However, Hymotion (another link), is real, and nearly affordable. The batteries they use (from A123 Systems) are currently expensive, but IMO, that's because they have no competition, and the batteries are worth more. Their extra-long lifetime, high efficiency, safety, and high power output all make it a great fit for a Prius plug-in. However, there are multiple competitors trying bring competing products to market (like Toshiba). Also, a deal with Toyota would probably be enough to bring the cost of the A123 batteries down to comparable to lithium-ion (MIT claims their competing technology is even cheaper).
Burning fossil fuels at a power plant, charging your car batteries, and running all electric is from 25-100% more efficient. This directly reduces green-house gases. Also, with the added flexibility to choose what kind of fuel we use, we could pretty much eliminate foreign oil imports. Toyota is spreading FUD. 8 miles? What a crock. All Toyota has to do is offer this product. Plug-in hybrids are a great technology that can save money, reduce oil imports, and reduce green-house gases.
BTW, every time I point out these simple sites and concepts that any dolt can easily understand, I get mod-ed down by a strange group that seems to read articles late. I have two theories on this: there are paid/.-ers who are paid to bury this kind of info; angry anti-environment/.-ers read articles late.
There's a natural progression countries like China go through. Initially, their population doesn't have enough cash to afford American prices, or even heavily discounted prices. The government allows/encourages piracy at this point, since the alternative of not having access to American IP puts their country at a disadvantage. This doesn't directly hurt the US, since these countries wouldn't buy our IP anyway. At this stage, the country may also have many low-wage engineering/software companies that do nothing but low-cost contract work for foreign companies. As the economy improves, and high-tech contracting companies flourish, local demand for IP protection grows. This allows local companies to make profits off of locally generated and consumed IP. As IP begins to have actual monetary value in an emerging economy, Microsoft (and others) assert their rights to payment for their IP. Microsoft is doing us a favor: they can be the bad guys, but everyone involved in any IP industry in the US will benefit, and Heaven knows the Chinese have plenty of US $ to buy our IP now.
Gates is smart enough to know that piracy helps him in many cases. If you pirate Windows Office for home use, you knock out your home desktop as a place for Open Office to flourish, and you probably wouldn't have paid the $300 for a stupid office suite anyway. By remaining addicted to Windows and Windows Office, you insure his future revenue stream at your next job. By allowing piracy in emerging markets, he keeps out Linux, and eventually stands to make a lot of $. He's not stupid.
So, how much should a person pay for software? In theory, our economy would benefit most if those who benefit more from software pay more, and those who can afford more pay more. So, for example, in Romania, Windows Office should cost far less than $100, while here in the US, $300 is not totally unreasonable. At work, where a copy gets hammered all the time, $1000 might be reasonable, while at home where all I do is occasional recreational writing, it should be free or close to it. I don't believe Microsoft in principle would disagree with any of this. So, how is it possible to charge some people more, while other people are charged less? As shrink-wrap products, it's nearly impossible. We have the same problem with aids medications. How much should a poor African pay? The same as a wealthy American? See... it doesn't work out. Literally, people die because of this issue.
Piracy is a partial solution. It allows Microsoft to sell one copy to many customers. As a country becomes more able and willing to pay, they crack down, reducing the piracy ratio. Can or do we do the same for aids drugs? Do we allow rampant illegal cloning of drugs in Africa? We probably should if we don't. Hopefully, one day most African countries can join countries like China, and begin enforcing IP protection, not because of Microsoft police, but because they can afford it. Anyone else got a better solution?
I found the responses to this article very informative. The article itself was just some college kid, probably not the world's greatest network analyst. However, the responses include some very insightful comments. I think it's wise of/. to pick articles that invoke interesting dialog, and if you take that measure into account, this article isn't half bad. In particular, if I similar connections to my home network in the future, my first thought will be "zombie or P&P", rather than "world governments are spying on me".
Actually, my first reaction to this article was "What! The US doesn't need to make connections to spy on me!" With AT&T's big fat pipe to the NSA, the government get's all the data it wants about me, even though I run Ubuntu.
Sure you can!! You can stop paying Yahoo for shoddy service.
I wish:-) It's a company account, and only my e-mail address seems to be widely known to spammers. Everyone else seems fairly happy with the service, especially since you can check your mail on-line (which I almost never do).
False advertising is probably more accurate. However, Microsoft is not the only culprit. Yahoo regularly drops my e-mails if I attach a multi-megabyte file, without any bounce or warning. Also, I pay for this mail service, so it's not just the free accounts. When e-mails with large attachments do get through, they are often quite delayed, like an hour or more. Yahoo also forwards hundreds of spam e-mails to me every day, and SFAIK, there's not much I can do about it. The right place to stop spam is when an unknown server contacts you, and Yahoo just passes it right through, expecting a spam filter to fix the problem on the back-end.
One of my best friends new the guy. He had and argument with the guy about how fair that code was. According to the COBAL programmer, his code did a good job of minimizing hardship by maximizing the number student's who could attend classes they want. The fact that it was always the same students who got screwed, and the same students who got all the classes they want seemed irrelevant to the COBAL programmer. Apparently, he got paid more for improving the over-all measurement.
I've personally suffered greatly from a far worse, but similar usage of a sequentially assigned number, when a random number was called for. At Berkeley, as an undergrad, many classes I needed were over-full. The stupid COBAL programmer Berkeley hired to do student-class assignments needed a random number too break ties. He took the last digits of the student ID, and students with a higher number got in, and the students with lower were kicked out (mine ended in zeros). One semester, I applied for 20 units, and only got assigned 3, but the 3 were given to a prof so horrible I immediately dropped the class.
There's an interesting story about the difference between a Berkeley trained engineer and a Stanford trained engineer. The Stanford engineers typically finish college, and are downright shocked when they enter Dilbert Land, and for a while are unable to perform well. Berkeley grads don't seem to notice the transition, and get right to work.
This is such a classic example of doing what's right for the overall good of the country, vs doing what's right for big financial contributors (telcoms, in this case). What's the right thing to do? Duh, total no brainer. I hope the FCC is given the freedom to do it's job for a change.
The EU simply needs to make clear that any software splashing "Protected by patent XXXX" holds exactly zero weight. For example, Adobe Acrobat Reader does pretty much exactly the same thing as the Evince document reader (except 5x slower), so what the heck are all those patents listed on the splash screen? The latest splash screen from Adobe includes:
Protected by U.S. Patents 337,604; 338,907; 371,799; 454,582; 4,667,247; 4,837,613; 5,050,103; 5,185,818; 5,200,740; 5,233,336; 5,237,313; 5,255,357; 5,546,528; 5,625,711; 5,634,064; 5,729,637; 5,737,599; 5,754,873; 5,781,785; 5,819,301; 5,832,530; 5,832,531; 5,835,634; 5,860,074; 5,929,866; 5,930,813; 5,943,063; 5,995,086; 5,999,649; 6,028,583; 6,049,339; 6,073,148; 6,185,684; 6,205,549; 6,275,587; 6,289,364; 6,324,555; 6,385,350; 6,408,092; 6,411,730; 6,415,278; 6,421,460; 6,466,210; 6,507,848; 6,515,675; 6,563,502; 6,604,105; 6,639,593; 6,701,023; 6,711,557; 6,720,977; 6,748,111; 6,754,382; 6,771,816; 6,842,786; 6,857,105; 6,894,704; 6,934,909; Patents Pending in the U.S. and other countries.
What the heck are poor coders suppose to do when they see a splash screen like that? Go to law school to learn Lawyerese and read all those patents? I suspect one interesting side-effect: few people would be brave enough to sell a product that mimics what a simple reader like Acrobat does, but they'll willingly work a few hours every week to promote an open-source community effort. In a world of lawyers, creativity flourishes anonymously. Except in the UK, where you can still sign your name.
You gotta love it when you actually learn a lot from a reply. Thanks! I'm not so sure Linux is headed fast for the "Then you win" stage, unless we redefine "winning". If "winning" means that the big PC vendors all support Linux desktops, peripherals come with Linux drivers, and we no longer have to pay the Windows tax, then I think Linux is headed for a win. If "winning" means becoming the single most popular desktop OS, I doubt Linux will ever win. But why should I care what Joe Sixpack has installed?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the awesome link! It crosses my cool gadget hacking threshold... I'm gonna give these apps a try. I just hope I don't brickify my wife's iPhone!
Good point, but Apple isn't providing the desired feature set. They never have and never will. They depend on 3rd party software for a huge percentage of all interesting applications on Macs. Apple wont get them for the iPhone, tremendously limiting it's usefulness.
Worse than the cell-vendor locks are the application locks on the iPhone. Most of us are unwilling to buy a $600 phone and then hack it, potentially rendering it unusable. The application space for the iPhone are huge, yet we can't do dick. We could port Skype/OpenWengo/Gizo, gaim, and provide a shell. Can you believe there are zero native games on the iPhone? My wife uses an iPhone, but until I can legally program the damned thing, I'm not getting one.
It turns out that few GUI programmers are good with data structures, and slow GUIs plague many applications as a result. My favorite is list boxes when they contain thousands of elements. Every implementation I've seen chokes. Here's a specific one on Linux: The stupid Nautilus file browser. Try viewing a directory with > 10000 files sometime... good luck. Even viewing /usr/bin is stupidly slow. GUI programmers love introducing N^2 loops, and there are often N^3 loops.
Geeze! Gotta love slashdotting... the poor world of actual non-super-geeks out there have no freaking idea what this thread is about :-)
s/?/, unless you believe power/money does not corrupt/
So, TXT in short is hardware DRM, right? Will it do more? I'd love to know that my Linux kernel has been compiled signed by the vendor, and not hacked by any virus. Will TXT significantly mitigate viruses, worms, spy-ware, and the like? Will it allow vendor signed Linux kernels to be trusted to play DVDs out-of-the-box in the US? Will it help commercial companies port their products to Linux without fear of hacking? Will it allow FlexLM to finally be semi-secure? Will it get the damned bot-hackers off the gaming networks? If it will in fact do all that, I'm not sure I'm opposed, but of course, the proof is in the making.
It's interesting to speculate what could happen when solar becomes cheap enough. If it becomes cheaper or more desirable than alternatives, we could afford to increase the world's installed panels by 10X in one year, here in the US (obviously, we'd have trouble building that many factories in one year). So, we could potentially see a lot higher than 45% growth for a while.
I'd mod you funny, but I already posted :-)
Yeah, we're kinda like one giant Microsoft Corporation :-)
Well, here's an apology: I personally apologize for being an American and not doing more to stop our government from it's recent brainless actions, including invading Iraq, causing a rise in terrorism world-wide, and putting the breaks on democratic reforms in our own country, and others through our own terrible example to the world. I voted against Bush both times, donated $100, to the EFF to help them sue AT&T, and ran bushshitlist.org for a while, to help educate people about his mistakes. And I'm no Republican hater - my favorite president since I've been alive is the Bush Senior.
Fortunately, even we Americans eventually wise-up. Bush is the most hated president in America since I've been alive (early 60's). I don't bother running bushshitlist.org anymore, because even the National Enquirer now publicizes the stupidity of many of this administrations actions. I've found that Americans fall into several groups, and we have very little mobility between them. The 'religious right' is hard-core in the Bush camp, making up 18% of Americans, and the majority of Bush's remaining meager support. Both Democrats and Republicans split about 20% of Americans that I call "glass eaters": smart people who would rather eat glass than criticize a president from their own party. There are also plenty of stupid people in every country, and we Americans are no exception. You gotta love Brittney Spear's support of Bush, for example. You also gotta love the stupidity of the Dixie Chicks attacking Bush. The dumber of us let actors and performers affect our opinions, and we tend to elect them to high offices. Then, there's a minority of Americans who can make up their own minds, and have at one point supported a Republican or a Democrat, based on their performance. This last category is the largest group, but unfortunately the others tend to outvote us.
All that said, America is still the world's greatest country, in my not so humble opinion. We've just got some clean-up work to do.
Of course, mine goes to 11 :-)
I'm probably just ill-informed, but aren't CD's just plain old 16-bit, with no compression, and great sound quality? The summary says 'CDs', but the link refers to technologies used on DVDs, which are highly compressed. As for annoying volumes, TV commercials really piss me off. It's illegal to crank commercial volumes, but every local station does it anyway - advertisers love it. I have to turn down the volume every time a stupid loud commercial comes on.
I agree, though don't give up on batteries. A123 Systems for example, uses less polluting non-explosive technology that are efficient, easily dosposed of, charge fast, deliver lots of power, and last a very long time. Their only real drawback right now is that A123 Systems wants a lot of $ for their product, since the market seems willing to pay it. Competition will eventually solve that problem.
The real enemy here is coal. Over the next 25 years, I expect a major shift to plug-in hybrid and all electric vehicles, as oil becomes more expensive. However, at $50/ton, nothing competes with the price of coal. The fuel is so damned cheap that power companies want to build more low-efficiency, highly polluting plants to burn even more coal. We'll run out of regular oil long before coal, so most of the real damage we can do to the Earth's environment is likely to be done through coal. Oil shale and oil sands may keep our gasoline engines running, but it'll simply be cheaper to run off the grid and burn all that cheap coal. Solar and possibly biofuels may become darned cheap, and we can always build more nuclear plants. But with coal sitting there, waiting to be burned practically for free, coal will continue to be the East Coast's #1 fuel for powering the grid, until we get so PO-ed by climate change, poor health, and smog, that we force our leaders to convert to clean fuels.
Thanks for the debunking, though all I had to do was multiply 100,000 miles times $3.25 to realize it was bunk. If Prius owners had the $325,000 to spend on a car, they'd all drive Porches or better.
Ha ha! Yes, Tesla Motors doesn't make a car for you and me (yet). However, Hymotion (another link), is real, and nearly affordable. The batteries they use (from A123 Systems) are currently expensive, but IMO, that's because they have no competition, and the batteries are worth more. Their extra-long lifetime, high efficiency, safety, and high power output all make it a great fit for a Prius plug-in. However, there are multiple competitors trying bring competing products to market (like Toshiba). Also, a deal with Toyota would probably be enough to bring the cost of the A123 batteries down to comparable to lithium-ion (MIT claims their competing technology is even cheaper).
Burning fossil fuels at a power plant, charging your car batteries, and running all electric is from 25-100% more efficient. This directly reduces green-house gases. Also, with the added flexibility to choose what kind of fuel we use, we could pretty much eliminate foreign oil imports. Toyota is spreading FUD. 8 miles? What a crock. All Toyota has to do is offer this product. Plug-in hybrids are a great technology that can save money, reduce oil imports, and reduce green-house gases.
/.-ers who are paid to bury this kind of info; angry anti-environment /.-ers read articles late.
BTW, every time I point out these simple sites and concepts that any dolt can easily understand, I get mod-ed down by a strange group that seems to read articles late. I have two theories on this: there are paid
There's a natural progression countries like China go through. Initially, their population doesn't have enough cash to afford American prices, or even heavily discounted prices. The government allows/encourages piracy at this point, since the alternative of not having access to American IP puts their country at a disadvantage. This doesn't directly hurt the US, since these countries wouldn't buy our IP anyway. At this stage, the country may also have many low-wage engineering/software companies that do nothing but low-cost contract work for foreign companies. As the economy improves, and high-tech contracting companies flourish, local demand for IP protection grows. This allows local companies to make profits off of locally generated and consumed IP. As IP begins to have actual monetary value in an emerging economy, Microsoft (and others) assert their rights to payment for their IP. Microsoft is doing us a favor: they can be the bad guys, but everyone involved in any IP industry in the US will benefit, and Heaven knows the Chinese have plenty of US $ to buy our IP now.
Gates is smart enough to know that piracy helps him in many cases. If you pirate Windows Office for home use, you knock out your home desktop as a place for Open Office to flourish, and you probably wouldn't have paid the $300 for a stupid office suite anyway. By remaining addicted to Windows and Windows Office, you insure his future revenue stream at your next job. By allowing piracy in emerging markets, he keeps out Linux, and eventually stands to make a lot of $. He's not stupid.
So, how much should a person pay for software? In theory, our economy would benefit most if those who benefit more from software pay more, and those who can afford more pay more. So, for example, in Romania, Windows Office should cost far less than $100, while here in the US, $300 is not totally unreasonable. At work, where a copy gets hammered all the time, $1000 might be reasonable, while at home where all I do is occasional recreational writing, it should be free or close to it. I don't believe Microsoft in principle would disagree with any of this. So, how is it possible to charge some people more, while other people are charged less? As shrink-wrap products, it's nearly impossible. We have the same problem with aids medications. How much should a poor African pay? The same as a wealthy American? See... it doesn't work out. Literally, people die because of this issue.
Piracy is a partial solution. It allows Microsoft to sell one copy to many customers. As a country becomes more able and willing to pay, they crack down, reducing the piracy ratio. Can or do we do the same for aids drugs? Do we allow rampant illegal cloning of drugs in Africa? We probably should if we don't. Hopefully, one day most African countries can join countries like China, and begin enforcing IP protection, not because of Microsoft police, but because they can afford it. Anyone else got a better solution?
I found the responses to this article very informative. The article itself was just some college kid, probably not the world's greatest network analyst. However, the responses include some very insightful comments. I think it's wise of /. to pick articles that invoke interesting dialog, and if you take that measure into account, this article isn't half bad. In particular, if I similar connections to my home network in the future, my first thought will be "zombie or P&P", rather than "world governments are spying on me".
Actually, my first reaction to this article was "What! The US doesn't need to make connections to spy on me!" With AT&T's big fat pipe to the NSA, the government get's all the data it wants about me, even though I run Ubuntu.
I wish
False advertising is probably more accurate. However, Microsoft is not the only culprit. Yahoo regularly drops my e-mails if I attach a multi-megabyte file, without any bounce or warning. Also, I pay for this mail service, so it's not just the free accounts. When e-mails with large attachments do get through, they are often quite delayed, like an hour or more. Yahoo also forwards hundreds of spam e-mails to me every day, and SFAIK, there's not much I can do about it. The right place to stop spam is when an unknown server contacts you, and Yahoo just passes it right through, expecting a spam filter to fix the problem on the back-end.
One of my best friends new the guy. He had and argument with the guy about how fair that code was. According to the COBAL programmer, his code did a good job of minimizing hardship by maximizing the number student's who could attend classes they want. The fact that it was always the same students who got screwed, and the same students who got all the classes they want seemed irrelevant to the COBAL programmer. Apparently, he got paid more for improving the over-all measurement.
A great bumper sticker I saw: "Drive Carefully. Most people are caused by accidents."
I've personally suffered greatly from a far worse, but similar usage of a sequentially assigned number, when a random number was called for. At Berkeley, as an undergrad, many classes I needed were over-full. The stupid COBAL programmer Berkeley hired to do student-class assignments needed a random number too break ties. He took the last digits of the student ID, and students with a higher number got in, and the students with lower were kicked out (mine ended in zeros). One semester, I applied for 20 units, and only got assigned 3, but the 3 were given to a prof so horrible I immediately dropped the class.
There's an interesting story about the difference between a Berkeley trained engineer and a Stanford trained engineer. The Stanford engineers typically finish college, and are downright shocked when they enter Dilbert Land, and for a while are unable to perform well. Berkeley grads don't seem to notice the transition, and get right to work.
This is such a classic example of doing what's right for the overall good of the country, vs doing what's right for big financial contributors (telcoms, in this case). What's the right thing to do? Duh, total no brainer. I hope the FCC is given the freedom to do it's job for a change.
The EU simply needs to make clear that any software splashing "Protected by patent XXXX" holds exactly zero weight. For example, Adobe Acrobat Reader does pretty much exactly the same thing as the Evince document reader (except 5x slower), so what the heck are all those patents listed on the splash screen? The latest splash screen from Adobe includes:
Protected by U.S. Patents 337,604; 338,907; 371,799; 454,582; 4,667,247; 4,837,613; 5,050,103; 5,185,818; 5,200,740; 5,233,336; 5,237,313; 5,255,357; 5,546,528; 5,625,711; 5,634,064; 5,729,637; 5,737,599; 5,754,873; 5,781,785; 5,819,301; 5,832,530; 5,832,531; 5,835,634; 5,860,074; 5,929,866; 5,930,813; 5,943,063; 5,995,086; 5,999,649; 6,028,583; 6,049,339; 6,073,148; 6,185,684; 6,205,549; 6,275,587; 6,289,364; 6,324,555; 6,385,350; 6,408,092; 6,411,730; 6,415,278; 6,421,460; 6,466,210; 6,507,848; 6,515,675; 6,563,502; 6,604,105; 6,639,593; 6,701,023; 6,711,557; 6,720,977; 6,748,111; 6,754,382; 6,771,816; 6,842,786; 6,857,105; 6,894,704; 6,934,909; Patents Pending in the U.S. and other countries.
What the heck are poor coders suppose to do when they see a splash screen like that? Go to law school to learn Lawyerese and read all those patents? I suspect one interesting side-effect: few people would be brave enough to sell a product that mimics what a simple reader like Acrobat does, but they'll willingly work a few hours every week to promote an open-source community effort. In a world of lawyers, creativity flourishes anonymously. Except in the UK, where you can still sign your name.
You gotta love it when you actually learn a lot from a reply. Thanks! I'm not so sure Linux is headed fast for the "Then you win" stage, unless we redefine "winning". If "winning" means that the big PC vendors all support Linux desktops, peripherals come with Linux drivers, and we no longer have to pay the Windows tax, then I think Linux is headed for a win. If "winning" means becoming the single most popular desktop OS, I doubt Linux will ever win. But why should I care what Joe Sixpack has installed?