Unlike copyright terms, which have cancerously grown to effectively more than a century (for every work created more than 30 years before death), patent terms are still at the relatively reasonable lengths copyright used to be.
It varies by type, but the standard appears to be 20 years. This patent was filed in 1990.
Someone really did wait until the absolutely last possible moment. In another year, the patent will run out, so we should be able to keep using ethernet without disruption regardless of the outcome.
However, the damages would likely be retroactive, so the companies involved must still hope that the patent gets tossed out.
((Also, all of the above is Wikipedia-fueled speculation by a non-lawyer.))
When you conduct a blind test, you can't simply take the correct and incorrect responses as they come.
If there were people who said the lower bit-rate sounded better, and there is no factor to actually convince them of that (ie. the music is the same recording, played at same volume, in randomized order... and they were actually asked "which has the higher bit-rate" rather than "which do you find more pleasant to listen to"), then you must assume that these people arrived at a random guess (which they might not be aware of), which means they had a.5 probability of getting it wrong. For one third to randomly guess wrongly, another third would have to randomly guess right.
Conclusion: Assuming the data in the summary is right, the number of people who were unable to reliably tell the difference were likely closer to 2/3.
Note that that one's bundled with the Launchpad package. I downloaded the binaries directly from Mozilla to get the Minefield trunk, and I see no Ubuntu addon listed in there.
In this case, MS added the plugin to the self-installed version of Firefox, not a version of Firefox they distributed (not that they'd likely be able to cut a branding agreement the way Ubuntu did, so MS would have to distribute it under a different name).
Ever found out that your website was subjected to an intrusion attempt which failed laughably because you used software with good security and regular patches? (I have. It's a very satisfying feeling.:-) )
Or maybe a distributed Denial of Service flood by a botnet, against which online passports won't help (people will still use unpatched Windows) and for which tor is useless anyway...
Not at all, for me - I grasped what you wrote in about five seconds (admittedly, the details about subvocalization, sample rates etc. were skipped at first), while the first twenty seconds of the sample I heard were just gibberish. I was eventually able to discern some phrases, and could probably train myself to be able to listen to that. That would be an interesting project.
However, the reading speed and listening speed seem totally disconnected, as I don't get any subvocalization (unless I consciously try, and have heard the person speak). I don't think I even read every word in order. I've noticed I skim the text in at least 2-3 passes, the first of which just picks up keywords from the beginning of each paragraph.
Pidgin is crap for one, but not the question. Trillian is much better, and both free and non-free.
Pidgin has some quirks and annoyances, and there are several messengers that compare favorably to it.
They do not include Trillian. It sucked for me. It didn't even run stably and fast on Windows; the text formatting was difficult to configure, the character encoding frequently broke special characters and umlauts, and some messages were just dropped silently.
I switched from the official single-protocol clients to Trillian early 2004, then found out about Gaim (ie the precursor of Pidgin) in 2007 and never looked back. That's three years I put up with Trillian, and I actually bought the Pro version at one point, but I was just fed up eventually.
Sorry, I'm not trying to FOSS-troll. I really have used both, heavily and for years. I can't imagine what use-case or feature rubric could be used to compare the two by that would result in Trillian beating Pidgin.
Screw those stupid slashes; you don't need to write those out anyway. What I want to know is who the hell came up with prefixing web addresses with www.
I can imagine it might have made sense for early networks whose "domain names" actually named "domains" with multiple hosts, were a single host might have been the webserver. But pure web names? Or even names with multiple additional services like google.com?
WWW is the single biggest evolutionary baggage in the transition from physical domain hierarchies to logical names.
"I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."
What they are concerned about is losing market share to open source, so they'd rather pretend it doesn't exist and try to eradicate the philosophy of free software in the public mind.
In wishing to completely and speedily address your worries, we have permanently removed all domains owned by your corporation from our search index. You will now no longer suffer from an onslaught of non-paying visitors to your sites. With the best wishes, Google."
They should stop fucking around. Murdoch and the other paid-content-idiots know they can't do business without the search engines linking to them, and if they don't, it's high time they learned it. They need the search engines more than the search engines need them.
I think IP law is in need of heavy reform, and I can even understand (though not condone) people downloading creative works which have no direct alternative. But... Windows? Why steal crap when the free stuff is better? Even if your company forces Windows onto you, your employer could buy it for you.
Sorry, I really see no reason to run counterfeit Windows that makes sense even disregarding the law.
You'd think the BNP winning the last election would have made some headlines.
At least then the NPD in Germany and the Aryan Nation/KKK folks in the US could have known to send them a bunch of congratulatory flowers, or something...:P
Exactly - the PP pulled past the rightwing extremists with flying colors and taken on the title of the "biggest of the small parties". The news agencies moved them out of "Others" into their own column. To compare, the Greens got 1.5% when they first ran, and "save the Earth" sounds easier to convince people of than "copyright needs to be revised". This was a grand success!:D
Slashdot Mirror
Correction, sorry - "in the 1990s". So yeah, it may be a few more years.
Unlike copyright terms, which have cancerously grown to effectively more than a century (for every work created more than 30 years before death), patent terms are still at the relatively reasonable lengths copyright used to be.
It varies by type, but the standard appears to be 20 years. This patent was filed in 1990.
Someone really did wait until the absolutely last possible moment. In another year, the patent will run out, so we should be able to keep using ethernet without disruption regardless of the outcome.
However, the damages would likely be retroactive, so the companies involved must still hope that the patent gets tossed out.
((Also, all of the above is Wikipedia-fueled speculation by a non-lawyer.))
But staying connected for too long turns you into a wraith!
(Oh wait, that's just like the internet.)
When you conduct a blind test, you can't simply take the correct and incorrect responses as they come.
If there were people who said the lower bit-rate sounded better, and there is no factor to actually convince them of that (ie. the music is the same recording, played at same volume, in randomized order... and they were actually asked "which has the higher bit-rate" rather than "which do you find more pleasant to listen to"), then you must assume that these people arrived at a random guess (which they might not be aware of), which means they had a .5 probability of getting it wrong. For one third to randomly guess wrongly, another third would have to randomly guess right.
Conclusion: Assuming the data in the summary is right, the number of people who were unable to reliably tell the difference were likely closer to 2/3.
Note that that one's bundled with the Launchpad package. I downloaded the binaries directly from Mozilla to get the Minefield trunk, and I see no Ubuntu addon listed in there.
In this case, MS added the plugin to the self-installed version of Firefox, not a version of Firefox they distributed (not that they'd likely be able to cut a branding agreement the way Ubuntu did, so MS would have to distribute it under a different name).
Moar like WTF amirite.
Consider this the +1 insightful I'd give you if I hadn't commented already.
I've read with interest what Kaspersky had to say before, but the guy and his whole company have lost all credibility for me after this.
Ever found out that your website was subjected to an intrusion attempt which failed laughably because you used software with good security and regular patches? (I have. It's a very satisfying feeling. :-) )
Or maybe a distributed Denial of Service flood by a botnet, against which online passports won't help (people will still use unpatched Windows) and for which tor is useless anyway...
When you pry my cold, dead fingers off the keyboard.
Not at all, for me - I grasped what you wrote in about five seconds (admittedly, the details about subvocalization, sample rates etc. were skipped at first), while the first twenty seconds of the sample I heard were just gibberish. I was eventually able to discern some phrases, and could probably train myself to be able to listen to that. That would be an interesting project.
However, the reading speed and listening speed seem totally disconnected, as I don't get any subvocalization (unless I consciously try, and have heard the person speak). I don't think I even read every word in order. I've noticed I skim the text in at least 2-3 passes, the first of which just picks up keywords from the beginning of each paragraph.
That's probably not the norm, of course.
Pidgin has some quirks and annoyances, and there are several messengers that compare favorably to it.
They do not include Trillian. It sucked for me. It didn't even run stably and fast on Windows; the text formatting was difficult to configure, the character encoding frequently broke special characters and umlauts, and some messages were just dropped silently.
I switched from the official single-protocol clients to Trillian early 2004, then found out about Gaim (ie the precursor of Pidgin) in 2007 and never looked back. That's three years I put up with Trillian, and I actually bought the Pro version at one point, but I was just fed up eventually.
Sorry, I'm not trying to FOSS-troll. I really have used both, heavily and for years. I can't imagine what use-case or feature rubric could be used to compare the two by that would result in Trillian beating Pidgin.
Sorry to tell /you/ this, but GIMP has actually been running circles around Photoshop, in performance and usability, for at least 2 years.
Well, that's exactly the usecase where it's superfluous, because that's what the port number is for.
funet.fi:80 listens for http
funet.fi:21 listens for ssh
funet.fi:443 listens for https
funet.fi:25 for smtp
etc.
No need for protocol-based sub-domains.
Screw those stupid slashes; you don't need to write those out anyway. What I want to know is who the hell came up with prefixing web addresses with www.
I can imagine it might have made sense for early networks whose "domain names" actually named "domains" with multiple hosts, were a single host might have been the webserver. But pure web names? Or even names with multiple additional services like google.com?
WWW is the single biggest evolutionary baggage in the transition from physical domain hierarchies to logical names.
"I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."
DRM!
Oh, wait...
Glad I didn't have to quote it after all. I was just about to look up the lyrics. :P
They aren't, and so they won't.
What they are concerned about is losing market share to open source, so they'd rather pretend it doesn't exist and try to eradicate the philosophy of free software in the public mind.
"/Dear/ Mr. Murdoch,
In wishing to completely and speedily address your worries, we have permanently removed all domains owned by your corporation from our search index. You will now no longer suffer from an onslaught of non-paying visitors to your sites. With the best wishes, Google."
They should stop fucking around. Murdoch and the other paid-content-idiots know they can't do business without the search engines linking to them, and if they don't, it's high time they learned it. They need the search engines more than the search engines need them.
"Pen-testing" and "set a thief to catch a thief" does not mean letting a thief build your security infrastructure without supervision.
Granted, it is a fairly old system after all. :P
Smaller and nearby? It's the GPU!
(Also, insert obligatory IBM/BlueHenge joke.)
I think IP law is in need of heavy reform, and I can even understand (though not condone) people downloading creative works which have no direct alternative. But... Windows? Why steal crap when the free stuff is better? Even if your company forces Windows onto you, your employer could buy it for you.
Sorry, I really see no reason to run counterfeit Windows that makes sense even disregarding the law.
You'd think the BNP winning the last election would have made some headlines.
At least then the NPD in Germany and the Aryan Nation/KKK folks in the US could have known to send them a bunch of congratulatory flowers, or something... :P
Exactly - the PP pulled past the rightwing extremists with flying colors and taken on the title of the "biggest of the small parties". The news agencies moved them out of "Others" into their own column. To compare, the Greens got 1.5% when they first ran, and "save the Earth" sounds easier to convince people of than "copyright needs to be revised". This was a grand success! :D
And then we could finally stop supporting IE in our web design and move on with the standards.
Hell yes.