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  1. Re:Perhaps the patents are legit, valid patents? on Why No War Over MS's Android Patent Shakedown? · · Score: 1

    Copyrights are from the moment something is created, it doesn't have to be published. "Publication is not necessary for copyright protection." [Bam, citation: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html%5D. If you wrote a diary and never showed it to anyone, it would still be copyrighted.

    And you do need to have seen the original to be in violation of a copyright. If we wrote the same diary, word for word, without having seen each other's, we theoretically would both have rights. [I don't have a public citation for this one.] This is unlike patents, which you can violate without ever knowing the patent existed.

  2. Re:Words can't describe... on DisplayPort-To-HDMI Cables May Be Recalled Over Licensing · · Score: 1

    I'm sure some part of the HDMI specification is covered by patents, and would therefore need to be licensed. It's not just the trademarks on the name and logos.

  3. Re:Then again... on Motorola CEO Blames Open Android Store For Phone Performance Ills · · Score: 1

    But you won't have any Google Experience apps, and users probably won't really like a phone without Maps, Gmail, and the Marketplace (although Amazon is helping there). The base OS may be open (except for Honeycomb), but that doesn't mean all of what people think of as Android is open. Oh, and you'll still have to go pay others for patent licenses or risk being sued.

  4. Re:Motoblur on Motorola CEO Blames Open Android Store For Phone Performance Ills · · Score: 1

    Then what's an EEPROM? Just because it's an electrically erasable and programmable ROM doesn't mean it's not a ROM :)

  5. The ISC is an ISP? on DOJ Gets Court Permission To Attack Botnet · · Score: 1

    Internet Systems Consortium or other ISPs

    Since when is the ISC an internet service provider?

    "Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (ISC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation dedicated to supporting the infrastructure of the universal connected self-organizing Internet—and the autonomy of its participants—by developing and maintaining core production quality software, protocols, and operations." Other than hosting a few Open Source projects, the ISC doesn't act as an ISP to the best of my knowledge.

    I guess they mean something to do with the F-root server at ISC and redirecting DNS requests for the control servers? Color me confused, and TFA isn't helping.

  6. Re:And we do this how? on Samsung Plants Keyloggers On Laptops · · Score: 1

    Business vs consumer lines. The Dell computers sold under their business headings come with install disks (the one my college purchased three years ago had a Vista install disk, drivers, and the applications that came preloaded all on physical disks in the box), and generally have less crap and better support.

  7. Re:Of course they are. on High Performance Gaming Mice Don't Perform · · Score: 1

    Astro-turf some more, puppet. Whatever you do, don't ever tell us what you didn't like about the product (and no, "greatness might be expensive!" doesn't count). That wouldn't please your masters. Of course it is total coincidence that the two products you most favorably mention are made by the same corporation. Yeah, uh huh.

    Logitech: another company I won't ever buy anything else from ever again. C'mon corporate America. Keep showing me how underhanded you can be. It is good to know who cannot be trusted.

    Huh? As it turns out, good products create fans. That's how having consistently good products works. My desktop has a Logitech keyboard/mouse combo, and my Anywhere MX for my laptop is the best mouse I've ever used. I really can't think of a single thing I'd improve about it. I'm sorry there's nothing significant I don't like about a product that I can tell you. But before you call me a shill for Logitech as well, consider that I'm a Microsoft employee.

  8. Re:hammer on Expensify CEO On 'Why We Won't Hire .NET Developers' · · Score: 1

    Ah, that's helpful. I've interacted with LabVIEW a little over the past couple years in college, and haven't once heard the language referred to as "G".

  9. Re:Easy solution on Univ. of Illinois Goes War-of-the-Worlds On Students · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, yes. Most of the time people think "Of course I want to do !" when they see a dialog, because they actually did intend to press that button at the time. But they do solve the problem of "Oh no, I didn't mean to click that!" (I've accidentally sent uncompleted emails an embarrassing number of times), and really are useful for things that cannot be undone. Such as, oh, I don't know, sending mass text messages.

    This most certainly was an interface problem. If someone is intending to update a template, if they can accidentally send an uncompleted message to thousands of people, the interface designer horribly screwed up. Those options should be no where near each other. Humans routinely make small mistakes, and blaming the user for interface problems only makes things worse.

  10. Re:Whoa, Whoa, Whoa... on Steve Jobs Questioned In iTunes Monopoly Suit · · Score: 1

    Well, yes... MONOPOLY for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store. But that's not what we're talking about.

  11. Re:Patches? on Phony Web Certs Issued For Google, Yahoo, Skype · · Score: 2

    You do know that SSL certificates are used by things other than browsers and for things other than HTTPS, right? The operating system keeps a list of valid root certificates so all applications can use them, not just IE. Or would you rather every application needs to know how to validate certificates on its own?

    It's the equivalent of updating ca-certificates on Debian based systems. Which I'm really surprised hasn't happened as far as I can tell, even with the warning "Please note that certificate authorities whose certificates are included in this package are not in any way audited for trustworthiness and RFC 3647 compliance, and that full responsibility to assess them belongs to the local system administrator."

  12. Re:Hm on 'Pruned' Microchips Twice As Fast and Efficient · · Score: 1

    I know you were going for a joke, but that actually does work with "Subtract and branch if less than or equal to zero" and a couple other instructions. Obviously not practical, but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer

  13. Re:Vote by SMS? on Ask Slashdot: Setting Up Wireless Voting For Students? · · Score: 2

    Did you not even make it past the first sentence? "I volunteer for a non-profit that organizes Model UN conferences for high school students" means they don't work for a high school, not that most any high schools would have an "electrics" class anyways, or that your suggestion made any sense at all.

    The counting portion of the problem is by far the easiest.

  14. Re:FAIL on Wi-Fi Shown To Interfere With Aircraft Systems · · Score: 1

    Surviving a lightning strike unscathed is a result of the conductive airframe acting as a Faraday cage, protecting the internal electronics. Very different than trying to protect against EM radiation generated from inside the plane.

  15. Re:FAIL on Wi-Fi Shown To Interfere With Aircraft Systems · · Score: 1

    I'm not commenting on the tubes/semiconductor debate because I don't know enough, but where are you going to get a good ground at altitude? You could have a common ground throughout the (metallic portions of the) plane, but that's a far cry from having the infinite source/sink that is an earth ground.

  16. Re:Autocratic Admin? on Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor? · · Score: 1

    Man, that brings me back to the days when firefox was cool.

  17. Re:google can figure it out! on Why Google Wants Your Kid's SSN · · Score: 1

    Sure there is, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Pretty much every website has that in their TOS.

  18. Re:This is important? on Science Channel Buys Rights To Firefly · · Score: 1

    All of the space scenes were silent, so perfectly realistic :)

  19. Re:How many can the market support? on Intel Committed To MeeGo Despite Nokia Defection · · Score: 1

    Do you really think that taking desktop apps and shoving the on a phone will make for a good user experience? What ODT editor - are you going to shove OpenOffice onto a 4 inch touchscreen and expect it to be usable? While a lot of the technical components are there in free software, that's not the hard part. The hard part is the user and interface design, and that's what the proprietary systems you are railing against get far closer to correct.

    And for "sans a few kinks", you've heard "the last 10% is 90% of the work"? That's an understatement.

  20. Re:Intel CPUs not in the mobile space because... on Intel Committed To MeeGo Despite Nokia Defection · · Score: 1

    You might be interested to know that Windows 8 will run on ARM SoCs.

  21. Re:Void the Warranty? on Microsoft To Work With Windows Phone 7 Jailbreakers · · Score: 1

    Having software controlled parameters makes development easier, cheaper, and faster. Would you really like your phones to come out later and cost more because the designers had to try and protect against modified firmwares purposely pushing things out of spec? It's not like user level applications can do any of these things, which would be a real problem.

    I could easily change the speed and voltage of my desktop's CPU in the motherboard's BIOS. Oh, and turn the fans off as well. I'm sure I could burn my CPU out if I pushed everything to the limit, but that would rightly void the warranty on my CPU. Are you arguing that these options should be taken out? Wouldn't that remove freedoms people have with their hardware?

  22. Re:I think on Sony Marketing Man Tweets PS3 Master Key · · Score: 1

    I'm fine buying equipment that does exactly what it says. If I buy a system with the knowledge that it is designed for games, and isn't sold as a general purpose computing device, then I'll be perfectly happy that steps have been taken in order to prevent other uses. (If it's advertised as supporting other uses and then those uses are removed as with OtherOS, yes, I'd be pissed. That's a different story.)

    With games, since one person using cheats can ruin other people's experiences, I expect that measures will be taken in order to prevent the execution of modified games during online play. I'd call this restriction a feature.

  23. Re:The price of easy and automatic on USB Autorun Attacks Against Linux · · Score: 2

    These days, autorun (at least without prompts) is a terrible idea. But back in the days when the main thing put into CD drives was pressed games with most of the content on the disk and malware was more for shits and giggles than true malicious intent, things seemed very different.

    That said, I really appreciate the "what would you like to do?" dialog, or KDE's list of recently inserted media. Yes computer, I inserted some media, i'm probably going to want to do something with it. Completely ignoring my deliberate action and doing nothing is a bad interaction.

  24. Re:who still uses telnet? on Hackers Bringing Telnet Back · · Score: 2

    Maybe he means "safety of my job" as in "so no one knows to telnet into our horribly insecure systems"?
    In which case, being anonymous would seem like a good idea :)

  25. Re:If something else doesn't kill first? on Airborne Prions Prove Lethal In Mouse Studies · · Score: 1

    Life: a fatal sexually transmitted condition.