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Comment Re:I don't care about the DRM implications... (Score 1) 212

*gasp*

Unless you let the gospel of RMS into your heart, you will burn in the fires of Hades!

He who hath heard the Good News and let it fill his soul will have taken their first steps to redemption. Every time you say "GNU/Linux", you take another step upon that path (but, watch out... if you say Linux, without the "GNU", you will fall off the path, into the waiting hands of the Ballmer Devil!)

Comment Re:Only if they can do it with out getting shot (Score 1) 926

[quote]You can use deadly force to protect people and property from imminent danger. Someone poking a hand under your bumper is not that.[/quote]

Your Honor, I saw the guy putting something that looked like it might be a bomb underneath my car.

[quote]And there's generally going to be no way you'll prove self-defense against a cop, since you have to presume a cop is assaulting you legally unless you know specifically otherwise. you might have a chance if he's assaulting you without telling you he's a cop, but that won't work if he's under cover, since "I didn't know he was a cop" is the whole point of that. And killing a cop isn't just murder or manslaughter, it's a cop-killing, and for that you get special treatment.[/quote]

I doubt there'll be uniformed police officers doing this. So, fall back to the undercover portion of your comment. Does the law in Texas say you have to give someone time to identify themselves? "I saw him putting his hand into his jacket. I thought he was going to pull a gun on me. How was I supposed to know he was getting out a badge?"

The whole "break the law" portion of this (having to commit trespassing, at the least) really makes it sketchy. I'm glad I don't live in 9th district land.

Comment Re:what about pre / in interview code samples or p (Score 2, Insightful) 154

Are there people who work, for free, in a "probation period", where those people are not interns?

Seriously... If any job I was applying for said "Well, Mr Polydwarf, we like you and all.. but we're going to need you to sit at a desk and pound some code out, just to see if we *really* like you.. Oh yeah, no paycheck, either. But, you do get to bask in the glow of your monitor and congratulate yourself on a job well done."

Benefits are a different story (a lot of places, they won't kick in until some amount of time in, like 90 days)... But paycheck?

Comment Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary (Score 3, Insightful) 416

I see what you did there. You made an unlikely assumption about how this patent would be used and then you turned it into an advertisement for open source. Well done. I hate Apple and Steve Jobs (smug bastard) vehemently but even I recognized that to be a highly contrived scenario and illogical statement.

I don't see how you're able to say that it's "unlikely" and "highly contrived", considering there's a mockup of an osx-ish desktop in the article. The other portion you quoted about that it "could" be used for public kiosks, etc, doesn't say it *won't* be used for anything else. Especially when further in the article it specifically notes that it applies to anything with a UI, like set top boxes, smart phones, TV's, and others. Those aren't really public kiosk devices.

What's next... having to sit through an advertisement on my smartphone to make a call? Or is that too unlikely and contrived, given that the article mentions this can be used on smartphones, with no further qualification?

Comment Re:closed proprietary system is more proprietary! (Score 2, Insightful) 426

If YouTube truly thinks this is best long-term for its success, I'm afraid we'll watch a slow death as competitors nibble away market-share, one obscure platform at a time that lacks a flash player but was created to use open standards out of the box.

I don't think they do... Witness the various points in the article (Which I'm sure you read, right?) where they said "And we're helping to fix xyz problem"

But, what they point out is that HTML 5 video is untenable for even their short term success. If they went to purely HTML 5, they would lose market share rapidly to people who weren't pure OSS. What does that say, from a business standpoint?

Comment Billions of People.. with smartphones? (Score 1) 245

The possibilities are enormous, especially for the billion plus people around the world who live more than a few hours' walk or drive from the nearest doctor."

And yet... they'll have smartphones?

I know, a lot of countries skip land lines and go to cell phones... but all those people who live hours away from the nearest doctor will have smartphones (as opposed to normal cell phones)?

Comment Re:not necessarily impossible (Score 1) 349

...I'm sure in a case like this that something can be worked out. Instead of actual reporting and checking up on the situation, we instead get people using words like "impossible"...

So... They reported what the situation *is*.. And that's not actual reporting? The fact of the matter, it *is* impossible to go buy a new PS3 with OtherOS. It *may* not be impossible in the future, however that's conjecture, not reporting.

Comment Why only third world? (Score 3, Interesting) 87

Something I never understood about the "This could be great for the third world" items..

Why wouldn't it be great for the first and second worlds too?

I would assume scale and speed aren't up to par with more focused medical devices... But, for the price of one of those, you can buy a bunch of 35 dollar ones.

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