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Patents

Red Hat Patenting Around Open Standards 147

I Believe in Unicorns writes "Red Hat's patent policy says 'In an attempt to protect and promote the open source community, Red Hat has elected to... develop a corresponding portfolio of software patents for defensive purposes. We do so reluctantly...' Meanwhile, USPTO Application #: 20090063418, 'Method and an apparatus to deliver messages between applications,' claims a patent on routing messages using an XQuery match, which is an extension of the 'unencumbered' AMQP protocol that Red Hat is helping to make. Is this a defensive patent, or is Red Hat cynically staking out a software patent claim to an obvious extension of AMQP? Is Red Hat's promise to 'refrain from enforcing the infringed patent' against open source a reliable contract, or a trap for the unwary? Given the Microsoft-Red Hat deal in February, are we seeing Red Hat's 'Novell Moment?'" Reader Defeat_Globalism contributes a related story about an international research team who conducted experiments to "quantify the ways patent systems and market forces might influence someone to invent and solve intellectual problems." Their conclusion was that a system which doesn't restrict prizes to the winner provides more motivation for innovation.

Comment Re:Blackhole all of Russia (Score 1) 140

But the government could give out the criminals who the West asks from them. They don't cooperate with other nations. The EU has deadlines for new member states to get some things in order (corruption, law and even the macro economics) why can't a huge country like Russia to do the same. I think also that this is a problem of willingness not the nature and the size of the task.

Comment Larger corp loose, and small businesses win (Score 2, Interesting) 336

Small (niche) content producers benefit from file sharing. Because more and more people encounter content that isn't advertised or played in the mass media. When there wasn't no Internet people had rely on the radio/tv/newspapers for bringing them the newest cultural content but now people can find suitable content for them self. Therefor I think that it's fair to share files. Look how much the big corps. earn and how much the musician/actor/director etc earn. The revenues are too large to complain.

Comment Re:Dupe, (Score 1) 417

Windows puts one application on one core (unless you tell it to).

Would be correct?!? Threading is a messy thing. You have 10 times more testing to do than in a single threaded application. And a multy-threaded application is slower than single threaded one when the CPU is powerful enough to run it in one core.

Comment Re:Dupe, (Score 1) 417

The problem is the OS. Windows isn't built for more than one core CPU. It only can put one application to one core and that's it. And sharing the cores isn't really that fast. Therefor isn't the multi-core CPU-s very useful for such big applications like today's games. But buying a multi-core GPU is more useful because the threading model should be built-in in the cards or drivers. Of course 32-bit XP can't handle more than 3G ram.

Comment Re:Well well.. (Score 1) 696

When they don't agree then Linux won't come any popular because the hassle with distributing software to Linux doesn't pay off. And when there isn't popular software in Linux then majority of users won't change to Linux. That's the reality.

Comment Re:Well well.. (Score 1) 696

In my mind Linux has one major problem - too many different subsystems for developers - KDE or GNOME, RPM or DEB etc. If there would be a major Desktop for example Ubuntu which has 80% of the Linux desktop market and decides on one of the subsystems then developers can port just one time not N times for every freaking distro. Ubuntu, Fedora etc are pretty user friendly (ok some work to do but not so much).
GUI

Submission + - 3D Web solutions - the next big thing?

salarelv writes: "The are new 3D Web engines coming up like mushrooms after a warm rain. We have also heard that Google's Lively is now dead.ly and that Microsoft wants to get the big chunk of the market again by making an "everything simulator". When it comes to interactive web there has always been mentioned Flash but Flash 10 isn't really a 3D engine as it hasn't got a hardware acceleration and you have to include a third party API like Papervision for showing the usual 3D models. Now and then I encounter stupid comments like "why don't You use VRML" and I have to reply that VRML is dead for a long time. Of course there are smaller players like: 3DMLW, Virtools, WireFusion, Vivaty and VastPark. My question is whether it is possible for an OpenSource platform like 3DMLW to survive in this kind of environment or not? We are trying to do things in a different way than others — giving the developer a similar approach like in HTML+JavaScript development chain. We also have a free beta stage editor called Quantum Hog and the player for MacOS is coming soon. We don't want to be a hyped Virtual Reality chat room but a solid development platform for any kind of cost-effective 3D applications."
Biotech

Submission + - Waste coffee grounds offer new source of biodiesel (eurekalert.org)

Julie188 writes: "Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks. Their study has been published online in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world each year. Scientists estimate that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply."

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