Agreed, Xiph wanted to create a clean codec (which is still the problem with VP8) but you are right: they just didn't balance the engineering and comp-sci effectively. They could have shot for incremental progress, releasing something new every couple of years. Instead, they had a few underpaid open-source enthusiasts working on it for a decade.

That being said, when it came to negotiations, it was REALLY important that Vorbis was around to give everyone an idea that open source codecs were at least viable. Had Google just seen a standard proposal, they wouldn't have invested $100m in buying up On2!

Microsoft has been bilking industry groups out of money over supposed Linux patent violations for over a decade. OIN was supposed to be the stockpile that would prevent Apple, Microsoft, and others from pulling the trigger on software patents. Instead, you took all of the F/OSS patent pool energy and restricted it to narrow definitions of core Linux technologies.

Finally, you talked about how tiny companies can't stand up to Microsoft and patent trolls yet you won't use your stockpile to "aggressively" stop companies that you KNOW are hitting up dozens of smaller companies.

Stop parading yourself as the protectors of Linux, you couldn't even stop Oracle (whose core business relies on your software) from destroying all confidence in the Java platform. The day you stop the Android patent battles is the day you start earning your keep.

The Telegraph's reporting on this issue outlines the intense political pressure the UK government has placed on these companies. One of the big problems was interoperability. With this database, local law enforcement and small ISP's can use the biggest repository of signatures for these images instead of building one from scratch.

The last I checked (which was a very long time ago) Linux/ext required a logical swap partition for paging. Why not just preallocate some space in BTFS and be done with it?

I am quite sure that Larry Ellison knows *exactly* what his middle finger is doing.

Yeah, I thought that the lack of support was over patents...

It's about time we started investing in the decentralized name server alternatives. .P2P fizzled because they couldn't figure out a decentralized distribution mechanism. Thankfully, Namecoin is at v3.5 and only requires adding a DNS resolver to the system.

Seriously! Greenland is still an autonomous country, they should be able to make that decision, not a domain name broker.

It's all just based on perception, TPB thought that by changing the torrent into a link everything would be okay. Turns out, it's still called The Pirate Bay.

I'm not sure I understand your point... I know that these behaviors preceded Nixon... the leak itself outlined the abuse of executive powers of prior presidents. The original leaks had nothing to do with Nixon himself and Nixon administration even encouraged the publicity of the leaks to some extent because they made Kennedy look bad.

Nixon got in hot water because his hired goons to broke into Ellsburg's psychologists office. The pull-out from Vietnam didn't happen because of anything directly contained in the pentagon papers but because Nixon was trying to stave off impeachment.

I don't think LBJ or his predecessors were innocent, but I do think executive privilege has allowed people (of both parties) to hide their activities until after punishment is viable...

You know who got that law passed? People like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked a trove of *historical* documents; Ralph Nader, the father of the modern progressive movement; and Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat who lead the charge to clean up Nixon's mess. How is it, some 30 years later, that their modern-day counterparts are spending life in a military prison, reviled by their own party, and hiding in the embassy of a 3rd world country?

I think this was the "Yes we can" part of Obama's 2008 campaign message. I guess he should have cleaned house.

If your contract with the hospital is contingent upon regular security checks, then formalize this agreement. Suddenly, instead of a breech of your network, they are just another contractor (like yourself) running security tests on the doctors network. Directly or indirectly, the hospital has to pony up the costs of you filtering their disruptive network actions from their standard ones...

Mod parent up, this is *by far* the best GUI for R I have seen. Is it open source? I would think statistical analysis would be an especially good target for paid open-source SAAS.

I think you are confusing GUI with IDE; RStudio and most of the other R "guis" don't make R more discoverable. SPSS and the like are used because they offer guidance on what one should try given what they already know. With an IDE, you still have to know how to program. Throwing together a text editor, an output window, and an execution button doesn't do much.

It's really disheartening that a professor thinks this solves any of the major pedagogical problems that R forces. I really wish you would STOP recommending RStudio and start recommending tutors.