I wonder how accurate that really is. I mean, home use of the internet was not prevalent until at least after Win. 95 came out. And I mean prevalent in the percentage of Americans on the internet not the percentage of computer users on the internet. Compuserve and AOL were going strong as ISPs, 14.4 modems were higher end at this time while 28.8 was on the way. I remember a lot of software had codes your had to type in and hardware dongles were all over. It would be interesting to see what systems were really out there at this time. Windows 95 certainly didn't have remote activation, you just typed in the code on the CD cover IIRC.

Jurisdiction can be based on where the harm occurs. Has anyone purchased software product (*pick one from above*) in the E.D. of Texas? Then infringement happened there and jurisdiction is proper. Are the companies selling their products in Bestbuys, Walmarts, or other retailer located in the E.D. Texas? Do they advertise there? Maintaining an office in the jurisdiction is just one of the factors, but for patent infringement it is pretty easy to meet the test for jurisdiction in just about every district in the U.S. I imagine for software, it would even easier.

I said it above, but it really comes down how fast the E.D. of Texas moves these cases through the system and plaintiff friendly juries. Texas = high value on property rights = high damages figures. That is a jury decision.

My understanding is that the favorable juries are why plaintiffs tend to sue in the E.D. of Tex. The relatively high value of property rights (just look at the laws for using deadly force to protect property in Texas) and the lower average education level of the jurors leads to higher percentages of verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs and much higher damages calculations.

The other factor, is that the judges tend to fast track the patent dockets so from start to finish the average time spend on trial is much shorter in the E.D. of Tex. than in other districts (though there are faster places, but not many).

A mutex is a way of controlling access to a shared resource. Imagine you have a car with one key. If you and your sibling both want to use the car for the night, the key is the mutex. Whoever gets the key first gets to use the car until they put the key back.

/. loves car analogies, right?

Well, looking at it from a U.S. perspective it would depend. First you have to look at whether the laws truly contradict and who passed the laws (state v. federal). If law A was passed by congress in 1980 and a contradictory law B was passed by congress in 1990, then law B trumps. The courts would say that law B supersedes law A and congress intent must have been for law A not to apply any longer. This is because congress had spoken on the issue and now says something different. The newer law must reflect congress current intent on the law rather than out of date view of the older law.

Now things change if we are talking about state passing a law and congress passing a law. You have to do a whole bunch on constitutional analysis at that point. State rights vs federal power.

All circuits are math too. Should those be patentable? They are physical embodiments of math, but math none the less. Of course, circuits are also chemistry. But look at 802.11, its just a radio + DSP + faster circuits. The radio already existed and DSP is just math. The faster circuits weren't made for 802.11 per se, but certainly made it possible. In the end, 802.11 is just math...

This is not correct. Any person can file a reexamination request and present a substantial new question of patentability with the USPTO. Here is a wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reexamination. So if anyone has some publication that should invalidate a patent, by all means attack it. Also, there a declaratory judgment actions that can be used to initiate a lawsuit before the patent holder sues you. However, the patent holder needs to take some action that makes the likelihood of a future lawsuit quite high.

I am not a fan of Facebook, but lets think about what you said. What other site has risen to the level of popularity that Facebook has? And have those sites disappeared or lost popularity? We can start with Yahoo I suppose. Still huge, still around, and a completely different set of services offered. Geocities? eh, maybe but they were only popular with a segment of the internet population at a time when being on the internet was not cool. (Plus I never cared for Geocitie's pages) MySpace? While certainly their status has declined, hey are still kicking. Plus, Facebook actually pre-existed MySpace, then experienced a decline to MySpace, and has now far surpassed MySpace.

I would argue that AIM and ICQ are the closest analogies. Except that Facebook replaced them. Those services were designed to connect people and now Facebook does that (arguably better). Sure some people still use those services, but a lot of people just use Facebook for those things.

I guess my point is, please name the flash-in-the-pan popular sites you are referring to that have reached Facebook's level of pervasiveness in society? I only ask, because I have been on the net since '90 and cannot think of another and I am really trying. I am not saying there isn't a site out there that I am forgetting or that there isn't a site that I never knew about, but I would be really surprised.

Slashdot has been around a long time and has a dedicated following, is it a flash-in-the-pan popular site? I mean, /. is really a place for people who were/are on the forefront of the emergence of the Net into our lives. Can anyone think of any single site that crosses more culture, economic, or age brackets? Say what you want, but they did something right. And picking themselves up from their bootstraps to comeback from near-defeat at the hands of MySpace is something to be respected.

Apparently they were using a Modded UX49 for the web server...

No mod points, so I just wanted to say thank you to the parent. Those claims do not cover sudo. Congratulations to the OP on using scare tactics to get to the front page os /. Well played good sir, well played.

I don't know the figures, but I would venture to guess that AT&T and Comcast are the two largest ISP's providing DSL and Cable (at least in California). Neither of them block bittorrent, maybe its time to get a new ISP. You know, one that doesn't block legitimate file transfer protocols.

Cannot handle the G forces, I agree. But too slow? Then why do UAV's still have human pilots via remote control. Humans are being taken out because the aircraft are much more maneuverable without a human body blacking out during sustained g-forces. Also, that pesky bit about losing trained airmen when an aircraft is lost.

I would argue tht IP Masquerading became popular because all of the home consumers that had a single ip address access point to their ISP and multiple devices in the home that needed a connection. High speed home access got affordable and prevalent (outside of major cities) right around '99. At the same time, home access network gateways started having an internet port and four internal network ports with NAT built in to provide the private-public IP translation. IPv4 vs. IPv6 was not as much as an issue as ISP's not wanting to encourage home users to use multiple machines (increasing bandwidth). You might argue that ISP's didn't offer multiple public IPs because of scarcity, but that wasn't true in '99-'00. It was purely to discourage bandwidth usage and justify charging more for more robusts services that provided multiple IPs.