If this is only at the TCP level, essentially forwarding all encrypted traffic unaltered, then there is no issue.

But looking at the content is very serious. If the browser shows that it sends the data encrypted to example.com, but in fact it sends them in cleartext to proxy.amazon.com, it's a ridiculous security hole. I doubt they are doing this.

I totally agree that it's completely impossible to create a product without infringing patents, especially software patents. The whole system is absurd.

Still, the issue here is whether Google knew about the _specific_ patents that Oracle is suing about. That's the point the judge is trying to make.

Hopefully the whole thing will be irrelevant if the patents are shown to be invalid (Google found lots of prior art).

So the GNU/Linux arguments start making a lot more sense now, aren't they? Cause if you just call it Linux, Android seems perfectly "Linux" to me.

Not really.

Btw I'm selling the following RARE swedish stamp:
67XX5768XX34XX4233 (digits hidden for security reasons).
Anyone interested?

I'm using telnet for ssh too. Doing RSA in your head is a bit tricky at first, but once you get used to it it's really convenient.

PS. For a real challenge try to PPP authenticate over dial-up using your voice.

Worse, it's akin to suing the yellow pages for potentially listing the grocery store (even though it's not even printed yet).

Here's my personal view on the issue. Abstract words without a proper definition mean nothing. What I find essential from a video format for the web is to be a "Free and Open Standard" based on this definition (main points: vendor neutral, freely available, no-patents). Ideally I would like such a standard to be published by W3C and included in the HTML5 spec (which currently does not specify a video format, so the "video" tag is essentially useless).

H.264 is clearly not a free and open standard. WebM is clearly not one either. Theora is "more or less" free and open based on this analysis.

Now, if the question is a preference between H.264 and WebM I would support WebM for 2 reasons. First, the freedom to implement a standard is IMHO far more important that being vendor-neutral. I cannot possibly imagine a Web where you need to pay someone to publish content or create a standards-compliant browser. Second, WebM has some realistic chances of becoming vendor-neutral if Google submits it to a standards organization. On the other hand H.264 has close to 0 chance of becoming patent-free.

The only useful scenario I could possibly imagine is that you use hard-disk encryption and your laptop is stolen while it's on, so the key is in memory. If you can shut it down the disk becomes useless.

But this is science finction (and there are known
attacks for this scenario anyway). The kill switch idea sounds at best stupid, at worst goverment sponsored.

There, fixed that for ya.

I am a slashdot regular for years now and I can generally identify (oh crap) with the average slashdot user. Yet, I am completely shocked by this poll and comments.

First, all these arguments about backups are ridiculous, of course that's not the point.

But even more important: the idea of comparing beloved people to possessions and data is just outrageous! Possessions? Really? Like what, a car, a painting, jewelery? Or data? Do you mean the only copy of Shakespeare's complete work or your porn collection?

Try to name something specific instead of "possessions" or "data" and you'll understand immediately how crazy this is. I lost my father a year ago and I would happily give all my possessions and data to bring him back. Without a second thought.

To the 15% who didn't put loved ones first: either you are alone in life (at least I can understand that) or there's something seriously fucked up about your priorities.

Your argument is simply that if you try to maximize profits in a "bad way" you mind end up not actually maximizing them. So the company should stop behaving in that way. This only strengthens the view that the ultimate goal is maximizing the profits. You fail to provide an example where a company would knowingly choose an action that decreases their profit, based on a goal that is unrelated to profit (such as the benefit of society in general).

A large company will always act in a way that maximizes its profit. Every single time. The only positive thing, on which capitalism is based, is that the action that maximizes the company's profit _might coincidentally_ be the same that offers a benefit to society in general. Unfortunately this coincidence is often inexistent.

I agree with your argument. But seeing the same argument from a positive perspective, a prospective buyer will understand that all they're getting is office furniture unless they're willing to respect the product they bought and the community behind it, and use it to their advantage. So I predict that in 3 years the only ones buying FOSS are companies who understand FOSS, which is great.

Memorization by itself is indeed useless, but in education it is the means not the goal (at least it should be). And especially for history it does a reasonably good job.

We need to make clear what is the purpose of education. On the one side there are things we learn that have a practical use, in the sense of being directly applicable to our life (as you say, "in the real world"). On the other hand, a big part of education (arguably the biggest) is about cultivating human beings, raising people that are not barbarians. It's about how we think, behave and react in general, and not about dealing with practical problems.

Now think about the King George example, or to make the point stronger think about World War II. It's clear that you cannot be called a civilized human if you don't know anything about the existence of WWII. The important thing here of course is not the ability to recall information, the important thing is to have read and thought about WWII. Reading and thinking about it changes your mind even if you barely remember the basic stuff afterwards.

So if the goal was to retrieve information, a history course could be summarized as "google: WWII". But the goal is to make students read and think about it, and asking to memorize it is a reasonable goal to achieve this.

Of course in other areas the goal is different, and I completely agree with you that memorizing is useless.

It's pretty hard to keep the graph up-to-date.