All i need from a desk is for it to be the right high and have enough space, for my LCD to be clear and large, and my keyboards to be solid.
That's not much in the way of ergonomics however, its just my workspace requirements.

Its a different matter when looking at my mouse, which is 5 buttoned + 2 axis scrolling wheel, and contoured to my right hand, with all buttons accessible with minimal effort.

I'd also say my chair is something important, but its something i take for granted. Anything padded would work for me.

Back to the point.
I visit various client's computers frequently, and the thing i miss the most when working on them, is my mouse. Theirs just feels different... wrong.
Which is why i appreciate my mouse when i return to it. It feels right and all the buttons are where i expect them to be.

First up, some citation is needed. I couldn't find a single trace of a lawsuit coming about from burp-tanks.
The story just sounds like some fictional feel good story passed around to cheer up people who think they hold a genius idea. Do correct me if you can find a source or citation for this story though.

Secondly you say that he could of made more money by being patient, but i'd argue that is far from true. You never know when someone else is going to come up with an invention that would make your invention either obsolete or just an alternative.

Sooner you go to production, the sooner you can establish a a foothold, and set companies in their ways with your product. By the time a competing idea comes along, hopefully you idea is so ingrained that they just won't bother with the alternatives, at the very least you'll have the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_mover advantage.

As for loosing most his money to lawyers, I'd expect very much that if he did win all his lawsuits, he would of made more then if he had a legal arrangement, at least short-term. Punitive damages are designed to do just that. He should of got what he wanted for his idea AND then if his lawyers were any good, received large punitive damages on top.

As for mending the resulting burnt bridge, I'd say with all that cash you just received you'd be able to purchase some top notch marketing. If your product is worth using, I'd say you'd be able to come to some arrangement rather easily.
If your that scared of burning them, out of court settlements are also great way to come to a mutually beneficial agreement.

Sitting on an idea and letting it rot while you try to make the 'perfect' launch is a great way to fall behind the times or be 2nd to the punch.

You know i'm usually one for freedom of rights and all, but lets get a few things right.

Driving is not a right inherent to all of us, its a privilege.
A privilege given to us by the state, and subject to the conditions they impose, and can both be denied and revoked.
The roads you drive on are not your own, they are the states.

If you want to drive around at 80MPH on your own private backyard watching the tv instead of the wheel, by all means you can. Hell its Darwinism at its finest. But you keep your erratic driving to yourself, and on your own property.

Its well within the powers of your state to ban cars with that functionality from being licensed for road use. Passing a law addressing the issue probably isn't needed, but at the end of the day its just easier for everyone. (Except perhaps people who do drive at 80mph on their own turf)

Your entire post leaves me wondering.

China as a whole seems to keep to itself. It will regulate inself, and any outside interferance. So the idea of china ruling the world could only really happen economically, in which case we won't be a state of china, just a trading partner. (In fact New Zealand already is the first trading partner to china).

So the world being better if china took over is such a pear shaped world, i can't see what could cause it. I'm not happy with how china censors everything inside itself, but its CHINA. I'm not Chinese, nor do i live there. It is not my place to say how they should and shouldn't rule.

Now going back to America, I have no idea what your dribbling on about. You talk about the end of America like they are going to implode because their technology was stolen. America isn't a company where if the blueprints for its next device is leaked, it goes bankrupt.

It does however pay to note that its not far off bankruptcy, due to stupid policies, and some VERY stupid policies. If their government wasn't crooked, and the voters informed, and willing to vote for hard progress, rather then easy debt, i believe we'd see America start to pull ahead.

As it is now, America's greatest failing is they have no concern about where their money comes from. If they did the housing market wouldn't of collapsed, the war wouldn't' of drained their coffers, and hell, even the car industry might be in a leaner shape rather then relying on government handouts to keep the lard well smoothed.

Time will tell how dearly the pay for their actions, i just hope they don't take my country down with them when they do. (Like this world wide recession they created.. thanks!)

bad companies don't make any profit of a second hand laptop.

A good company would sell them support and services, and judging from the summery, at $150 for a smart bay, they are close to doing just that.

Lets not forget that all PC's need to be replaced, if new owner is impressed with your service and quality, he may purchase directly from you in future.

There's also the original owner, if he has trouble on-selling his old PC because of you, he's less likely to purchase newer models from you.

1. Treat your Customers well.
2. ...
3. Profit!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/kentucky_domain_name_seizure_upheld/

its bounced back and forth, herels one where an appeal lost because a judge though they did have the power, it later got reversed and the domains re-enabled.

They were successful in disabling the domain, but not permanently. That's "not entirely successful". I believe they'll try it again once they try passing new legislation. thats the "yet" part.

Lets consider a better analogy.

We build at OUR EXPENSE an entire series of roads, spanning both countries and continents, and we tie the traffic system into YOUR control system.

We REIMBURSE you for your troubles, paying you a small fee for each traffic light you operate (DNS Registration), resulting in cheaper operational costs for everyone.

We however have grown concerned over your ability to operate our traffic as a neutral controller, as some of your states believe they can hijack and disable our traffic lights, if it bothers their locals. They have not been entirely successful yet, but they have caused disruptions that should never of been possible in the first place.

http://blog.cdt.org/2009/01/24/kentucky-court-rules-that-domain-names-arent-craps-tables/

The options we have available to us to minimize US laws/regulations on both our local and international traffic, we have the following options:

1. We leave the system in your hands (and whim), and hope for the best.
2. You hand over the control to an multinational committee
3. We sever our dependence on your system, and create our own. This however will more then likely cause international traffic crashes.

Anyone who thinks that its America's right to retain control over the entire INTERNATIONAL internet will suffer when countries develop their own control system in disgust.

Anyone who thinks America is more reliable then a committee might have a point, but 'because were better then you', is never going to be an accepted reason.

Very.

A good coder should write clean code that is easy to understand.

But when the variable's names are written with meanings you can't understand, and comments (or worse, none) in another language, you might as well be reading assembly.

They wouldn't have cared the slightest about that. The only reason they will have done this will be because of money. Plain and simple.

Now perhaps they have realised that their DRM efforts are repelling people from buying their games. I know i refused to purchase RA3 the moment i heard it had super restrictive DRM put on it

It could also be a ploy to get cheaper licensing deals with the makers of securerom.

Or perhaps its just an experiment to see what less DRM does to sales.

If you purchased the game and got it cracked later, they already got your money and couldn't care less. It is after all EA, they aren't exactly known for having customer satisfaction as a priority

A few thoughts here.

The GPL doesn't force you to distribute your source code unless you've distributed a derived work (ie: binary executable).

In other words when you distribute anything based on the GPL, you distribute ALL of your work, holding nothing back.

Its still your right to not distribute anything

To give a further example.
If I've built some killer utility application, and I decide I want to licence it under the GPL I can.

A friend comes to be, lets call him Adam, and he asks for the software, since he's a friend I give it to him. I can even SELL the distribution to him.

Its now his copy to use and redistribute as he likes, under the restrictions of the GPL. (He can even redistribute it for free or for more if he likes)

Later tosspot Bob comes along from a competitor's company and decides he needs it, and asks for it. I can refuse to distribute to him.
He can ask my friend Adam, and Adam can choose to distribute or not.

In this case, since no one has distributed to Bob, he has no recourse for acquiring the source code or even derived works. He can't demand it from either of us since we never distributed to him in the first place.

If he steals the code/binaries from Bob its copyright infringement, as he was never given a licence to use the software from anyone.

Now if you understand that you only need to supply source code to those you've distributed to, the fact that you can be restricted from distributing to places and people has little effect on the integrity of the GPL.

If you can't release source code to Cuba, you can't release anything to Cuba, the GPL forbids it. But that does not invalidate or contradict the licence in any form or way.

Probably the biggest misconception with the GPL is that people think once its licensed under the GPL you have no control over who you distribute it to. That's just not the case, you can distribute nothing, or everything. There is no in-between however.

You think gaming can be done without paying attention to accuracy?

You jump up a ledge, your computed land zone is 0.5 units below the ledge itself. You fall through the world and die

Texture wise you'd see all kind of errors, which given how graphics have evolved to look more realistic, seeing doors hang mid-air would be going a few steps back.

Finally bugs. When you encounter a bug that caused the game to crash, you'll never be sure what caused it.

As for scientific research, the Intel pentium had a bug that could cause a division to return inaccurate results. The result, Intel processors were shunned for research purposes.

Nearly all of the operations done on a computer/console are used in future calculations, and require 100% accuracy. This chip will be of no use at all.

What this chip could be useful in, is primitive applications that don't have anything like an operating system and perfect accuracy isn't required.

I can see a lot of mechanical applications, pretty much anything that runs off AA batteries and thinks a little.
Anything with lithium ion or a wall socket probably won't find a use from it

Here's a chart showing the US National debt with a nice timeline showing the president in charge, and any wars.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

There is no spike. There is a surge at the end of the Clinton administration, which lasts the entire duration of the bush administration. The national debt nearly doubles under his term.

Considering how big a hole was dug in the US economy (which has spread globally now), i don't expect any US government can truly recover from it in a matter of a few years. I honestly doubt they ever will, and instead will continue their slide into national debt until their debt explodes in another global crisis (if it doesn't go off this time)