Also, where do you get the idea that "politeness" means being deceptively nicey-nice? If I'm so angry at you that I want to rudely tell you off, then I am instead going to do the polite thing of inviting you out to coffee, whereupon I would present you with my grievances and convey just how offended I am at them -- calmly, clearly, and with composure. I would not scream, I would not curse you, I would not call you names.

"Polite" does not mean "deceptive". Politeness means politeness. I think politeness and sincerity are two of the minor virtues that Whitaker exalts.

F# really is a nice language, but the last time I looked, the licensing is REALLY SCARY. Its under some sort of Microsoft shared source type license which essentially states that you can not use F# is any type commercial environment, unless you are using Windows. So, you are allowed to look at, and write programs, but you could not distribute them.

Has this improved any? I really would like to used F# on Linux, but I will not go anywhere near something with licensing like this?

I opted for Communication in its absence. It really pisses me off when adults read slower and with less comprehension than I could when I was 9. When I was younger I would read every scrap of writing I came across, right down to the ingredients list on the cereal box, but most of the people I meet now can barely comprehend a newspaper article.

In my opinion that is the largest obstacle to a more intelligent society. If the people can't read worth a damn, how do you expect them to study for anything else?

Aside from recording and preservation for academic purposes, there should be no effort made to keep a language living, languages die when they serve no purpose to people. Such is the Bo language, useful as a museum piece for history and anthropology and linguistics, but no longer fit for the people of that region. It is a certainty that the world will standardize on a very few languages in the near future because of global communication, the candidates for those include Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish and English

He must be from marketing!

GET `IM!

Raising children.

This follows from my finding that, on the evidence and on a proper interpretation of the law, a person makes each film available online only once through the BitTorrent system and electronically transmits each film only once through that system.

This is a very strange argument. If I torrent a movie and let it seed indefinitely, I will almost certainly have distributed more than one copy of the film. Did the justice really believe that torrenting is a one-for-one kind of activity where a downloaded work is uploaded once and only once? I haven't read the decision, but I wonder how much of it concerned downloading versus uploading.

These comments don't really alter the basic thrust of his decision, but they do give one pause to wonder how much the justice really understood about the mechanisms of the "BitTorrent system."

Meh. It's all in the delivery. Some people can tell a joke.....

Apparently you are not familiar with the Navy NMCI Contract with EDS. I haven't been following it lately (as in the last few years) but it had VERY overpriced systems on the contract and mostly hired people who didn't have much experience because they were cheap. That contract would keep even the worst managed company in gravy for quite a while. I don't know what most of the military guys thought about it but just ask any civilian employee for the Navy what they thought of NMCI and listen to the expletives fly.

I'm not sure how any company can sell computer software or services without lying, even unintentionally. Anything worth bidding on by EDS is going to be complicated enough to keep them from knowing what they really have for a month at least.

The worst part is if you're going to expect technology salesmen to tell the truth then you're going to eliminate at lot of material for the Dilbert comic strip, among others.

Yeah cos that's what apps like Google Voice were all about. Don't spout rubbish like that just because you don't know what you're talking about.

That's some nice Internet Tough Guy but life doesn't always work that way. I know a few people who are working jobs they loathe in order to support their families. Jobs that were awesome 5 years ago and have gone to shit recently with outsourcing of everything that isn't nailed down, forced "vacations" where the company shuts down for weeks and you can use PTO or go hungry, no bonuses, no raises, pay cuts, etc. If they were single and had nobody depending on their income, they'd bolt in a heartbeat even if it meant they'd likely be sleeping on a friend's couch in a few months but who wants to explain to their kids why they have to live in Auntie Jill's garage for a while?

So it's "Thank you, sir. May I have another?" until they can line up something better.

Nah, if I'd had mod points left by the time this article was published, I'd have modded it down to. Racism and sexism aren't funny.

It is intended that people can build on other patents. The system is specifically set up to do so.

I can take you patent, 'improve it', and patent the results.

Here is an example:
Lets say you invent a device that thaws meat faster. (basically a piece of steel you put the meat on.

I can take your device, add a piece that closes onto the top of the meat to thaw both sides at the same time. IT would be a valid patent, and I wouldn't be violating IP.

I mean, explain this.

No, it's not. Can you show me any dictionary that defines fundamentalism as "Let's strip off all of the ritual, tradition, cruft, and bloat that's crept into Christianity over the past 2000 years, and get back to what was preached and practiced back in the First Century"? I didn't think so. That's your own interpretation, and is significantly off the mark, as fundamentalism (being a recent re-interpretration of Christianity) adds its own cruft and bloat.