Apple, Microsoft & Google have got to be getting sick of this - they need to open up their wallets and toss some serious money towards lobbyists to get the patent system changed.

And if they are not getting sick of this: shame on them!

Just sayin...

"I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift."

Real men wait until the 24th before tossing together mom's gift.

In the linked article he says "...I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail...". Whoever wrote the slashdot headline is the one who said "Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail"

Arstechnica just posted a nice companion piece to this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/42-german-p2p-fine-stark-contrast-to-seven-figure-us-judgments.ars

Of course. I think thats great. I often borrow from the library now. At other times I purchase books. The problem with borrowing from the library is that they don't have an unlimited selection. If I want book A, and its on loan, with a 10 person waiting list then I have to wait... Or I could log into the Sony store and rent it right now. So, sure - free when that makes sense, but available for rent when that makes sense.

I don't like the idea of buying digital books for many reasons: 1) I can't pass them on after reading them, 2) its easy to loose your entire library by misplacing one reader, 3) the price difference between a printed book and a digital book seems small (or even non-existent), etc.

I would be likely to buy an eReader (Nook/Kindle,etc) if they offered a rental service. $1/day or $5/week (per book) or something like that. I don't see any point in actually buying eBooks - but I would like to rent them.

I think thats the model that will make these things take off.

I am reminded of a saying I heard years ago:

If you owe the bank 100 thousand dollars and you can't pay, then you have a serious problem.

But, if you owe the bank 100 million dollars and you can't pay, then the BANK has a serious problem.

I think the eBook people are totally missing the ball on what business model to choose. I'd buy one if they used a rental system rather than a purchase system. It makes no sense to me to buy a book on a reader. I loose too much "book" functionality. But if I could rent one for a dollar a day - sign me up - I'd be spending $365 a year on books. DRM the hell out of it - I don't care: I'm just renting it. I don't want to keep it on my shelf. I don't want to lend it to anyone. I just want to read the thing. If its a "keeper", then I'll go out and buy a dead-tree edition.

Find the right business model and eBooks will work. They haven't found it yet...

According to arstechnica's keynote LiveBlog, Steve said:

Retina display has 326 pixels per inch ...
It turns out there's a "magic number" right around 300 pixels per inch. When you hold something about 10-12 inches away from your eye, there's a limit in the human retina to differentiate the pixels ...
at 326 pixels, we are comfortably over that limit

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote-steve-jobs-liveblog.ars

Thats crazy talk!

Unless they reboot the story by placing it in AN ALTERNATE SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM!
 
...didn't see THAT coming, did ya?

Here.

also, i never said it wasn't ever reasonable to demonize him... i just asked the reader to think about it. the fact that you assumed that from my question says a lot about your motives. some people hold bill gates reputation in high regard.

Just so. The proposed law makes it illegal for software to share without your permission, but it hardly makes it impossible. People could perhaps claim that they were unaware that their software was distributing anything at all, then point at this law and claim the software was supposed to have warned them of this fact but failed to do so. Not that they would necessarily succeed with such a defence... IANAL.