Ford(-AV)? = MPEG-AV (This was part of the car analogy).

Maybe because the FFmpeg possible implementation of MPEG-AV's technology is better?

mpeg codecs = engine
applications using engine = vehicle
MPEG-AV = company who patented the mpeg codecs that makes up one of the engines
FFmpeg = open source entity that may or may not infringe upon MPEG-AV's patents
Google = using FFmpeg's engine (library) for mpeg codecs while paying MPEG-AV for a patent license

I think it goes like this:

MPEG-AV made a great engine idea and patented it. They also sold licenses to MPEG-AV Manufacturing and quite a few other companies to manufacture the cars with the engines

FFmpeg manufactures vehicles in all shapes and sizes that may or may not infringe on Ford's engine patents.

Google, uses FFmpeg's engines in their vehicle, and since it may or may not infringe on MPEG-AV's patents, they license the technology from Ford-AV.

At least this is what i gathered from the above mailing list quips.

Hmm, I always thought you needed to be a state certified engineer to call yourself an engineer. If not, well then damn, i'm labeling myself a solve-interesting-IT-problems-that-no-one-else-can-engineer.

Well its not as if Microsoft doesn't make writing drivers complicated or anything. How many times has the drivers had to be rewritten to support "Supported" configurations per Microsoft.

He didn't ask for a virtual reality environment, he asked for a HMD. An HMD isn't limited in scope to just a virtual reality environment.

1) Augmented reality MMORPGs and FPSs. Done even slightly smartly a HMD could identify other players in the game and generate a 3d avatar around their physical person. Talk about a game of tag, last man standing or CTF. Or a spy game as mentioned in some of Charles Stross's novels

2) Assisted communication device for the deaf. Allows the deaf to wear a set of glasses with a device that transcribes a conversation to text.

3) Its the ultimate device for an ultraconnected somebody that always needs to be wired in for their news/twitter/facebook fix.

4) It would allow police to walk around constantly comparing faces on streets to mugshots. Taking the computer error out of facial recognition. The computer generates possible matches while the cop scrolls through them checking without breaking eye contact.

If the microwave ovens implemented this feature no one would need new microwaves once they purchased one of these and their sales would drop, so the companies would have to build in manufacturing inconsistencies to keep sales high. Plus they would make sure they didn't get the feature right the first time so they could double-tap a portion of their customer base once they "fixed" the feature.

oops accidentally modded you troll instead of funny... posting to retract bad moderation

From wiktionary

And man i thought you were saying that climate had nothing to do with the weather.

So having two sets of government overhead won't cost extra...

Sorry, i must of misinterpreted that meteorologists study weather. And climatologists study weather over long periods of time. I'd think these two fields of study would want to use the same resources, databases, etc.... So lets split them into two organizations so they can not only have two sets of government bureaucratic overhead but also two near identical sets of IT infrastructure, I'm sure thats cheap.

Way to go. We already have a national weather service. Why would you encourage the government to create yet another redundant service.

I thought tracking weather involved tracking the history of weather, which would lead me to believe that it would take a small investment into the national weather service to create a climate forcasting/monitoring service. Oh wait, NOAA's NWS already tracks climate.

network boot, instead of booting off of a drive of some sort you can boot off your network if its configured for dhcp and a bootp or pxe boot server.

So my XP workstation at my federal installation job can support a camera via the USB ports. So my computer is forbidden even though its sitting on my desk connected to a federal network, just because it has the capability?

That is one of the most stupid paraphrased misleading "quotes" i have ever seen.

Mom drove me home from school.

What the article is saying is that you don't need fiber to the curb for the cable companies to get 100mbps service to the home. What Japan and other countries are doing is using the existing cabling with newer hardware. Verizon is running all new lines to their FIOS neighborhoods so of course its more expensive, its like comparing riding the bus to school and digging your own trench.

Additionally, I would prefer to trench through yards compared to running wiring in an older giant apartment complex that wasn't designed for rerunning cable throughout.