Scientists call others to action, then nothing actually happens, so someone will claim it was all a fraud just like Y2K.

It looks like a place for billionaires to go skiing. Take your helicopter up to the top (they're building a helipad) then ski back down.

What's the difference between a panoramic photo, composed of small pictures stitched together, and Google Streetview or Google Maps, which are composed of small pictures stitched together? Is the difference that one person calls themselves a "photographer" and the other person is just a technician?

Yup, Google Maps is one big panoramic photo. Though the article says largest with "commercial" camera, but doesn't define what that is. If you can buy it, even if you have to be a very rich company to do so, then it's still a commercial camera...

Quoting from the BBC (I didn't read the German ruling):

"However, as part of its ruling the court in Munich said that too few people were using Eyeo's products for it to be judged to have a "dominant" position that might justify an antitrust intervention."

I think the expensive clothing items with the giant company logo on them are hilarious. Pay extra to wear an item that is essentially a billboard, what an ingenious business model!

However part of the ruling says that there were so few adblock users that it was not a serious concern. If adblock suddenly showed up on 90% of all viewers the courts might have to rethink it...

This reminds me of the giant blow up over paid mods to Skyrim. The player community went nuts. But the modding community also went nuts and split a bit, some still wanting to treat their modding as just a hobby same as any other open source, but others who stopped modding altogether because "we deserve to be paid", "no one ever voluntarily donates", "you're a bunch of freeloaders". Ugliest mess you ever saw.

All because it was a system that worked well for a very long time, and then one day money entered the picture.

And never actually buy any of the products.

Seriously, the advertising model on the internet is very screwed up at a times. Like a Buick advertisement on a cycling site. Too many sites just accept random ads that are provided by a third party advertising service. Ie, they've got a blog, they want to make some money to pay for hosting their blog, so they accept scripts from someone they heard about then sit back and wait for money to roll in. And the advertisers who are not paying their fair share of the cost of providing the ad, instead of paying third class postage they pay almost nothing and instead rely on the viewers' own ISPs to deliver their crap for free.

Adblock is used as a self defense mechanism. If we keep getting punched in the face then we're going to start wearing head protection, no matter how much someone whines that they make their living by punching me in the face.

If your livelihood depends upon annoying your customers, or even harming them, then you need a better job. If it's just a hobby then stop demanding that we pay for it.

Seriously, who is the freeloader, me for protecting my computer and my bandwidth, or the advertisers who use my bandwidth without permission and sites who offer up any ads without testing for malware first? Try living for a month on dialup only or pay per megabyte, then see how much you learn to hate advertisers.

- Treat your viewers and customers with respect
- Be responsible
- Stop tracking viewers
- Stop stealing their bandwidth.
- Provide the ads from your own server, not from a third party provider that you have no control over.
- Stop annoying users with ugly crap, stupid animations, pop ups, pop unders, blaring sound, etc.
- No videos!
- Provide relevant ads
- Stop sending out malware - if you do not vet your ads then you are at fault if malware gets through.

If you have an advertisement that you feel is appropriate, then submit it to adblock and see if it gets on their whitelist.

However, I agree with Supreme Court that "good faith" is not enough to be a valid defense. This is Cisco after all, they will lie, cheat, and steal just as much as patent trolls. Give them a free pass of "oh, that didn't sound like a valid patent, so we just ignored them" and then pretty soon that excuse gets used for everything.

The entire summary, and many people here, are using PowerPoint and presentations interchangeably. So what do they REALLY mean, do they hate PowerPoint itself, the tool, or do they hate the idea of a presentation or slides, a concept used for many decades, or do they hate the person who does a lousy job at making and performing a presentation?

I don't like PowerPoint, as it's painful to use and oozes Microsoft out of every pore, but I don't hate presentation software as a general concept.

They used to be called engineers in the UK, in the early days, then the term fell out of use. The original term was "engine-man". BBC articles are so helpful.

You sound offended. Need a hug?

But we don't want to get to know the person better. This is about news and information, not warm fuzzy feelings. I could read a reasonable summary in 20 seconds and move on, without every worry about what the writer looked like or what the facial expressions were while writing.