H.264 = MPEG-4 Part 10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC)

If you mean MPEG-2, H.264 was designed as a replacement for this technology amongst others.

H.264 and VC-1 are currently the most efficient methods in terms of bandwidth to transmit video.

This was true of the preview release of 2.0. It was horrible. However, the final version of the UI is fairly decent.

Sadly, no. An actual working prototype is not needed to file for a patent. All you really need (I'm no patent lawyer) is a fairly detailed description of an idea. You also need to search for any ideas similar to yours. If applicable you may need to reference them as works.

I believe the only way this can be overturned is if there is evidence of prior art - (possibly) a working implementation of the idea before the patent was filed.

Also, it's not any particular implementation that they are going after, it is the general "method" of how plugins work within the browser that is the violation.

I blame the LHC...

The alcholic who was drunk driving and killed someone should get a reduced sentence?

For sure... and it's not a black hole. It's a very well designed waveguide that is able to channel microwaves to an absorbant material without re-radiating any of the incoming energy.

You're an AC but I'll respond...

Simply stated, corporations exist by permission of the Government through means of a Government granted charter.

This feature of corporations was ended by the ruling in 1819, I believe. I would bet that merchants and business men of the time wanted a more firm assurance of stability. That is, their charters for their businesses would not be revoked at a whim by an over zealous politician. The ruling ensured that this would never take place. The nefarious aspect of this ruling is promoting the corporation to a status of "individual" with essentially unlimited wealth and resources to protect itself from legal attack. It also cannot be "killed" in the classical sense due to the aformentioned changes in the law.

The debate around unfettered capitalism is at best a text book argument. The reality is that markets undergo some sort of regulation from their inception. unfettered capitalism is unstable thus requires regulation. Given the events of the last 9 months it appears we have learned some things - it will be interesting to see if the "recovery" is stable.

My mention of Obama is simply this - under Obama's proposed laws the top 5 percent of tax payers will exceed the the other 95% contributions to the system. Meaning that over 50% of the tax burden is borne by the top 5% of earners in the country. This is a new record and tends to disprove the notion that wealth concentrates wealth. Obama is taking that wealth and forcible redistributing it across the country instead of allowing the people with the wealth how to decide to spend it.

Unless you have testimony from all of QuoteMstr's family you mentioned about their past voting record, this entire section of your reply is meaningless.

It's not meaningless at all. The point is this - our government was and is constructed by the people who walk down the street, our family members, ancestors and friends. Every american citizen past and present has contributed in one way or another to our current state of affairs. In the unlikely event that the fellow has a long family history of activism I will certain make an exception. The more probable outcome is that his family has their fair share of uninterested or unaligned individuals. It is not fair to call other people (offensive) names simply due to their political beliefs when there is quit possibly someone in their family that shares a similar view.

inevitably distorts the political system into favoring those with wealth

I would argue that the ruling in 1819 by the supreme court labeling the Corporation as "an "artificial person," possessing both individuality and immortality.[13]" (Wikipedia) has done the most harm or rather has created the environment that you refer to as "unfettered capitalism". large corporations have almost unlimited capital available to them and possessing the full rights of an individual it makes the corporation a "person" that is economically invincible in some cases when placed against another individual in a dispute. this is especially true of corporations who exist to serve end consumers such as AT&T.

unfettered capitalism (there exists no such thing) does not inevitably lead to wealth concentration and wealth concentration does not inevitably distort the political system into favoring those with wealth. you may only have to look so far as the obama administration to disprove your second assertion.

People like you comprise the lunatic fringe that's historically impeded any attempt at breaking entrenched powers and enriching the life of the common person.

People like your great grandfather, grandfather, grandmother, aunts, uncles, mother and father have selected and elected the people that have created and overseen the implementation of the policies that you object to so vehamently today. Remeber that before slinging around your tempestuous insults.

Nah not ideal at all. It's a hi tek secret decoder ring. The problem with this particular ring is that a copy can be made of it. I would condsider this a huge vulnerability. Other more conventional technologies such as secureid cannot be compromised in this way.

I mean I'm all for verbally lashing young whipper snappers, but the report in question does not seem to be available from the site. All we have is some paraphrased version of the report that doesn't really make a great deal of sense. I don't think think that anyone would claim the xbox or ps3 is overtaking the cell phone for "messaging". Surely these comments came with some sort of bounds.

Perhaps someone already brought this up - IE 8 may have a user agent string that is not being grokked properly. IE 8 has been a recommended update for about the last month and a half and that coincides nicely with the anomalous statistics.

The sticher program is still a pain in the ass to use, and does take up a lot of time to assemble. he's right - it's not the best use of vacation time.

Using the TPB Top100 to determine if New Artists are able to break out through file sharing is fundamentally flawed.

The Top100 represents what people want, now, not what people will want. Top properly use these statistics you would need to do the following:

Identify all artists being traded illegally on TPB. Track them. See if they eventually become Top100 artists (esentially satisfying the hypothesis "piracy marketing" works). Then compare this with emerging artists using only "traditional" means of promotion. Even then you are only using one source, TPB, and not all artists that allow their music to be traded illegally to see if they then become successful.

There is a actually a group called "Anonymous" (p.45). Slashdot is NOT mentioned contrary to the summary.

"remove any or all Content from any Service"

What is the definition they use for "Service" because that is what they will be filtering from. I have a hard time thinking that your internet connection and the content from all web sites consititutes a Service.