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Comment Re:Still a useless exemption (Score 1) 74

'Denial' isn't just a river in Egypt.

You're missing the point.

Quadcopters are dangerous

Sure, just like countless other objects. But if the FAA was worried about safety, they'd be expecting the recreational users of them to also be subject to the regulations they're putting on commercial operators using exactly the same 3-pound plastic quadcopter in exactly the same way. A guy checking out his own roof gutters with a consumer-grade quad, and a roofing contractor using exactly the same device in exactly the same way present exactly the same safety risks ... but the FAA only considers one of those two people to be subject to a $10,000 fine. How do you reconcile that?

Easy. For both the homeowner checking his gutters as well as a airplane pilot flying overhead, self-preservation is a big factor.

OTOH, third parties flying vehicles around other people is an inherently callous (and cowardly) act.

Businesses

Amazon Gets Approval To Test New Delivery Drones 74

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has been vocal in its complaints about how slow the FAA is in approving drones for test flights. In March they were finally given permission to test a drone they had developed six months prior, and they said the drone was already obsolete. Their complaints appear to have worked — yesterday, the FAA gave permission to test a new, updated delivery drone. According to the FAA's letter (PDF), the drone must stay at an altitude of less than 400 feet and at speeds of less than 100 mph.

Comment Exactly! Icons without context are meaningless (Score 1) 89

Its like putting those large golden padlock images on e-commerce pages: Over time, people will absorb them as trust indications and then scammers will increase their success rate by draping their spoof pages in these symbols.

A user has to understand what a browser or email client is, and learn to look for trust indicators in the areas that frame the content.

Adding a PGP interface inside a content area is just STUPID.

The real problem that needs solving isn't hacking PGP into web-mail, it's making certificate management user-friendly. And that's not even that hard to do!

I completely agree. I think cert and key management *would* be a lot simpler if operating systems presented keys and certs as first-class objects instead of little scraps of gobbldeygook texts with an empty-page or question-mark icon.

Comment Re:Patents? (Score 1) 223

Cases in point:

1. The ridiculous FAT long-filename patent
2. The subpixel rendering patent (despite prior art being shown)
3. Outright patent-troll behavior: Refusing to disclose a stack of patents its using to extort for-profit Linux distributors behind closed doors.

If MS comes out of the closet and enumerates #3 and opens a dialoge with the community about them, THEN I will believe their hype about being open-source friendly. Otherwise, they are in the business of growing their Android-derived revenue using submarine tactics.

Also, explain to us why MS shuts out FOSS AV and document formats (the consumer-oriented ones); Not only from their products but from standards-making processes.

Have a nice day, mods! :)

Comment Re:Patents? (Score 0) 223

Cases in point:

1. The ridiculous FAT long-filename patent
2. The subpixel rendering patent (despite prior art being shown)
3. Outright patent-troll behavior: Refusing to disclose a stack of patents its using to extort for-profit Linux distributors behind closed doors.

If MS comes out of the closet and enumerates #3 and opens a dialoge with the community about them, THEN I will believe their hype about being open-source friendly. Otherwise, they are in the business of growing their Android-derived revenue using submarine tactics.

Also, explain to us why MS shuts out FOSS AV and document formats (the consumer-oriented ones); Not only from their products but from standards-making processes.

Comment Re:MS is still hostile to open formats (Score 1) 178

"Microsoft simply wants to support industry standard formats and not hobbyist formats like Ext4 or OGG Vorbis. You are not going to find Ext4 or OGG Vorbis support from your camcorder either."

So those massive datacentres powered by Linux are running a hobbyist filesystem?

And don't forget there are billions of Android devices that can understand Ext* disk formats.

Comment Re:MS is still hostile to open formats (Score 1) 178

So only MS gets to embrace and extend; Who would have guessed? Break a single rule in Microsoft's .NET standards and they can come at us with both barrels.

The irony here is MS are using licenses that are thought to be the most libre as a cover to keep the developer community fenced-in to their platform with patent threats. Re-purpose any of the patented code and.....

Also, I'd like to remind you that MS still enforces at least two very silly patents against FOSS distributors: The FAT filename-length patent and the subpixel-rendering patent (which has prior art). And IIRC there is a raft of patents they are using to threaten Linux distributors which they still won't reveal, so they are still in the business of wielding shadowy threats which I'm told is actually illegal.

MS needs to make good on their past and current patent trolling. If they don't then we have no reason to believe they are doing "open source" in good faith.

Comment Re:MS is still hostile to open formats (Score 1) 178

I doubt it is trivial to add EXT2/3/4 support to the windows stack. Consider that ZFS has barely moved in linux space, even though it is fully BSD compatible, opensource, and awesome. Apparently it makes more sense to develop BTRFS.

Its trivial to get Windows to recognize a Linux partition and refrain from telling people to format those volumes.

Comment MS is still hostile to open formats (Score 4, Interesting) 178

And that makes them hostile to open software in my book. They insist on treating Linux-formatted disks as essentially blank and have Windows tell the user the volume must be formatted to be used; fixing this would be simple in the extreme and would not even require an ability to read an Ext* volume. They stonewall AV formats like Vorbis when they could be added easily to existing apps. Really, the list goes on. The place where they have capitulated is formats that are intrinsic to the web (while parading their proprietary stuff as "open" hoping enough people will take the bait).

MS still promotes lock-in. And from what I gather even their new .NET licensing terms are designed to leave you on the hook.

Comment Re:Daala (Score 1) 68

Vorbis made it into a lot of products that were not Apple or MS, from Sandisk to Samsung.

Daala is shaping up to be excellent as well, but its biggest competition may be VPx in the long run... Google announced they would start 18-month release cycles for major VPx codec revisions after 10. That creates a Chrome-like effect on the mindshare of early adopters, so it should be interesting. Of course, who is backing Daala? Mozilla... who may get dragged into release-cycle competition with Google on another product. :)

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